“You weren’t bitten,” Cian said flatly. “A scrape, not a puncture.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Quite a bit.” Blair straightened. “There’s infection, and there’s also considerable risk of the one who bit you having some control over you.”
“Aye.” Larkin frowned, closed his eyes. “I felt something working in me. But—”
“We’ll take care of it. It needs to be purified with holy water.”
“That’s fine. Then if I could have the lovely balm Moira spoke of, and a meal, I’d be good as new—but for the fact every bone of my body feels as if it’s been hit with a hammer.”
Straight truth, Blair thought. Straight, hard truth. “Do you know the burn you felt when it sank into you? The burn you’re feeling now?”
“I do.”
“This will be a lot worse. I’m sorry.” She walked out, hurried up the steps. And Moira rushed out behind her.
“There must be another way. How can we hurt him again? He’s still so weak, and already in pain. I can see the pain in his eyes.”
“You think I can’t?” She swung into her room. “There is no other way.”
“I know it says there isn’t in the books. I’ve read them. But with Glenna and Hoyt—”
Blair pulled a bottle of holy water from her kit, and her face was set when she whirled around. “There is no other way. He’s infected. That puts him and all of us at risk.” She shot out her arm, turned up her wrist to show the scar. “I know what it’s like. If there was another way, don’t you think I’d try it?”
Moira shuddered out a breath. “What can I do?”
“You can help hold him down.”
She took down towels, bandages. She made herself walk to Larkin, look straight into his eyes. “This is going to hurt.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Cian added, “like a motherfucker.”
“Oh well.” Larkin licked his lips. “That’s heartening.”
“I might be able to block some of the pain,” Glenna began.
“I don’t think you can, or should.” Blair shook her head. “It’s part of it. It’s the way it’s done. Here, we need to get him on the floor, facedown. Get those towels under him. Cian, you’d better take his feet. Wouldn’t want any to splash on you.”
Larkin winced as they shifted him. “What would he need to take my feet for?”
“We’re going to hold you down,” Blair told Larkin.
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you will.”
He met her eyes again, saw what was in them. “You do it then. I trust you to see it through.”
With Cian at his feet, Hoyt on one side and both women on the other, Blair opened the bottle. She brushed his hair clear, exposed the raw bite.
“Under these circumstances, it’s not considered unmanly to scream. Brace yourself,” she warned him, and poured the
blessed water on the wound.
He did scream. And his body arched up, bucked. The wound itself seemed to boil, and she let the viscous liquid that bubbled out run as she continued, ruthlessly, to douse it with water.
She flashed back to the night she’d had to go to her aunt, less than a week after her father had left her. And how her aunt’s tears had run down her face as she poured the water over the bite on Blair’s wrist.