Page 45 of Kept 3
“I tell you, I couldn’t say what I was really thinking, he had some kind of hold over me. It was exactly the way Margarita described it. If he’d said jump off a bridge, I would have.”
Nicholas shakes his head as we walk, hand in hand, across the snow towards Constance’s manor where tonight, everything going to plan Elsbeth will die - or I will. I fervently hope it is the former, but partly this revolves around Nicholas believing Elsbeth will live by the vampire rules and spare me. Much of our conversation earlier tonight revolved around me not believing for one instant that she would, and he asserting the opposite.
“So, I can be killed by someone other than you?” I had asked earlier this evening, as we sat on my bed going over our plan.
“Yes, but only by a vampire, and no vampire in history would kill another’s Kept – it is lore.”
“Lore, not L. A. W,” I mutter, “and she is obsessed with you. I think she will kill me if she can.”
“I hope you are wrong,” Nicholas finally says, sighing, “but I fear you are right. Either way – if you are right and she is so focussed on destroying you, then that might be the chance I need to kill her.”
I had nodded grimly then, and we set out.
“And you are sure he said Elsbeth was under his protection?” he frowns, drawing me back to the now, his face beautiful even in worry, his eyes shining, illuminated by the full moon as we walk.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well, I took no chances. I have not told him what we are doing tonight, and he and Margarita should be back in London by now. If all goes well he need never know, although in all the centuries I have known him, Gerald has never once mentioned that he knew Elsbeth, let alone felt anything for her.”
“But he also never mentioned he had extra mind powers,” I say quietly, “I’m beginning to think you know as little about Gerald as I do.”
He shakes his head, but says nothing, as we continue walking past Constance’s grave, towards her former house. But we barely get a few metres beyond the cemetery, when we hear laughter.
“Fitting,” a girl’s voice calls, still laughing, “that this is where you choose to lose your second love.”
Nicholas stiffens, dropping my hand, and we spin to face Elsbeth, sitting irreverently atop Constance’s headstone, her black cape flapping in the light breeze, making her appear like a large crow.
Having the opportunity to study her, I realise she is just a child. I don’t know how they could have imagined someone so small was old enough to marry and have children in the 1500s. She looks like all the students I have served in high school cafeterias, a girl of just 14, or less, and as overly emotional as any teen I’d met.
‘No wonder she’s so obsessed with him.’
“I’ve come to introduce you to my Kept,” Nicholas says, his eyes two cool pools of ice.
“Have you now,” she drawls, flicking her eyes to me, and back to him.
I know what she is going to do before she does it, and I quickly dodge behind Nicholas as she makes a lightning-fast lunge at me, nails outstretched, fangs bared.
“You know the lore,” Nicholas bellows, but her laughter is the only response as they collide and the sound of snarling and growling echoes through the cemetery.
I dodge to hide behind a large stone Angel and cross my fingers that Nicholas truly can beat this powerful creature. They are moving sometimes so fast, they look like a blur to me, and at other times their blows are so powerful, it seems like it is in slow motion. As they fight, she goads him, laughing at him, at his weakness for dark-haired mousey women, and I screw my nose up.
‘Mousey? You bitch.’
His words though, seem to annoy her just as much.
“Gerald tells me you are under his protection,” Nicholas grunts, feigning left and laughing as her kick to his head misses its mark, “he offered no such boon to your prodigy.”
“Protection,” she spits, lunging again, this time hitting him and laughing as he grunts in pain, “his obsession with me knows no bounds. If I could, I would destroy him in an instant.”
“How do you know each other?” Nicholas spins, catching her with a blow to the side of the head which sends her momentarily reeling towards where I hide. I duck down low and let out a breath of relief when I peek up to see her launch herself at him again.
“Don’t you know?” she laughs, “he made me.”
Nicholas gasps as her nails rake down his face and he kicks out, sending her sprawling yet again.
“You lie.”
“Do I,” she pants, rising quickly and retaliating with two fast blows to his chest, “he turned me on my deathbed, my babe torn from my womb. He wanted to keep me as his vampire bride, confessed he loved me like no other,” she laughs hysterically, “but he killed my son when he found I had given him my blood. I vowed never to see him again – it was no hardship on my part, I never cared for him.”
