Vampire Instinct (36 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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Mal had gone silent, probably because he knew he couldn’t stop her. Or he was close. Either way, she wouldn’t think. She couldn’t. She just had to buy time. Leonidas would want to torture her, violate her. He wouldn’t want to kill her immediately. He’d waited too long to have her at his mercy. She
would
survive this. She’d survived it before and no worthless, raping piece-of-cursed-garbage vampire was going to end things for her. She was stronger than that, and so was Miah. She met the girl’s gaze, and that link helped her still her trembling hand on the stake.
So be it.
Leonidas stared at her as she extended her arm through the gate. The single limb was undeniably pale and fragile under that violent gaze. She let her fingers brush Miah’s hair. The girl’s dark eyes stayed on hers, and whatever Elisa could give her in that single exchange, she did. It helped her not think of what was ahead. Even without a blood-link between them, she hoped the girl understood the most important thing Elisa was thinking at her, hard enough that if will alone was all it took, it should be scrolling across Miah’s brain in bright lights.
Run like the devil, the second he lets you go.
“There’s your offer,” Elisa said, shifting to hold those red eyes in the grip of her own. Her fear had gone, buried beneath that numbness. She wondered if it had worked the same for Miah, rape after rape, when she knew she couldn’t stop it. But this wasn’t the same. Elisa wasn’t going to let go of control. She was making the choice. That made all the difference. She knew Mal would be angry with her, but some things a person had to do. There were too many bad things in the world to stop them all, so when one was laid before you like this, you had no choice. She suspected he probably knew that as well as she did.
Summoning up something black and dreadful in herself, as fearsome as what lay in a vampire’s heart, whether it was the one before her or the one she sensed coming to their aid like a streak of dark lightning, she spoke again. “You know you’ve wanted human meat ever since Victor took me down under your nose and didn’t share. Prove you’re even more of a monster than he is. Let go of her, you bludger.”
Before she could flinch, his hand clamped over her arm. He could tear it from the socket, break her bones like twigs. Yank her forward and crush her windpipe. But to do that last one, he had to let go of Miah. Plus, everything he wanted had narrowed to getting Elisa inside the enclosure with him, all his rage and violence culminating into one summary act.
What had Mal said? You never run from a predator; you never look away. He might kill you anyway, but he would for sure do so if you ran. She wasn’t going down as prey; that was for damn sure.
Leonidas dropped his hold on Miah, and the girl was gone. Elisa had a brief impression of her flashing into her cell. Metal vibrated under her arm as Miah slammed the cell door.
Jeremiah was shouting something unintelligible through those interfering fangs. William was still snarling, further garbling any communications. Bloodlust had seized them fully, she was sure, the noises a pack’s brutal encouragement. She understood. Mal had taught her a few things these past couple weeks. When instinct was involved, there was no fault or blame. It was simply the way life was. Like her instinct to save Miah and Nerida now.
It was then she heard Mal. No longer trying to stop her, as if he knew that was futile, but giving her something else.
Hold on, Elisa. I’ll get there.
I know.
She pushed the button with the stake and the door buzzed its release. In the next blink, Leonidas had yanked the gate forward and ripped her away from it like a shred of ribbon. The stake skittered away on the ground as he punched her brutally in the face.
 
