Vampire Instinct (69 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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The oath on the other side echoed his own sentiments. “She’s been part of the serving class all her life. They don’t have the luxury to entertain depression, let alone have it. If she’s doing that, then she’s gone far beyond where she should go.”
“I know that.” He set his jaw. “But she’s still . . . dusting. Cleaning every damn thing. Mending clothes. I tried to stop her. Kohana tried to stop her. But we have nothing else to offer her.”
“Really.” The one word was heavy with speculation. “Do you want to send her home to us? Do you think that will help?”
“What do
you
think will help? That’s why I’m calling.” He wasn’t in the mood for damn games.
“My first instinct is to bring her home, to watch over her.” Danny paused. “But can I do that better than her Master?”
He sat on his desk, heedless of the paperwork that crumpled beneath him. Knees splayed, elbows planted on them, he resisted the urge to splinter the receiver. “Danny, would you please stop being a goddamn woman and speak plain?”
“I’m speaking plainly enough,” she responded in that cool tone of hers. “A servant isn’t about having someone to fetch for you and give you physical release when you need it, though all that comes with it. It’s something deeper, something that keeps us connected to the pulse of our soul, Malachi, whatever that is.”
“You held off getting a servant twice as long as I have, way longer than most vamps wait, but now you’re lecturing me on what it means to have one?”
“Mal, can you stop being an emotionally constipated male and admit that if I told you to put her on the next plane, you’d tell me to bugger off in twelve different ways?”
He remembered Nadia, standing before Lord Marshall, begging him to be ruthless with her, to be the Master she needed him to be. He closed his eyes.
“As an emotionally constipated male, I’d only need one way to tell you. Fuck off. Less words, less syllables.”
A wry chuckle at last. It squeezed something around his heart. He sighed. “Help me, Danny. I don’t want to send her back, but I don’t know how to reach her. Except, something Kohana said . . .” He hesitated. Even among close vampire relationships, there was very little as taboo as what he was thinking about saying. “He said I do have the key, but it’s something vampires . . . We don’t offer it to humans. Can’t offer. Right?”
At the sudden, weighted silence, he realized he was right. It was ridiculous, dangerous to even bring it up. As a relatively young made vampire, he was far more likely to be accused of dangerous sentiment, the remains of his human background, which would merely heighten his inferiority in the eyes of other vampires. Even Marshall, after that emotional outburst to his servant, had made an attempt—albeit a poor one—to pass his fierce words off the next day as merely helping his servant, not a true reflection of his devotion.
Total horseshit.
Though Mal didn’t give a damn about vampire opinion, he’d quickly learned, as all vampires did, that a perceived weakness could be a terrible danger for that vampire, quickly exploited by others. He had too much at stake here, too many depending on him appearing strong in all ways. A more powerful vampire with an issue against him could take it all away. Danny had had Dev for only a couple years. As Elisa so eloquently put it, the female vamp would think he’d gone wobbly. He shouldn’t say anymore.
Then he thought of those empty, wounded blue eyes.
Damn it.
“You know what Elisa said to me, a while ago? She said no one, even vampires, can do without love. And she thought maybe that was why vampires had servants. Because of the way we are, humans are God’s gift to us, to let us love. If you don’t say something soon, I’m going to hang up and pretend we never had this conversation.”
“Well, her logic makes sense, doesn’t it? We’d need that from our servants, because we sure as hell aren’t good at loving our fellow vampires.” His gut loosened anew as he heard the warmth return to Danny’s voice. “She’s quite something, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, in more ways than one.” Mal shifted, scowling at the sound of Kohana rattling his pots. “Since she’s been here, a couple things have happened that made me wonder if there’s more to her than we know. I can’t go into one of them”—he thought of her ability to see the fault lines that only he and Kohana were able to see—“but the other was Jeremy’s second mark. She had a physically empathic connection to him, when he was in distress. Kohana has done some of his medicineman hocus-pocus, meditating or some nonsense, but he says there may be some Celtic magic in her ancestry. Just a residual, nothing too fancy. Maybe a great-grandmother wisewoman type of thing.”
“I’m sure Kohana appreciates your great reverence for his skills,” Danny said dryly. “And while I wouldn’t be surprised, because people are often more than they themselves know, I think she’d be every bit of what she is, even without that. My mother saw something special in Elisa, Mal. In the short time she was in my service, I saw it, over and over again. That day she hit Ruskin with a teapot . . . Hell, it was like watching a field mouse attack a lion.
“It reminded me of the night I walked into a pub and met a man who thought he had nothing to offer, but he was the biggest damn hero I’ve ever met. It’s what makes them special to us, Mal. They can’t overpower us; they aren’t superior to us in any way . . . yet it’s funny how all of a sudden we find we can’t do without them, right? And,” she added, “If you ever tell anyone we had this conversation, I’ll deny it, and then rip your throat out to appease my offended sense of honor. Got it?”
He blinked, not entirely sure she was kidding. “Got it. I think.”
She huffed a snort, then continued. “Mal . . . I know where you’re going here. We don’t have to speak of it directly, but I’ll tell you this. You and I both know when a problem confronts us, we usually already know the solution, however unlikely it seems. So the only thing I’ll say is this, and take it for what it’s worth. Vampires and servants are what they need to be in front of other vampires. What they are behind closed doors . . . that’s between the two of them. Understand? For most, it’s no different from what the vampire world sees. But for some of them—maybe more than we realize, since no one will admit it—it’s something different. Nothing gives a woman a reason to live like knowing someone needs and wants her, more than he wants or needs anyone or anything else.” Her voice softened. “You convince her of that, Mal, and you’ll get her back.”
“So what gives a man reason to live? What keeps Dev going?”
