"So what caused you to hunger? Do you remember?"
Daniel closed his eyes. "There was so much blood." He sobbed once. "I knew it was wrong. Stefan, it was a baby. A crying baby... it smelled so good."
I glance around at the crowd in time to see the elderly vampire lick his lips. I quickly looked back at Daniel. I didn't want to know how many of the vampires were made hungry by Daniel's recount.
"The baby you killed in the orchard?" asked Stefan.
Daniel nodded his head and whispered, "Yes."
"Daniel the orchard is outside of Benton City, a half-hour drive from Paseo. How did you get there?" Marsilia quit tapping her fingers. I remembered that Stefan had said that a vampire in the grips of bloodlust would never be able to drive a car. Apparently Marsilia agreed with him.
"I must have driven the car. It was there when I... when I was myself again."
"Why did you go to Benton City, Daniel?"
Daniel didn't answer for a moment. Finally he said, "I don't know. All I remember is blood."
"How much gas was in your car when you got to the hotel in Paseo?" Stefan asked.
"It was on empty," Daniel said slowly. "I remember because I was going to fill it... afterwards."
Stefan turned to his silent audience. "Bernard. How much gas was in the car Daniel was driving when you found him?"
He didn't want to answer. "Half full."
Stefan looked at Marsilia and waited.
Suddenly she smiled, a sweet smile that made her look like an innocent girl. "All right. I believe that there was someone with Daniel that night. You, I would believe, could drive twenty miles and fill up the car while under the burden of the bloodlust, but a new vampire like Daniel never could."
Daniel jerked his head toward Stefan. "That doesn't mean that I didn't kill those people. I remember it, Stefan."
"I know you do," he agreed. "You can leave the seat--if Wulfe is satisfied of your truth?" He glanced up.
The teenager next to Marsilia, who'd been cleaning something out from under his nail with his teeth, nodded his head.
"Master?" whispered Daniel. Andre had been staring at the floor, but at Daniel's words he said. "You can leave the seat, Daniel."
"This doesn't prove anything except that there was another with Daniel that night. Someone who drove the car and filled it with gas," Bernard said.
"That's right," agreed Stefan mildly.
When Daniel tried to stand up, his legs wouldn't hold him. His hands also seemed to be stuck. Stefan helped him pry his hands free and then picked him up off the chair when it became apparent that despite the feeding, Daniel was still too weak to stand.
Stefan took a step toward Andre, but then he hesitated and brought him back to where the wolves and I were standing.
He set him down on the floor a few feet from Warren. "Stay there, Daniel," he said. "Can you do that?"
The young man nodded his head. "Yes." He held onto Stefan's arm though, and Stefan was forced to unwrap the other vampire's fingers before he could return to the chair. He took a handkerchief out of a back pocket and cleaned the arms of the chair until the brass tacks gleamed. No one complained about the time it took.
"Mercy," Stefan said, putting the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Would you please come and bear your truth before my mistress?"
He wanted me to go stick my hands on those sharp thorns. Not only did it seem somewhat sacrilegious, thorns and pierced palms, but it was going to hurt. Not that it came as a terrible surprise, not after Stefan and Daniel.
"Come," he said. "I've cleaned them so that you will suffer no taint."
The wood was cool and the seat a little too big, like my foster father's favorite chair had been. After he'd died, I'd spent hours in that chair, smelling his scent, ingrained into the polished wood by years of use. The thought of him steadied me, and I needed all the nerve I could get.
The thorns were longer and sharper than they'd looked when I wasn't about to push them into my flesh. Better to do it quickly than to stew about it. I closed my hands over the ends of the arms and pulled them tight.