Sitting back, he braced his foot again and crossed his arms across his chest. “During the time I was in their compound last night, two of them had fits like you described. I wanted to be certain. They’re likely caught in transition.”
“What does that mean?” Too late, she realized she didn’t know if she had permission to ask questions. Fortunately, he didn’t seem offended.
“A normal adult vampire transition is over in several months. For some time after that, a fledgling deals with bloodlust, and is typically under the care of a sire for at least a year as he or she learns to manage it. What Danny gleaned from Ruskin’s sparse files suggested he had Matthew and William for just over a year. There’s no history on the others. You said they don’t communicate. Do they verbalize at all? Talk, that is.”
“They’ll gesture, point, nod. Miah and Nerida will sometimes sing together, like chanting. I can’t make out any words, though, and neither could the blackfellas at the station, more humming and made-up sounds than anything. All of them seem to understand everything we’re saying, but it’s as if their spoken language skills are gone.”
“They’re not.” He pushed the file away from him, a frown on his face. “I marked them as a sire, as I said I would, but that won’t give me much of an advantage. Ruskin wanted them to be savage animals, so he punished them for any behavior, outside of their hunting skills, that demonstrated reason, intelligence, gentler emotions. Their minds are a thicket of chaos, the best defense they could manage, though it only adds to their impulse-control problems.”
She of course had suspected that, but to hear it confirmed made her heart hurt anew for them. She masked it, though, already well aware of Mr. Malachi’s impatience with sentiment.
He gave her a sharp look. “While they’ve learned to mask emotion or rational thought, the ability to speak, I don’t believe they are incapable of it. They’ve just done what brutalized slaves or prisoners have done for centuries. Figured out other ways to communicate. They use a subtle form of sign language in front of others, and likely talk to each other when they’re alone. If they are capable of trust, they may become more interactive.”
“I’ve . . . I’ve never noticed that.”
“It’s often done in movements too quick for human eyes to follow. And subtle enough to even be missed by a vampire who’s not looking for it.”
She thought about Jeremiah, how often she’d seen something she’d interpreted as a burning desire to communicate, to tell her something. Though she encouraged him to speak, he never would. He simply looked at the others and shook his head, shuffling to the back of his cage in the barn.
“How long will they be caught in transition?”
“It depends.” He sighed, ran a hand over the back of his neck, an unexpected gesture of agitation, as if something bothered him. It sharpened Elisa’s attention on him, though she was hanging on every word already. “Bloodlust seizures are like when you have too much energy to spare and can’t sit still, magnified a hundred times, and coupled with an overwhelming desire to draw blood.” His glance suggested he thought it unlikely she knew, at least of late, what it was like to have an overabundance of energy. Elisa couldn’t deny it, but she sat up straighter in the chair. “Since we know at least William and Matthew should be getting past those now, something has gotten hung up, developmentally.”
“Maybe your work with them will help them get past that.”
He arched a brow at her forced, bright tone and Elisa told herself to be quiet. Fiercely.
“Victor was different,” he continued. “From Danny’s notes, it appeared the seizures became more and more violent, until he integrated that killer instinct into his personality. It was no longer an episode, but what he was. Leonidas appears to be on a similar track, according to what you’ve said about the frequency of the attacks. And Jeremiah—”
“He does it a lot less than Leonidas. When they happen, he fights it, trying to keep himself under control. Sometimes he manages it.”
“If what happened to Victor is happening to Leonidas and Jeremiah, then it’s fairly inevitable. Enduring it year after year will take its toll.”
“You can’t predict anything like that,” she insisted. “The children are all different.” At his warning look, she pressed her lips together. “The fledglings. They’re so different in how they react to things, different levels of emotion . . .”
“Elisa, I know you wish to help—”
“I can help.”
“Not if you keep interrupting me.”
She’d been used to having her opinion counted for so much more with Danny and Dev. She didn’t want to feel animosity toward Mal—she really didn’t—and she knew he just needed to get to know her, but to do that, he had to give her the opportunity to prove her value, right?
“You are proving it, by following my direction. I expect when you entered Lady Danny’s household, you had to do that for a while before she trusted your judgment, correct?”
