He frowned up at the Englishman before quickly pulling Lilly’s nightdress down over her legs and closing it at her throat, though he paused before buttoning the collar to touch her neck. He shifted his fingertips to his mouth and licked them. “Blood... Something’s bit her—there’s tooth marks.”
He scowled at Holmes. “Now, I give you permission to lay hands upon her one more time.” He squatted by her shoulders. “Grab her feet. The doctor’s got to have a look.”
But before Holmes could move, the ranger stiffened.
“Wait. Ain’t Miss James with you?” he asked, glaring at the younger man.
“Virginia saw something,” Holmes said with shaking voice. “And ran to look but we got split up—then I found Lilly.”
Another lamp appeared in the trees and cast a pool of light on the ferns that Van Resen and Jacob followed through the tangle toward them.
“Miss James is missing now, Doc,” Seward growled, as Jacob took Lilly from him; the black man cooing, “Poor little girl!”
But the ranger continued, “And it looks like something bit her.”
“Again?” Van Resen leaned over the girl and groaned before looking up. “Where is Miss James?”
A bloodcurdling scream shattered the jungle quiet; somewhere in the night, in the distance, a woman was in peril.
“Miss James?” The old ranger stared in the direction from which the sound had come. Before he could move the scream came again to fill the dark with menace.
CHAPTER 16 – Action at Sunrise
Gazda glared in the direction of the screams, and knew from the echo that the brown-haired female was moving east through the treetops at a rapid pace. And she was not alone.
Some other creature carried her.
The night ape looked down from his perch in a young oak, and struggled with the conflict that raged inside him. The males of Lilly’s tribe had reacted to the distant cries where they stood over her body. From their postures and manner he knew they shared his frustration and wanted to retrieve the second female, but they also had the injured Lilly to think of first.
Lilly!
The night ape came close to despair as he thought back to the moment Lilly left the cabin to go with him through the black fog.
She came to him with a smile on her pink lips and desire gleaming in her blue eyes. Smitten, Gazda crouched before her, and patted the earth with open hands while swaying left and right, apologizing in the way of apes: barking, and grunting out his great remorse—explaining his behavior of the night before.
But Lilly paid no mind, accepting instead his presence with a soft downward stroke of her fingers over his neck, chest and abdomen. Then walking with him into the jungle, she watched his movements, eyes hungry as she opened her long garment and pulled it down to hang at her waist.
Gazda leapt and charged excitedly around her as she turned and turned to follow him with her eyes—until her breath caught suddenly, and she fell unconscious in his arms.
Sitting cross-legged in the ferns with her draped across his lap, he inhaled the scent of her sweet yellow hair, and licked at her lips, jaw and breasts, drawn quickly to an excited pitch by the taste of her skin, and by the blood that surged beneath it.
When Lilly’s eyes half-opened Gazda pressed their lips again and a scarlet flame welled up in him that filled his body with a passion he could not contain, and so he coupled with the drowsy female. The heat from his burning loins rushed over her skin like flames, caused her heart to throb and blood to rush.
Gazda had been alone so long, lost without his friends, without king, family and tribe, and there the beautiful Lilly had trusted him to walk among the trees, to move at his side with the cold black fog caressing her heels. And then to trust him in the vaulted forest, to mate while the dark mist drifted round.
There in the tree above the unconscious Lilly and the males of her tribe, fury shook Gazda’s powerful frame and caused the scar on his brow to blaze and his eyes to flash with fire.
Had he not come to Lilly concerned that she had suffered his mother’s fate?
He remembered how his passion rose to match a thirst that grew within, and how he used his fangs again to open the wounds upon her throat, and how he had with pointed tongue lapped the sweet blood that trickled out, and then...
He remembered pulling his mouth away to see her bright eyes upon him. To this he shook his head and drooped with shame; but, Lilly cooing drew his brow against her breast where the roar of her heart called out to him.
He pressed his mouth to hers to kiss and kiss more deeply, and soon he laid her out upon the ground, and pushed aside her coverings to mate again.
Blind with her perfume, urged on by her flesh, Gazda pressed his suit as heat poured from the girl and her thoughts were overborne.
High in the branches, Gazda gripped his skull as if he yearned to crush it, for memories came of his fear as he leapt from Lilly’s white form to whimper her name with foaming lips dripping...
Blood. He’d taken her blood again.
She was white upon the jungle floor, and in a panic he had kissed her face to draw her back from death, and as she slept he took his knife and slit the flesh of his wrist to press the flowing wound against her mouth. And Lilly drank what he returned to her before she could wake.
Then cries had come through the woods as others came in search. In the clearing they circled and called, so Gazda kissed poor Lilly and caressed her naked limbs until a young male carrying flame approached. Then the night ape left the girl where she’d be
