“Maybe he didn’t like the taste of dog.” Max pushed the needle through her flesh again and winced at the pained sound she made in reply.

“You are making it hurt more on purpose,” she accused. If she hadn’t sounded so helpless, he would have shown her what it would feel like if he intentionally hurt her.

Instead, he handed her the Scotch. “Do you need a break?”

She tilted her head back to drain the flask. After she wiped her lips, she adopted a determined expression. “Get it over with.”

To distract himself from the few yelps she couldn’t hold in, and to distract her from the pain as much as he could, he asked questions. “So, how did this happen?”

“I took your girlfriend’s tip and checked the cemeteries.” Bella clenched the back of the sofa as though she was going to climb away from him.

“Relax. It’ll be harder to finish this if I have to chase you around the apartment to do it.” He took a deep breath and rolled his head to ease the stiffness in his neck. “And Dahlia is not my girlfriend.”

“Well, it was a good tip.” Belle grimaced ruefully. “In theory. I thought I had him. He seemed lucid, until I realized he was not talking to me, but to a person who was not there.”

“He was talking?” That twisted Max’s guts. If Nathan had simply gone insane, there was no help for him. Only one facility existed to deal with vampires who went south of reason, and the Movement probably wasn’t going to welcome a marked vampire in.

She nodded, blowing out a shaky breath. “For a while. Then he completely changed.”

“Into a vampire?” Max tossed his head to get his hair out of his eyes, coupling the motion with a flash of his feeding face.

Her eyes flared, a spark of anger lighting her pupils. “Do not do that. And no, he was still human looking.”

Max looked doubtfully at her shredded leg. “He did this to you in regular Nathan form?”

“He managed to do the leg with the bolt I fired into him.” She shrugged. “It was not my night for aiming.”

“Should have quit while you were ahead.” The wound was nearly closed. All that remained was to tie off the floss. “Still don’t believe he’s possessed?”

It took her a moment to answer. “I do not like to concede that I was incorrect—”

“Flat-out wrong.”

She pursed her lips. “Incorrect. But yes, I do believe you. When he attacked me, he was not in control of himself.”

Max carefully lowered her leg to the couch. “From where I stand, I think you have two options here.”

“I cannot wait to hear them.” She narrowed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest.