Vampire Instinct (12 page)

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Authors: Joey W Hill

Tags: #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural

BOOK: Vampire Instinct
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“That’s a jackal.” Kohana shifted his hip to the rail, folding the carpet over his arm so he could cup his hands to his mouth. The imitation made her smile; then he shifted to the rumbling, hoarser cat call which earned a response, one of the cats echoing him.
“So does this mean the leopard who wants to mate will come find you?”
Kohana snorted. “For all that a cat in rut can be a bit brainless, I think he’s got more sense than that.”
“Do another one.”
His eyes warmed on her, pleased with her enthusiasm, and he gave her a succession of calls. It worked like a dog howling, setting off a chain reaction. The catcalls from the night got more varied and diverse, a natural music that made her rise and put her hands on the rail, cocking her head to take in the song. As she did, she was amazed to feel the touch of the night close around her, a real sense of all the things moving and part of that darkness, the way nature was supposed to be. The simple pleasure gave her some reassurance. As well as laughter, when the radio at his hip beeped and Chumani’s irritated voice came through.
“Do you mind,
mato
? You’re getting everyone down here worked up with your racket.”
“No man wants a shrew,
pahin
.”
“Good thing I don’t want the nuisance of a man, then. Shut it or I’ll come make you sorry.”
Kohana grunted. “You’re all talk on the radio, skinny girl.” But when he released the button, he cocked a brow at Elisa. “They’re doing feeding and exams down at the enclosure.”
“What’s
m-mato
, and the other word?”
“
Mato
is bear, and
pahin
is porcupine. We’ll call you
tuxmagha
. Bee.”
Elisa smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a problem.”
“Far as I can tell,
you
didn’t.” He gave her a wink. “Keeps them on their toes.”
“Does he rehabilitate jackals as well?”
“Not exactly. Mal and the people who helped him set up this place knew they needed an environment similar to that of the different cats, to help with their rehab. We have meat flown in for those in the habitat, and to supplement the ones learning to hunt, but we also have small herds of gazelle, wildebeest and other game. Since cats don’t eat everything, and because we’re trying to make it as close to what they’ll experience in the wild, he also brought in the smaller scavengers. Jackals and the like. There’s a zoologist on the mainland who spent a lot of time helping him know what would work and what wouldn’t.”
“Extraordinary.” She thought about the drive. Hazy, tired and flustered as she’d been, she did remember some details. “The island has very different terrain. Last night, it was like crossing through entirely different countries.”
“Mmm.” Kohana’s benign expression turned into a scowl. “Yeah. He worked that out with someone, too. Someone he shouldn’t be tangling with.”
Someone a
vampire
should avoid? Kohana didn’t linger on that curious statement, though. He pointed to the sky instead. “Can you see that many stars back in Australia?”
“They’re arranged a bit differently, but it’s a lovely new view of it.”
“We’re in the Northern hemisphere,” the Indian said. “Some things you see from one side, you don’t see from the other.”
Nodding, Elisa turned her face back up to the sky. “I guess I’ve been distracted by so many other things, I haven’t appreciated what it is to be traveling half a world away from everything I’ve ever known. I’ve never been much of anywhere. Lady Constance met me in Perth, and sent me to school in Adelaide. And of course I went to Darwin to help Lady Danny and Dev when we first got the children.”
“Fledglings,” Kohana reminded her helpfully. “He’s right about that part. Plus, it’s best not to rile a vampire for no reason.”
“No worries. That part I
do
know.” She considered the sky again. “There’s the Milky Way. We can see that one, though it looks a bit dimmer here.”
“The Tsalagi, the Cherokee, call it ‘the place where the dog ran.’” Kohana slanted her a glance. She wondered if he spent a lot of time here by himself, which made him so willing to talk to her, or if he’d been instructed to keep her distracted, though Mal hadn’t really projected such sensitivity. He might be merely gathering impressions to share with Mal later, but if so, she could only be herself. Plus, she was doing just as much information gathering herself.
“Why do they call it that?”
“That’s a Tsalagi story. I’ll tell you a proper Lakota story, which is much better.”
She gave a mock snort. “Oh really? Better than a story about the Milky Way?”
His eyes creased, showing his enjoyment of her. “Yes, young smart mouth. It’s a story about the creation of the world. There was another world before this one.” When Kohana looked out at the night, at the beauty of the darkened island, she saw something in his face that quieted her. “But people didn’t act as they should in that world, so the Great Spirit sang and it rained. The more he sang, the harder it rained, until the whole earth was flooded and nearly everyone drowned, swept away by his disappointment. However, Crow came to the Great Spirit and asked to please give him a place to rest his feet. The Great Spirit relented and decided to create a new world. He sent four animals who could swim into deep water to get him creation clay. Three of them failed, but Turtle succeeded, bringing back the clay that became the land. The Great Spirit cried over what had been lost, and the rivers and streams formed from his tears. He populated the new earth with animals from his pipe bag, and then, after much deliberation, he took red, white, black and yellow earth and made people again. He gave the people his sacred pipe and told them all would be well if living things learned to live in harmony. But if they made it bad and ugly again, it would once again be destroyed.”
As he glanced toward her, she showed her appreciation with a curve of her lips. “Dev would like you. He tells Aboriginal stories, because he has their blood. What kind of Indian is Mr. Malachi?”
“His mother was Cherokee; his father was a white trapper. But Mal doesn’t tell Tsalagi stories, or speak the language.”
“He’s never learned?” she ventured.
“I never said that. I said he doesn’t speak it. Doesn’t tell the old stories.”
Since Mal would hardly talk to her about the children, let alone something personal about himself, she wondered why she heard a warning in Kohana’s voice.
“He hired all Indians to work here. So he must feel some connection.”
Kohana made a rather irritable grunt. “That’s a story for him to tell. Mal’s put all of himself into this. Too much. You two may have more in common than you know.”
