"None could compare to her when it came to her riches, station, and comeliness. But of these three attributes, it was her beauty that Elizabeth treasured most. It pleased her that men would be moved by the sight of her to unthinking lust. For, as she had long ago learned, men possessed by lust have their uses in the political arena.
"Since she no longer enjoyed the embrace of men, she developed a taste for the pleasure of others, and orchestrated orgies for her amusement. As the years passed, they became more and more extreme in nature, involving erotic circuses complete with acrobats, trained animal acts, and freak shows. Black Sabbaths were held within the castle's chapel, where highborn guests ritually desecrated the altar and baptismal font in honor of He Who Makes. There were whispers of the goings-on amongst the villagers, but the rumors rarely made it to the royal court. And even if they did, the Countess was a blood cousin of the vice chamberlain. Who would dare to lift a hand against her?
"And so it went for several years. But as roses fade and silver tarnishes, as the sun will one day lose its fire, Elizabeth's great beauty finally began to dim. Her breasts were no longer firm like apples, but more like ripened plums. Her buttocks and belly were starting to sag; silver (.breads were woven throughout her dark hair, and her hands resembled more the claws of a crow than the wings of doves. For a woman such as Elizabeth, the effects of aging were no more to be suffered than the stare of an insolent peasant. She instructed the witch to find a rejuvenation spell or she would put her to death.
"The witch pored through her collection of spells and incantations until she came upon a ritual described within the pages of an ancient tome known as The Aegrisomnia. It promised the restoration of youth and vigor and, eventually, the gift of immortality, but only by bathing in the freshly shed blood of young virgins.
"Elizabeth decided that if Cleopatra became one of the great beauties of the civilized world with the help of asses' milk, then she would have her bath of blood. The majordomo, in collaboration with the witch, butchered one of the servant girls and bled her into a large cauldron, in which Elizabeth steeped herself. From that day on, the ravages of age held no sway over her.
"For ten years, Elizabeth's loyal inner circle scoured the countryside in search of suitable young girls, free of sin and untainted by illness, which, in those days, was not as easy as it sounds. Numerous peasant girls, born into ignorance and poverty, were offered positions as chambermaids and scullery servants in the comparative grandeur of the castle. But the moment the new 'serving girls' arrived, they were drugged, bound, and butchered like sheep.
"Over the next ten years, more than forty young girls were fed to Elizabeth's beauty, and it would have continued for another decade, possibly a third, if a fatal case of mistaken identity had not been made. When the young daughter of the archduke arrived at the castle for an unannounced visit after a particularly long and arduous journey, she was mistaken for the most recent recruit and summarily drugged and bled out before anyone realized who she was.
"The archduke became concerned when his favorite daughter did not return. He wrote several letters to Elizabeth, asking what had become of his child. At first Elizabeth assured the archduke that the girl was fine and had merely decided to extend her stay. But when he still did not hear from his daughter, the archduke became more insistent. Elizabeth then claimed that the young girl had contracted a fever and could not be moved. This news upset the archduke greatly, and he promptly sent a messenger to the castle to inform Elizabeth that he would be leaving his palace to personally attend his ailing daughter.
"Halfway to the castle, the archduke was met by one of Elizabeth's retainers, who said his daughter had died of the plague and the castle was under quarantine. The Countess had been forced to burn the body of the archduke's daughter, for fear of contamination.
"This last piece of news was more than the archduke could bear. He had heard rumors of the goings-on at the castle but had not given them much credence. He knew his child was dead, but he suspected her end had come by mortal hands. He petitioned the king for an investigation. Elizabeth's cousin, the vice chamberlain, tried to block the request, but since the king was the cousin of the archduke, he was unable to stop it
"A division of the king's army, led by the archduke and accompanied by church inquisitors, stormed the castle. They found the archduke's dear, departed daughter moldering in the dungeon, her highborn corpse alongside the daughters of swineherds and hod carriers.