It hurt like bloody hell, but she was hazily sure he’d pulled the punch, because otherwise he would have broken her neck. Her head was reeling so much from the blow, she was barely conscious of him tearing at her flesh, the painful puncture of his fangs above her nipple as he shredded her clothes away from her. It was odd, but that was where Victor had bit her first as well. Was it a buried need, some twisted need to reconnect to the mothers they’d lost?
The disjointed thought sparked with lightning flashes of pain. Though she felt all of it, heard the scream that tore from her throat as a bone broke somewhere on her, perhaps at her thigh as he wrenched her leg outward, she was somehow floating as well. There was a noise, a short buzzing sound, like the gate releasing, and she wondered if he’d somehow rocked the inner gate door so hard it had slammed back against its own controls, bouncing there so it was depressing it in those irregular rhythms.
She was yanked up from the ground, shaken like a rag doll, but now it was more than Leonidas. She tried to blink through the blood in her eyes, to make sense of the whirling dervish going on above her. William . . . Yes, William was on Leonidas’s back, his arm around the older boy’s throat. Jeremiah was between her and Leonidas, freeing the lock of his hands on her, which explained the rag-doll effect before she was freed, thudding to the ground. She was being dragged back by two sets of hands, and got a momentary glimpse of Miah and Matthew leaving her to join the fray.
The noise was incredible, like the fighting dogs Mal had told her about. But this wasn’t Rodney’s calm pack logic, establishing dominance without real damage. This was a primal melee, as the others tore at Leonidas, pummeling him as he’d done to her.
But he was fighting them, and Elisa knew he was much stronger. Picking up Jeremiah, he spun the boy away from him with a snap of popping shoulder bone and shoved him nearly twenty feet away, sending him tumbling across the grass. He clawed at William’s face, caught his collar and started to flip him over his head, but Miah launched herself at his front, taking Jeremiah’s place. The girl was screaming, not the pitiful, fearful mewls of earlier. This was a shrill scream like the ferocious cheetah, sending out a call to warn others away from her territory.
Elisa tried to move, but things weren’t cooperating. She couldn’t even seem to move her arms without spears of blinding pain shooting through her sides and neck. Everything felt wet with blood. It was as if she’d fallen into some terrible, rank billabong and come out coated in viscous red mud, the sand turning it into grit.
Leonidas seized Miah by the throat. When he plunged his fist forward, Elisa saw it hit her midbody. She wished she could have looked away fast enough, because that fist exploded from Miah’s back, splitting flesh and bone, the image forever seared across Elisa’s mind.
“No . . .” Despite the pain, Elisa tried to reach out, tried to do something. Miah was tossed away from him. The girl landed near her, her loose arm flung above her head, fingers brushing Elisa’s bloody calf. In that second, the second when Leonidas’s eyes followed her track, Jeremiah returned. The boy plowed into Leonidas’s chest and abdomen, his torso tucked in a bullish charge, head down, arms close to the body.
William let go, jumping back. Elisa cried out, not understanding why William would leave the fight, knowing Jeremiah couldn’t take Leonidas toe-to-toe. But then she saw why.
Leonidas spun around, trying to dislodge Jeremiah, a howl bursting from his lips. As he did, she saw the stake he’d knocked out of her hand earlier. The point of it was jutting out of his back.
Jeremiah’s arms and legs were wrapped hard around him, holding that stake in place between them. Leonidas roared, beating the boy’s back so that she could see the ribs caving in like a matchstick creation.
Jeremiah, no . . .
She was able to roll to her side, and peeled her lips back in a feral snarl, fighting the pain, daring it to stop her as she crawled forward, touching Miah’s twitching arm. She couldn’t get farther than the girl’s bare foot, her vision starting to blacken and gray. She’d pass out if she tried to get to Jeremiah. While some part of her suggested that unconsciousness would be a blessing, she couldn’t leave them alone to face this. She pushed her forehead into the torn-up ground, gripping Miah’s ankle with her blood-smeared hand, fighting for awareness.
She lifted her head again when Leonidas hit the fence with a harsh clang and started to slide down it. Jeremiah still clung like a burr to the larger boy. He lifted his head, locking gazes with Leonidas. Jeremiah’s face held a terrible expression as the life died out of Leonidas’s. His lips formed words; then he was falling, dropping to the ground, back still propped up against the fence.
That ringing tone of impacted metal died to a hum, then was gone, leaving silence. A silence broken by Miah’s wheezing, William’s faint growling and what she realized were Jeremiah’s sobs. He had the one hand so firmly locked on the stake it was halfway into Leonidas’s chest cavity. The boy leaned into Leonidas’s dead body, such that it looked like he was curled in his lap, his temple against Leonidas’s shoulder as his own narrow ones shook.
His head turned, though, his eyes finding her. The starkness in that gaze pierced Elisa to the core, hurt her more deeply than anything had ever hurt her in her life, even Willis’s death.
Chumani was wrong. She wasn’t all that brave, because she couldn’t find the strength to do anything now. Not think, or move, or hope or feel. Not to face terrible, desolate truths. She could only look at Jeremiah’s face and think this kind of blood would never, ever wash away.
22
 
S
HE’D placed the radio on the stump, and when she had, the weight of the books alongside had kept the receiver depressed. Kohana had been listening to gospel spirituals, but he’d deliberately kept them turned down below his preferred blasting volume, just in case Elisa needed something. Or Chumani wanted to banter with him. When the static crackled on the walkie-talkie at his hip and he’d heard the maid’s voice, Mal’s command came through his mind, through all their minds, at the very same moment.
Kohana wasn’t surprised to find the vampire already on the move. They all knew his growing bond with the pretty miss. But his own reaction—all of them, felt through that shared bond—was the same. The girl was impossible not to love.
Please, Great Spirit, let nothing happen to her.
Kohana lurched through the house, snatching up his shotgun and making it down the steps and to his ATV faster than he’d moved in a long time. He took the walkie-talkie with him, though hearing what was happening, the screams and growls, he damn near ran off the mountain, pushing the small vehicle past safe speeds. But they needed to get there as soon as they could, for Mal. In a situation like this, a man was likely to do all sorts of crazed things. An enraged vampire, protecting what he considered his, would leave a swath of death in his wake.
 
Mal cut a path across the leopard’s territory, streaked over a corner of the cheetah’s base, heard his shrieking cry. He was scenting blood and danger on the wind, just like Mal. Elisa’s thoughts and the quick images he was seeing only made him push himself faster. The rest of his mind tracked the staff. Kohana’s race up the slopes in his ATV, Chumani, Tokala and the others coming from the habitat area and open preserve, already preparing their weapons.
It didn’t matter. They were all going to be too late. That stubborn core of steel of hers had come forward, poured itself over every fear, every lick of sense and self-preservation she had. He’d thought he could hold her back, but Leonidas, the conniving little monster, had known he couldn’t. The fledgling had signed his own death warrant, but with his warped bloodlust fully unleashed now, he didn’t care about that, any more than Victor had.

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