In celebration of the completion and delivery of
Vampire's Keeper, I wanted to give the fan forum an exclusive early glimpse of the first 20-some pages. For those who've not yet read
Vampire's Claim, some of it may be a little confusing, but basically Elisa was the maid and secondmarked servant of Lady Daniela, and in Vampire's Claim they acquired a handful of illegally turned vampire children. Elisa became their human caretaker.
I'll eventually send this out as an early peek excerpt on the newsletter, but of course it will be closer to the release date. Though I don't yet have a release date, if Berkley sticks to its 4-5 month spread between books, and
Vampire Trinity comes out in early September, I'll hope we'll see this one in February. Anyhow, remember this is three full copy/senior editing reviews away from the final print galley, so forgive any errors or typos. We'll get those cleaned up before you see the final!
Chapter One
Since Elisa was gazing out the west-facing window of the private plane, she had first glimpse of the string of islands. Outlined in white foam, they were like flecks of green and brown jewels amid a vast expanse of deep blue sea. The islands were shaped like a question mark, a symbol that became even more pronounced as the plane dropped out of the filmy white cloud cover. The sudden flash of sunset made her squint and start back, despite the beauty of the rose and gold denouement. She steeled herself against the heave of anxiety that flopped on an empty stomach. Well, not empty. A cold, tight knot she refused to loosen had become her belly’s permanent companion these days, like a dour, stillborn fetus, its potential terminated before it was realized.
Stop it. Pushing that away, she focused on the islands. This was a new place. A new start. She tried to make herself feel that, drawing a deep breath, letting it out. She’d started over countless times, hadn’t she? Ever since she was a child, born to a Irish prostitute in Perth. She’d been thrown on the streets to beg, steal and fend for herself practically before she could walk. Pulled in by a copper with a kinder heart than most, he’d found her work in a household as a cook’s helper, where she’d earned herself up from that to a housemaid. When she got pretty, she rucked up her skirts for the man of the house when her job was on the line. Getting rooted was nowhere near as bad as hunger or facing the dangers of the streets.
Things changed again, though, when an unusual dinner guest, a woman with sad but oddly still eyes, had paid a considerable sum to take her into her employ on her Western Australia sheep station. Elisa hadn’t known Lady Constance was a vampire, not then. She’d sent Elisa to school, taught her how to dress and take care of her hair and nails properly. Even how to speak like a proper lady, eradicating the colorful common vernacular that might have kept her relegated to a lower rank in a household. By the time she learned the nature of her current Mistress, Elisa was so grateful for her kindnesses it didn’t really matter. Vampires were just another part of an unpredictable life.
The purpose of all those preparations had become clear the day Lady Constance brought Elisa to her room and explained her circumstances. “My daughter will come soon. When she does, you will repay my kindness by giving her your absolute loyalty.” The next morning, the sad-eyed woman had walked into the sun, disintegrating into ash while her consort, Lord Ian, slept on undisturbed. After he heard the news, Elisa remembered he’d drummed his fingers once on the table in irritation, then asked his human servant to flavor his breakfast blood with the cranberry-flavored sherry. He’d moved that servant into Lady Constance’s room before the wind had carried away the lingering remains of her ashes.
The arrival of her daughter, Lady Daniela, had put an end to all that. Elisa tightened her chin, vicarious satisfaction in the recollection. The female vampire had decapitated Ian at the dining table—that was a mess to clean up, for sure—and within a month had taken over as Region Master of the northwest territory with the help of her bushman servant, the quiet, handsome and altogether likable Devlin. Lady Danny made Elisa her second-marked servant right away, teaching her things about herself and her own sensuality that those previous ham-handed, clumsy employers never had, making Elisa feel strangely empowered. Until that fateful night.
Closing her eyes, she tried to shake away the horrific images before her mind could fill with them. She guessed she’d always been a simple soul, with a sturdy cheerfulness to prepare her for the life God had seen fit to give her. No matter her lot, there were always things to be thankful for. Particularly since Lady Danny had taken over. For awhile, she’d been able to laugh with the other staff over nonsense, enjoy the cook’s dry humor, take secret glimpses at a new stockman who had a handsome smile and arse. Stretch out in her soft bed after a hard day’s work, knowing in Lady Danny’s house, no one would be creeping in to bother her.
