by Tara Moss
‘Where did you think you were going, virgin?’ the blonde hissed. ‘That’s none of your business,’ was my swift retort. I took a few steps closer, and folded my arms. I was still a few metres away from Jay, who looked confused but not nearly as scared as he ought to be.
I wondered what they would do.
I didn’t have to wonder for long.
‘Hey, ladies,’ my date began with a smooth smile. Sensing the thick atmosphere of hostility, he raised his hands, palms up, and spoke in his most charming voice. ‘There’s no need to—’
Redhead grabbed Jay by the throat and lifted him up against the wall. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. He was a big man, strong and very tall, but she lifted him like he was weightless. Jay was so tall that his feet didn’t exactly dangle, but his body hung limp. I thought it strange that he wasn’t struggling with his arms or legs. His face was turning more purple by the second and his eyes bulged, locked in a stare with his beautiful attacker. I wondered if she was hypnotising him.
‘Put him down!’ I demanded, and took a step towards them.
Brunette and Blonde turned to me and assumed poses of readiness. They looked like they planned to fight me. Interesting that they thought it would take two of them.
‘Ms Báthory has plans for you and your friends,’ Redhead said, still gripping Jay’s throat and not breaking the stare. I wondered how much longer Jay could take it before he passed out.
‘Let’s leave the man out of it,’ I said, and looked around me. The models were blocking the way we’d come, and there was a doorway at the end of the hall behind them. There was the door up the corridor behind me which I’d almost followed the two women through, possibly leading backstage or to a room for the fashion show’s staging staff. I could make a run for it, but I couldn’t leave Jay with those fanged femme fatales, not even for long enough to get help. He could be dead by then. Or undead.
‘Look here,’ I said, and bolted towards them, emptying my pockets as I bridged the distance between us. My paper seat ticket fluttered to the ground, catching the eye of the blonde and brunette vamps, and after it, grains of rice hit the floor and bounced. The models reacted with a peculiar ‘Ohhh’ sound, and crouched to the floor to begin counting. ‘One, two, three, four . . .’ Redhead turned from her victim to see what her evil cohorts were doing, and when she spotted the rice she too crouched to the ground and began counting, as if in a supernatural trance. Jay slid to the floor, holding his throat.
Supernatural rules. So weird.
‘This way, Jay!’ I called out and nearly tackled him in my attempt to get him up and moving.
‘She had . . . teeth . . .’ he stuttered, perhaps finally realising the fangs were real.
We scrambled along, Jay clutching his sore throat in one hand while I gripped the other, pulling him as fast as I could towards the far door – a fire door with a big metal hand bar – hoping it led outside where I could flag down help. I hadn’t been able to fit a lot of rice in my jacket pockets, and the models would soon finish counting. I pushed the bar down and burst out the doorway, dragging my date behind me. It opened into a disused loading bay. I was not staring at a bustling New York City street, not at traffic and life-saving yellow cabs; I was looking at a disused back alley in the Garment District. It was dark, but not uninhabited, I quickly discovered. Oh no, it wasn’t uninhabited at all.
Vampires liked alleys, apparently.
The long black limo was there, along with the familiar yellow sports car that belonged to my nemesis Athanasia – who stood only metres away in her leather pants and a tight T-shirt that was totally inappropriate for the weather, looking as if she’d never been staked. And she had friends. Big, scary, dead friends. Two males – both pale, ugly, neckless and looking like they’d been Russian body builders in life. One of them – a bald, nasty-looking man with muscles that seemed ready to burst out of his suit – held two bodies, one over each shoulder. I stifled a scream. It was Skye and Pepper.
Then I noticed Athanasia’s smile was slick with fresh blood.
Oh no. No, no, no, no . . .
I could barely take in the grim spectacle as the hulking creature slung my editor and deputy editor into the trunk of the limo like they were sacks of potatoes. And maybe that’s all they’d been to Athanasia: food.