"The lowborn accomplices who had served Elizabeth so loyally were put to the question, and quickly turned evidence against their mistress. For collaborating with the State, the witnesses privy to the secret behind Elizabeth's unique beauty treatments were rewarded by having their fingernails pulled out with pliers, their kneecaps broken, and then were hanged and dismembered in the public square. The witch, for the additional crime of blasphemy, was broken on the wheel and then burned at the stake.
"Because of her high station, Elizabeth was not put to death. Indeed, she was not even placed on trial. Instead, it was decreed that she would spend the rest of her natural life under house arrest, and to make sure that her sentence would be as short as possible, her jailer was the archduke.
"The day after sentence was passed, the archduke arrived at her castle and ordered all the fixtures removed. The beds, chairs, tables, tapestries, even the chamber pots, were taken from the castle and distributed amongst the families of those who had lost their daughters to the bloodbath. Once the interior of the castle was bleak and bare, the archduke ordered what few servants remained to leave. By the end of the second day, all that was left inside was a pallet of dirty straw, a crooked footstool, a rough-hewn table... and Elizabeth.
"The archduke then summoned his master mason and ordered him to brick up every door and window ... save for one. The sole egress was a small window in Elizabeth's bedchamber, accessible only via a long ladder. Through this narrow portal Elizabeth's jailers pushed her daily meal of black bread and stone soup.
"Elizabeth's isolation from the world was total, as she was forbidden pen and paper to pass her days, candles or fire to illuminate the darkness or warm herself, and her keepers were forbidden to speak even one word to her, under pain of death.
"She spent four years sealed away from the light of day. Four years spent shitting in the ballroom fireplace. Four years spent prowling the dark for rats and mice to supplement her diet. Four years spent licking condensation off the walls to quench her thirst. Four years freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. Her only clothes were those upon her back the day the master mason sealed her away. Her only blanket was a tattered piece of tapestry overlooked by the archduke's men. Finally, after years of such treatment, she collapsed in her bedchamber, too weak to rise. As she lay dying on the hard, chill floor, the shadows in the comer of the room took a form familiar to her and knelt beside her, its eyes flickering in the eternal gloom.
" "Thou breathest thy last, fair Elizabeth, but despair not. In life thou embraced monstrosity and, in doing so, secured for thyself Unlife never-ending. In three days' time, thou shall walk the earth once more, as one Made in mine own image.'
"They found the body of Elizabeth, reduced to little more than a skeleton, covered in filth and open sores. Although the archduke would have gladly thrown her corpse on the dung heap for dogs to tear apart, he had no desire to offend her powerful relatives, so he had her body placed in the family tomb without the benefit of clergy, alongside her long-dead husband.
"And so ended the story, as far as most people were concerned. But the night following her entombment, Elizabeth rose from her resting place and walked out into the darkness, never to return to her native land. For He Who Makes was as good as his word; although dead, she was now one of the Unliving, who walk by night and feed upon the blood of mortals. But Elizabeth was different in many ways from common enkidu, those creatures whom humans know as vampires. She did not have fangs to bite her victims, but instead absorbed their blood directly through her skin. An
d now that she was Undead, she no longer had to worry about the blood being that of a male or a female, virgin or sinner.
"So Elizabeth wandered the world, eager to quench her thirst and continue the existence she had once known. She soon learned that the best cover for her operations was that of the brothel. Men, as a rule, were far easier to entice to their deaths . .. and much less likely to be missed than virginal young maidens.
"Over the centuries she went from country to country, city to city, establishing a series of bordellos notorious for their willingness to cater to the more perverse-and wealthy- patrons. Rome, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Venice, Moscow, and London: she knew them all, and they knew her, under a dozen different names. But always the same title: Countess.
"Empires rose and fell. Religions were founded and destroyed. The ancestral line of which she was once so proud grew anemic and fell into decline. To her eyes, human society was like a castle made of sand, constantly being washed away and rebuilt. The one thing that remained unchanged was her beauty ... and the blood that fed it.