She’d pulled herself out of the muck that others had thrown upon her often enough, but she’d never experienced the bog of her own mind. Blood and screams were pushing in at the corners of such memories even now. In desperation, she groped for one of her best, though she’d never shared it with anyone, not even Willis.
He might not have called her a fool for it, but others would, and she didn’t want the memory sullied by the truth. It had been in her second employer’s home. He was far wealthier than Mr. Collins. One of her tasks was laying out the dining room for grand dinners. Usually, she was all alone in the room, and that one day, the silence of it had caught her. After she’d finished the job, she’d gone to the door, turned to survey her handiwork. Dust motes had moved lazily in the sun beams pouring through the tall windows, drenching her corner of the room. The mahogany sheen of the table, the beautiful gold-edged dishes, the sparkle of the wine glasses, the polish of the silver—it was all like that because of her, because she’d cleaned and arranged it.
When they sat down to eat that night, they might or might not notice how lovely and perfect it all was, but she did, and knowing she’d helped make it so gave her a swelling contentment. Hard work didn’t bother her none, and truth, this was really what she most liked doing. Making small corners of the world lovely to give pleasure to others, take care of them. Lately, she’d decided that Heaven would be having the mind wiped of everything but such simple memories.
Of course, with Danny, maybe she’d gotten too used to life being soft, which made it easier for something terrible to knock her off her feet. Like having the man she loved torn to pieces ten feet away and then being raped by the vampire who did it. Victor had been soaked in Willis’s blood, had it dripping from his fangs before he’d stabbed them into her flesh, punctured her with sharp talons, rutted upon her…
She shuddered, pressing her fingers hard into the chair arms.
“It’s all right,” Thomas murmured next to her. “Just a little turbulence is all.”
Opening her eyes, she glanced at him with despair. The somber gray eyes behind the wire spectacles reflected he wasn’t talking about the plane. He’d just stated it that way to save embarrassing her. He didn’t touch her, despite her obvious distress, and for that she was grateful and unhappy at once. She’d been skittish about a man’s touch, not because she feared Thomas, Dev or any of the others, but because it brought back Victor’s brutal, bruising grip. She craved contact to save her from the void of her own grief, her guilt, but not just any contact. A touch like Willis’s, gentle and loving, the merest graze of his fingertips communicating that he knew her, saw her...loved her. Would Willis have been so eager to help her with the vampire children if he hadn’t felt that way?
She’d thought her affection for the lean stockman was one-sided. But when Danny had taken in the seven children that the previous Region Master had unnaturally turned into vampires, Willis had volunteered to serve with Elisa as a blood source to them. She’d known it wasn’t one-sided then. Not the way he met her gaze, sending heat prickling over her skin, a flush rising to her cheeks.
He’d been such a good man, too. Spoke little, but there was nothing on the place he couldn’t do. When Dev traveled, Willis served as station manager. She could watch him all day long and never tire of it. Working with the sheep, mending fencing, riding a horse. Willis put her on one of the brumbies, sat her in front of him to teach her how to ride. He wouldn’t let her get scared. That was where he kissed her the very first time. Making her lean her head back on his shoulder, he’d placed his lips over hers, giving her the taste of sun and tobacco, sweat and man, the press of his thighs on the outside of hers. A man who was integrated into the world around him, the earth, air, wind and blazing heat of it.
She expected him to coax her to raise her skirts that very night, maybe in a corner of the stables. She might have done it, for the earlier ones had simply taken what they felt she owed them. Coated with courtesy or not, their demand had been implacable. Willis was the first who could make her heart pound up in her throat, who obsessed her with the way his brown, callused hands moved over a horse’s reins or handled everything from a fence post to a bucket. She’d been quite mad over him, like a girl with her first crush, and maybe it had been. The first time in her life she’d had that luxury.
Lady Daniela had marked her, so of course Danny could read her thoughts at will. When her feelings came to light, Danny surprised Elisa with her protectiveness. Dev was sent to give Willis a thorough talking-to, reinforcing that her maid was not a simple tumble. But Elisa knew it wasn’t that not-so-veiled warning that made Willis deal honorably with her.