Upon my arrival on the scene the rear door of the limousine had opened, and now, slowly, a figure emerged; a figure more beautiful and terrifying than any I had seen before. It was a woman clothed in a long, black dress with a tight, corsetted bustier and draping folds of luxurious fabric that fell to the pavement. She had a high forehead and aristocratic features, and although she was no taller than me, her presence was commanding. Her skin was luminous, pale and flawless, and her dark hair was pulled back behind ivory-skinned shoulders to reveal a long slim neck and a collar of blood-red lace. Her dark eyes were malevolent, somehow mesmerising, and the power of her dark beauty seemed to overwhelm that of Athanasia, who looked plain next to her master, even after her fresh feed.
This, I knew instinctively, was the woman behind BloodofYouth.
‘Good. You’ve come, Pandora English,’ the woman announced in a richly accented voice. ‘I am Countess Elizabeth Báthory.’
I blinked at her, aware she was trying to hypnotise me. I felt her mind push into mine, and I pushed back. I refused to let her influence penetrate. She kept her eyes locked on mine, and she smiled.
‘I was told you are not all you appear,’ she stated. ‘This was correct.’
Báthory, Báthory, Báthory . . .
I turned the name over in my mind. Athanasia had mentioned her mistress Báthory, as had the red-haired vamp, and here she was. The name Elizabeth Báthory was familiar. It had been in my mother’s books. It came up frequently alongside the name of Vlad Tepes, the supposed inspiration for the fictional figure of Dracula in the novel Celia despised so much. She was from Eastern Europe. Yes, Romania, or Hungary, but long ago, centuries ago. And unlike Count Dracula, she was very real and she had committed some truly terrible real-life crimes, crimes so heinous it made her a dark legend. There was some talk of a wrongful trial. No, she was of noble blood and thus could not be tried, I now recalled.
This is Countess Báthory, the Blood Lady achtice. This is the Blood Countess.
When I was younger I’d read about the legendary Blood Countess, and had asked my mother about her. She was notorious for being the most prolific female serial killer in history, accused of having killed many hundreds of her virgin servant girls at her castle – as many as six hundred. She could not be tried because she was of noble blood, so in a strange version of justice she was walled into her castle for her crimes, and there she supposedly died. There was some dispute among historians and academics about whether she had really killed all those girls. My mother had believed her to be the victim of a conspiracy. But if this was Báthory, clearly she had not died in her castle, as history suggested. She was turned into a vampire, a Sanguine, or perhaps she already was one before they caught her.
A centuries-old celebrity murderess.
With shaking hands I reached into my pockets, found only a few petty grains of rice left. Darn it. Darn it! I closed my eyes, said a little prayer, and feeling quite ridiculous, threw the grains at Báthory’s feet. All of us present watched the grains hit the pavement, bounce. Báthory looked at me, her crimson lips curling up at the corners into a horrible smile. Her minion, Athanasia, cast her eyes to the ground and I saw her lips move. One, two, three, four . . . The others were, sadly, unaffected.
Athanasia stopped counting at nine.
‘If you were hoping to effect me, you are quite mistaken, mortal. I am no Fledgling.’ Evidently neither was her muscle. One of them stood protectively next to Báthory, while his bald counterpart moved towards me, intent on taking me down, and perhaps slinging me in the back of the limo as he’d done with my colleagues. I stiffened, and turned to Jay for assistance.
He was staring in Báthory’s dir
ection, entranced.
Oh, HELL!
‘Jay?’
He didn’t respond. He was evidently hypnotised.
Why are the men in my life so useless when these creatures are around?
I turned to run back towards the warehouse, and found that the three models had finished their counting. Blonde, Brunette and Redhead were already at my back and they had me in their clutches in seconds. I flailed violently like a fish but they held me still while the pasty-faced bald man with the formidable muscles moved close at a lumbering pace. He smelled nauseatingly like sulfur and decay. Undead BO. Without a word, he put his hands around my neck in a stranglehold.
‘No! No!’ I protested, but could say no more with the slow crushing of my windpipe. I thrashed against my assailants, but they had me contained and I would be unconscious in seconds, I knew.
‘Don’t damage the neck, Augustine,’ the Countess instructed calmly. She glided towards me, serene and menacing. ‘Open her mouth.’
