Page 36 of Kept 2
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“Sounds simple,” I shrug, my veneer of friendly conspiracy holding up, despite my underlying anger, “catch a vampire, drain him, drink his blood and wallah – impervious to any kind of death, except decapitation. Where do I sign up?”
“It’s a little bit more complex than that,” she says dryly, helping herself to some more cheese and olives.
We are sitting at the long, pale timber table in the second-storey kitchen; the place I spend most of my time, as does Ricardo. We feel most contented here, despite downstairs having a perfectly comfortable lounge room with open fireplace and squishy couches, and the bedroom featuring a wide balcony that opens up to panoramic ocean views – this room, where the smell of food pervades, is the favourite.
I’ve set up a platter of dessert cheeses, most were sweet with caramel flavours, like the golden brown Gjetost and the light brown Mysost, but there are also the expected kind; the white camembert and creamy yellow port du salut, for those less educated in fromage. I don’t count myself in that class any more, ask me anything about any type of cheese, I’m pretty sure I know it.
But tonight is not about cheese, although dairy is high on the menu, as always.
“Well, how did you do it?”
“I am a Lanesborough. Historically speaking, we have been vampire hunters for hundreds of years. Our bloodlines go back, as far as we can trace them, to the medieval period. We have been catching and drinking vampires for that long. There is residual power in our very genes – but not all of us, it skips generations.”
“So how did you originate, though? Someone must have been the first guy to figure out they could sip a vampire and gain superpowers.”
“As I’ve told you, ad-nauseum, we don’t have super-powers, we simply can’t be killed in a whole lot of ways. As to the history, that is in our lore, but not something I can reveal to you.”
“Are there others, outside your family, who are part of your team?”
“Yes. But again, I can’t tell you any more of this.”
“Maybe that’s because Countess Elsbeth Deuforte made you,” I say nonchalantly, nibbling on another piece of cheese.
She puts her glass down and stares at me.
“How do you know this?”
I shrug.
“It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is that you are full of shit. And unless you tell me exactly why you are here in about, ooh I don’t know, five seconds, I’m going to stab you with my cheese knife.”
She sighs.
“It’s true, although few outside our brotherhood know of our inception, we were made by a vampire, the countess. But since then we have become something else, something other.”
“Other than what?”
“Other than servants of the devil.”
“Just whatexactlyare you then?”
“All you need to know is that we are vampire hunters. We don’t work for them; we kill them. End of story.”
“So, you didn’t go to Ereston to continue Elsbeth’s vendetta against Nicholas?” I inflect enough doubt in my voice that it is pretty clear the cheese knife is poised.
“No,” she shakes her head firmly.
“And you didn’t go to drink his blood, because you already have superpowers,” I muse, trying to add things up as I go along.
“I will have to drink soon,” she sighs, “since I’ve already technically died once and come back. My strength is not what it should be – I am technically human again and will be in need of a top-up, so to speak. Others in my team need it too.”
“Is that why you went after Lord Montague?”
“In part.”
“So…the other part?”
