Page 38 of Kept 2
She goes on as if she hadn’t heard me.
“They let it go. Not too far, just so it thinks it might have a chance. Then they reach out,” she stretches out her hand to demonstrate, “and they sink their claws back into it, and drag it back, squeaking in terror, to their teeth.”
I scowl at her. The idea that he let me go scares me more than I care to admit.
“I’m not a fucking idiot, Lucy, and I don’t appreciate the theatrics.”
“Were you drawn to him?” she asks quietly, her head to one side, studying me.
“Were you?” I retort. I want to deflect to her because I don’t want to admit, out loud, just how attracted to him I was. Even now I dream of him, imagine us together in all sorts of lurid ways. But also, I’d liked him, looked forward to our conversations; I didn’t want to admit a word of this to her.
“No. I knew what he was capable of. All my training has gone into resisting the lure, the seduction. And of course, my blood protects me to a certain degree from being drawn to him.”
“But you still fucked up.”
“Yes,” she sniffs, “but there is no need to be uncouth about it.”
“Just so you know,” I shake my head and snort, “I will probably continue to be uncouth. Having the threat of imminent death hanging over my head has made me more or less not give two fucks about how I sound, what I do, or what people think of me.”
“Then you are already thinking like a corpse,” she sneers, “you need to turn your mindset from the hunted to the hunter – the thing you fear most will consume you otherwise, spiritually as well as literally in this case.”
“Are you going to tell me where we will be staying?”
“No, it is probably best that you just come along, the less you know, the less you can accidentally reveal.”
“And Margarita, you are sure there is a way to save her, even though she is technically Kept now?”
“There is a way, but it will be painful for her, and for you as her friend. I’ve seen the process before, sometimes the Kept, I won’t lie, doesn’t live through it, doesn’t want to. I don’t know much about the vampire she is being Kept by, but likely he is attractive to her as no man has ever been before – it is their way.”
I shake my head at the thought of taking my friend away from a life she is loving, and a creature she believes she loves. But at the same time, I am resolved that she should live to a ripe old age, and that is not going to happen if I let her stay as she is. Plus, Margarita is pretty shallow; there is a very good chance she is more in love with the vampire’s wallet than with the blood-sucker itself.
“I wouldn’t be any kind of friend if I let her stay with him,” I murmur.
“No,” Lucy nods her agreement, “and I wouldn’t be any kind of vampire hunter if I didn’t use everything in my disposal to work towards my brotherhood’s goals – and that includes you. I want you to be fully aware that I give no guarantee you will survive in the long term. I need you to help me get to a vampire that we have hunted for centuries, and I’ll do anything I have to do to achieve that goal.”
“None of us will survive in the ‘long term’,” I snort, “but I appreciate your honesty. I’ll let Ricardo know tomorrow is my last day in the restaurant. I’ll be ready to leave after my shift. Although I don’t know why you insist on leaving after dark, given that the monsters chasing us only come out at that time.”
“The monsters are not chasing me,” she smiles, “I am chasing them.”
I look at her over the rim of my glass but don’t return her smile, because I know they sure as shitarechasing me.
Puff Pastry
(Pastry for such recipes as beef wellington)
Ingredients:430g plain flour, 15g salt, 117ml water, 430g butter.
Method:
This is a two-part recipe and takes two days to complete – plan ahead.
Part 1: mix 300g plain flour, salt, water and 100g of butter (chopped into small pieces).
Remove from bowl and roll dough into 20x 15cm rectangle, place on grease-proof paper and refrigerate.
Part 2: mix 330g butter and 130g flour.
Remove from mixer and tip onto grease-proof paper. Top with another sheet of paper and roll into 40 x 20cm slab, refrigerate.
