“You know that for certain.”
He shrugged. “I’m simply assuming.”
“You don’t do that.” She considered him. “You’ve marked him. I didn’t know that was even possible. How did you do it?”
She saw a gratifying flash of surprise at her intuition, then he rewarded it with an image in her head. It unfolded as vividly as her dream in his bed. Mal had spent hours interacting with the tiger on the western area, letting him learn who and what Mal was, and letting Shira have a freedom he’d never had before. When the tiger finally sank down for a rest, obviously tired but like a child at the fair, still too amazed with his new surroundings to sleep, Mal squatted behind him. As he laid a hand on the mighty flank, the tiger made a loud moaning noise. Even in the midst of the memory, it made Elisa smile, because it was as if he were talking to Mal. At length, when the tiger laid his head down on the ground, Mal bent. He gave the mark through the shoulder as the tiger made another moaning noise. A brief sip, and the tiger was panting, eyes glazed and staring straight ahead as if somewhat entranced.
When Mal drew back, his hand sliding away, the tiger stayed on his side, eyes closing in a nap, but it didn’t last long. Within minutes, a swarm of nighttime moths caught his attention and the beast was up again, chasing them through the grass. Since it was Mal’s viewpoint, she couldn’t see him, but she imagined that crimson gaze that came upon vampires when they took blood dying away to dark brown again. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a slight smile crossed his lips.
Elisa swallowed. The memory had taken over her mind so clearly it had unbalanced her, such that she was leaning against Mal’s side. He clasped her waist, keeping her steady until she lifted her head and looked up into his face. It was entirely intimate, as close as two people would be before they kissed, and she jerked back, taking a couple unsteady steps that brought her up against that dividing wire and would have had her falling over it if he didn’t close the gap again, steadying her further.
“I’m fine.” She pushed away, putting more space between them. “Well, that was something, wasn’t it?” She brushed at her hair, straightened her shirt. “So that means you can talk to them, and they to you.”
“No. Vampires aren’t anymore capable of understanding animal language than humans. But it does give me the sense of their state of mind, which supplements the operant training, and helps build trust between me and them. Since I have a different scent from a human, there’s less risk in me having more direct interaction with both the rehabilitating cats as well as these.”
Shira gave her a brief glance, whuffed and backed out of the smaller cage, taking his piece of meat with him.
“I guess he doesn’t think much of me.”
Mal made a noncommittal noise. “Don’t be offended. Cats don’t like to meet your eyes.”
She noted the top of the enclosure was open, though it appeared there was a strand of electrified fencing at the top. “Aren’t you worried about him getting out?”
“No. Tigers aren’t climbers, unless extremely provoked. Now, others . . .” He pointed out another enclosure, this time one that was screened at the top. She was just in time to see a medium-sized cat with tawny pelt and long ears with black markings and tufts dart out of a nest of foliage and rocks. The feline leaped dramatically in the air, catching a flying pigeon in her paws.
“Wow.” Elisa blinked as the cat vanished back into the undergrowth.
“That’s a caracal,” Mal said. “And there’s her mate up there. Watch—he’s going to get another.”
Elisa drew in a breath, catching his arm unconsciously as the cat launched himself off the rock, knocking another bird right out of the air. Locking his jaws around it, he carried the creature back to the rock formation that served as his cave. “Oh my. He’s so fast.”
“They used to train caracals in India to do that for show. They’d release pigeons in the ring with them and take bets on how many they could knock down.”
He pointed to a chute system that had been rigged to their enclosure. “Since these two are being rehabilitated for eventual release, we send the birds and small rodents down through the chute.”
She looked at the mesh fencing. “Aren’t the holes big enough for their prey to escape?”
“Sometimes. That’s part of it. We’re training them to watch and be ready, just as they’d have to do in the wild. When they first get here, if they’re malnourished or ill, as they often are, we give them meat, however much they need to get them back in good health. The amount of cats we have here consume about three hundred pounds a day. We get in whole slabs of cow ribs from a supplier on the mainland that ships to us once every couple weeks. We breed rabbits and mice in the compound, as well as the birds. We start with dead rodents, humanely killed, to introduce them to whole prey, and then move them on to live ones. Once they’re out on the preserve, we’ve of course populated it with a variety of animals they hunt for food, big and small.”
Taking her arm, he guided her onward. Maybe he hadn’t intended to take her through more than one or two habitats, but she was so enthralled with all of it, his willingness to tell her more seemed to expand with her enthusiasm.
