Blood Ritual

by Sarah Rayne

  The woman was struggling feebly, flailing with her hands, scrabbling to get out of the car. She sprawled across the ground, her feet still jammed beneath the dashboard, but the upper half of her body dangling out, so that her head banged against the roadside.

  Catherine was out of the car and on to her at once, forcing her to the ground, using the knife again. Veins here and here . . . Arms and wrists and thighs. Pulsing, blood-rich flesh . . . Warm ichor-filled sacs. The wetness spurted against her skin again . . .

  There was the feel of soft breasts crushing against her, beautiful, exciting – cloven not crested, my dear; now you see – and there was the feeling of lungs collapsing for lack of air and the soft exhaling of breath. As the woman died, Catherine had felt a surge of love for her.

  The blood flowed slower and more coolly after that – she died too quickly! thought Catherine. It was too quick. Yes, but you will know better next time.

  There were no faithful servants for Catherine, no loyal attendants as there had been for Elizabeth. When the desire was slaked, when the splintered tear in her mind had scabbed over, she was forced to go shivering and nauseated into the depths of the forest, dragging the poor drained corpses across the ground. She buried her own dead deep in the woods, covering them with leaves, shuddering to know that, for all her care, they would be quickly uncovered by prowling weasels and stoats. She always murmured a prayer over the corpses.

  She burned her blood-stained garments in the old copper boiler in the dilapidated shed that had once been Varanno’s wash-house. Later, she took to partly stunning her victims with the heavy torch and dragging them into the concealment of the forest. Then she simply stripped and went about her grisly task naked. Her skin gleamed white, but the sliding moonlight turned the blood black. She washed her hair every morning and cleaned her nails meticulously, but she thought that the stench of the dried blood clung to her, and at times her nails were dark where the blood had caked and congealed beneath them.

  Elizabeth had never had to bother about disposing of her victims. Csejthe’s Lady would have curled her beautiful lip at the idea. Illona and Dorko took the drained carcasses away and washed the floors so that the castle gulleys ran with red-streaked fluids. They buried the corpses beneath the castle dungeons by night, and in time they both began to carry with them the reek of old dried blood and the stench of decaying flesh.

  It was a good day for them all when Illona discovered the neglected stone crypt beneath Csejthe Church and asked why they should not make use of it. Supposing they were to tell the ageing pastor some story of a plague necessitating speedy and secret burial? If anyone could deceive the old fool, you could, Madame, suggested Illona, cunningly.

  The failing, devout old man, who had in his care Csejthe and the small scattering of villages surrounding it, was properly shocked to be told that a number of the Countess’s waiting women had succumbed to a virulent form of ague, and innocently grateful for the benefices sent down by the Lady herself. Christian burial, said Illona, handing over the benefices, having counted them first and cannily subtracted a judicious amount by way of payment for herself and Dorko beforehand. Christian burial for them all, but a degree of secrecy to be maintained. People panicked, said Illona wilily, and the Lady did not wish to start an alarm in the village. Was it perhaps possible that they could make use of the crypt?

  The old pastor was touched to hear of the young Countess’s concern. And while it was not altogether in keeping with the solemnity which should attend the dead to commit them to their last resting places so furtively, the circumstances were unusual and God would surely understand. As for the disused crypt – well, the pastor could not remember when anyone had given it a second thought. There was no reason why the poor bodies could not be put there, and the proper burial service pronounced that very night.

  The pastor thought that it warmed a man’s heart to come across such benevolence. When you had reached the three score and ten prophesied for you, you tended to be a little cynical of the world. But the Countess’s gift had been generous and God’s Church would benefit and there was still goodness in the world. The pastor, being of an orderly turn of mind, even at seventy-three, knotted his kerchief as a reminder to pray not only for the souls of the poor young women but also for the continued well-being of the Countess herself.