He didn’t find a stable for her after that first kiss, or even the second. The third time he kissed her, though, it was with more urgency, but he broke away first, his hands flexing on her shoulders. She would have done for him then, but he’d given her a little shake, a fierce look.
“Value yourself more than that, girl. I want you bad, I do, but I want you to take me as the man you love, not the man you expect no better from. When you think that’s the case, then I’ll make you mine. For keeps.”
An incredible thought. For keeps. Man and wife.
But that dream was gone, lost in blood and savage animal grunts, the echo of her painful screams.
Thomas was there, with a handkerchief for the overflowing tears. With the right timing, when the need to flinch was overwhelmed by the need to cling, he eased his arm around her. Turning into his chest, she buried her sobs there as he held her close.
She felt safer with Thomas than most, because he was a monk. A monk who also happened to be a third-marked servant. He belonged to Lady Lyssa, a powerful friend of Lady Danny’s. It wasn’t her place to pry about it, but she certainly wondered about him. A resolute celibate, he emanated the care and compassion a true man of God could offer. She took it now, seeking no answers where there were none, giving into another bout of the endless grief.
* * * * *
He really was the biggest idiot in the world, Mal reflected. Just because he owed Danny a favor didn’t mean he owed her a bloody pound of flesh. The trouble with women was they had a serpent’s ability to coax and persuade a man to do unlikely nonsense. Like taking in six fledgling vampires who should have been exterminated as the mistakes of nature they were. He guessed it could have been worse. It had been eight. One of them had died before Danny could ever get the creature back to her place. Apparently unable to handle the transition from predictable brutality to unprecedented kindness, the fledgling had so lost herself in a bloodlust attack she ran up against a wooden pin to hold a saddle and inadvertently staked herself.
The other one had been executed by Danny herself. She should have done them all at the same time. With an irritated expression, Malachi eyed the lights of the plane coming in for a nighttime landing on his airstrip. Every vampire in the world knew you didn’t turn children. But when Lord Charles Ruskin had done so to cultivate his unique and diabolical pack of “hunting hounds”, Danny hadn’t had the heart to dispatch them the way she’d dispatched their sire.
So instead, she had been trying to civilize them, take the savagery out of them that Charles had exacerbated with torture and starvation. Malachi had cursed when she explained she’d used two of her household staff to help feed and manage them. She hadn’t needed to tell him the inevitable tragedy, one dead and the other violated and almost killed. At least she’d been smart enough to kill the fledgling that had perpetrated the crime.
The same female who’d been injured had insisted they keep trying, and, incomprehensibly, Danny had agreed. The Danny that Mal remembered looked like a fairy tale character with her guileless blue eyes and golden-blond hair, but she’d put her foot up someone’s ass in a heartbeat. Instead, in this case, she called Mal for help.
So in addition to seeing what could be done about this impossible situation, he had to manage this woman, this
Elisa. He only had to put up with her for three days, though. Danny had said to give her that much time to provide background on the “children”—and to say goodbye. Then he was free to bundle her back on the plane with Thomas, if he thought that was best.
It would have been
best if Danny’s human hadn’t come at all.
Children. He snorted. That was part of the problem. Calling them that altered the true perception of them. Essentially unnatural, savage creatures with no sense of impulse control, or right or wrong. In any other environment except sentiment, they would be called monsters. Sociopaths, with fangs and superhuman strength.
* * * * *
By the time the plane began its approach, Elisa was composed again, her face washed. The children had traveled in a separate compartment, but she’d checked on them several times, assuring them and herself all was well. She hated the steel cages in which they were confined, but at least they were roomy enough for traveling. Each child had a bed and some stretching room. Malachi was supposed to have a secure facility for them that included a communal area.
At her latest check-in, Jeremiah had given her the closest thing to a grateful look. Leonidas spat at her. She hated the spurt of fear that had her hurrying by his cage, not meeting his eyes. The other responses fell somewhere in between. The two girls and four boys ranged in visual age from six to fifteen. Lady Danny had guessed they might be anywhere from a few months to ten years older than their apparent age. It wasn’t likely any child could have survived longer than that under what Lord Ruskin had inflicted upon them, even as turned vampires. From his bookkeeping, they knew he’d gone through at least fifty or sixty before this lot, the average expectancy a horrifying two years.