Muscle tried to open my jaws and I gritted my teeth like a stubborn animal.
No . . .
‘Open up, little morchilla,’ came a voice from one of the fanged models behind me. She pinched my nose.
‘Ha, ha, little blood sausage!’ one of the others said, and laughed.
I continued to grit my teeth, holding my breath.
‘Stubborn, aren’t we?’ Báthory remarked, and waited patiently for me to open up. ‘I can hold my breath forever. I have no need for breath. But you, mortal girl, you must open . . .’
Eventually, inevitably, I gasped for air. The Sanguine caught my teeth and prised my mouth open. My tongue fought uselessly with the air. Languidly, and with a sense of great satisfaction, Báthory leaned in, placed her hands over my open jaws and flipped open an ancient ring on her index finger. Something light and powdery landed on my tongue. Bitter. Before I could spit, my mouth was forced closed.
I swallowed involuntarily.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Augustine, put her in the car.’
When the trio of supermodels let go of me, my body fell limply into his arms. My head felt foggy. I could not feel my limbs. I was a rag doll, paralysed and terrifyingly helpless.
‘As for that one,’ I heard the Blood Countess say, ‘erase him.’
I’ll admit that back in Gretchenville I dreamed I might one day ride in a real limousine. I never imagined, however, that my new boss would be in the trunk, or that I would be sitting in the back with a four-hundred-year-old murderess.
Elizabeth Báthory reclined across the seat of her limousine before me, self-possessed, nefarious and unnaturally alluring. The limo seemed cavernously large inside, and it was new enough to have that new-car smell. It was a welcome change from the sulfurous rot of Báthory’s henchmen, one of whom was in the passenger seat up front, and the other – the bald one – was driving. This vehicle even had a bar, and rows of shiny, clean champagne glasses resting on purpose-built holders along the inside. There was no actual champagne, of course. I guessed that champagne was not this woman’s beverage of choice. Thanks to whatever poison she’d forced me to swallow, I had no use of my limbs, and I was slumped awkwardly in a seated position opposite her, my head resting against the frosty window. When the vehicle turned a corner, I slid around a little and my cheekbone rubbed uncomfortably against the cool glass. Thankfully they had seen fit to strap me in with the seat belt. For a bunch of murderers, this seemed an oddly solicitous touch.
‘Now, tell me who you are,’ the Blood Countess commanded.
I opened my mouth to respond, but was dubious about my ability to form coherent words in my unnatural state of paralysis. Sure enough, the first syllables came out slurred. ‘Paaaaaaaan . . .’
Elizabeth Báthory folded her arms. ‘Yes, yes,’ she replied impatiently. ‘I know your name, Pandora English. But who are you? How is it that you managed to stake my mannequin Athanasia? She is still young but she has fed often. She is far more powerful than any human.’
Fed often. Yuck.
Elizabeth Báthory was interested in me, it seemed. This didn’t seem to be a positive development. If only my mother could see me now, I thought darkly. But then her interest in me might be the reason I wasn’t crammed in the trunk. It might even be the reason I was still alive. Were Skye and Pepper unconscious? Paralysed like I was? Dead? Undead? I hadn’t heard a peep from back there. No thumping, no moaning. I turned my eyes to watch the increasingly barren cityscape pass outside the window. We’d crossed a bridge and were no longer on Manhattan Island, but I wasn’t sure what direction we were travelling in. Were we in Queens? Jersey? From my vantage point I could not pinpoint our direction from any landmark, or from the position of the sun or moon. The sky was dark, and the streets filled with identically depressing strip malls, rundown neon signs, thinning traffic. I saw some graffiti on the sides of derelict buildings. This was not good.
I opened my mouth again. ‘Where . . . are . . . we . . . going?’ I managed slowly, but with somewhat better voice control. I sounded drugged and very, very weak.
Báthory ignored my question as if it had not been asked. ‘You don’t look powerful,’ she observed, sounding intrigued. She tilted her head to one side, and dark, perfect waves of hair fell over one shoulder. ‘Tell me how you knew about BloodofYouth? The blonde one, the coward,’ she said, indicating the trunk behind me, ‘told me she did not even write the article. She says it was you. Athanasia suspected as much. She said you were poking around. It is true? But how did you know to seek out the actor? And why? Are you so brave? Did you not know there would be consequences? Tell me,’ she demanded.