Reclaiming his crutch, he hopped back toward the door. She noted he’d left a stack of bedding on the arm of the couch. “Is that for the guest quarters?”
“No. I expect you and Thomas don’t need a linen change yet. Unlike some other people who live here, I assume you don’t fall into your bed at dawn still wearing your dirty clothes, and get leaves and dirt on the sheets.”
Elisa bit back a smile. “No, I try to wash off a bit before bedtime.”
“We might as well give him a hole in the backyard,” Kohana snorted. “He wouldn’t notice the difference, and I wouldn’t have to keep it clean.”
“I’m about done with the windows. Would you like me to take it to his room and change them out?”
“Be happy to let you do that.” He waved her in that direction. “Downstairs, last bedroom at the end of the hallway. I usually straighten up a little in there, but don’t get too fussy about it. He won’t be able to find anything and he’ll bitch about it for half the night.”
Nodding, she returned her window-cleaning supplies to the supply closet as he disappeared around the corner, headed back to the kitchen area. He’d told her he started cooking for the staff just before midnight to give them a good supper break, so she’d do the linens and then come back to help. She was pleased she’d worked hard enough that her muscles were aching. Fatigue dogged her all the time now, but this felt like a physical tiredness, not a stress-caused one, and that was an improvement, to her way of thinking. While she wished Mal had taken her with him, it was quiet here. She liked it, and Kohana’s company. Liked not being the center of so many sympathetic or
tsk
ing countenances. She liked those new sounds in the night, the idea she might see things she’d never seen before.
Kohana seemed to trust her well enough, though it was probably because she’d come from Lady Danny’s household versus any merit of her own. Still, she’d take the opening it provided. There were puzzles here to engage her interest, like Kohana’s cryptic comments about the island and Mal’s dedication to it.
The other doors along the wide corridor downstairs held guest bedrooms. They were a bit nicer than what was provided for the humans on the second level, but not by much. The walls were stone, as were the floors, giving a castle impression to her fanciful imagination. The gaslight sconces added to the feeling, casting dim, shadowed light across the rock. They illuminated drawings on the wall, or rather, one big drawing. A mural of cats.
They weren’t polished, not like a painting in a museum, yet there was a rough realism to them, reminding her of the Aboriginal drawings one came upon in caves in the Outback. It was apparent the mural had been done over time, no real plan for it, as if the artist was merely idling away spare time, drawing what captured his imagination. For instance, there was a picture of a lion lying down, but a domestic cat’s tail lay over one paw, the cat looking over his shoulder and up at the lion with typical feline disdain. Cats of myriad species played, hunted, leaped, slept . . .
It had to be Mal. She sensed his restless energy coupled with the intense focus in the drawings. It gave her yet another intriguing view of the master of the house. No matter his harsh worldview or practicality, down here he was willing to entertain a more fanciful view of his charges, of a wondrously playful and different kind of world. She thought the surroundings encouraged it, warm and dark like a mother’s womb, where everything was still possible.
Now she was about to enter the intimate sleeping quarters of the unpredictable male vampire who was caretaker for her children. Most beings, even vampires, left clues to themselves in the places they slept, coupled and felt most secure. Mal didn’t seem the type who knew what fear or insecurity was, though. Maybe Kohana was right—a coffin in the back would be just as appropriate, and she’d find nothing in here of note but a bed and a line of muddy boots.
He was hard to pin down, that was for certain, but she had to admit, not only from Kohana’s grumbling, he was one of the more nonegalitarian of his kind she’d ever met. In some ways, he reminded her more of Dev than Danny. Except when those eyes sharpened on her. Then she felt that same thing Danny possessed, in spades, the quality that could fluster Elisa in such unexpected ways. He was right; she wasn’t used to feeling it from a male vampire. As unsettling as it could be from Danny, when it came from him it made her knees buckle in a downright embarrassing fashion. She needed to get a handle on herself, and perhaps a greater familiarity with who he was would help with that.
Or make it worse,
a sly voice in her subconscious suggested. Ignoring it, she pushed open the bedroom door.
The left corner of the room was a far messier version of his upstairs office. Papers, files and sketches scattered everywhere. As she wandered in, sheets in her arms, she glanced into open boxes that contained reference material and reports that looked like they came from universities, dealing with animal behavior, habitat studies and anatomy. The table in the corner was laden with mostly toppled wooden carvings, all different types of cats. She realized they had distinctive markings, added with markers. Names were scrawled on them, an aid to remembering which cat was which, she assumed.
He had a radio, though she wondered at the reception he might get down here. No pictures, just black-and-white photos of what looked like landscape features of the preserve. They were tacked up on wooden strips embedded in the stone. Turning in a full circle, she faced the right side of the room. And she discovered the most extraordinary bed she’d ever seen.
Carved of some type of black wood, the posts twisted in a natural treelike way up into a canopy of interlaced branches. She expected looking up into it would be like looking up in a forest during winter, when there were no leaves. But hanging from those different branches were sparkling things. Drawing closer, she saw they were crystals, rough-cut gems, strung together in beaded lengths and woven in and out of the branches, along with feathers, and braided lengths of what appeared to be animal hair. Golden, brown, black, white.
Thrown over the bed was something she also didn’t expect. Animal skins. She recognized the tiger’s pelt from pictures in Thomas’s book, the strikingly rich black and gold markings. Underneath and offset from it was one that, from its size, looked like it should belong to a lion. It was tan with a dark, broad arrow of color forming a pattern upon it. Another coat looked black until she drew closer and saw it was a bitter chocolate brown, with a pattern of faint spots through it. A black leopard, maybe.

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