  He made a second knot so that he would not forget to explain the exact circumstances to the alert young man who was to replace him next month. The good Ponikenus was a devout soul, but sometimes a trifle over-eager. It would not do for him to get the wrong idea about the freshly buried bodies.

  It certainly would not do for him to harbour any suspicions against the Countess.

  The road that led to CrnPrag was narrow and, although it was negotiable, two cars would not have been able to pass. Catherine saw that the forest was ahead of her: a sprawling black and silver mass, filled with the eerie secret life of all forests. Forests and looking-glasses and mountains were all just a little bit sinister.

  She drove on, the Renault’s headlights slicing through the darkness, tiny nocturnal creatures with blurred, transparent wings darting in and out of the beams of light. Thin, creeping fog clung to the ground, and Catherine shivered and turned up the car’s heater. Ahead of me is the place my cousins called the threshold of darkness.

  The tiny illuminated clock on the Renault’s dashboard showed four forty-five a.m. The hour before dawn. At this time of the year it would probably not begin to grow light until almost seven. Could she reach CrnPrag and get inside before people were about? Could she find Pietro before CrnPrag’s day began?

  The forest was all about her. The undergrowth grew to the very edges of the narrow road, and overhead the branches interlaced so that it was like driving along a dark tunnel.

  And then, without warning, the walls were in front of her, and the massive iron gates, lead-lined, were barring her way. Catherine parked the Renault in the trees as far off the road as possible and switched off the engine. For a few moments there was no sound except the ticking of the cooling metal, and the dry rustling of the wind in the trees. Somewhere behind her, she caught the faint screech of an owl as it swooped across the night in search of prey.

  She slipped from behind the wheel and stood looking up at the walls of CrnPrag. The trees had grown up to the walls, the branches thrusting against them, and the forest was filled with rustlings and murmurings; and what almost sounded like scuttling feet . . . Was something following her, creeping through the forest towards her? Catherine shook her head angrily. She would not let the old stories, the cousins’ half-serious, half-teasing tales into her mind now.

  The walls stretched up and up, faintly glassy in the moonlight and with black, glinting spikes, wickedly sharp on the top. Could she hook the rope over one of them and haul herself up? She would have to be very careful of them. Perhaps she could fold her jacket over the spikes. But she needed to get up there first . . .

  She looked back to the half-hidden Renault and an idea formed.

  It was difficult, but not as difficult as she had feared to manoeuvre the car through the trees until it was standing against the wall. She would not think about how subtle CrnPrag’s defences might be. You could not electrically charge a wall, could you? She thought you could not. In any case, this was the ghost-ridden black mansion in the forest, and CrnPrag’s own legends would be sufficient to keep intruders out. CrnPrag did not need electronic defences.

  She reached inside for the coil of rope, and it occurred to her that there might be something stored in the back that would be of use. Didn’t Bianca always say, half joking, half serious, that she kept a kind of contingency kit in the back in case of a breakdown on a lonely road. ‘My dear, you never know when you might be glad of a weapon to ward off an importune hitch-hiker, or a torch and a rug and a pair of gumboots,’ she said. Her mother’s boots would not fit her, but a torch might be useful later. Catherine opened the passenger door and flipped forward the seat, but as she pushed the door
wider, preparatory to climbing into the back, it activated the inside light that garages called the ‘courtesy light’. Catherine sprang out at once, shutting the door. It was a dim light but in the dark forest the car’s interior would have been as bright as a floodlit stage. She walked round to try the boot. Locked. Damn. Had she the key? Yes. She fished it out and inserted it in the boot lock, and at once felt resistance. Something stuck behind the lock? Damn again. She jiggled the key, but the lock refused to give. Lack of oil, of course, although there had been a moment when it had seemed to give, and then stuck. You could almost imagine a hand had clamped down, holding the inner catch in place.

  Well, she could not waste any more time on recalcitrant boot locks. The torch was probably out of a battery anyway.