Danny had said little about the vampire who would now be overseeing their wellbeing, except that he was a friend she had known some years, and that he was young for all he’d accomplished. Near a hundred and twenty years old, he’d operated this private sanctuary for predatory cats for the last several decades, and owned the island where it was located.
“He’s the quiet sort, Elisa,” Danny had explained. Giving her maid a straightforward look, her Mistress had added, “I expect you to obey him as you would obey me, particularly where these children are concerned. Remember what we discussed. Continuing this goes against my better judgment, but this is their last chance. If we don’t see improvement, if Mal determines it’s time to end this, we follow his direction. I’ve told Mal he may send you back with Thomas at the end of three days if he chooses, and then their future is up to him.”
“But—”
“You are getting three days. Consider it fortunate I’m allowing you to go at all.”
Elisa had wanted to argue, but a warning flicker in Dev’s expression made her bite her tongue. Danny didn’t pull the “I’m-an-all-powerful vampire” mantle of authority too often, but when she did, disobedience or argument wasn’t tolerated. Plus, this wasn’t easy for Danny. She’d initially decided to spare the children, when they found them at Ruskin’s estate. Now Willis was dead, and Elisa…
She tightened her chin. She was
fine. Just fine. It wasn’t like she was an untouched innocent, after all. Willis would have wanted her to keep trying. She thought he would, at least. She knew for certain
she did. She had to, because sometimes when Leonidas looked at her the way Victor had, rage surged in her such that her fingers itched for a stake herself. Especially when he scented her fear, and she heard him snicker.
Deliberately, she turned her thoughts to Jeremiah, because he gave her hope, soothing her mind like the vision of that perfect dining room. Nine years old when he was turned, he was a slim boy with blond hair and serious gray-green eyes. None of them communicated in words, making only inarticulate noises as they fought past the demand of their blood that roared up at the sight of anything resembling prey or food. However, they’d made the most headway with Jeremiah. He’d been the very first to reach out.
* * * * *
At the station, she’d discovered a pre-dawn routine that helped ease the children’s agitation. Dev’s bedtime stories calmed them, perhaps his voice reminding them of parents they dimly remembered. He’d sit cross-legged within a few feet of the semi-circle of cages. Since the children found adult vampires unsettling, Danny would stay at the barn entrance, but she usually came to hear what story he’d tell, a light smile on her face even as her gaze remained watchful.
Though Elisa was sure Dev was equally alert, he’d appeared relaxed that night as he told the story of the Three Sisters’ rocks in the Blue Mountains. While some of the children were hissing and growling low in their throats, she thought a couple expressions flickered with sparks of curiosity. Nerida and Matthew, the two youngest, mimicked his crosslegged posture.
“They tell this story several ways. Legend has it there were three beautiful sisters among the Katoomba People. Three brothers of the Nepean People fell so deeply in love with them, they knew they’d never be whole until they had them. So they rebelled against the tribal laws and planned a battle to capture them. Sometimes you have to capture sheilas before you can work on winning their hearts,” Dev added. At his broad wink, Danny gave him a raised brow that made Elisa hide a smile. “But as the day of the battle approached, a witch doctor of the Katoombas decided to turn the three sisters into rock to protect them. He figured he’d turn them back when the battle was over.”
Dev’s gaze flickered to the left. Jeremiah had put a hand through the bars. Just pressed his palm flat on the wooden slat floor, near one of the toys that Elisa had left close to his cage. None within reach, because the children shredded them, but it had been something pleasing for them to look at. This toy was a stuffed bear.
Leaning over, so he was on his hip and elbow, Dev pushed the bear closer, continuing the story even as the boy scuttled back. Dev kept that position, his shoulder propped near the bear. Elisa noted it when Danny tensed. He’d brought himself within reaching distance, and the boy’s gaze was too focused on the artery in his throat. Even Elisa could see him fixate on it and wondered at Dev’s judgment.
“Unfortunately, the witch doctor was killed in the battle. So to this day, those three magnificent rocks stand in the Blue Mountains, the three sisters forever captured, because no one knows how to reverse the spell.” He tilted his head back to eye Danny, humor and something else there, something that made Elisa’s vampire mistress curl her hands into balls and give him an exasperated look. “One wonders, if those girls had been given the choice to be encased in rock for hundreds of years, or give those three blokes a chance, what they would have chosen?”
