"My mother, your mother, and Uncle Lucian," Elspeth answered.
She nodded again. "And the staking? Do we know what happened? Who it was?"
Thomas tilted his head. "You don't believe it was someone Uncle Lucian sent, then?"
"What?" Lissianna glanced at him with surprise. "No, of course not. He'd know that staking wouldn't kill me. Besides, that's kind of rough punishment for sneaking Greg out of here."
"Greg thought it was them," Mirabeau informed her, and Lissianna frowned.
"Well, he'd heard a lot about what the council does, he probably has a pretty grim picture of Uncle Lucian and the council."
Thomas nodded. "Aunt Marguerite, Aunt Martine, and
Uncle Lucian were pretty upset to hear about the staking when I called. I'm sure they'll look into it. Uncle Lucian probably already has someone doing so."
Lissianna nodded, then got to her feet, grimacing at the stiffness of her blouse as she moved. The smell told her it was dried blood causing the cardboardlike stiffness of the cloth. Fortunately, the dark color didn't show the blood; otherwise, she'd be fainting and back in bed.
"Maybe you should take a shower," Elspeth suggested.
Lissianna shook her head. "I want to check on Greg first."
"Lissi, they won't let you in," Thomas said quietly. "We've all tried to get in there to check on him, and they won't even open the door anymore. They just shout that he's fine and to go away."
His words made her hesitate, but then Lissianna moved resolutely to the door. "I have to check on him. Where is he?"
"The room next door," Elspeth murmured.
Nodding, she stepped into the hall, aware that the rest of them were following her. Their presence helped bolster her up so that when Lissianna reached the spare room, she didn't hesitate and didn't bother knocking, but simply opened the door and walked in.
Her eyes went wide with horror as she took in the tableau. Greg lay writhing on the bed, his hands and ankles tied down. Apparently, fearing the ropes weren't strong enough to hold him, her aunt Martine and her uncle Lucian stood on either side of the bed, adding their strength to keep him down as her mother struggled to insert an IV into his arm.
"Is everything all right?" Lissianna asked with concern.
As if her words were some sort of cue, Greg suddenly screamed again and redoubled his thrashing. Much to her amazement, he nearly broke free of the hold Martine and Lucian had on him.
"Close the door!" her uncle Lucian roared.
Lissianna turned automatically to do so, her glance apologetic as she shut the door on her cousins and Mirabeau. Then she turned back to the struggle taking place to keep Greg in the bed.
"The nanos have made him this strong already?" she asked in amazement as she approached the bed.
"No. It's the pain and fear," Marguerite gasped, giving up on what she'd been doing to bear down on his arm and shoulder as he thrashed.
"Fear?" Lissianna moved around her uncle to the top of the bed and reached out to gently touch Greg's forehead, murmuring his name.
He seemed to settle a little at the sound of her voice. At least, his struggles slowed. Lissianna felt tears sting her eyes at the desperate agony that filled his as he opened his eyes and found her.
She'd heard many times that the turning was painful. The nanos were an invading force, eating up blood at an incredible rate as they multiplied and spread throughout the body, entering every organ and cell. Lissianna had heard that it felt as if the blood was turning to acid, and that acid ate you up an inch at a time. She'd heard that the pain wasn't even the worst of it, that nightmares and hallucinations accompanied it, horrid terrifying visions of death and torture and, usually, burning alive.
Lissianna had often thought those stories an exaggeration, but seeing Greg as he was now, she believed every one of them. Her gaze slid to her mother. "Isn't there something you can give him for the pain?"
"He wanted to go through it without drugs," Marguerite said on a sigh.
"Only because Lucian badgered him into it with his 'real vampires take it like a man,' crap." Martine tossed her brother a glance filled with disgust. "They may not have had strong painkillers in Roman or medieval times, but you won't convince me that a society advanced enough to develop this sort of thing, didn't have the knowledge to develop pain suppressors to ease their introduction to the body. Besides," she added pointedly, "you were born this way just as I was."
Lissianna saw the smile playing about her uncle's lips, and growled with fury as she turned to her mother to snap, "Give him something!"
"He said he wanted to suffer through it," Lucian commented mildly. "You cannot--"