  She wound the rope around her waist and clambered carefully on to the car’s bonnet, feeling it give beneath her weight, and then stepped on to the roof. The low branches were within her grasp: she reached up and swung herself into the tree. So far so good.

  It was easier than she had expected to loop and knot the rope about one of the spikes, and then fold her jacket over the adjoining ones. She looked down. The drop was not actually as deep on this side. Ten feet? Twelve? Just over twice her own height. Catherine climbed carefully over, holding on to two of the spikes for ballast, looping the rope three times about her wrists. Her hands took the strain and the rope held. Catherine walked backwards down the wall, like an abseiler, and landed easily and silently on the springy grass below.

  I am inside CrnPrag.

  The trees thinned out on this side of the wall, and she was standing in a small coppice. Bracken and dead leaves carpeted the ground, and there was a drifting scent of wet earth and vegetation.

  Catherine left the rope dangling, noting that it was a little to the left of the great gates, directly behind an ivy-covered oak. It would be easy enough to locate it for the return. There was a bad moment when she thought she heard the click of the Renault’s door opening and then closing, but nothing happened, and she thought it was probably only the ticking of the metal cooling. But just for a second it had sounded heart-stoppingly loud. She moved through the undergrowth, melting with the shadows.

  Beyond the trees she could see the house itself. In this light it was a black bulk with flat lawns surrounding it. Catherine made out pale windows on the ground floor, and rows of tiny apertures above. There was a central portion and a couple of jutting two-storeyed wings which were probably kitchens or servants’ quarters.

  CrnPrag had been modernised and adapted to its present use; even at this distance Catherine could make out telephone and electric cables. The chimneys were cowled and there were vents for the wash-houses. But the house still bore the print of its earlier life, when it would have been some nobleman’s mansion, built in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, bastioned and fortified against the Turks and the pashas who coveted the wild and beautiful Romanian countryside. The crenellations and the battlements that would have adorned its roofline had vanished, but it was possible to make out where they had been.

  Five a.m. Catherine thought it was as good a time as any to try to get in. There were no signs of life and there would surely still be an hour or so before most of the occupants began to stir. There might be night staff of some kind, of course, even guards to patrol the grounds. Would this be about the time when they might be expected to check in to some central control? If so, the sound of a door being opened or closed ought not to attract the attention it might attract at two or three o’clock in the morning. She would risk it.

  She began to move cautiously through the coppice, grateful for the cover of the trees. The night was filled with slithering shadows and rustlings, and several times she stopped and looked back, sure that something was following her, sure that something was creeping after her through the undergrowth, crouching low as it came . . . Had that been a twig snapping beneath someone’s foot then? Or was it only the wind in the trees? Was it only the pounding of her own heart? But the shadows were silent and still and Catherine moved on.

  The trees were becoming sparser and she was nearing the house now. She paused, considering. It would be better not to approach it from the front. She would try to find a side door.

  She found it almost without looking: a small, plain door that looked out over what Catherine thought was a kitchen garden. It swung open to her touch, softly and with only a whisper of sound.

  Come inside, my dear . . .

  Catherine hesitated, because surely it could not be this easy? Surely CrnPrag was guarded more closely than this? Or did they rely on the house’s eerie reputation to keep out prowlers? I don’t know, thought Catherine. I can’t judge. But I’ll have to risk it. If I’m to find Pietro, I’ll have to go in.

  She stepped inside and the darkness of CrnPrag closed about her.

  Chapter Ten

  Hilary found it fairly easy to keep the small Renault in sight. The BMW purred effortlessly through the darkness, the headlights picking out the road. It was also unexpectedly easy to adapt to driving on the right, and to disregard the clutch. Hilary thought she was managing well. And she was keeping the memories at bay.

