“I don’t disagree, but the first couple of times, I needed to see how they reacted without you there. It’s important to know that the tree really does make a sound when it falls in the woods, if you’re not around to hear it.” The quirk of his mouth was almost Dev-like. “As to how they reacted, not as badly as I expected, with the exception of Leonidas. He still has reasoning skills, but they’re honed in one direction, for the hunt and kill.” His mouth tightened, eyes darkening. “The only thing he respects is greater strength, and the lesson has to be constantly reinforced.”
She’d seen that herself, but it didn’t make it easier to hear, because it left little room for hope. “How about the others?”
“The rest are very cautious of me. When I opened his cell, Matthew didn’t come out at first. I played cards on a stool and table in the communal area for quite a while. When he came out, he explored the furthest points away from me. He did pass by William’s cell, and eventually squatted there, watching me. William stayed close to his cell wall, right behind him.”
“Yes. Miah acts in a similar way with Nerida. I think the two pairings were taken about the same time, so maybe they bonded during their transition. I’m afraid what Ruskin may have done to exploit that protectiveness.”
“Actually, the fact William openly shows it suggests Ruskin was too much of a bastard to ever notice it. To him they were things, not living beings. He assigned no sentiment or sentience to them, except for their ability to serve his purpose. He didn’t register the compassion, since he had none of his own.”
The longer she’d spent with the fledglings, the more she hoped the man responsible for their state was rotting in Hell.
“But that can’t be a factor when you interact with them.” Mal glanced over at her again, then back to the road as he started a winding, downward slope that offered a changing view of the forest line, the headlights more necessary as they dipped lower and the early moonlight slid behind the trees. “You remember the way you hated everyone at the station tiptoeing around you, suggesting you sit down, take a rest, rather than letting you work?”
“You’re doing it here, too.”
“Kohana was. I set him straight on that. When we tell you to rest here, or to eat more, it’s because you’re physically not up to the level of work you’re pushing yourself to do, and you won’t be any use to anyone if you break yourself down, make yourself sick. Take the rests you need, eat and build yourself back up to your work. We’ll give you the space to do that, and believe me, when you’re up to something, I won’t hold back on making you pull your weight.”
Was he suggesting that she might be staying? That he might consider—
“Not even close to that yet,” he said shortly. “But part of it is proving to me you have sense enough to take care of yourself. I have over a hundred cats here, and now six fledglings that need attention in various ways. I don’t have time for my staff to need my nursemaiding, physically or emotionally. But back to the original point, that’s the kind of pragmatic feeling the fledglings need aimed at them. No coddling, no pity.”
He pulled into an open gravel area then. From Kohana’s description, she realized they were at the vast maze of habitats for the cats that weren’t able to go onto the open preserve, or not yet ready for it. In their discussion of the fledglings, she’d forgotten they were coming here first. She’d have to bite back her impatience.
Mal switched off the Jeep and closed a hand over her elbow before she could get out. “Part of it is keeping your focus where I tell you to keep it. This is an orientation, not a tour. It’s to teach you things that are important for your safety as well as my staff’s. If you mess up because you haven’t paid attention, they’re the ones who risk themselves to get you out of harm’s way. You said you want to work, to be a help. Well, if that’s the case, you need to understand the operation and rules around here. The better you demonstrate your understanding of that, the more likely it is you’ll have more freedom to move around the island.”
He knew what kind of carrot to dangle in front of her, for certain. Still, his reasoning was sound, so she nodded, making a monumental effort to push the fledglings out of her mind, at least for now.
This area was a sprawling compound of wire enclosures. There was no artificial lighting, because Malachi could see at night, and second marks could see in the darkness passably well, no worse than the gray hours of dusk. The lack of man-made light made it seem an even wilder place, the enclosed cats calling out, everything from low rumbles to huffing chuffs of breath or sudden shrieks. Things she’d heard last night had seemed close, but these noises were far more pronounced. Remembering the pictures, the sizes of some of the cats, she felt a moment of trepidation, but a sliver of amusement from the vampire at her side disrupted it.
There is nothing here that’s more dangerous than a fledgling vampire. And you want to cuddle those like kittens.
She pressed her lips together. Bloody galah.
