Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) (35 page)

“Don’t be upset, mistress. Whatever it is, we’ll find a solution for it. Please don’t cry.” There was no response from the Countess who was lost in her abyss.

The days continued like this, more girls from the Gynaeceum came in to be tortured and killed for their pericardia and every time the Countess accidentally spared Oriana, Katalina breathed a sigh of relief. One after the other they were made to suffer acts of unnecessary agony, cruelty and indecency before their hearts were extracted for that final act of misguided witchcraft that only Kati was allowed to witness. Every time she tried, she would tweak the ritual just a little and every time she failed she would scream and curse and break down and cry, before, in almost no time at all, she came up with some sort of other solution that was exactly what she’d been missing and which would be the key to her cure.

One dawn, after another manic episode, Erzsébet fell asleep, allowing Kati who was fortunately unshackled to leave the castle carefully and go see the old man. It was a risk but the situation was desperate and she had to speak to him immediately. She was certain that when all the girls were exhausted her turn would come.

He was sitting by his fire as usual and mending some netting. She opened the door carefully at the sound of which he sat up and his left hand instinctively went for the hot poker, the tip of which was always entrenched in the hot embers.

He was astonished that she’d ventured out in the sunlight. They moved to the central table and she told him what had been happening in the last few days and about going into her room and the whipping she got for it. Going to his kitchen cupboard he fetched a bottle and two glasses which he placed on the rickety table. He uncorked the bottle and poured some home brewed liquor into the glass and gave her a bit. It was really strong and it tasted disgusting but she drank it in one gulp.

“She’s getting worse, becoming completely unpredictable. You shouldn’t go back.”

“I missed my chance to escape before she bit me,” she said with a slightly accusatory tone. “And anyway, where would I go? Stay here? She'll find me in ten minutes. It’s already quite risky being here while she’s at the castle, but I had to come tell you about the acceleration in her murder rates, in case anything happens to me."

“Has she discovered your gift?”

“No, not yet.”

“That’s one good thing at least,” he said also taking a big gulp of the powerful brew.

“In recent days, her madness has been growing by the hour and of course her concoctions and alchemical butchery are proving useless which is serving to irritate her even more. She’s entirely consumed by the fear that she’s running out of time to find a cure for her boy because if she dies, there’ll be no one to care for him.”

“That explains why she’s become increasingly reckless,” he said straightening his feathery hair in a gesture that seemed more like he was trying to order his thoughts than his mop. “Get the mule. We must go into town now and speak to Father Barosius, we can’t wait any longer.”

“Oh no Papa, don’t! She hates priests and she might hurt him too. Besides, I can’t make myself known to the authorities. I'll have to tell them I’m changed and then they will come after me too.
You
should speak to them.”

“All you have to tell them is what you’ve seen while you were serving there, no more.”

“But they know me in town, he’ll soon realize that something’s different about me.”

“There’s no other way child, if we don’t act now both you and the rest of those poor girls will be killed.”

“No Papa, it’s too dangerous.”

“Is the sun up all the way?”

“Yes but…”

“Then we’re safe. If we go now they’ll send for some troops who will be here by nightfall and she won’t even know what hit her…” Before he could finish his sentence the flimsy door to the hut swung open with incredible force revealing the Countess, who was standing at the entrance blocking the light. Kati didn’t have to look to tell that she was angry. With malice in her eyes she strolled towards Kati who grasped the old man’s hand in fear. He remained quiet but stiff as a board. Erzsébet grabbed Kati by the throat and lifted her a little off her feet. She struggled to breathe and scratched at Báthory’s hand but nothing would make her soften her grip.

“I guess what they say is true…the early bird does catch the worm! I’ve only been up and about a few minutes and I’ve already discovered so much!”

The old man froze in his chair. Cold sweat poured out of every pore in his body. The last time
this
Erzsébet Báthory had come to his house she’d blinded him and she hadn’t been half as mad as she was today. The Countess was still highly focused on Kati, who’d gone bright red in the face and who was slowly losing her senses. “…And to discover that you can read and have a gift too? What a pleasant surprise that is! I thought you were the most useless one of the lot, and I’d wasted my time in making you, but here you are all special and intelligent and all this time you were hiding it from
Mommy
.” She spat out the last word, and curled up her lips revealing her sizeable fangs.

“I should suck you dry right here, but I won’t give you the grace of an easy death. Oh no my dear, you deserve the full Countess Báthory treatment and I intend to make it last, seeing as you are one of my special little girls." Her eyes were at their greenest. She put her nose in Kati’s hair and inhaled deeply, savoring the smell before releasing her sharply at the sound of a sizzling noise and a blood curdling scream. She turned to find that the old man had struck her with as much force and precision as he could muster with his fire poker and had got her right on the spine. The smell of cooked flesh filled the air. Ignoring the searing pain she swung around, knocked him off his feet and instantly landed on top of him pinning him to the ground with her supernatural strength.

“You think you can stop me, Methuselah? There is no one you can call who can interfere with my plans! I am the law round here and everyone knows it! I own everything and everyone, even the Emperor cannot stop me! I am Queen of these parts and you are all my property, all of
you
! Do you hear me, you blind bag of bones? I let you live once, old man, but it would seem I made a big mistake! Simply blinding you was not enough, so now you really will pay!” And with that she plunged into his throat emaciating his neck, drinking some of his blood but spilling most. The old man struggled to get her off him but to no avail, he was no match for her Afflicted strength and before long his frail frame was left wasted and lifeless on the cabin floor.

