she dearly wished they could figure out how to get those fangs to retract. it had to make the fledglings more self-conscious around mature vampires, the constant problems with spittle, or flecks of blood and temporary scars where the fangs punctured the lip and chin.

"all right, then. it's time for you to go in so the girls can have their time." she said it reasonably enough, hoping that leonidas wouldn't give her trouble and have to be forced back in by a call to malachi. while she liked chumani considerably, it was the first time she'd really been able to be alone with them since they'd arrived, and she liked having that uninterrupted time to talk to them without any self-consciousness of her own.

leonidas gave her a sneer, a blatant defiance of the warning mal had issued on the plane, but sauntered back to his cell. he knew he frightened her. like all animals, whether human, vampire or otherwise, fear incited dangerous attention and, in his case, contempt. she could do little about it, though, except stay calm on the outside while continuing to struggle for it inside.

he went into his cell, closed it with a resounding clang, then shook it to show her it was locked. when he tossed her that derisive look again, it said clearly that, if he wasn't held in the cell, he would tear her to pieces. beyond the fear, it made her sad, realizing mal might be right, that there was less than buckley's chance they could dissipate his rage or make his life better. unlike the others, he'd never shown any interest in books, gadgets-anything that would prove he could be engaged by something other than the chance to kill.

she kept thinking she'd figure out the secret to him, though. something that would change the tide of such thinking. she wondered what he'd been before. it was a game she played, like imagining his green eyes. at times she'd turned her game into stories for them, saying aloud what she thought they'd been like before. what sports they'd played, what their families might have been like. miah and nerida might be the only ones who really knew, since they'd been taken from their mothers, whereas the boys probably had come from orphanages.

still, not remembering a family was all the more reason to imagine a variety of them. a father who was a famous traveler, carrying his son on his shoulders. a mother who was gentle and beautiful and could sing like a nightingale. who never hit her daughter in the face with whatever object came to hand-her own personal fantasy. a grandmother who made pies and offered comforting, sage advice.

she supposed those were hardly original ideas, but every child who'd had no family-or one that might be worse than none at all-was comforted by such fantasies. she always allowed for significant pauses, and encouraged them to interrupt her if they wanted to give her the true version and correct hers. but they hadn't, not so far. they listened to the stories like a child listened to a fairy tale, seeing no real connection to their own lives. ruskin may have erased all memory of such things, but eventually something she said might strike a spark.

until then, she guessed she'd have to hope and fantasize for all of them.

she pressed the control to let out the two girls. watching the way nerida immediately ran to miah, hugged her, she wondered if they'd been half sisters, sharing a mother and two different white fathers, perhaps coming through the area to work on the railway or fence lines.

nerida brought the pieces of chocolate elisa had left in her lockdown cage with the blood, offering miah some. though elisa had given them an equal amount, and they both liked the sweets, miah liked them even more and nerida knew it. that was something the boys never did. they didn't share.

elisa glanced down at the two books she'd brought to read by the lantern light. one had colorful pictures, a photography book of exotic places, but she thought she might read the poetry. they liked the singsong cadence of it, and walt whitman gave such beautiful descriptions of the world around them. it keyed into the desire to be free, soothing it in some odd way, as if the words could help transcend the cell bars. at least that was what she thought, because when lady constance had sent her to school and she'd discovered the book of whitman poetry, it had made her feel that way about the more nebulous bars of her own life.

she wondered what mal was doing. he'd intended to be in the leopard part of the range today, helping the adolescents learn to hunt. from kohana, she understood that to mean he ran down game for the orphans, showing them by example how to do it. chumani had said they were old enough that they would likely join in the hunt, jumping onto the creature to help bring it down, such that mal would likely be able to pull back and let them do most of it except for the final kill, which was apparently the part that initially confused them, that clamp on the throat that would end the prey's life quickly.

today's lesson likely wouldn't be quick or easy, so she was glad not to be there for that. she understood the point of it all, but she was just too softhearted to watch it.

jeremiah cried out, a harsh shout. elisa's head jerked up from the books, just in time to see jeremiah leap forward and slam against his locked cell door, his hands clamping on the unyielding bars. whipping her head around, she saw leonidas shove open the door of his cell with a resounding clang. a glint of metal shot out of the locking mechanism, a shard she realized with horror he'd maneuvered into it to keep the locks from fully engaging.

he was in the communal enclosure with the two girls.

nerida shrieked, darting behind miah and grabbing the skirt of her dress, even as miah tried to snatch her up and run back toward her cell, the closer of the two. she didn't make it. leonidas was on her in an instant, knocking her to the ground, nerida underneath her body. he had his hand clamped on the back of the older girl's neck, his knee in her back.

elisa was on her feet, reaching for the control panel, but then she realized there was nothing she could do to help. she couldn't open the enclosure. spinning on her toe, she grabbed for the radio instead.

