Vampire Instinct (21 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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He drew his touch back then, diabolically making the ache intensify. “So what will it be, Elisa? A woman, or a wild animal? If you choose the woman, remember you back away from a predator slowly, one step at a time. No running, no taking your eyes off him. If you run, I will take you down.”
The challenge weighted the air between them, a challenge she didn’t know how to answer. She’d never “taken” in her life, never had the aggressive instincts of the wild animal he was referencing. It coiled inside of her, the things she wanted, the things she’d lost, the things that confused her still. She knew she had no answer for him. But perhaps she could test herself in another way.
Slowly, she drew her arms down, her hands slipping away from his neck as she folded her limbs against herself, staring up at him. “You told me I don’t need to know more. You were surprised I could see those bluish lights. You talked about the protection of the skins, but you didn’t say it like it was a wishful thing, the way we wear crosses and hope someone is listening when you pray. It
is
magic, isn’t it? Will you tell me?”
She didn’t expect him to answer. In fact, she was counting on it. It would confirm there was no real connection between them, the physical lust as temporal as an animal coupling and as emotionally empty. However, after following her brow with a fingertip, then tracing it down her nose, a brief touch on her lips again, he sat up, bringing her with him. She was inside the span of his arm as they sat, legs bent, gazing down on that meadow where the leopards were.
“The cheetah and cubs we saw tonight aren’t here, on the island. When we drove through that open plain, we were actually in Africa. For just a moment or two.”
“Of course. That’s what I would have suspected.” She blinked at him. “I don’t think you need to worry that I’ll give away your secret. Not sure anyone would believe that.”
His lips curved, but the serious set of his eyes remained. “There is a sizeable island here, and the house sits in the center of it. However”—he drew several lines in the dirt banked against the fallen tree—“these sections, when you move into them, you’re not actually
here
. These are pieces of land elsewhere in the world, that have been patched here by magical fault lines. You can’t wander past them into larger territories. And it’s . . . off-kilter with the reality there. Those actually in those places can’t see or hear us or our cats. Our lions on the open preserve are walking in the environment they’d have in Africa, a shadow of it, without the danger of the poachers. When the island was first formed, a certain number of prey animals—impala, zebra, wildebeest—enough that we could maintain a herd, wandered across that protected fault line before the man who created it sealed it and . . . off-centered it. I’m sure he’d laugh at my rather nontechnical explanation, but that’s the bare bones of it.”
She was more than a little amazed. “I don’t know anything about magic, but that sounds extremely complicated.”
“It was. Just about depleted him. Had to nurse him here for a week before he was back to standing strength again. He’s a little too sure of his own talents. Course, I don’t really know what
will
kill him.” Mal grimaced.
“And the bed?”
He shrugged. “The canopy over the bed is the focal point for the magic. All the interwoven branches, the charms and sigils, hold it all together. If you tried to unravel it, or break it, you’d simply... incinerate. If you merely touch it, you’re fine,” he added at her startled look. “When the pelts came into my keeping, Derek said they would make a vital part of the casting and protection. The spirits of the cats that used to belong to those coats helped strengthen the connections and the overall protection on the island.”
“Derek. Does he live here?”
Malachi shook his head. “I don’t know where Derek Stormwind lives. Sometimes I’m not quite sure
what
he is. A sorcerer is probably the best definition. He looks about thirty years old, has since I first heard of him, back in the eighteen hundreds. He came through here years back, when I was setting this place up and trying to decide how I would make it work to rehabilitate cats from different environments.”
“He sounds a bit frightening.” Now Elisa understood Kohana’s darkly ominous comment.
“He’s a lot like one of these cats. You respect his power, have confidence when you deal with him, but you never forget he can be dangerous. I think Derek belongs more to the mysteries of nature than things of man, and it’s a part of nature far darker and more twisted than most of us get to see or comprehend.”
She thought about that, thought in his current disarming state he wasn’t much different from the unpredictable Derek. “So when you sleep in the bed . . . does it do anything to you?”
“Sometimes I just sleep, but there’s always the sense of cat spirits in my dreams, their bodies pressed up to me. And no, it’s not my house cats. They don’t like the bed. They prefer my desk upstairs. I think the magic unsettles them.”
“So much for cats being familiars.”
“Well, I expect there are familiars who are cats, but not all cats are familiars. Some of them are just basic folk.” He gave her a half smile.
It was alarming, how her heart skipped a beat at that expression. She needn’t have worried, however. In a blink, his mien became stern once again and he rose, offering her a fairly impersonal hand up. “I brought you out here so you know what the open preserve is like. I or one of the others will bring you again if you’d like, but you leave the grounds only in my company or others of the staff. If, on the unlikely chance you’re here long enough to be trusted to run errands off the compound, you will get out of the Jeep only where Kohana tells you to get out, and then you come right back. If the Jeep breaks down, you stay inside of it, with the windows rolled up, until we come find you. You’ll have a radio at all times if you’re off the property. Understood?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you want to go see the fledglings now?”
Her heart leaped. She couldn’t contain her joy, even though his voice became even colder and more authoritative. “While you’re there, you’ll obey everything I tell you to do or not to do, immediately and without question.”
“Yes, sir.”
Just please take me to them.
She didn’t intend it as a direct plea to him, but she expected he heard it. On their walk back to the Jeep, he didn’t try to touch her again.
She knew how to pick up information from nuances, things unspoken and physical evidence—things on a bedside table, dropped carelessly under a bed or left between the sheets. Looking at his unrelenting profile, she knew he thought her feelings toward them were a problem to be solved. Was it possible these brief moments of consideration and seduction, when she felt a surprisingly compelling connection to him, were merely ways to do what she suspected Danny had asked him to do? Brace her maid for the worst.