Walking over to a still dazed Kati, who was leaning semiconscious against the wall, the Countess looked down at her and cocked her head giving her a sinister grin through her blood stained lips and teeth. Bending down she popped Kati over her shoulder and took her back to the castle and straight down to the basement where she clasped her in chains.

“This little exertion this morning has taken a lot out of me.” She said panting and sweating, her eyes visibly red from the glare of the sun. “I'll be back this evening as soon as I’ve had my beauty sleep.” As a parting shot she stepped onto Kati’s hand causing her to scream in pain as all the fine bones snapped and broke. Kati lay there writhing in agony. In a few hours she too would be dead just like the old man for whose death she felt utterly responsible. She had led the Countess straight to him and she was beside herself with guilt. She clasped the injured hand in her good one and buried her face in her forearms and began to sob loudly. The wrought iron cuffs fit tightly around her wrists and were shiny and sticky from the blood of the countless other girls they had hosted before her and which she’d so often released after death. The irony of it all didn’t escape her.

Twenty-two

She opened her eyes. They were sore and puffy from the daylight and the crying. It was still daytime, but from what few rays crept in through the cracks and the small windows at the top of the wall she couldn’t be sure of the hour. Her hand was bloated and throbbing, but had improved a little. Had she fed it would've healed in no time, but she hadn’t eaten much in close to four days and was feeling the effects. The blood crusted on the cuffs taunted her and in desperation she began to lick the restrains, at first tentatively and then with more vigor. The blood tasted old and vile but it still worked and she felt her crushed hand begin to slowly heal.

She sat up and tried to assess the situation, the room smelled of death and decay and though frequently cleaned after each torture spree it was still so laden with the force and emotion of what went on in there. Physical clues also remained: missed clumps of hair in a corner somewhere, a fingernail clawed out in desperation clung to the wall, a piece of blood soaked fabric underneath a fresh bale of hay and so on. If these nefarious walls could talk the tales that they would tell would haunt a person’s dreams forever. She sensed the ghosts of hundreds of girls who would never be named or discovered or even remembered, fallen in the name of one woman’s insanity and shortly she too would join their ranks to end up in a cold grave for all eternity.

A rustling sound interrupted Kati’s reflections. To her surprise she realized that another girl lay unconscious in a cage in the corner. She hadn’t sensed her and couldn’t discern an aura from where she was, or any breathing. She shifted positions trying to get a better look but her restrictions left little room for movement. This place had slowly been customized from a simple storage area to a dedicated torture chamber with chains and cages evenly dispersed throughout the space. All the times she had released the Countess’s hapless victims from here she had tried so hard not to think what it must have been like for them to die in this dreadful fashion. Her Affliction told her to hunt and to kill to feed, but murder on this scale was unnecessary and it revealed a real darkness within the Countess, perhaps bred over the centuries of hardship, the death of her husband, her aging intertwined with the potential loss of her son or even the pressure from the Crown... or maybe it was pure unexplained malice.

Kati knew that her imminent death would be excruciating if it was anywhere near what she had seen the Countess do to the other girls.
Maybe she will just drink my blood to acquire my gift and will not torture me
, she thought to herself. She had become so tired of the beatings and the pain and she felt her soul had been stained by all the anger and hatred that seeped from the Countess. She thought of the other “apprentices”
and wondered where they had been buried. With these thoughts circling in her head she broke down in tears again and tried to pull her hands to her face but the shortness of the chain stopped her from reaching it. Her injured hand had all but healed at least and only felt a little tender. She sat there for a while and just cried and cried realizing that she had been lucky enough to have avoided death for this long, and that she had been foolish to hope that she would be the lucky one. This wasn’t the kind of place that luck prevailed for anyone.

***

The sound of steps coming down the corridor was unmistakable. The Countess walked in and Kati felt her blood go cold.

“Well my dear, I’m sure you know what time it is, don’t you?”

Kati shook her head from left to right repeatedly in denial.

“You’ve disappointed me, Katalina, I expected more of you.” Tears streamed down Kati’s face. The Countess knelt down beside her and smiled with glass behind her eyes. She took Kati’s formerly crushed hand and examined it. She ran her finger up and down the inside of Kati’s forearm admiring it, “Youthful skin is so beautiful, so rich and soft it makes you think it will never spoil, and yet over the years it gradually becomes thinner and finer and crinklier until you are left with only a shadow of your former self, wondering where it all went.” She gazed at it tenderly for a long time admiring its softness and suppleness before, in a mercurial mood shift, she slashed it so deeply that it revealed the thin fat layer that lay just under the skin. The exposed white flesh was instantly dotted by dark red beads of blood merging to flood the gash and begin to slowly seep downwards. The pain, which had not been felt initially, now caught up with her brain and the girl screamed.

“Aaaaa,” Kati exclaimed and tried to pull her arm back but the Countess’s grip was too firm. She put her mouth to the wound and began to slowly lick the trickling blood. The warmth of her tongue made Kati wince and her saliva stung instead of soothed. Goosebumps rose all over her body.

“Please Your Excellency, let me go. I won’t disappoint you again, I’m so sorry for what I did,” Kati pleaded.

“Don’t beg now, little girl, it is so unbecoming. You’re better than that.”

“Please let me serve you again and you won’t regret it. I will do whatever you ask of me and even more, I will anticipate all your needs and desires, I will even care for your boy if you need me to.” With that the Countess looked up from her slurping and struck Kati across the face so hard that she spat out a mouthful of blood along with two of her back teeth. Her ring-laden fingers had also taken a line of skin off of Kati’s cheek.