“Not bastard? I would have thought that would be the first that came to your mind.” He lifted his brow. “Not sure what galah means.”
She thought Lady Constance’s education had driven such vernacular out of her head. While she could blame Dev’s influence for letting it come so readily to her mind, it apparently took Mal to bring it to the forefront.
“Bastard is an affectionate term in Oz,” she said stiffly. “If someone is your mate, you might call him a right bastard. It’s one mostly used by men.”
“Hmm. Chumani uses arrogant prick. She also claims it’s a term of affection.” He gestured ahead of them, ignoring her startled glance. “This whole section is for our new cats, where we evaluate their condition or get them back into shape. It’s also for our cats that can never return to the wild and wouldn’t be safe if we let them roam the island with the ones that are being rehabilitated. On the western end of the island is a large running area, separated from the open preserve. Once or twice a month, we take different groups from here to spend a night out there, really stretch their legs. I camp out with them to make sure they come to no harm.”
He surprised her when he came around and offered her a hand out. His long fingers were warm and strong, and though the contact was brief, when he released her, his palm slid along her forearm, his other hand touching her back to guide her.
Fortunately, she was distracted from that by something going on at one of the nearer fences. She’d met Tokala yesterday, a tall, handsome Indian with a thick braid that fell to his waist. He had a WWII battalion tattoo on his biceps, which told her he’d been a soldier, like Dev. Now the tall man had his arm raised above his head. On the other side of the fence, a tiger had his paws against the mesh, stretching up toward the hand.
“That’s Shira,” Mal said. “Tokala’s doing what’s called operant training with him. We need to do cursory physical exams periodically to make sure everything’s fine. So we teach them that maneuver, reaching up toward the top of the enclosure, so we can do a visual check of the belly and genital regions, verify the skin and fur look healthy and his weight looks good. We make sure there are no signs of stress, like over-grooming or tail biting.”
“How do you help him, if he is stressed?”
“Various things. If we think he’s truly sick, we bring in the vet from the mainland, though Chumani has pretty good training as a technician. Sometimes he just needs more stimulation. We do enrichment activities, which is a fancy term for giving them different toys and stimuli. Cardboard boxes, dead tree limbs, water pools for the tigers since they love to swim.” He nodded toward a water hole in Shira’s large enclosure. “At Easter, we paint eggs and let them roll them around and play. They eat them raw. It’s fun for the staff, too.”
“Easter eggs?” She was intrigued at the thought. “Is it fun for you?”
Mal grunted. “We compete to see who can decorate the prettiest egg before the cats mash them. Bidzil usually wins, but I’ve come in second a couple times.”
She blinked at the remarkable statement, then looked back toward the cage as Tokala gave another command. The tiger dropped down to all four massive paws. The man put what appeared to be raw meat in a smaller cage attached to the enclosure and then pulled a lever, giving Shira access to that cage to retrieve his reward.
“We limit direct contact between humans and the cats,” Mal said. “When he was merely an adolescent, Shira could have broken a toddler’s neck with a playful swipe of his paw. These are wild animals, even if they’ve never been outside of captivity, and we want to maintain that as much as possible. If contact is encouraged, it also encourages the natural human tendency to treat them like pets. Then someone gets badly hurt.”
Since she wanted to get closer and see the tiger, Mal showed her the single-strand wire that was the three-foot barrier between the fence and all visitors or those not working with the creatures. The fine stripes along the tiger’s flanks and sides were like that pelt in Mal’s bedroom, and it made her think of Thomas’s book. There’d been a photograph of a tiger running through a jungle, light playing over those stripes.
“So he can never be free?” she asked softly.
“He was bred to be a white tiger for movies and entertainment, which didn’t pan out, because white tigers are mutations; they’re almost nonexistent in their native environment, and when they happen, the mothers kill them pretty quickly. She can’t hide the cub from predators, so he endangers the other cubs, and even if he grew up, he couldn’t conceal himself to hunt effectively. Because they wanted a white tiger, and he wasn’t, they didn’t know what to do with him. He was kept in a small carrier when he was young. They kept him in it for too long, didn’t give him proper nutrition or exercise, so his back legs never strengthened as they should. He enjoys our nights at the open preserve here, though, and he’s happy.”