“I have no idea. I’d put money down that the Soul Eater has something to do with it.” His anger was so thick it could have choked him. He turned helplessly, his hands clutched in fists. He would have slapped the lamp from the bedside table to release some of his rage through destruction. But it wasn’t his lamp to break, it wasn’t his body that was ruined and it wasn’t his sire to be pissed at. With a deep breath he released with a curse, he turned back to the bed.

“Where’s Carrie?” Nathan’s eyes, cloudy from the drugs, searched Max’s face with an intensity that made his skin crawl.

How much did Nathan know? And how much should Max tell him?

Thankfully, Bella took care of it for him. “She will be here soon. Lie down. I will get something for your bruises.”

“There’s witch hazel. In the shop,” Nathan panted. “The drugs are wearing off. Do something!”

“Give me the handcuffs.” For being afraid of him before, she was awfully take-charge now. Max went to the dresser to retrieve the cuffs. She held her hands out as if to catch them. Max shouldered past her.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said under his breath as he stretched Nathan’s arms above his head.

“Don’t let it happen again. Don’t let me go back there.” Nathan’s fingers wrapped around Max’s arm with terrifying strength.

Now I know how a life preserver feels, Max thought, carefully withdrawing from his friend’s grasp. “We’re going to try and help you.”

For a heart-stopping moment, Nathan’s face contorted into his vampire form, and he growled. Then his features returned to normal, as if they were wax melting, and he closed his eyes.

“He is unconscious again,” Bella noted.

Max wanted to snap at her, to tell her he knew Nathan was unconscious, but it would have been pointless. Sure, it would make him feel better now, but later, when he had to go back to being civil, it would only make things that much more awkward. He snapped a cuff closed around one of Nathan’s wrists and threaded it behind the brass bars of the headboard. Bella improvised a rope with the sheet, until they could find something more suitable, and tied Nathan’s feet to the end of the bed.

“He will be uncomfortable.” She stood with her arms folded across her chest, a critical, yet entirely unhelpful, look on her face.

Max bit his tongue and cuffed Nathan’s other wrist. “Better him uncomfortable than us dead.”

She shrugged, seeming to acquiesce to his logic, but with her it was hard to tell. In a bizarrely maternal gesture, she picked up a faded quilt from the floor and spread it over Nathan, folding the top back gently.