by Tara Moss
The window nearest Countess Báthory lowered with an electronic hum. She peered out into the quiet night.
After a moment I heard footsteps on gravel. A male guard walked over to the gate and unlocked a padlock with a key attached to a chain on his belt. He was strong-looking – again pale and lumbering, and dressed in black. Undoubtedly undead, I thought. He pulled the gate open, as expressionless as a drone, and we drove through. Báthory’s window was raised. She had not spoken a word. In my peripheral vision, I saw the gate close behind us, saw the creature refasten the padlock, and my heart sank. Thanks to Báthory’s mysterious poison, my body was still rendered incapable of flight, but even if I could outrun these brawny guards, I could not scale so high a fence and make it over the barbed wire. I’d need to get that key from his belt, and exit through that tall gate.
The limousine drove slowly to the rear of the factory, out of view of the winding road we’d travelled. As we neared it, I saw that the painted concrete of the structure had faded and peeled away, much like the sign on the road. How long had this place been derelict before Báthory took it over? From our position on the rise, I saw that the closest lights were in the far distance. This location had been chosen for its privacy and isolation.
The car stopped. The engine cut.
The front doors of the limousine opened and the driver and his partner stepped out onto gravel. I saw movement and heard the gravel crunch under their feet. We’d stopped by a rear entrance to the factory. The entrance was large enough for a truck to back in, and it too was guarded by more of Báthory’s underlings – large hulking male vampires, no doubt chosen for their might and obedience. These were ugly creatures, nothing like the unnaturally beautiful model vampires she’d left with Jay in the Garment District. How many guards was that now? Four, plus the one at the gate, the limousine driver and his partner. Seven henchmen. Perhaps more inside. The bald driver opened the door and Báthory alighted from the vehicle gracefully. For a few seconds I was alone. I took the opportunity to attempt to move my middle finger, just a fraction.
There.
It was only a centimetre, but it was something.
On the drive I’d realised my toes had begun working again. I’d wiggled them inside my ballet shoes and I’d even managed to bend my ankle a little. The mysterious paralysis was wearing off. Báthory was confident enough that she hadn’t bothered to otherwise restrain me, and with so many guards, and given the isolation, would it really matter if her powdery potion wore off now? Where could I possibly run to?
The bald driver opened the door, unbuckled my seat belt and slung me over his shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ I said facetiously into the middle of his back, but he didn’t respond. The smell of sulfur and rot filled my nose, and I gagged.
Helpless, I watched gravel pass beneath us until the ground became concrete. I smelled decay and dust, and something else that was impossible to define. I turned my head and saw a concrete wall. A corridor. Before I managed to crane my neck for a look the other way I was through a doorway into an unlit room. Oh. In sharp contrast to the factory, this room smelled sweet, like perfume or incense. The guard flipped me unceremoniously over his shoulder. I landed somewhat gratefully on the soft, cushioned surface of a bed. The bed was covered with an ornate brocade throw of deep burgundy and gold. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, with luxurious cushions thrown here and there. A vanity. A mirror. Odd. That was all I managed to take in before the bald driver, Augustine, stomped out of the room and closed the door behind him, throwing the space into total darkness. I didn’t hear him use a latch or a key. The room was windowless and now the sweetness in the air was cloying. There was a trace of mustiness, and more of that indefinable thing that filled me with dread.
The cold feeling in my belly was ever-present, and increasing in intensity.
Báthory’s temporary lair.
With effort, I twisted my body on the bed. Must. Get. Up. I could circle my ankles, my wrists, but the rest of my body was yet to respond. I rotated a shoulder, managed to get my knee to bend in slow, unsteady movements. I knew I could not walk. Not yet. I certainly couldn’t run. Minutes passed in darkness as I felt like a fly caught in a web. I wondered how long I would be left there, willing my body to save me. Now my hands could fully flex. That was something. The feeling was returning to my knees, my elbows. I hated to stay where I had been tossed – like a waiting meal – and I thought of wriggling to the edge of the bed and off, hoping I could catch myself, hoping my reflexes would spring into action, but the likelihood of falling helplessly to the hard floor stopped me. One foolish move on my part could ruin any chance I had of survival.
