Vampire Instinct Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 semicircle of cages. The six reacted in myriad ways to his arrival. Three bolted to the backs of their cages, silent, skulking shadows. In contrast, the one who looked the oldest moved forward, baring fangs. Holy Christ, Ruskin had taught them nothing. Their fangs couldn’t retract, were 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, 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