Since Danny’s motives were based on affection, she couldn’t fault her much for that. But his motives still felt unclear to her. The fact she was sure he heard her thought, and didn’t care to confirm or deny, only made her uneasiness that much worse.
13
 
S
HE wasn’t one to waste a good moment on worry. She was going to see her fledglings. As they drove through the hills, she held on to that thought. Since Mal wasn’t talking much, she focused on the scenery with new eyes, particularly at the elevated points open enough that she could look down and see that puzzle piecing of different terrains, the magic glue like a dim line of blue fireflies. During daylight, she was sure each crest gave her a panoramic view of the ocean, the sunlight glittering off the waves. She hoped she’d eventually have the freedom Mal suggested to see that. She’d love to walk barefoot along the sandy shore, wade in the water.
Of course, first she had to learn how to drive. She’d coax one of the staff to teach her, in exchange for mending or cooking or other skills she had to trade. They’d done that at the station, one man whittling her a new stirring spoon in exchange for sewing his shirts, or Mrs. Rupert knitting her a cap while Elisa took over the baking for a day, giving the older woman rest for her swollen legs. That type of companionable bartering had to exist on an island where supplies were flown in and things weren’t readily at hand. While she was still perceived as a guest, and a temporary one at that, if that changed, she’d become part of that fabric.
She stole a glance at Malachi. Wanting to reclaim the earlier ease they’d had, she ventured forth with a question that seemed relatively safe, particularly since she already knew the answer. “There’s a councilperson named Lord Malachi. That’s not you, I assume?”
When Mal cocked his head toward her, the dark wing of his hair, the aquiline line of his nose, the way the dim light caught his dark eye, made the likeness to a bird of prey even more arresting. “Do I strike you as good at politics, Irish flower?”
My fat aunt
jumped into her head before she could stop it. At his quizzical expression, she cleared her throat. “It’s an Aussie expression. It means . . . not really.”
He snorted. He turned off the main road, such that it was, onto something that looked like a deer track, the trees closing in so that palm fronds slid over the windshield and tickled the elbow she had braced on the open window. A trio of birds flushed just ahead, their crimson feathers and snow-white heads a splash of color against the greenery.
“Lord Belizar, the head of the Council, also has a full servant named Malachi,” Mal said. “There being so few vampires, they’ve considered changing the servant’s name to save confusion.”
“But that’s his name. I know they’re powerful vampires and all that, but taking away the name your mother gave you, that seems too much. Sometimes that’s all you have of yourself.”
Mal missed a gear. The Jeep jerked such that Elisa caught the dash with her free hand. She didn’t miss the look on her driver’s face, though. In that one brief second, his expression altered. It reminded her of how, sometimes, when her day was going along just fine, someone came up on her sudden-like, startling her. A dark well opened inside and things supposed to be in the past were all too present. His expression became inscrutable again in a flash, but she’d seen stark pain, overlaid by a rage so deep it was impossible to ignore.
“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly terrified that she’d angered him beyond immediate repair. “I wasn’t trying to be insolent. I—”
He stopped the Jeep so abruptly she was glad she was still holding the dash, but his advice about standing fast before a charging predator came to mind when he turned toward her. “Elisa, short of you spitting in my face, you are going to get to see these damn vampires tonight. All right? So stop walking on eggshells and making everything about that. And for fuck’s sake, be quiet until we get there.”
The savagery took her aback, such that she had to force herself not to shrink into a corner. She sensed the anger wasn’t at her, not directly. She’d simply been a messenger carrying a missive he hadn’t wanted to receive. Taking a steadying breath, she tried to fold her hands in her lap and sit in dignified silence as he put the Jeep back in gear. After several tense seconds, she glanced at him through the gray darkness, the hard set of his mouth.
She wanted to apologize, and not because she was afraid of not seeing her fledglings. She hadn’t intended to hurt or upset him. She didn’t like to do that to anyone, not without cause, and she’d really thought it a safe line of conversation. But since he seemed to prefer her silence, she swallowed the compulsion and hoped to have a chance to offer her regrets later.
He navigated one final turn that slid them into a clearing, which gave her a first glimpse at the enclosures Thomas described. Eagerly, she sat forward, straining for a better look. She could see movement, and thought it might be William. Another small figure stepped out of a walled shelter inside his cell and turned toward the oncoming Jeep. Unmistakably Jeremiah.
Though it had been only a couple days, she’d thought about them with every inhale, worried with every exhale. She’d treated that rhythm like a clock, counting down to this moment so she wouldn’t go mad. Perhaps she had gone a little wobbly. But now, so close to her goal and not wanting to do a single wrong thing, she forced herself to stay seated in the Jeep, waiting for Mal’s direction.
She admitted being impressed by what she was seeing. The enclosure area was large, each individual cell enough to house a small cabin and patch of yard. The yard area wasn’t just gravel or dirt. Small trees had been planted there, flowers, bushes. Like the cats, there was a box-sized cage attached to the larger cell, through which she suspected the staff could leave their blood donations so the fledglings could retrieve it without contact.
The individual cabins were joined to one large communal enclosure, the place Mal had let them interact with him. That area was likewise landscaped, with a birdbath to attract small feathered creatures through the gleaming silver fencing that completely enclosed the area, including the top. That gleam made it like no type of fencing she’d seen. She wondered if Mal had somehow used an extra wisp of Derek’s magic to reinforce this area, ensure it was strong enough to keep vampires from tearing, digging or climbing out.
Danny had contacted Mal several months ago. Despite that length of time, this was far more than his attitude had led her to expect. She was a bit shamed by her doubts.

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