"And so things would have remained until the world's end, except for the Blue Monster.
"The Blue Monster was a fearsome creature that hated all things inhuman. It had mirrors for eyes, a leathery black skin, and a single, deadly silver tooth, which it plunged into the hearts of its hapless victims. It scoured the world in search of vampires and other nonhumans, stalking its prey without mercy.
"One day, not too long ago, while returning from an exclusive sex club in Monte Carlo, Elizabeth was accosted by the Blue Monster, who attacked without warning or provocation, slicing her with its horrible silver tooth. It took all of Elizabeth's strength to escape the dreadful beast.
"Although she had avoided true death at the hands of her enemy, the Blue Monster's silver tooth had done its damage, turning her legs gangrenous. To keep the rot from spreading, Elizabeth had no other choice but to have her legs removed. Although the surgery was successful, her existence was forever changed. As all vampires know, wounds dealt by silver weapons never truly heal, and limbs lost to silver never regenerate.
"For the first time in centuries, Elizabeth was unable to feed her beauty, and without the blood of her admirers, the full weight of her years began to bear down on her brittle bones. Elizabeth needed a companion to help restore her youth and beauty; a companion who would do her bidding without question or qualm; a companion who would deceive, seduce and kill for her. Most of all, she needed a companion who would protect her from the Blue Monster.
"Elizabeth looked in penthouses and boxcars, prep schools and prisons for such a companion. Then, one night, while at an interstate travel plaza, she noticed a young girl dressed in a tank top and cut-off jeans going from rig to rig, soliciting the truckers for sex. She watched as the girl climbed into one of the cabs, then exited ten minutes later, her hands stained with blood and clutching a large roll of paper currency. It was then that Elizabeth knew she had found her companion.
"Elizabeth took the girl away from the truck stops and rest areas that had been her world and gave her nice clothes, money, expensive cars, and took her traveling around the globe. And in exchange, all the companion-who was, in reality, a Secret Princess-had to do was keep Elizabeth's beauty fed with fresh blood. Which proved very, very easy. The End."
"But you didn't say if Elizabeth and the Secret Princess lived happily ever after," Phaedra said.
"How remiss of me! And Elizabeth and the Secret Princess lived happily ever after forever and ever. The End."
"I like it when you do the voices," Phaedra said, her voice drowsy.
The next John whose name wasn't John was a Japanese business executive with an Osaka electronics concern. She picked him up at a gentleman's club while wearing the red wig and driving the Lamborghini. He had insisted on vaginal intercourse but hadn't lasted three minutes. Not that it mattered. In the end he met the same fate as all the other nameless Johns she had slaughtered in the service of the Contessa's beauty.
Still, she was beginning to worry. They had been in one place far too long. And the cycles between baths were becoming disturbingly short. When Phaedra first began working for her, the Contessa had required only one bath a week. Now it was two, sometimes three. The local police would eventually tie the various disappearances together, despite Phaedra's care in changing her appearance and making sure she didn't trawl in a discernible pattern.
Even if the cops were slow on the uptake, there was no guarantee the papers wouldn't smell a story and start writing about the sudden spate of missing midlevel executives. Neither the cops nor reporters really concerned Phaedra overmuch. She was used to dodging both. But what she was afraid of was the story getting picked up by the wire services. That meant the Blue Monster would be headed their way.
Phaedra felt much safer in Europe than the States. Part of that was personal. After all, nothing bad had ever happened to her on the Continent. She had repeatedly begged her mistress to leave the country, but the Contessa remained adamant about staying put. Phaedra feared that the Contessa's frequent aging cycles had somehow affected her mind. Sometimes she seemed distant and disjointed, as if centuries of memory were playing inside her head at the same time. On occasion she called Phaedra by different names and spoke in languages she didn't recognize.
