Page 18 of Kept 4
“Fuck off.”
She fingers the knife at her belt, and Monsieur Levac sighs.
“Ladies, please, let me remind you. We are in the house of God. And Prudence, I don’t think Lord Montague lies in his journals. If what Josephine tells us is correct, he has kept one for every year of his long life and allows no one to read them. They are solely for his own purpose. There would simply be no point in filling them with fabrications.”
I let out a small sigh of relief. I know that by helping them, I am essentially sealing the fate of the man I love. If they are correct and killing the ancient kills all vampires, then Nicholas is doomed. But to think that they might confuse him with the ancient and bend all their wills to hunt down and kill him, that didn’t sit right. I couldn’t reconcile helping them with that. I couldn’tdirectlykill him.
Even now, my heart feels like it weighs a million tonnes at the thought that I am turning against the man I love. Murderer? Yes, he is, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine yearns for him.
Monsieur Levac interrupts my depressed inner monologue.
“Have you ever seen Gerald in the daytime?”
“No,” I shake my head and screw up my nose, “he’s a vampire.”
“Yes,” he nods, “but hunter lore suggeststhevampire can day-walk.”
“Huh.”
“But that might not be true,” Benjamin adds, giving Monsieur Levac a hard look, “remember we have so much information from so many hands over so many generations, it is like Chinese whispers sorting the fact from the fiction.”
“True,” Monsieur Levac shrugs, “but that would certainly make him or her almost impossible to find, would it not?”
It was Benjamin’s turn to shrug.
“Either way,” I interrupt, “I don’t see how I can help you any more than I helped James. I read the journals, what else could I possibly do to help you?”
“If you know where the ultimate weapon is,” Benjamin says quietly, “all we ask is that you deliver it to us. We will do the rest.”
I sigh.
“If I get it for you, you have to promise me you will try it first on Gerald. I really do think he is the one you are looking for.”
They all look at one another for a long minute, before nodding.
“You have our agreement,” Benjamin says.
“OK,” I grimace. “I know where it is, but I’m not sure how in the hell to get it. Nicholas knows where I am at all times, what I’m feeling. He would sense if I was nearby, know I was up to no good.”
“No,” Prudence says, bringing a package out from inside her coat and slowly unwrapping it, “he won’t. This bracelet stops the Kept link – as long as you have it on, he can’t find you or feel you. It has other powers too, supposedly, powers to protect the wearer’s mind; but we have never tested it.”
My eyes widen when I see the silver bracelet, it looks like the same metal the weapon was forged from, carved with similar runes. She unwraps it and holds it out to me.
I’m about to ask a million questions when the door shatters into a million sharp little timber shards, and all hell breaks loose.
8
I sense him before I see him.
My arms rise in goosebumps; my breath quickens, and I don’t hesitate to plunge myself into his outstretched arms.
“Thank God,” he breathes into my hair, “thank God.”
“I’m OK,” I shudder, pressing myself into his hard, muscular body, revelling in the feel of his arms once more holding me, “I’m OK.”
“I killed the last one,” he leans back, kissing me lightly on the cheeks, the forehead, the nose, the ears and finally, the lips, “you are safe now.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and shudder once again.
