Page 15 of Kept 4
“If you thought I was Kept, why go to all the bother of drowning and beating me to death? Why not just cut my goddamned head off?” I hiss, keeping my voice down when I see Pierre shoot me a concerned look over the stove-top.
“We had to be sure,” she smiles, slowly, “and I cannot answer for Benjamin, but for myself, I enjoyed it.”
“You sure know how to endear yourself,” I snigger, “fuck off before I scream the place down.”
“There won’t be any need for that,” Benjamin says as he pulls up another chair and sits down by my side, one hand above the table, one pointing a handgun at my stomach.
“You know it won’t kill me,” I sneer.
“No, but it will hurt like a bitch,” the woman laughs, “now answer our questions, leave nothing out, and any more lies I assure you, you will beg for me to cut your head off before I finish with you.”
I pick up my jar and drain the last of the wine.
I sit in the pew, my hands in my lap, and wonder why, of all places, I had been kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a church, the very church I had spent the afternoon in, ironically.
My captors had ordered me to sit as they left through a tiny door behind the organ recess. My hands are free, but my feet are tied with black plastic cable ties which are cutting into my skin painfully. Given that I don’t fancy my chances of crawling out of here, I wait.
I’m scared, and I pull out my phone to lose myself reading the last of the journal entries Nicholas had sent me the day before. It would, I figure, take my mind off the new round of real torture the Hunters were, no doubt, going to impose upon me shortly. If it was anything like the beating and drowning I had already suffered at the pair’s hands, well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Thankfully, they hadn’t bothered taking my phone, no doubt happy in the knowledge I would have no reception at all in the big, thick-walled rock church, and no doubt also thinking they would have plenty of time to go through all my belongings when I was dead.
Still, that was a bit stupid of them, because true, I had no reception, but I could still wipe all my contacts.
But not before I read my vampire’s last journal accounts. I needed that, needed to feel I was inside his head one last time. After all, I was definitely never going to see him again. Any faint, hidden hope I may have carried in my heart that we might one day have had a happy ever after was pretty much extinguished the moment I had been re-captured by the hunters.
I pull up his entries and smile sadly at his familiar handwriting.
New Entry
Such has been my temper that Gerald and his Kept departed yesterday. Originally, they planned to leave earlier, but Josephine’s departure warranted his investigation, and he waited until I was ready to answer his questions, apparently.
For once though, I was not in the mood for his flippancy or his advice.
“You let your Kept leave? Just let her go?” he frowned, putting down his whiskey with a heavier hand than required for crystal on silver and causing a sharp crack to appear up the side of the glass.
Ishrugged and turned from him. My heart was too heavy for his callous remarks, Josephine too raw a wound still for him to probe with his metaphorical scalpel.
“She did not wish to be Kept, Gerald. You know me better than anyone. I would not take her against her will.”
“And why did she leave in the night, so suddenly, without even saying goodbye to her best friend?” he mused, “did she give any particular reason?”
“Parting from me was hard enough. I suppose she didn’t want any more painful goodbyes,” I murmured, my eyes on the forest in the distance and the faint shadows of the deer sleeping in the wet grass on the edge. Winter would be upon us soon, even now there was the occasional snowfall, albeit brief – soon I would need to talk to the gamekeeper about how many of my beauties he would cull for meat this season.
“Is that all?” Gerald asked, his voice sombre.
“What else could there be?” I frowned, as I turned from the window to look at him.
He stared at me for a second, a strange look upon his countenance, before turning away to the sideboard to pour himself a fresh drop in a new glass.
“What indeed, old boy,” he chuckled, “who knows the hearts of women? What you need is a willing Kept, or better still, a new wife. To wive and thrive, remember? In fact, you should kill this kept. You really should – then all this angst will end.”
I didn’t answer. He knows, I am sure of it, deep down he knows, she was never truly my Kept.
Truth be known, I was hers from the moment I first watched her read my journal, the moment her mouth quirked into that very first smile, I was doomed.
“No,” I said quietly, placing my own glass down near the one he had cracked, which now bled a tiny bead of whisky onto the tray through the hairline crack. “I don’t want anyone else. I need to be alone.”
“Come now,” he laughed, “some merry company will soon knock you out of your doldrums.”
“No,” I turned and walked to the door, “and it would be best if you leave, Gerald. But I will call you shortly. There is something I must do, someone I must kill, and your help will be appreciated then, my friend.”