‘She’ll drain you.’
I drew in my breath sharply. ‘Who’s there?’ I asked, and noticed my voice was working again.
‘She’ll keep you here, to have her fun.’ The voice was female, and somehow distant. ‘She’ll drink from you as she pleases. She’ll chant and do strange things. It’s a ritual for her. Foreplay. And then, when she’s tired of you, she’ll drain you.’
My eyes searched the pitch dark and found only a faint white shape. ‘I can’t see. It’s too dark. Who are you?’
‘Alice. I was like you, before she drained me.’ I felt a chill in the air next to me, and then a cool, misty hand. Fingertips stroked mine to comfort me, but her words were anything but comforting. ‘She will keep you paralysed and awake. She has the power of Isis. She bathes in blood . . .’
One of Báthory’s victims. This room was where she killed them, and then . . .
My mother had told me that Báthory’s reputation was probably unfounded. Báthory had been an educated woman, and she had ruled her husband’s lands effectively in his frequent and extended absences. After he died at war she had continued business as usual with her serfs, and refused to pass on her vast landholdings to her male heirs while she still lived. She’d been a businesswoman back when the very idea of a businesswoman was unacceptable, and what she got for her entrepreneurial spirit was her terrible legend. Or so my mother had suggested. It seemed my mother had been wrong.
‘Can you help me?’ I pleaded. Perhaps this ghost could try to protect me, as Luke had when Samantha went for my neck.
‘She is coming,’ the girl said. ‘Goodbye.’ And the chill air around me returned to normal.
Light footsteps were approaching.
I heard the doorknob begin to turn, and suddenly the room was aglow. Rows of candles lit of their own accord – a most devilish and bizarre show of black magic. There were hundreds of them. I wondered how many women had been sacrificed in this room. That’s what this was, wasn’t it? The sacrificial chamber of the entrepreneurial Countess Elizabeth Báthory? Now, to my right, I saw an open doorway. It led to a bathtub.
I felt a fresh shiver run through my body.
Báthory.
There was no time to react. My captor was through the door, and it shut behind her, though I was not even sure she had shut it with her hands.
‘See my power, Pandora English?’ she said, rolling the R. Doubtless she had seen the shock and horror on my features. ‘The blood is the life, and I have had so many lives, right here . . .’
I was careful not to flinch.
‘You must know why you are here, yes?’
I had no adequate response. I was not sure why she’d bothered to bring me so far, to what seemed to be the local centre of her devilish operations.
‘Count . . . esss,’ I replied, laying on the drugged voice a bit thick. I defied my every impulse to move and remained totally still on the bed as she approached.
Báthory appeared pleased. If she had been Freyja, she would have purred. With an air of majesty and triumph she moved to the end of the bed, leaned in. I resisted an instinct to try and kick up with my legs. The Countess grinned, and sniffed the air delicately. ‘Don’t think you can hide it from me, girl. I can smell it. You’re a virgin.’
Oh . . .
From beneath her lovely, terr
ible mouth, two sharp ivory points appeared. Just tips. I recoiled.
She inclined her head. Those dark eyes took me in. ‘But first, I have been admiring your jacket,’ she said, smiling at it and running her eyes over the fabric. ‘It would be a shame to ruin it. Take it off.’
I didn’t move.
‘Oh, that’s right. You can’t.’
I lay limp and passive while Báthory unbuttoned Celia’s tuxedo jacket and pulled it off me, stretching my arms above my head. I watched in silence as she admired it by the light of her strange candles. ‘Oh yes. It is a marvellous jacket. I think I’ll take it.’
‘No . . . problem,’ I muttered.
She threw it on over her dress, pulling one arm through the sleeve. ‘What a darling tailor you—’
While her arms were tangled in the jacket sleeves I sprung from the bed as if I’d been tightly coiled. I bolted to the door.
