“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, farther and farther, 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 steps, 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 because 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 second marks, as smooth and easy as she’d ever seen it done, though she’d heard giving more than one mark at once could burn. Maybe it was different when the third mark wasn’t involved. Regardless, 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.

3

AFTER that dramatic beginning, the next few minutes were decidedly tame and efficient. Mal brought Elisa out of Leonidas’s enclosure, had it resecured and then went to the opening of the cargo bay to wave at the driver of a small forklift. The piece of equipment had been taken off one of the four flatbed trucks that were going to be used to transport the cages. Elisa counted ten men and one woman. Back home in Australia, all the station hands knew Danny was a vampire. She’d second-marked them so she could be in their minds whenever she chose. Elisa wondered if these were the same, and expected they were, because they moved forward to do his bidding with very little obvious conversation. Of course, perhaps it was just familiarity, because Elisa had learned to serve her Mistress without much direction, anticipating her needs.

Mal escorted Elisa back to Thomas’s side and indicated they would go in a Jeep to their guest quarters, where he would join them later.

“Mr. Malachi, I can help,” Elisa protested. “I’m not your guest. I’m here to work, same as your people.”

The vampire gave her a dismissive glance. The reassurance and patience he’d demonstrated when he’d held her against him were no longer evident. In fact, she sensed her very presence was irritating him.

“Duly noted. If you’re working for me, then follow orders. Go to the house with Thomas.”

“They don’t know you.”

“No, they don’t. But they do know you. Which is an additional problem I don’t need during this transfer.” He gave her a look out of those dark eyes that held a clear warning. “Get in the Jeep; go to the house.”

Danny had told her she could trust him. But he didn’t see what she did. While Leonidas was predictably savage to everyone, the others had known only one kind of male vampire. The kind that tortured and starved them for his own purposes, everything from hunting to simple sadistic entertainment. When Ruskin had made four adult vampires to serve him, he’d also allowed them free use of the children, in whatever manner would entertain them best. When she looked toward Jeremiah, she saw the terrible apprehension in the tense line of his jaw, though he was trying to mask it. Nerida and Miah, the girls, had naked fear in their expressions. William was already on the side of his cage closest to Matthew’s, as close as he could get to reassure him, though they both knew there was no reassurance. There was only getting as close to one another as possible, so that one didn’t feel all alone in the suffering. She knew why that was so important.

When Victor had taken her down, Willis had been too weak to help her, his chest crushed, but he’d used that last precious spark of energy to drag himself a few inches. She’d fought, until Victor hit her in the face and broke her jaw, pinned her to the floor. After that, she couldn’t fight him any longer. It was then she’d looked left and met Willis’s pain-filled gray eyes, blood coming from a mouth that no longer could speak to her. He was trying, though, the lips working. His blood-soaked hand strained toward her. When she’d reached out, there’d been an inch between their fingertips. Then Victor had jammed himself into her, making her cry out, her body jerk in response. That had closed the distance. She’d managed to get her fingers underneath the callused surfaces of Willis’s.