  They were going down the narrow mountain road she remembered rather enjoying on the way to Varanno. Was Catherine returning to Vienna, then? On the left was a sprawling mass of forest, dropping sharply down with only the smallest of parapets for a crash barrier, and on the right the mountains rose steeply up, forming a hard rock wall. It was necessary to keep close to the sheer rock-face, but the BMW hugged the corners. There were no abrupt side turnings from which rumbling lorries might suddenly come roaring out, the jagged-toothed grille filling your windscreen like a nightmare monster belching heat . . . She frowned and shook off the vision and concentrated on the task in hand.

  Catherine was driving fairly fast, but Hilary was keeping her well in sight. She was forming and discarding plans as she went; thinking that as soon as Catherine stopped, she would drive straight up and stop alongside. If Ficzko pounced on Catherine the two of them would surely be able to overcome him. How strong were dwarves? Ficzko wouldn’t try to attack Catherine as she was driving would he? It was rather frightening to think of him coiled in the back of the car like that. Hilary found herself glancing nervously into the BMW’s rear.

  She had just reached this point in her mind when, without the least warning, something darted across the road and was caught for a moment in the headlights. Something that ran low and crouching and that turned its head to look straight at her. In the glare of the headlights there was the brief, shocking impression of a thick pale face with features like warm, runny tallow. A blurred face. As if it had somehow slipped before it had set. There were two glaring eyes.

  Hilary slammed down on the brake and the BMW’s rear end curtseyed. The car skittered wildly across the road, the steering wheel tearing itself out of her hands. The front wing smashed against the sheer rock-face and there was the sickening crunch of metal and the squeal of rubber tearing. The front right-hand corner sagged abruptly. Hilary felt the seat-belt clinch, stopping her from going through the windscreen but smacking against her ribs. The engine stalled and there was a rather dreadful silence.

  It was important to keep calm, to discover if she was injured. It was even more important to remember that she was nearly a decade away from that other crash. The winding mountain road was not the road in Hereford with the sleety rain making it shiny and wet, with Sarah at her side chattering about the school play and the Christmas holidays ahead. Eight years since the snarling iron-and-steel lorry monster had lurched out in front of the Mini.

  Hilary’s thoughts ran chaotically in and out, like trickles of different coloured liquid, and it was several minutes before she could force her mind to concentrate.

  She thought she was not hurt. She was certainly bruised from the snapping-into-place of the seat-belt, but she thought there would have been far more pain if a rib had broken or cracked. I’ve survived again, just as I did before. I�
��ll hold on to that thought. But I’ve certainly put the car out of commission.

  She hit the steering wheel with clenched fists in silent anger and frustration, and winced as the pain from her ribs caught her. But there was no point in sitting here giving way to anger, and she forced her shaking self to unfasten the seat-belt and get out.

  She surveyed the damage ruefully. The front tyre had burst when it tore into the rock-face, and the wing was buckled.

  I’ve lost Catherine and I’ve crashed the car, and I can’t remember how to change a wheel, even if I ever knew in the first place. And even if I could, the wing’s jammed up against the rock.

  And I have no idea where I am, or what that creature was that darted across the road. For a rather dreadful instant it had almost looked human, although probably it had not been. Probably it had been some kind of large, pale animal. You might get all kinds of odd creatures out here. It was important to remain calm and sensible.

  Hilary looked about her, her eyes tired and gritty from the unaccustomed long drive, and her limbs cramped.

  The countryside was shrouded in darkness – if she had not rushed out of Varanno in such a flurry, she might have thought to bring a torch or even matches – but when she walked a little way along the road, around the sharp blind curve, she saw that high above her, somewhere beyond the sheer rock, were lights.

  Lights would mean people and people might mean assistance.

  Could she do it? Could she go up to a house in the middle of the night and knock on the door and ask for help?

  But I can’t just do nothing, thought Hilary. I’ll have to try.

  The lights were higher up than she had thought. Beyond the bend where she had crashed, the rock-face opened up and a narrow track wound upwards. Hilary hesitated. She could still see the lights and they were warm, rather friendly looking lights, as if the people who had made them liked to send out a beacon to lost travellers.