Danny pressed her lips together, about to move forward. Dev shook his head, apparently quite aware the boy had reached through the bars. With one hand, Jeremiah took the bear. With the other, he stretched toward Dev’s hair. One fingertip touched it, then another. A crooning noise came from the boy’s lips, garbled by the long fangs curved over his lips. Then the hand retracted and Dev turned his head to watch the boy pull the bear into the cage. As he held it against his belly, a curious look crossed the boy’s face. Jeremiah moved it back and forth, experiencing the soft sensation under the ratty T-shirt.
“There you go, mate,” Dev said. “You go to bed now, and have sweet dreams.”
Elisa had swallowed, trying not to clap her hands in victory over this small progress. In her joy, she of course paid no attention to the crimson flickering in Victor’s gaze. The thirteen-year-old vampire would be the one who, a couple months later, would take her and Willis by surprise in such a tragic way.
* * * * *
It was too bad Jeremiah wasn’t stronger than Leonidas, because if he had more authority with the others, it would go much better. Her most “gentle” vampire had terrible moments himself, though. Elisa had seen him fight the bars of his cage until he bloodied himself, his fangs dripping with saliva as he stared hungrily at any living thing. They all had such episodes, though Jeremiah and Leonidas’s seemed more intense. For no reason at all, they would become savage, as if they were going insane in their own skins. Those were the hardest moments for Elise. She could sense their distress, their need to be touched and comforted, but the bloodlust in them only wanted to destroy. It was like watching paper dolls being torn in half.
It was also at those weak moments she wondered if Danny was right in her first thinking, that they should have been put down.
Elisa closed her eyes.
No. She couldn’t bear to think that. It couldn’t all be for nothing.
* * * * *
As Elisa got out of the plane, she looked for him, this Malachi. He was not a Region Master or even an overlord, so he bore no lord or ladyship title as did Lady Danny. Elisa decided she would use Mr. Malachi until he indicated otherwise. She wasn’t unhappy about Thomas’s presence with her, though. The weight he brought as Lady Lyssa’s human servant—Lady Lyssa being Region Master of the southern United States, as well as a consultant to the current Vampire Council and the last royal blood of the vampire clans—would be helpful, even knowing Thomas would not stay long from Lyssa’s side. Three days… She had to convince Malachi to let her stay, to convince Danny it was okay as well.
For one thing, she couldn’t bear to go back to the station and see the empty spot that should have been Willis. Riding the stock in, or whittling in a chair leaned back against the barn. Tipping his hat to her with a lazy smile when she came out to beat the rugs. If she went back, she’d have nothing to do but being a maid. Having the children had filled her days
and nights. It kept her from thinking so much.
Once being around vampires, it wasn’t difficult to spot one. The exceptionally graceful, predatory way they moved, the intense focus of the eyes. And of course, every single one of them was beautiful beyond words. It should get tiresome, her senses unaffected by it. Perhaps because of his unexpected appearance, that wasn’t the case when the island’s owner made his appearance, striding toward the plane.
Even the untitled vampires she’d met took care to appear as aristocracy. Well-dressed, well-groomed, well-spoken. Most had lived long enough to accumulate money, education, making themselves appealing to human prey if they didn’t have a servant for a regular bloodsource. In contrast, Mr. Malachi wore jeans and workboots, an untucked and snug-fitting dark T-shirt. The outfit was no more formal than what Dev or Willis might have worn for their stockman duties. Black hair, unruly and brushing his shoulders, looked like a lion’s mane. He had an aquiline nose, the features of a hawk. He was an
Indian.
When Danny bought her a book about the United States, they’d compared Western Australia with the American Wild West. In the pictures of the Native Americans whose tribes had once been scattered over the United States, the resemblance was unmistakable.
A black stone carving of some kind of cat, threaded on a braided strip of leather and worn around his neck, only added to the impression. When she at last focused on his dark brown eyes, he possessed a predator’s strength and authority in his focus, but it was far more...primal. None of them were exactly what she’d call gentle or safe, but he had an untamed look that said he’d always be more at home among wild animals in a dense forest than among his own kind. A strange thought.