“A cold beer and a soft arse. Men are much easier to recall from the dead.” She laughed, then sobered. “Call me if nothing changes for the better, Mal. If you need us, we’ll come. She’s very special, to all of us.”
41
 
T
WO nights later, when Mal told Elisa he needed her help at the cat habitats, she went along dutifully enough. As he drove the Jeep, she didn’t turn her face up to the night. Instead, she simply stared into space through the windshield. Between gear shifts, he reached over and touched her leg to draw those vacant blue eyes to him.
“Elisa, do you want to go home?” he asked.
“If you no longer need me here, I can go if you want me to,” she responded automatically. “They always need an extra pair of hands at the station.”
“Do you
want
to go, Elisa?”
Her hands tightened in the folds of her plain work dress. Mal saw it clearly in her mind. She didn’t want to be asked what she wanted. She didn’t want to wade into the jungle of her feelings, wanted to be on the fringes of her consciousness only. She didn’t want to think.
“Will this take long? I told Kohana I’d help him bake apple pies for the day-shift hands, for their breakfast.”
“It will take as long as I require.”
That got her attention. He’d been gentle these past weeks, seeing the fragile state of her mind. But his emotions had been so involved, he’d forgotten what he’d told her from the very beginning.
You don’t help a traumatized cat get past the trauma by acting as if the trauma is still happening.
Life went on, so they all had to as well. She was his servant, and he was her Master.
Her gaze flickered toward him, then away, her lips pressing together, a combined sign of frustration and nervousness. Good. Both were new. As he drove up to the habitat area, Chumani raised a hand, coming out of a wire enclosure they’d put up temporarily for the new arrivals.
When Mal got out of the Jeep, Chumani nodded to them. “They’re ready for the next feeding, the little monsters. Milk’s in the warmer and should be the right temp. I’m headed up to the northwest corner to help the young lions hunt. The zebra herd’s looking likely tonight.”
“Good luck. Be careful.”
The Indian woman gave him a nod, and Elisa a quick stroke down her arm, but she didn’t linger over it, going about her business. Mal gestured to Elisa to precede him to the wire cage. “We received a litter of ocelot kittens found by a ranger. A poacher had their mother. Since the ranger station didn’t have the resources to nurse them, they asked for our help. Unfortunately, their eyes were already open, and we don’t have a nursing mother right now, so we’ll deal with their human bonding later, when we get to the rehab stage. For now, we need to get them stronger. This is a job that takes a good bit of time, so you’ll take over for the hands. You can drive back and forth from the house for the feedings.”
She’d stopped at the wire fence, and saw the kittens in a box lined with grass and leaves. Though their eyes were open, they did in fact appear weak, uninterested in their surroundings and not moving around as they should be. The mewling noises they made were muffled.
Mal took her to the makeshift sink and directed her to wash her hands in the strong antibacterial soap. Then he removed two bottles from the warmer. “Exotic cats are very sensitive to fatal intestinal problems, which is why we’re careful about giving them the wrong kind of bacteria. They can also aspirate if you don’t feed them correctly. That means the milk gets into their lungs and they drown. We’ll go slow this first time; don’t worry.”
Her eyes had gotten dark, the blue like deep ocean. “Mal, I don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t recall making it a request. You stay here, you pull your weight. You’re one of my staff, aren’t you?”
“I’ll go home. I just said I would.”
“Fine, then. But you’ll do this until I arrange a plane.” Guiding her in, he put pressure on her so she was sitting on the ground, and then he sat down behind her, sliding her into the space between his thighs, bracing his back against the fencing. Her body stiffened. Since those couple of attempts to break her out of her catharsis through physical demands, he’d restrained himself to incidental contact only. That had been a mistake. He realized now it was easier to shut herself down to full-blown lust than casual intimacy like this. With both virtual feet firmly planted in her mind, he saw how one part of her mind rejected his closeness, while another part desperately wanted it. Being a vampire who’d abstained for well over a month now, he was more than willing to start forcing her to face her desire, rather than letting her hide from it.
The babies were making more noise, detecting the milk scent. He picked up one and deposited it in Elisa’s lap, putting the bottle in her other hand. “Here we go. Now, the hardest part is getting it in his mouth. Wrap the hand around his head, where you’re covering his eyes, and put your thumb under the jaw. It basically shuts down all other stimuli and helps him focus just on eating . . . Once in—there you go—you want the milk to drip into the mouth—”
For the next few moments, he instructed her in the proper angle to hold the bottle, how the kitten should be positioned, and at what rate to administer the milk. How much would be enough. She was trembling as she handled the baby, but he acted as if all was well, keeping his voice low, firm and calm, steadying her hand until the kitten was nursing enthusiastically.
They repeated the process with each of the three kittens, but it wasn’t until she was done, holding a lap full of sleepy babies, that she touched the animals for more than the milking function. Her now-free hand touched the back of one. Normally he would have discouraged human affection, but given the circumstances, he let it go. As he watched her stroke the kit hesitantly, he saw the slight adjustment in her mind, the crack of the door, as she let herself be aware of the dependent body in her lap, the beat of his tiny heart, the way he’d taken nourishment from her. As the moment lengthened, her body eased some more, leaning back more fully into his. Putting a hand on her brow, he guided her head to lie on his shoulder as they watched the kit doze off, exhausted from his struggle to live.
“Do they . . . do they have a good chance of making it?” She pressed her lips together as if she hadn’t meant to ask.
“Kittens and cubs have a fairly high mortality out in the wild. If they don’t have any complications as babies, though, and you care for them the right way, they should. Maybe like Chumani, you’ll be the one to teach them to hunt.”
“Then one day they’ll learn enough, and they’ll leave. And they could die.”
“Yes, they could. Or they could live the lives they were meant to lead, hunting, having babies of their own.”
“It’s too painful,” she whispered. “It’s just too difficult.”

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