Simon struggled against the restraints as hard as he could. He'd known something was off about those pills but he'd never thought…
He was going to be sick.
"You've been drugging me."
"I've been helping you control your darker nature. The part of you that would have become exactly what killed your mother if not for my intervention." Reuben positioned the needle against Simon's arm. "Think of it as a leash. One that's kept you from hurting yourself and others for a decade."
"I don't need your leash."
"Recent events suggest otherwise." Reuben pressed the needle into Simon's vein. "You fed a vampire your blood. You protected him against your orders. You've been compromised in the worst way."
Simon felt the first drops of Reuben's blood enter his system—cold, then burning, spreading up his arm toward his heart.
"What I'm giving you now will eliminate your confusion," Reuben said softly. "It will burn away the influence of your pet vampire and return you to your purpose."
The burning reached Simon's chest. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in. He could feel Reuben's presence growing in his mind, a familiar, soothing weight that wanted him to give in to its command.
"When you wake up," Reuben continued, emptying the syringe, "you'll be yourself again. And your first mission will be to eliminate the vampire who nearly destroyed everything we've built."
Simon's back arched against the restraints as the blood circulated through his body and dulled his mind.
His last thought before darkness claimed him was of Charlie—brown eyes wide with trust, apologizing for existing, warm against him in that too-comfortable bed.
Then nothing.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Charlie pressed his hand to his chest. He felt like throwing up.
"You okay back there?" Viktor glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Charlie hunched in the backseat, Brent's gym bag full of hastily packed clothes at his feet. "No," he admitted. "I mean, I'm ok. But I don't think Simon is."
Brent twisted in the passenger seat to look at him. His friend's face still held the dazed expression of someone whose entire worldview had been upended in the span of fifteen minutes.
"So you can, like, sense him? Because you drank his blood?" Brent shook his head.
"The bond formed when he fed me."
"And the rabbit thing?"
"That's... unrelated."
Brent's brow furrowed. "It's gonna take me a while to wrap my head around this."
That was fair. Charlie just didn't know how much time they had.
Viktor took a sharp turn, heading out of the city. "We need somewhere to regroup. Somewhere they won't look for us immediately."
"And then we still need to contact that guy from the library," Charlie said. "The one Simon talked to before everything went sideways. Noah."
Viktor nodded. "Slight problem, though. We don't have his contact information."
"Shit." Charlie slumped back. Another dead end.
But what could they do?