“Do any zoos ever offer to take them off your hands? So you could have room for others?”
“They did at first, but we turned them down. They’re not all bad, but the primary purpose of a zoo is entertaining humans. That’s how they raise money. They take animals bred or captured specifically for their facility. An animal may live a longer, less dangerous life in a zoo, but that’s like saying human children are better off being locked in their rooms all their lives.”
“Well, they seem happy here.” She studied a bobcat lying on her side, washing. “That’s something, right?”
“Yes.” She sensed a hesitation, as if he was considering his next words carefully. “There’s another vital reason I mark the cats, Elisa. It tells me who can never find any contentment here, the ones who are too damaged and we have to let go. End their suffering.”
She swallowed. He’d marked all the fledglings, that first night. “You said their minds are all chaotic, that you can’t tell much. So it’s best not to be too hasty.”
“What’s interesting to me is that you leaped to defense, rather than a question. You didn’t want to know if I saw that kind of resignation and permanent despair in any of them.” His hand tightened on her elbow. “Why is that, Elisa? Do you already know?”
“No, I don’t, not really. And neither do you, no disrespect intended. Sir. The way any one of them feels today may not be the way they feel a few months from now. When terrible things happen, we all have despairing thoughts for a while. We get past it. They just need time. Are those ocelots over there?”
He gave her an even look, but gestured her toward the habitat for the smaller cats. He held her elbow, though, and bent his head, a quick breath of heat against her ear. “I’ll let you get away with it right now, but if you’re going to be any good to them, you’re going to have to learn to face this head-on, Elisa. You hear me?”
She nodded. Just not today.
She liked the distinctive array of markings along the ocelots’ bodies, like tabby cats only in bolder lines and designs. It launched her into another litany of questions about everything, even how the enclosures were cleaned of animal waste if the humans couldn’t go in. She found they used long rakelike devices that helped them take out the waste. Plus the enclosures were set up in a pod system that allowed rotation of the cats from one area to another if there was a need to go into an enclosure for a more thorough cleaning. She observed it was like one of those hand puzzles, where one square was always left empty.
That coaxed a smile back out of him, loosening the tension inside of her further. Then she jumped into him as a deafening roar split the air behind her, so loud her hands clapped over her ears. It was automatic to press into Mal’s chest to help blot out the sound. His hands came down over hers, increasing the soundproofing, and when she tilted her head up, he was still smiling. He spoke to her then, and she thought she’d gone deaf indeed, because she didn’t understand a word he said.
“What?”
“That’s the expression the Africans use to describe what the lion is saying when he roars. He’s saying, ‘Whose land is this? It’s mine, mine, mine!’ ”
She was a little too aware of the fact his hands remained over hers, sliding down to curl around her wrists, something that tripped her pulse up higher. He noticed, because his grip tightened perceptibly, a hint of restraint that shortened her breath further. “Males are always so concerned about their territory,” she managed. “Doesn’t matter what species they are.”
“Well, we tend to recognize what’s valuable to us and want to keep others away from it.” Mal nodded to a dead tree that had been planted in the large enclosure. “Notice all the claw marks? That’s one of the ways lions send messages to one another, mark their territory.”
“It reminds me of all those knife marks around your door in the study,” she said.
Chayton, another nearby staff member, chuckled outright. When Elisa glanced his way, she caught him looking at the way Mal was holding her. He had a bemused and amused look on his face. Mal apparently noticed as well, because he scowled and stepped back from her. “We’re on a schedule. Let’s keep moving.”
11
AT the next enclosure, Elisa stared for a good minute at the fuzzy, black slothlike creature. “That’s not a cat,” she said emphatically.
“Yes, it is. It’s a binturong. When he passes gas, it smells like fresh popcorn.”
“You are making that up.”
“Wait a few minutes and see. They have chronic flatulence.”
They passed several more staff members. The staff worked on two shifts, and the first part of this shift was apparently spent here, since the open-preserve cats needed less direct attention. As they moved through the maze of pod enclosures, those staff greeted her or sometimes added to Mal’s information, demonstrating their specific knowledge of their charges. But she also caught their speculative glances, much like Chayton’s, when Mal laughed or smiled or expanded on something, as if they weren’t used to him acting that way. Whatever the reason, she was glad to see him in a good mood. It boded well for her being able to see the fledglings.