Báthory made a startled sound, her left arm still tangled in the jacket sleeve. I threw the door open. Unlocked. ‘Yes! Go, Pandora! Run!’ I urged myself aloud, and did precisely that. One of my legs was half-asleep now the paralysis had worn off, and I cried out in pain. The next issue would be how to escape the factory, and as I looked around me I doubted that would be an easy task. There were two guards to my right, down the corridor leading to the car. I ran the other way and saw a huge metal catwalk above large steaming vats, and at every exit, a hulking, pale vampire guard.
Darn it. Darn it . . .
The guards turned in my direction with eerie coordination, and they began to move in at a lumbering pace. The reek of sulfur and rot filled my nostrils as they approached. I couldn’t tackle those creatures. I couldn’t fight them. No exit. I felt a cold metal ladder at my back, and instinctively I began to scramble up it, awkwardly but with the speed of desperation.
As I arrived at the top, Elizabeth Báthory appeared at the end of the metal catwalk, wearing Celia’s tuxedo jacket and a look of quiet rage. Flanking her were four guards with guns strapped to their belts. I turned to see four similar guards behind me. I was trapped.
‘You are quite the actress,’ Báthory said with displeasure, her imperious voice echoing through the factory. ‘Come now. Who are you really? My potion wore off far too quickly . . .’
‘I’m Pandora English. A writer,’ I called over the din of the vats below.
Báthory’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are no normal human girl,’ she accused, moving closer. ‘Don’t even pretend,’ she said, walking up to me slowly.
I watched her expressionless henchmen, who stood at each end of the catwalk, and at the base of the ladder up which I’d climbed, and something clicked. Samantha. She hadn’t been able to help me clean up after my run-in with Athanasia because she couldn’t contain herself around so much blood, yet these guards were strangely unmoved. ‘These aren’t vampires,’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ Báthory replied. ‘They’re zombies.’
My stomach lurched.
I had only just come to terms with the existence of vampires. I hadn’t yet imagined that zombies were real, or I’d have noticed how different they were before.
‘At one time it was not so rare, but the labour in this country just isn’t what it used to be. Not since the Civil War,’ Báthory explained. ‘You Americans got it all wrong,’ she sneered.
Civil War?
I thought of Luke, the Union soldier who had lost his mortal life in that war. If vampires were in the South back then, doubtless they wanted slavery to remain. They could remain holed up in their huge mansions, their zombie slaves working the fields. Could that be?
I was silent for a time. Contemplating.
‘So, now that you’ve had your little tour, do you like my factory?’ Báthory asked me. By now she and I were in the centre of the long catwalk. I had edged back towards the four guards behind me, but I knew I couldn’t take them on any more than I could out-muscle Báthory herself. She could see I had no weapons, no stakes. She was more powerful than I. She faced me on the catwalk, alone and magnificent.
‘This is where I keep up the stocks of BloodofYouth,’ she declared proudly, and swept her hand through the air to indicate the dark, metallic-smelling vats of boiling liquid below us. ‘You seemed so keen to know what makes BloodofYouth unique. Does it please you to witness the secret ingredient for yourself? Before you become part of it?’
I was up against the railing. From the ends of the catwalk, and from the doors below, her zombie guards watched impassively. I counted ten of them. There would be more at the other doors. Their dead eyes followed our movements, their expressionless faces slack, their bodies as lifeless as puppets. This was business as usual, I supposed. I was to become just another few ounces of BloodofYouth and there was not a living soul to witness it.
‘No more games. Now I will take what’s mine,’ Báthory said and opened her mouth in a terrible smile, marred by the fangs that slid out to full length from beneath her lips as I watched, frozen in horror.
‘Just one last thing before you drain me,’ I asked, stalling. ‘I need to know, did you really kill those virgin servant girls, all those years ago?’
‘What do you think?’ Báthory replied. I could tell she was excited now at the prospect of her virgin feed.
That was a yes, then.