He stopped before them, gave Thomas a curt nod. “My greetings to your lady.”
“And hers to you. She thanks you for assisting Danny.” Thomas cleared his throat, his gaze flashing with amusement. “She says one of these days she expects you to stop playing with your kittens long enough to visit a cat with real claws.”
“It may take me a century or two to find that kind of courage.”
Elisa drew in a breath, not expecting the quick flash of a male grin that showed fang tips. But then Malachi’s glance turned toward her, and the deceptively approachable expression was gone. “Where are the fledglings?”
“They’re in the plane,” she said. “We didn’t wish to unload the children until—”
“They are not children, girl.” He cut across her. “
You are a child. They are vampires. For the very brief time you’ll be here, you will not call them children.”
“You haven’t even met them yet,” she retorted. “You don’t know what they are or aren’t.”
“Elisa.” Thomas put a quelling hand on her shoulder, but Malachi had already stepped forward, bumping her toes, moving her back a step with his greater height. He wasn’t heavily muscled, but there was a lean, tensile strength to him that suggested he spent a great deal of time doing manual labor. Another thing vampires didn’t do. But daring a brief look into his face, she revised her earlier opinion. He might be different, but she saw that full blast of dominant authority a vampire could quickly bring to bear in the face of a challenge by a weaker opponent. What was the matter with her? She’d been trained better than this, but they’d barely stepped foot off the plane and now he assumed—
He settled a strong hand on her throat, tipping her chin up. She froze all over. “In time, I will ask you questions, and I will hear your thoughts. But I’ll make the decisions, and you’ll follow them instantly. You will not question me. If you have difficulty with that, I’ll stick you back on this plane and we’ll cut our three-day ordeal two days shorter. Understood?”
“Mal,” Thomas said. Malachi cocked his head toward him. Only a faint flicker showed in Thomas’s face, but the vampire glanced back down at her. Then his hand was gone and he’d taken a step back. While his face remained implacable, she realized why Thomas had spoken. She was shaking, and there was a swirling panic in her chest threatening to cut off her air flow.
Damn it. Firming that chin he’d handled so familiarly, ignoring the quaver in her voice, she spoke. “Mr. Malachi, I’ve served a vampire since I was seventeen years old. I’ll have no problem being respectful and obedient to your wishes, but I also have a responsibility to these…young vampires. They’re mine,” she added with determined stare that locked with his gaze, despite the breach of vampire-human etiquette.
I’ve paid in blood for the privilege.* * * * *
Danny had described Elisa as an obedient and efficient servant, naturally submissive. She was trembling like a leaf, her hands knotted together like a frayed rope. When he’d stepped into her space, she’d given every indication she’d bolt, but she’d dug in and stood fast under his touch. She had soft skin.
This was the one that had been violated.
Christ. Her foolish defiance had driven it right from his mind. He took stock of the paleness from recent serious injury, the flash of automatic terror at an aggressive, unknown male. Danny was a fool for permitting her to come. She wasn’t up for this. Grudgingly though, he acknowledged the fortitude it had taken to make this kind of trip and to continue to champion them.
On the other hand, she could be a complete mental case. A smile tugged at his lips, unexpected. One could say the same of a vampire who chose to live away from his own kind and play nursemaid to “kittens”, as Lyssa had taunted him.
How many scars had healed on his body from his missteps with his cats? At the beginning, while he was learning their ways, how often had he gone down under them? He could be considered prey with one wrong communication of body language or scent. It was unexpected to see that same history in her eyes, misguided though it was. A vast difference existed between a vampire’s mind and a cat’s. And a woman’s was entirely incomprehensible.
“You’re absolutely correct. I’ve not yet met them.” Gesturing, he directed her toward the plane. “Take me to them.”
* * *
Chapter Two
As Elisa turned, drawing a steadying breath, she almost choked on it again as his hand grazed the small of her back. If a human male had done it, it would have meant nothing, a courtesy. However, with vampires, touch always conveyed sensual intent, exploration, no matter how dispassionate it seemed on its face.