"no."

kohana had said a lion's roar could carry as much as five or six miles. leonidas's command shattered the calm of the clearing just that way. his crimson eyes burned into elisa.

"put . . . it . . . down. or i tear . . . her head . . . off. then . . . the other."

put it down, elisa. i know you're in trouble.

lord in heaven, how could she have forgotten? she didn't need the radio. mal's voice was calm and deadly. it was peculiar-she hadn't thought he ever really listened in on what happened here, except for occasional babysitting checks. now she wondered if he listened in more often. if he liked hearing poetry.

strewth, what was she going on about? her mind was splitting in half, refusing to see this was happening, wanting to prattle on about poetry. shoving aside that dizzying sensation, she dug her nails fiercely into her palms. she refused to let past and present overlap and shut down her mind. they needed her. she needed to be fully here, no matter what.

even now, since she'd appeared to hesitate, leonidas had caught miah's hair, shifting his other hand around to the front of her throat. he could twist her head off with one wrenching motion, and he would do it in one blink to prove his threat. then use nerida for leverage.

"all right," she snapped. she laid the radio on the stump. the tranquil cover of leaves of grass mocked her. that day in the barn, one of the toys she'd given the children, a train engine, had been splattered liberally with willis's blood. during victor's rampage, it had gotten knocked into matthew's reach. she remembered turning her head, watching out of glazed eyes as matthew nervously sucked off the blood while victor did what he was doing to her. she pressed her fingers down on the cover of the book, hard enough her bones protested. she hoped no blood got on it. she didn't want walt whitman to be ruined forever by whatever was about to happen.

god help me. focus.

nerida made a bleating cry as leonidas shifted his grip. nerida was buried beneath miah, clinging like a baby roo inside her mother's pouch, her face hidden, body shaking enough to make miah shake, or perhaps that was miah shaking. then elisa realized leonidas was rucking up miah's skirt in the back, yanking her up to her knees as he tore open the front of his trousers. a skirt and trousers elisa had made for them.

he notices them . . . mal's words rang in her head. oh god.

"no." she ran to the outside gate, gripped the links. leonidas ignored her, slamming an engorged cock into miah, no preamble, the way elisa had seen cattle branded. the girl shrieked, but bit down on her lip ferociously, as if she'd realized long ago it just made the attacker enjoy it more. victor had reveled in elisa's tears and cries.

elisa, i'm coming. we're all coming. hold fast.

she was heeding him, she was, but she had to be closer, had to let the girls know she was as close as she could dare to be. so she released the outer gate, wedged it open a crack. the inner gate still stood between her and them. it was made of a type of steel mal said the vampires couldn't tear open. "stop it, leonidas. stop! "

he kept pummeling the girl, grunting like a hog, spittle gathering on his chin. but his eyes, those satanic red eyes, were focused on elisa. in triumph, contempt . . . daring. she hated him then. hated him with every ounce of her being and wanted him dead, wanted him staked and torn apart by animals. she didn't care what he'd been or what he could have been. this was all he was, this monster making a girl scream and cry and try to get away from him.

he turned his back on her, buttocks flexing obscenely as miah wheelbarrowed on the ground, trying to escape his grip, but he had her fast. it freed nerida, but instead of running to miah's cell where she could have shut herself in, she scuttled in wide-eyed panic across the compound, toward elisa. she landed against the interior gate, making it shudder.

as the child curled up in a ball against the fencing, whimpering, her frightened eyes fastened in pleading appeal upon elisa. she knew she'd be next. he'd rape her next; then he'd kill them both. he'd been smart enough to engineer his escape, but he was all demonic beast, with no care that this would be the end of him. his only intent was to unleash the blood and rage that had been building inside of him.