‘It’s . . . fraud,’ I answered, saving my energy. Despite my terror, I felt petulant about her little game of Twenty Questions, under these less-than-fair circumstances.
‘The product I have created is a fraud? Oh, but it is not a fraud at all,’ she corrected me. ‘BloodofYouth does precisely what it claims. It is precisely what it claims. It restores youthful beauty for as long as the human uses it.’
‘Secret . . . ingredient,’ I croaked weakly.
She laughed quietly. ‘Did you really think anyone would care what’s in it? Humans are not so squeamish about what makes something work, so long as it does. They choose not to examine their ethics when it comes to what they really want. Surely you already know this about your pathetic, hypocritical race? Do you know the ingredients of everything you eat, use, rub on your skin? Do you know where it comes from? Who suffered for it? I think not.’
Admittedly I was nowhere near knowledgeable about all the products I used or the provenance of every last morsel of food I ate, but that hardly meant that her reasoning was sound.
‘There have been a few complaints of allergic reaction, but we’ll soon fix that.’
I thought of Skye and her mysterious illness; and Toni Howard’s ‘allergy’.
‘Do you know that we sold out across the country the day BloodofYouth hit the stores? When people couldn’t get their hands on it, it went on to the black market immediately. We get our best prices there. If your little attempt at journalism amounts to anything – which is doubtful – and BloodofYouth becomes illegal, it will only boost my profits. I should thank you.’
I blinked.
‘Humans will do anything to maintain the illusion of youth. I know this better than most,’ she said, and a small, bitter smile crossed her lips.
Legend had it that the motive for Báthory’s cruel crimes had been vanity; that she had tortured her victims and bathed in their virgin blood to maintain her youthful beauty.
BloodofYouth. The secret ingredient.
‘No false advertising,’ Celia had said.
My stomach lurched as the pieces fell into place. Could it be?
‘Humans will kill for it if they have to. But they don’t have to, because I do the killing for them,’ the Countess said, and gave a short, chilling laugh.
I don’t know how much time passed before the limousine finally slowed. If I h
ad to guess, I would say we had driven for well over an hour. Perhaps even two.
There didn’t seem to be anyone following us; no rescuers, not Jay – for whom I was gravely concerned – not even Countess Báthory’s minion and muse Athanasia, or her model friends. The landscape had become gradually bleaker and darker as we went, until there were now no other vehicles on the roads, and only a scattering of industrial buildings set against stretches of grazing land and pastures. If this was some kind of agricultural setting, it looked nothing like the farms back home. I hadn’t seen a homestead for miles.
Our driver slowed and diverted from the main road just as a ghostly structure loomed on a rise ahead of us – a large white factory surrounded by high, barbed-wire fencing. We followed a winding, single-lane road towards it. From my position, slumped against the window, I could see the foreboding structure was rectangular, with four smokestacks and a few outbuildings. It stood out from the surrounding dark rural landscape like a spectre. I noticed a sign on the side of the road, torn down and left on the grass, the paint faded and peeled away. The setting here had a neglected and malevolent air about it, but this was no abandoned factory, as I could see from a faint greenish smoke that billowed eerily from the mouths of the smokestacks. There was something in there, something being made, even now at this dark hour. And I thought I knew what it was.
Death.
I sensed the presence of death as surely as I’d ever felt anything.
This was a terrible place, a place of nightmares. I could feel it in my body, in my bones, in the sudden coldness in my belly.
Finally the limousine halted on gravel at the gate next to a small security booth. This change of pace, the nearness of doom, made my heart speed up. The increased terror seemed to clear the last of the drugged fog from my mind. I would need every ounce of my wits if I were to survive what was ahead. I took in every detail of my surrounds, everything I could see from my position against the glass. My eyes flicked over the structure ahead, the security lights, the guards in black standing in pairs at the entrance to the factory.