The first time she’d met Lady Danny, the woman had kissed her the way a man kissed a woman, and Elisa’s Catholic background crackled up like paper being eaten by flame. Like getting poison ivy or having the sniffles during the blooming season, it was something a human couldn’t control. She told herself that as a shiver of reaction spread out like teasing feathers all around that incidental touch.
Willis had been dead all of a few weeks, for Heaven’s sake. Yes, they’d had just a couple kisses and all, but still, he’d been thinking about forever. For keeps. And so had she. A family, a home, maybe children of her own one day… Those thoughts proved her body’s reaction didn’t mean anything. She didn’t even know why she was worrying about it, beyond the sensible concern he might think, because she was Danny’s secondmark, he was allowed liberties. She couldn’t let that fluster her right now, though.
They ascended the ramp to the cargo area, the efficient and well-armed crew nodding to Thomas, since this was of course his lady’s plane. Malachi preceded her into the hold. She would have preferred to lead, reassure the children. Because of their experience with Lord Ruskin, male vampires could agitate them into full blown hysteria. But Thomas gripped her elbow.
“Remember his warning, Elisa,” the monk murmured. “He’s in charge here. Trust Lady Danny’s wisdom in this. Mal knows what he’s about.”
Mal strode into the cargo area and came to a halt, gazing about the silver semi-circle of cages. The six reacted in myriad ways to his arrival. Three bolted to the back of their cages, silent, skulking shadows. In contrast, the one that looked the oldest moved forward, baring fangs. Holy Christ, Ruskin had taught them nothing. Their fangs couldn’t retract, permanently locked like saber-toothed tigers. The sickness that twisted in his gut now was what Mal felt when a half-starved juvenile lion was brought in, some misguided idiot’s pet or the whipped failure of some circus. He had an active dislike for humans, but before him was the reminder that malicious brutality and unforgivable ignorance weren’t limited to them.
That didn’t change what needed to be done here, though, so he made sure neither his scent nor his expression emanated such sympathy. Instead, he glanced at one of the handlers. “How do you open the cages?”
“A combination on this control, sir.” The man pointed at it.
Mal nodded. “Open his cage.” He gestured to the most aggressive fledgling.
“Sir?”
Mal cut a glance in the man’s direction, but Thomas was already attending to it. “Obey him,” he said. The monk put a reassuring hand on Elisa’s quivering shoulder. Her eyes had moved to the young snarling male, then skittered away, her skin paling further.
“Open it,” Mal snapped.
As the cage door retracted, Elisa fully expected Leonidas to leap out. Anticipating that, her body refused all rational thought, going rigid with the desire to bolt. Instead, moving faster than she could follow, Malachi was already in the door, chest to chest with the gangling boy. Leonidas was a few inches shorter, but had the lanky length of a teenager who’d been starting his growth explosion when he was turned.
Baring his fangs, Mal snarled in a way that made Leonidas look like a house cat standing up to a fully grown lion. Leonidas attempted to snarl back, but fear suffused his expression. Malachi moved into him so the boy shuffled back, further and further, until he was in the corner. However, Malachi continued to lever the advantage until the boy was shrinking down onto his knees under his looming body, cowering.
“There’s no reason to be that cruel,” Elisa muttered, starting forward. Thomas clamped down on her arm anew, but then Mal spoke.
“Elisa, come here.”
She’d intended to come a couple steps and admonish him. Faced with the actuality of coming into that cage, something happened to her feet, as if they were lodged in concrete.
Mal, his gaze still locked on Leonidas’s bowed head, stretched out a hand in her direction. “Trust me, Elisa. You are coming to me, not to him. Nothing will happen to you. Look at me only. Do not make any eye contact with him.”
Somehow, responding to the sure authority in his voice, her feet were moving, a blessed miracle. One step, two step, and she kept her eyes locked on Malachi. Was his hair long enough to braid, she wondered. Did he put feathers in it? Of course, this was the 1950s and Indians did not run around half naked on horseback with feathers in their hair, but she made herself imagine Malachi in such a way, anything to keep her mind away from what she was doing.
He’d be breathtakingly bare, on the back of a pinto. His bowstring drawn back to his ear, an arrow ready to fly. He’d be painted with symbols for a good hunt, wearing only that and the stone necklace on his upper body. Those brief leggings that showed the muscular curve of buttock would be his only clothing. The horse wouldn’t have any tack, man and horse as one, which fit with her idea of Mal as more wild creature than vampire.
