Vampire Instinct (35 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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Nerida brought the pieces of chocolate Elisa had left in her lockdown cage with the blood, offering Miah some. Though Elisa had given them an equal amount, and they both liked the sweets, Miah liked them even more and Nerida knew it. That was something the boys never did. They didn’t share.
Elisa glanced down at the two books she’d brought to read by the lantern light. One had colorful pictures, a photography book of exotic places, but she thought she might read the poetry. They liked the singsong cadence of it, and Walt Whitman gave such beautiful descriptions of the world around them. It keyed into the desire to be free, soothing it in some odd way, as if the words could help transcend the cell bars. At least that was what she thought, because when Lady Constance had sent her to school and she’d discovered the book of Whitman poetry, it had made her feel that way about the more nebulous bars of her own life.
She wondered what Mal was doing. He’d intended to be in the leopard part of the range today, helping the adolescents learn to hunt. From Kohana, she understood that to mean he ran down game for the orphans, showing them by example how to do it. Chumani had said they were old enough that they would likely join in the hunt, jumping onto the creature to help bring it down, such that Mal would likely be able to pull back and let them do most of it except for the final kill, which was apparently the part that initially confused them, that clamp on the throat that would end the prey’s life quickly.
Today’s lesson likely wouldn’t be quick
or
easy, so she was glad not to be there for that. She understood the point of it all, but she was just too softhearted to watch it.
Jeremiah cried out, a harsh shout. Elisa’s head jerked up from the books, just in time to see Jeremiah leap forward and slam against his locked cell door, his hands clamping on the unyielding bars. Whipping her head around, she saw Leonidas shove open the door of his cell with a resounding clang. A glint of metal shot out of the locking mechanism, a shard she realized with horror he’d maneuvered into it to keep the locks from fully engaging.
He was in the communal enclosure with the two girls.
 
Nerida shrieked, darting behind Miah and grabbing the skirt of her dress, even as Miah tried to snatch her up and run back toward her cell, the closer of the two. She didn’t make it. Leonidas was on her in an instant, knocking her to the ground, Nerida underneath her body. He had his hand clamped on the back of the older girl’s neck, his knee in her back.
Elisa was on her feet, reaching for the control panel, but then she realized there was nothing she could do to help. She couldn’t open the enclosure. Spinning on her toe, she grabbed for the radio instead.
“No.”
Kohana had said a lion’s roar could carry as much as five or six miles. Leonidas’s command shattered the calm of the clearing just that way. His crimson eyes burned into Elisa.
“Put . . . it . . . down. Or I tear . . . her head . . . off. Then . . . the other.”
Put it down, Elisa. I know you’re in trouble.
Lord in Heaven, how could she have forgotten? She didn’t need the radio. Mal’s voice was calm and deadly. It was peculiar—she hadn’t thought he ever really listened in on what happened here, except for occasional babysitting checks. Now she wondered if he listened in more often. If he liked hearing poetry.
Strewth, what was she going on about? Her mind was splitting in half, refusing to see this was happening, wanting to prattle on about poetry. Shoving aside that dizzying sensation, she dug her nails fiercely into her palms. She refused to let past and present overlap and shut down her mind. They needed her. She needed to be fully here, no matter what.
Even now, since she’d appeared to hesitate, Leonidas had caught Miah’s hair, shifting his other hand around to the front of her throat. He could twist her head off with one wrenching motion, and he would do it in one blink to prove his threat. Then use Nerida for leverage.
“All right,” she snapped. She laid the radio on the stump. The tranquil cover of
Leaves of Grass
mocked her. That day in the barn, one of the toys she’d given the children, a train engine, had been splattered liberally with Willis’s blood. During Victor’s rampage, it had gotten knocked into Matthew’s reach. She remembered turning her head, watching out of glazed eyes as Matthew nervously sucked off the blood while Victor did what he was doing to her. She pressed her fingers down on the cover of the book, hard enough her bones protested. She hoped no blood got on it. She didn’t want Walt Whitman to be ruined forever by whatever was about to happen.
God help me. Focus.
Nerida made a bleating cry as Leonidas shifted his grip. Nerida was buried beneath Miah, clinging like a baby roo inside her mother’s pouch, her face hidden, body shaking enough to make Miah shake, or perhaps that was Miah shaking. Then Elisa realized Leonidas was rucking up Miah’s skirt in the back, yanking her up to her knees as he tore open the front of his trousers. A skirt and trousers Elisa had made for them.
He notices them . . .
Mal’s words rang in her head.
Oh God.
“No.” She ran to the outside gate, gripped the links. Leonidas ignored her, slamming an engorged cock into Miah, no preamble, the way Elisa had seen cattle branded. The girl shrieked, but bit down on her lip ferociously, as if she’d realized long ago it just made the attacker enjoy it more. Victor had reveled in Elisa’s tears and cries.
Elisa, I’m coming. We’re all coming. Hold fast.
She was heeding him, she was, but she had to be closer, had to let the girls know she was as close as she could dare to be. So she released the outer gate, wedged it open a crack. The inner gate still stood between her and them. It was made of a type of steel Mal said the vampires couldn’t tear open. “Stop it, Leonidas.
Stop!
”
He kept pummeling the girl, grunting like a hog, spittle gathering on his chin. But his eyes, those satanic red eyes, were focused on Elisa. In triumph, contempt . . . daring. She hated him then. Hated him with every ounce of her being and wanted him dead, wanted him staked and torn apart by animals. She didn’t care what he’d been or what he could have been. This was all he was, this monster making a girl scream and cry and try to get away from him.