‘And you really did bathe in their blood? I thought it might be a conspiracy because those people wanted your landholdings,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, you are an innocent, aren’t you?’ Báthory whispered, sniffing my neck. ‘Why it was both, of course. I would never have been arrested for my little . . . quirk, if those men hadn’t wanted to seize my land. My son was one of those who betrayed me. Did you know that? He wanted it all for himself. He couldn’t even wait until I died. I could have killed thousands more and no one would have cared. They were just the daughters of servants. They were nothing. But yes, they wanted what I owned.’ Báthory was angry now, as she recalled her betrayal, and it seemed to fill her with even more fervour as she spoke. She looked me in the eye. ‘Those bastard interrogators who sentenced me without a trial – when I broke out of the castle, I made them pay.’
I imagined she had.
It took all my courage not to break her gaze. I was nearly out of time but I had an idea. ‘It’s a shame that BloodofYouth works on everyone else . . .’ She bent over me. ‘But it didn’t work for you,’ I finished quietly as she leaned in, her fangs almost at my throat.
Báthory paused. She had one manicured hand resting on my shoulder, the other against my head, pulling it to one side to better expose my jugular. ‘Hmmm?’ she murmured. She brushed my skin with the tips of her oversized incisors. I tried not to shiver.
‘I said, it’s a shame. I mean, you don’t look a day over four hundred, but still, I would have thought with all that effort you could have made yourself look young again . . .’
She pulled back violently and gaped at me, inches from my nose. Hers was a strange expression of puzzlement and desire, fangs extended and brow furrowed. ‘What? I am beautiful,’ she announced, baffled at my suggestion to the contrary. ‘For four hundred and fifty years I have been one of the world’s most beautiful women,’ she explained.
I shrugged. ‘If you say so.’ I crossed my arms and shrugged, wearing my most incredulous expression. My hair fell over my neck – an inadequate protection if ever there was one.
I’d struck a nerve. I could feel her rage build.
‘Look at me!’ Báthory bellowed. She snatched my chin in one hand and forced me to look at her. ‘I am beautiful. You see my magnificent beauty! You see!’
At the sound of their mistress’s agitation, or perhaps at some soundless signal, the zombie guards began to animate again. Slowly they advanced towards us on the catwalk, their dead eyes unseeing. Some of them were armed with guns, I now noticed with dread. I’d be shot in the back if I managed to break away and run for it. Dead footfalls rattled on the metal stairwell as they marched towards us, moving in to protect thei
r unhappy mistress. She had them hypnotised– but not me. I tore my gaze from the advancing undead soldiers and looked into Báthory’s dark, beautiful eyes. I had infuriated her, and some of her power slipped.
‘Let me tell you what I see,’ I told her. ‘I see every murder, every sin, every drop of blood you have spilled. I see all of it as plain as the lines and wrinkles on your old, ugly face. Each heinous act you have committed over the past four hundred years shows plainly on your drooping, hideous flesh.’ Urged by some instinct I pulled the mirrored compact out of my back pocket and flipped it open. ‘Look at how truly hideous you really are,’ I said, and thrust it in front of her face. ‘Look at yourself!’
Báthory’s eyes flicked to the tiny mirror, and to my shock, she shrieked.
‘My face!’ she screamed. ‘My beautiful face! No! It can’t be!’
The countess clawed at her cheeks, stumbling back from her reflection as she did. She was so consumed by the horror of whatever she had seen in the mirror, that she barely noticed when she stumbled right off the edge of the catwalk and fell head first into the boiling vat of blood beneath us.
‘My face!’ was her last strangled cry before the blood of her victims swallowed her.
I stood breathless on the catwalk. I gripped the railing in one hand, and in the other I held the compact Celia had given me like it was a live grenade.
What did she see in there? Did she really see what I willed her to see? Did I have that power?
Slowly I dared to turn it my way.
I saw only myself.
With a clatter Báthory’s zombie soldiers fell to the ground where they stood, the spell that animated them now evidently broken. Guns clattered against the metal of the catwalk, bodies hit the concrete floor of the factory below.
