Page 40 of A Malicious Menagerie
“I’d feel safer if you let me close the divider,” I tell him firmly, my expression and tone brooking no argument.
He flinches, and pain flashes across his features so quickly that I’d think I’d imagined it if not for the responding pang in my chest. He raises his hands in surrender. “Alright. I’m going.” He turns, affording me a stellar view of his toned back and muscular ass, and pads across the soft soil until he stands beyond where the divider crosses. He turns back and crosses hisarms over his chest, highlighting the definition in his corded forearms.
I hesitate for a moment, surprised by his easy capitulation. “Just like that? Not going to fight me on this?”
He quirks another crooked smile, and there’s something so tender in his expression that it makes me feel like a balloon is inflating inside my chest. “You’d figure it out eventually, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you: you hold all the cards, Anna. There’s not much I wouldn’t do to make you feel safe.”
My throat is tight with some mix of emotions that I’m ill-equipped to try to dissect and define. “Why?” I manage to croak past the jumbled ball of feelings. But he only smiles and waits for me to shut him in, and I know suddenly that I can’t do it. If it makes me the biggest fool there is, fine, but I’m taking a chance on this man.
I take a steadying breath before picking up a frozen haunch and hoisting it into my arms. That done, I move to the door to the enclosure and use my access card to unlock it. The minute I do it, I realize that if he wanted to escape, all he’d have to do is charge me now and slip through the door. My arms are full, so I wouldn’t even be able to try to fight back. Granted, he wouldn’t be likely to make it past the guards positioned at either exit, not to mention whatever protections are built into his collar. Still, if I were him, I might be tempted to try.
Instead, he only remains motionless, his head tilted that way I’ve seen him do as a wolf when he was trying to puzzle something out. I move to close the door behind me, but I hesitate before I do it. It feels… wrong. Mistrustful.
So instead, I make another leap of faith and leave it ajar. First, I deposit his dinner in the usual place, though it feels weird leaving it like that with him looking as he does now. Then, I turn and walk toward him, not letting myself falter. He never moved for the door, not even an inch, just stayed in the same place. Though his muscles tense as I approach, he otherwise remains motionless.
Once I’m close enough to reach out and touch him—or for him to reach out and grab me, if he really wanted—I stop and peer up into his golden eyes. I have to crane my neck to do it, as tall as he is. We regard each other silently for a moment, weighing each other’s character through our gazes, before Ifinally speak. “I want to trust you.”
“You can trust me,” he vows, his tone so solemn that I can’t help but believe him.
“I want you to trust me, too.” My gaze shies away from his, ashamed at what I have to say next. Because he has to be wondering if I can help him get out of here. How could he not? Lord knowsIwould definitely be thinking about it. “But I can’t help you escape, no matter how badly I want to. It’s not just you and me at stake here. I have to think about Nan.”
“I know,” he says, and he does, because I told him about Nan. I’ve told him a lot of things. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“I don’t feel any less guilty about it,” I say, and now I’m fidgeting, my fingers twining and untwining again and again.
A low growl reverberates between us, and Chase reaches out and grabs hold of one of my hands before I can react, stealing my breath. My gaze shoots to his as he raises my hand to his lips and brushes a kiss over my knuckles. His beard is somehow bristly and soft at once, and my traitorous brain can’t help but wonder how that would feel against my neck or trailing down my belly or tickling the insides of my thighs… “Don’t feel guilty,” Chase murmurs, startling me from my thoughts. I fight a violent blush as he continues, “I would never want you to do something that would put you or anyone you care about in danger.”
“But I care aboutyou,” I blurt, and then I immediately lose my fight against my raging blush. I clap my free hand over my eyes, partly to hide my tomato-red face and partly to avoid looking at him after that awkward, blundering admission.
“You care about the wolf,” Chase replies lightly, his tone teasing, and I know he’s giving me an out after I embarrassed myself so thoroughly.
“You’re the one who keeps saying youarethe wolf,” I remind him dryly.
He grins, just a hint of fang on display. “Well, then.”
Nothing is settled, not by a long shot. He’s still trapped here by iron bars and guards with a maze of warehouses and skyscrapers beyond. Meanwhile, my bonds are less tangible, but I feel my duty to Nan like a millstone around my neck. My need to keep this job to care for her is at odds with who I’vealways believed myself to be—a person who would never stand idly by while others are suffering or being mistreated. The two contradictory desires are eating away inside me like cancer.
But until I can puzzle my way through this moral quagmire, the best I can do is bring a werewolf a hamburger.
And a vampire some blood.
21
The Blood
When it’s time for my break a few hours later, I return to the breakroom and listen carefully to ensure there are no approaching footsteps. Satisfied, I pull the fanny pack full of blood from where I stashed it in my lunchbox and sling it around my waist under my shirt. It’ll be a little harder to convince John or any of the guards I see almost daily that I’ve gained ten pounds or two months of gestation in two days, so I wind my way back to the woods through a more roundabout set of corridors than I’d usually take. Then, I avoid the path and instead tiptoe my way around toadstools scattered through the leaf litter like mismatched buttons spilled from a grandmother’s sewing kit until I reach the back of the vampire’s enclosure.
As I approach the iron bars that mark the edge of the vampire’s domain, everything inside is still. My wary gaze flicks between trees and peers into dense clumps of gloom, but nothing stirs. There’s no feral woman careening toward me at preternatural speed.
Every survival instinct I possess is screaming for me to run before she shows herself. What good could possibly come from attracting a predator? But I’ve already proven tonight that I don’t react as I should when faced with a fanged hunter, so instead of slipping away, I clear my tight throat and call, “Hello?” When there’s no response after one hundred of my hummingbird heartbeats, I try again. “Hello? Ms. Vampire?”
This time, there’s movement in my peripheral vision, and I whip my head around so quickly my neck twinges. There, hovering in the darkness between two trees like a specter, is the woman in the blood-stained green dress.
Forcing myself to hold my ground, I offer her a tentative wave. “Umm. Hi. We didn’t meet properly before. I’m Anna.”
The vampire doesn’t move except to tilt her head unnervingly. Her expression is hidden in shadow, so I can’t tell if she’s understanding me at all. But she hasn’t rushed me, which is more than I can say for our first meeting.
“Do you… understand me?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t think I’m being condescending… assuming she thinks at all.