There were other changes, too. The torpor that followed her rejuvenation now lasted hours. Now all die Contessa seemed interested in doing was sitting on her bed and staring out at the night, watching the moon's reflection on the lake's liquid surface. The only thing that seemed to interest the Contessa, besides watching the night, were the fairy tales.
Phaedra liked lying with her head in her mistress's truncated lap while the Contessa absently stroked her hair and told her bedtime stories. It was something her mother had never done for her as a child. Her stepfather used to come into her room and put her head in his lap, but that was different.
If there was one thing Phaedra had learned in her short life, it was that love was not to be trusted. Need was better than love, safer than want, more reliable than lust. The Contessa needed her more than anyone else ever had. She needed her like Phaedra needed to eat and breathe. That, more than the money, was what kept her bound to the old woman.
The Contessa had done more for her than any other person on the face of the Earth, including her mother. All that bitch ever did was give birth to her. The Contessa, on the other hand, had lifted her up from the gutter, taught her how to act and dress and talk in such a way as to attract a more affluent John. It was the Contessa who exposed her to the world beyond the grim, gray confines of truck-stop plazas, trailer parks, and cheap motels.
It was the Contessa who had taught her how best to butcher a human being and disassemble him with a hacksaw and a cleaver; it was she who had showed Phaedra how to dispose of a body without attracting attention. When they first met, Phaedra was a callow young girl with a lot of anger and a straight razor; the Contessa had turned her into a sophisticated femme fatale and a world-class serial killer.
The Contessa had given her a life where before there had been nothing but day-to-day existence. Phaedra owed it to her mistress to protect her and make her safe from her enemies. But there was only so much she could do for her lady. Why the Contessa chose to come back to this place, she was not certain.
Phaedra knew the Contessa had lived in Red Velvet Manor far longer than any other place in the nearly four hundred years of her existence. Then again, perhaps the old woman's reasons for returning were more practical than sentimental. After all, Red Velvet Manor was already outfitted for her special needs.
It was Phaedra's job to protect her mistress, and that meant making sure their camouflage within the community remained intact. The best way to do that was to maintain a low profile, make sure the curious stayed at arm's length, and keep moving. The longer they stayed at Red Velvet Manor, the more likely it was that the Blue Monster would sniff them out. Phaedra had never seen the Blue Monster, but she did not dou
bt it existed. The Contessa's legs were proof enough of that.
In the years spent making sure the Contessa was one step ahead of the Blue Monster, Phaedra had come to realize it was as smart as it was tenacious. While Red Velvet Manor was isolated, it did have a historical connection to the Contessa; one that was easily accessible to anyone with access to the Internet and knowledge of the Contessa's various pseudonyms.
If her lady wished to remain at Red Velvet Manor, then they would stay put But Phaedra could not shake the sensation that things were about to go bad. It was the same feeling she used to get when she stood on the concrete block that served as the trailer's front stoop, sniffing the summer wind while cicadas sang in the trees. On the surface everything seemed safe, but there was always an edge of potential disaster in the rising wind.
There was a storm coming. But would it be just another summer squall... or a twister? Do you run for cover or stand your ground? Do you batten down the hatches or flee for your life? There was no way of knowing, really, until the storm was upon you. And by then it was too late to do anything but ride it out
"Have you seen this woman?"
"Nope," the bartender grunted, barely glancing in the direction of the photo on the top of the bar.
A fresh twenty suddenly appeared atop the photograph.
"You sure about that?"
The bartender stopped cleaning the highball glass and glanced up, for the first time, at the woman standing opposite him. His eyebrow went up even higher. Hotel Orso was a four-star establishment, catering to wealthy business executives. It rarely saw young women tricked out in leather motorcycle jackets, mirrored sunglasses, and tattered Black Flag T-shirts, even when rock stars were staying in the hotel.
The bartender palmed the twenty and picked up the photo, knitting his brows as he frowned. It was a candid surveillance shot, taken with a telephoto lens.
Nancy A Collins Page 3