As distractions went, it was a good one. It wasn’t the first time she’d used visual image to get her through a moment, but it was the first time since that terrible night she’d used imaginings like this. It made her want to scowl. Bloody vampires and their pheromones, as Danny called them. But if it did the trick, got her to him, then so be it.
She hesitated at the threshold, and then she was over it, placing her trembling hand in the grip of his. She tried hard to stare just at him, but then, nervously, her gaze skittered to Leonidas.
The boy struck. Elisa screamed. A flash of movement, a resounding thud and cry of pain. Not hers. Malachi was holding Leonidas against the bars of the cage. One long-fingered hand squeezed his throat, the boy’s feet half a foot off the floor. She had somehow ended up against Malachi’s chest, her face buried into it, his other arm curled protectively around her.
“Look at me, Elisa.”
Taking a breath, Elisa managed to get to his throat, her eyes glued to that dark stone totem in the bronzed hollow. She was used to pale vampires. When his fingers tightened along her back, she felt that odd dichotomous shudder again.
Don’t touch me. Please touch me.As Leonidas choked against his hold, she wanted to tell him to ease up, that he’d proven his point. But she did as Mal told her to do, at least for this volatile moment. They could argue about it later. Gathering her courage, she raised her gaze to his face. Without looking down, Malachi eased his hold on her, guided her around so she was facing Leonidas. She kept her head turned to stare only at Malachi. She wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t told her to do otherwise, or she couldn’t do anything else.
Mal let the fledgling’s feet touch the ground. As he loosened his hold, he bared his fangs again, a rumble coming from his chest, unmistakably a warning growl. The young vampire capitulated to it, going down until he was crouched in the corner again on his knees, his eyes downcast.
“I will taste your blood tonight, every one of you.” He swept his gaze over the room. “You will be marked by me as a sire, and I will have access to your minds. If you want to live, I will find
complete submission to me there.” As he moved his grip on Elisa, she tried not to shake harder. He curved his fingers in her hair, an easy, stroking touch that startled her, because it was unexpectedly soothing, despite his fierce, steel-muscled posture. “And this is mine.”
When she would have jerked her head up, his hand tightened in her hair, warning her to stillness. Lifting a booted foot, he pressed it against Leonidas’s chest, drawing the boy’s attention and holding him against the cage wall.
“With one push, whelp, I can crush all your ribs. Rip them out of your chest and stake your heart a good dozen times. You’d live long enough to feel pain such as you’ve never felt from anyone. You ever even
look at her in a way that displeases me, that will be your fate. She is mine, and that’s the end of it.” Malachi passed his attention over the assembled cages, making sure he had the acknowledgment he wanted from each. As he did, he gathered her hair in one hand, and tilted her head to the left.
“What—” But she had no time to react before he’d pierced her with his fangs, taking a draught of the blood she had to offer. Her gaze briefly locked with Jeremiah’s, squatting in the middle of the cage, his eyes intent on her face. Then he looked away.
The shock of it rippled down to her toes as Mal marked her. Dropping his hand to her waist, he caressed her there, while her body warred between panic and something not like panic at all. Dizzy, she leaned into him, and the warmth of his arm came across her chest as the electric stimulus of a marking burned through her blood.
You’ll be safe from them from here forward, fierce Irish flower. But you are still getting on that plane in three days.Holy Mary. He’d given her the first and secondmarks, as smooth and easy as she’d ever seen it done. He was in her mind now. She should have felt violated, and part of her perhaps did, but another part felt something she’d experienced for only a short time during Danny’s employ. So short that the terrible incident with Victor had made her think everything before that night had been a lie, or something she’d never feel again.
She felt safe. Despite her mortification, it made her begin to cry again, but she pressed her face into his T-shirt that smelled like animals, grass and man, and let the tears absorb there.
He didn’t seem to mind.
Subject: Exclusive to Fan Forum - Early Peek at Vampire's Keeper! 
Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:52 am
I get so excited that I just skip to the good part! 
stop that! Stop intimidating my expert consultant. I'm of course saying this while still laughing at the Puss in Boots image.
