Page 37 of Kept 2
She sighs, and I can see she is considering her next words carefully.
“Lord Montague is linked with a very old, very powerful vampire whom we wish to destroy. We hoped to learn more about the identity of the creature from his journals – draining him would have been an added bonus.”
“Huh. And this old vampire, what’s his or her name?”
“We don’t know, but we know Lord Montague must have been in contact with him or her. He is too old not to have been, and the secret is in one of those journals. And that’s all I can tell you.”
I note she doesn’t ask me about the first journal, or the last. Clearly she had read the first, and doesn’t expect anything of value from his last. And obviously, the countess is not the one they are after. No, someone older and probably far more powerful, and deadly.
I shiver and look at her steadily, frowning as I twirl the cheese knife.
I’m not keen on secrets, especially if I am expected to trust her with my life. But then again, if I was her I’d keep my mouth shut too – not many people would be able to withstand having every bone broken in their body, and still not spill their guts.
She was probably wise not to tell me too much; I’m pretty sure I have the lowest threshold to pain and the weakest stomach of anyone I know – I’d squeal like a piglet if even one finger was broken, let alone having a torturer’s finger pushed into my facial muscles.
I shudder again as I remember Nicholas’s description of what he did to her. She may be a stuck-up bitch, but respect where respect was due – she was a tough stuck-up bitch.
My thoughts switch quickly, as they have the past few hours, to yet another question.
“Why don’t they like milk?”
“It lessens their hold over humans,” she says thoughtfully, popping another piece of cheese into her mouth, before grimacing and politely spitting it into a napkin. Clearly, the Mysost wasn’t to her taste.
“I gather you are not going to stab me?” she nods towards the knife, and I shrug and hand it over so she can cut some camembert. “Their gaze can be quite hypnotic; their smell can draw their victims to them. Dairy inhibits this, not totally, but a fair way – also they don’t like the taste, so they tend not to drink people who eat or drink too many dairy products.”
“I knew I liked cows for a reason,” I snort, slipping another piece of the Mysost into my mouth – may as well finish it since she didn’t fancy it.
It occurs to me that my high dairy intake may just be the reason I resisted throwing myself at Nicholas in the restaurant, why I didn’t completely fall under the spell of his gaze.
I pop another piece of cheese into my, already stuffed, mouth.
Swallowing the last of her wine, Lucy puts her glass on the table resolutely.
“Have you made up your mind?”
“Yes.”
“You will come with me?”
“Yes, I want to do what you do. I mean, I don’t want to be a vampire hunter, obviously. But if you agree to help me get some superpowers, I agree to act as the bait for you and James to catch Nicholas – after all, I’ve already been the patsy for James’ failed attempts for weeks apparently, I just didn’t know it.”
She ignores my jibe at her brother.
“Are you very familiar with your pursuer?”
“No, but it helps to make him a little less scary if I think of him just as a normal psycho and call him by his first name, you know rather than Lord Nicholas Montague – Vampire.”
“Yes,” she says quietly, “how long did you say you served him in Paris?”
“Long enough,” I swallow the piece of cheese that suddenly lodges in my throat as it goes dry unexpectedly.
“And yet you live,” she muses, her mouth turning up into a slight smile.
“Margarita said he doesn’t want to kill me anymore,” I shrug. Even to my ears my tone sounds overly hopeful.
“She is wrong,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Vampires get bored. Their very long lives become mundane. They like nothing more than a cat and mouse chase. You have seen what a cat does when it catches a mouse, haven’t you, Josephine?” she smirks.
“Of course.”