Her cheeks burned. Apparently, he did sometimes listen in.
“Somewhat. Part of it is your face. You’re pouting.”
That burning became outright mortification. “I am not.” But then she touched her mouth and found it had in fact shaped itself into such a disagreeable shape. She tucked her lips tightly together, surprised to see a faint trace of amusement cross his face. “I do take your point, sir,” she said. “I will work to prove myself worthy of your trust.”
He blinked at her. “You almost managed to keep the scorn out of your voice that time, Irish flower.”
“Perhaps, with all due respect, Mr. Mal—sir, I have to learn to trust you as well.”
“I don’t have to prove myself to you.” In a blink, his tone became a warning that straightened her spine with a snap again and made her stomach do a full somersault. His brown eyes cooled, and he put his feet flat on the floor, holding her gaze captive with his own. “Perhaps Danny gave you more latitude, but that was your home. This is a new, unfamiliar territory, and as any of my staff will tell you, if you do not take the time to learn it, under my direction, it can lead to tragic consequences.”
Images swamped her as he pricked at that wound. She dug her nails into her palms hard enough to draw blood. It was intended to steady her, hold it together, but panic ran together with the pain as she imagined what losing her calm now could do to his opinion of her. Whether out of negligent cruelty or to study her like a lab rat, just like her children, he’d meant to do it. She was sure of it, and for an alarming second she felt genuine rage against him.
“I am familiar with . . . that,” she managed. “There’s no need to . . .” She rose from her chair abruptly. “Excuse me, I need to go . . . to the lavatory. I’ll be right back.”
Instead, he rose from his chair, and came around the desk in a graceful flow of movement that caught her in place before she could escape. “Please . . . don’t touch me,” she whispered. Her arm jerked under his touch when his fingers closed around it. Shudders ricocheted up from those muscles all the way to her tense neck. “Sir.”
He eased her back into the chair but then took his hand away. “Elisa, breathe.”
“I know . . . I’m fine.”
She heard him sigh as she stared at the dark panel of the desk to the right of his lean hip. He wore a knife there, the size of the scabbard suggesting an impressive hunting blade. “Last night, you thought I was being cruel to Leonidas. I was teaching him. Have you ever seen two dogs squabble in the yard?”
The even timbre was unexpectedly reassuring, like the night before. She nodded. “We have several at the station.”
“Who’s top dog?”
“Rodney,” she responded automatically. “Dev thinks he’s part dingo, and Lady Danny thinks he’s part Tasmanian devil.” Pleating her fingers into her dress, she studied the folds. She gave Rodney extra scraps because he did whatever his mind told him to do, hang the consequences. But he’d sometimes lie on the hem of her dress when she was sitting on the porch, mending. Occasionally he’d look up at her in what she imagined was a fond way.
“When Rodney fights with another dog to teach him to mind, does he hurt the dog?”
She thought about that. The sporadic dog fights in the yard could be loud and startling, but they were usually brief things. Very little blood was ever taken. Most of the time, if it happened, it was only at the beginning, when a new dog arrived. “No. Not often.”
“It’s pretty scary to watch two dogs fight like that, but it’s simply nature’s law of dominance, and their way of working it out. As soon as one dog proves he’s the leader, the others are fine falling in line, including the one he fought with.”
“But the childr . . . fledglings, aren’t dogs.”
“No, more’s the pity. It would be easier. Human and vampire blood makes things far more unpredictable. Plus, the fledglings’ former master was like the humans who train dogs to fight to the death. He’s messed up their proper sense of things, exploiting what nature intended. Did I hurt Leonidas last night?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“But it was somewhat scary to watch, right? Just like the dogs.”
Malachi took a knee then, brushing her thigh with it as his hands covered hers. The position put them at eye level. It was an unexpected thing for a vampire to do, and flustered her somewhat, to be so central to his attention that way. “I’m not telling you your job is over, Elisa. But I’m telling you that I’m going to shoulder a lot more of the load now. It belongs in my hands, because I’m the one who can handle it. I will need your insight, but there are things I already know about them that you don’t. The same way Rodney knows things about the other dogs in the yard. There is a difference between the brutality of Lord Ruskin and merely a firm, dominant hand.”
