Tuscany Trip

"Here. It's a flyer thing," Brian said. "Allow me." He laid one hand on each side of her head and was careful to slowly draw off all her negative symptoms, discomfort, and pain that she was feeling. He drew them off completely, and put in a temporary block to her flying magic so that it would disable all her symptoms. It would restore her to feeling good again, and when the storm was passed, he would unblock that magical ability again for her. He detected the burn on her hand, and took her hand in his and drew off the burn mark.

"You will feel a lot better now," Brian said to her. "Try it and see."

Khaat looked at Brian for a moment when Ronata spoke. She wondered what he had done exactly.

"I blocked her flying until the storm passes," He replied. "Sorry, Ronata. No point in feeling any worse than you have to. I'll give it back when the storm is over. She's safe to work in the kitchen now, Khaat."

"Okay. Just checking. Didn't want any more injuries," Khaat laughed. "Okay. Sure. I want to start the bolognese sauce. It needs to simmer a bit. Can you chop vegetables? Do you know how to handle a chef's knife?" Khaat didn't know how far back to basics she needed to go, and well, bolognese was as easy to do as some other things. Khaat got out a large wooden bowl and selected her vegetables for the bolognese--onion, garlic, carrot, celergy, tomatos. She set out a bottle of olive oil and a large dutch oven and a pasta pot. She filled the pasta pot with water and a healthy handful of seasalt and put it on the stove. "The first thing we need to do is to prepare the vegetables."

"Steven," Khaat said, with some seriousness, "It really is not a safe idea to distract anyone who has a chef's knife in their hand--especially someone new with one. Now--get out of the kitchen. " She laughed, but she was serious. She didn't want Ronata hurt, and she needed him to go find something else to do for a bit unless he was going to help.

Once the ingredients were cut, Khaat sauteed the garlic and onion together in olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper. She added the carrots and celery and sauteed them until they were tender. She added amounts of lean ground beef and ground pork and sauteed them with the vegetables. From there, she added a bit of whole cream, a bit of tomato paste, the chopped tomatoes, and a grating of fresh nutmeg, and more salt and pepper, and just for good measure, a bit of dry red wine. It was beginning to smell completely amazing. She lowered the heat to just a slow, gentle simmer and stirred. "There," she said. "Done. It just needs to simmer for a couple of hours now and we'll check it again and re-season, boil the pasta, and put together the salad.

She showed Ronata how to make a compound butter with fresh roasted garlic and kosher salt and how to cut the baguette to make garlic bread. Once the bread was spread with the compound butter, she rolled the baguette up on foil and set it off to the side to toast it later.

"I'd say we can relax a bit before we even think about cutting salad fixings," Khaat smiled. "We made good time through that. It seems we have a couple hours now. We probably ought to go see if our boys are sulking at being tossed out of the kitchen."

Khaat saw Ronata go to find Steven. She went to find Brian and was secretly very pleased to find he was asleep on his bed in his room. The man just worked too hard all the time. She picked up a book of her own and went downstairs again to read and keep an eye on the sauce. She took her teacup and was refilling it when she heard a noise in the garage. Not a loud noise. Just a noise. She set her teacup down, and drew her wand.

She carefully went downstairs. The instant her foot reached the bottom of the stairs and inside the garage, she was grabbed from behind in the dark, and she felt a razor sharp blade against her throat. "Call him," the voice said with an evil tone.

"Who?" Khaat asked.

"Quinn. Call him."

"Never!" Khaat replied, angry now.

"Oh, but you will, and he will come," the words slid forth from a female voice like a slithering snake--slippery and cold.

"No. I won't," Khaat said. She decided she would rather die than to call for Brian and let him walk into some sort of death trap. She took a massive risk and kicked her opponent with all she had, hard, in the kneecap with her sharp stilletto heel. She knew she had made some major damage. The woman cried out in sharp pain, jerking the knife before dropping it. Khaat spun around and delivered four sharp blows right in rapid fire succession, not knowing where her own wand had gone in the chaos. Fighting in the dark just was never easy. Suddenly, her opponent managed to dodge her, and grabbed Khaat by her hair and threw her to the concrete garage floor. Khaat took several huge kicks in her ribs before she managed to roll out of the way.

"Quinn!" her opponent suddenly used a sonorus. "Your lady is about to die! Catch me if you can!" The voice seemed to bounce at hundreds of decibels from the garage up and out hundreds of feet in every direction. She wondered if the neighbors would end up being targets now as well. Great! she sighed.

"No!" Khaat's great love for Brian would not let her give up. She made a flying leap at her opponent and knocked her to the floor where the fight for her life began the minute they hit the floor.

Brian was jolted by the sonorus shouting his name. His feet were hitting the floor at the speed of light before he even had his eyes open. He had his wand drawn. He thought he saw Ronata in one of the rooms and he shouted at her. "Dont move!!! That's an order!!!" He had no idea if he had seen Steven or not. But he was not in the mood to lose anybody today. He reached the kitchen in what seemed like a fraction of a second. Khaat was gone. But the door to the garage was ajar. His blood turned to ice, and his stomach churned in anxiety. For the first time in a long, long time, it mattered. It wasn't just another fight. This mattered in some part of him that he didn't think existed. Damn it, it mattered, and he was hesitating. He took a deep breath to pull himself back into form, and began to move silently and very slowly, one step at a time, like walking on eggshells. This time, if never before, it had to be right.

Brian's first real view was of Khat layingg on the floor. She wasn't done yet. She took advantage of the new light and flew, full force at the woman again. "Get out of here, Brian!" she shouted at him, knocking the woman to the floor again. She got a clear look at her face for the first time. Wild, black hair, all askew, a hideous face deformed by some sort of terrible past injury or by years and years of being exposed to evil in its purest form. The woman wore black leather pants, black leather knee boots, and a black leather bustiere. Khaat scowled. "Black leather? Really? That's so overdone," Khaat sighed. "Cover it up, for pity's sakes. Nobody wants to see that."

The woman responded by punching Khaat with a full force left hook to Khaat's jaw. Khaat was thrown for a moment and grabbed the woman by the hair and slammed her head into the concrete. The woman grew angry and magically threw Khaat hard, up against the ceiling and let her drop to the floor. Khaat was stunned. She couldn't move.

A loud, deafening crack sounded in the room. Robert Lupin apparated into the room, his wand in his hand. He stood directly in front of Brian, Khaat's stunned form laying several feet in front of her father on the floor. The woman seemed to freeze in utter horror at seeing Robert in the room.