He turned his back on her, buttocks flexing obscenely as Miah wheelbarrowed on the ground, trying to escape his grip, but he had her fast. It freed Nerida, but instead of running to Miah’s cell where she could have shut herself in, she scuttled in wide-eyed panic across the compound, toward Elisa. She landed against the interior gate, making it shudder.
As the child curled up in a ball against the fencing, whimpering, her frightened eyes fastened in pleading appeal upon Elisa. She knew she’d be next. He’d rape her next; then he’d kill them both. He’d been smart enough to engineer his escape, but he was all demonic beast, with no care that this would be the end of him. His only intent was to unleash the blood and rage that had been building inside of him.
Elisa, no.
Mal’s voice was thunder in her head, but his vehemence told her he might as well be off in the Never Never, because he was obviously too far away to stop whatever was going to happen for the next few minutes. All they had was her.
Jeremiah and William were both up against the bars of their cells, snarling, though she couldn’t tell if it was bloodlust stirred by the violence or they were protesting Leonidas’s behavior. Matthew was curled in a ball at the back of his cell, ears covered and rocking.
“No, stop it. Stop it!” Still screaming at him, she didn’t let herself think or hesitate, anything that would give Leonidas a vital second of forewarning. She punched open the control to unlock the inner gate, yanked it open, reached down and caught the little girl by the arm, jerking her through.
Though she’d done all in one unbroken series of motion, Leonidas slammed against the inner gate just as she slammed it, the lock catching and holding, thank God. He’d moved like lightning, pulling out of Miah, dragging the girl with him. As his arm punched through the mesh opening of the inner gate, Elisa flung herself backward, Nerida wrapped around her. The wedged outer gate gave under the thrust of their combined weight. Nerida clawed her way out of Elisa’s arms and was gone, disappearing like a ghost into the woods. Her kicking feet hit the swinging gate as she scrambled away and before Elisa could lunge and stop it, the outer gate clanged to a closing position. Nerida had locked her in the small space between the outer and inner gates.
Of all of them, Nerida was least likely to harm anyone before they could bring her back. Cutting her losses there, Elisa rose. As long as she kept her back against the outer gate, she was out of Leonidas’s reach. And now, with her locked in, he had no way of blackmailing her with Miah’s well-being to let him out of the enclosure entirely. Of course, she would have happily opened the gate to get him to release Miah, because Mal would have run him down like a cheetah on a turtle. But now it wasn’t an option.
Leonidas howled, realizing it as well. Elisa pivoted, jutting her chin at him, despite the fact every muscle in her body was shaking, including those that controlled her vocal cords. “Now you’re trapped, same as me. And the only thing that will save your life is if you let her go, let her go back to her cell and shut herself in.”
“The only thing . . . save
her
life is you . . . in here. He kill me anyway. Don’t command vampire . . . bitch.”
Despite the lisp caused by the fangs, the spray of spittle, he was clear enough. So was Mal.
You tell that bastard letting her go is the difference between a long, slow death or a quick one. That’s a promise.
Elisa spoke the words, feeling their strength, feeling the heat of a mature male vampire fill her, his rage and intent focusing on what was before her. She didn’t mind feeling that bloodlust now. It was similar to what was going through her veins.
Leonidas spat, something horridly like a laugh strangling out of his throat. “This
is
slow . . . death. Stupid. At least Master . . . let us kill.” The last three words were slurred in his long fangs, making a foam of his saliva. He didn’t look like anything human anymore, not that he’d ever made that much of a pretense of it.
He held Miah in one arm, his hand fisted in her hair. The girl had tears on her face, her nose running with blood and phlegm, drool leaking from her mouth around the fangs. Elisa wondered if she’d been as grotesque after her rape, everything slack and lifeless, eyes dead like that, no dignity or modesty left. Everything ripped open raw. Neither victim nor perpetrator could hold on to a mask of humanity during such a thing, perhaps suggesting something deep and terrible about them all.
Elisa.
Mal’s voice, strained, telling her he was coming as fast as he could, such that even conveying a thought took precious effort.
You will
not
go into that cell.
You’re not close enough yet. He’ll kill her before you get here.
He’ll kill her anyway. Elisa—
Just after her rape, when someone was talking to her, sometimes a part of her stepped away, leaving her attentive face, dutifully appearing to record the words, a vague, meaningless acknowledgment of the person speaking. The rest of her went somewhere else, where it was just her, alone with the turmoil she was facing and the odd, disjointed thoughts that came with it.
Would Miah let her wash her face, her body? The way Mrs. Pritchett and Mrs. Rupert had done for her? Their quiet cluckings and silent tears had been a soothing lullaby that had let her stay in a stupor for a while, avoiding the stark reality of what had happened. Or, if Mal wouldn’t let her be that close to Miah, would he do it for the girl? She thought he might. Which was good, because she might not be in any kind of shape to give Miah a bath after this.
There were several stakes and a crossbow hooked on one side of the square area, just in case they were needed. Picking up the stake, she estimated it would give her the extra arm length she needed. She looked toward Leonidas.
“Here’s how it’s going to be.” Her voice had gone from shaking to eerily calm, almost hoarse. “I’ll put my arm through this gate so you can hold on to me. You’ll let her go, and when she gets in her cell and closes it, I’ll use this stake to reach back and push the button behind me. The inner gate will open, and I’ll come inside with you.”

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