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

by Romina Nicolaides

  She realized that she had no idea what time it was. The last two days of constant wakefulness and the knock to the ribs had only served to confuse her. It was dark but she didn’t know if it was the same day or the next. Her own injury had healed and, judging by the stiffness in the girl's body, she presumed a whole day must have passed.

  When she was finished with the body Katalina did her best to cover up the makeshift grave in order to discourage any smells that might come from it. She would need to come check on it from time to time to make sure it stayed secret. She said a silent prayer for the girl’s soul and without meaning to she remembered how delicious the taste of her blood was. Silently berating herself she thought of the hunger that she now constantly felt. She wondered if she could go in search of some human blood but without hurting anyone and without getting herself in trouble. The staff at the castle were out of the question so she thought she might go into town and see what she could find, hopefully without the Countess realizing she was gone. She wouldn’t kill anyone like Erzsébet, only drink a little blood. She promised herself she would never hurt anyone badly.

  Walking in the streets in the little town was tricky for she did not want to be seen by anyone who knew her. People might see her and ask questions she was unable to answer, and it might all get back to her mother. The thought of her brought tears to Kati’s eyes. She missed her more than she could describe and the pain was augmented by the fact that she would probably never be seeing her again. Her heart would break if she knew what Kati had become. Despite the Countess’s reassurances Kati was not convinced about this Affliction of hers. What if she was contagious and she gave it to her mother? What if the hunger became so strong and she bit her without wanting to? She hated what she'd turned into, a being driven by a literal bloodlust, looking at people like a walking meal. Women on their period were particularly hard to ignore, the smells wafting from them constantly invading her thoughts.

  She pulled the shawl over her head upon hearing the approaching couple and looked towards the wall in case they saw her. They walked past oblivious to her existence and she breathed a small sigh of relief. She could hear church bells and walked towards them. Standing outside the church she smelled only three people inside, the priest on the pulpit, a woman at the front and a man towards the back. She peered in briefly and realized that she could not approach the woman without being seen by one of the other two. The man she could probably bite in theory but if he made a sound she would be caught in the act which was too risky. The church was clearly not a viable option so she walked on.

  The revelers in the tavern down the road offered the perfect opportunity, however. She approached it and carefully looked through the window to see several men drinking happily. A clearly inebriated one was pulling on his hat and preparing to leave. She hid in the alcove and waited. When he came out she followed him and for quite a while they walked together, he oblivious to his shadow, until the moment was right. When nature called he stopped against a wall and began to unfasten his trousers. The road was dark enough and nobody else was around.

  She knew she didn’t have very long and part of her hoped that he would be done quickly, pull up his trousers and leave, a divine intervention of sorts, stopping her from hurting someone else and from giving in to her beastly nature, but nothing happened. He stood there half asleep relieving himself for the longest time, until unable to resist any longer and virtually hearing his blood pump, Kati seized her chance and bit him on his neck. Luckily he was short and rotund. His height was enough that she could do it quickly without the need to disable him. His skin was rough and sunburned and he stank of sweat and alcohol, but his blood tasted good and felt so satisfying flowing down her throat. She had not hit the jugular but the beer made it flow quite well with little need to suck and made her hazy for a brief moment. Just like before she got glimpses of the man’s life: his neck was red due to the time spent out in the fields ploughing the land and his wife was fat with an aged face. Her head was slightly too small for her body and her teeth were blackened and dirty which he hated. Before she could take in much else, however, he collapsed to the ground with his trousers round his knees and Kati was forced to stop drinking, unable to hold his bulk. She checked his pulse. Thankfully he was still alive but unconscious. She pressed her fingers to where the bite marks were for a few minutes to stop him bleeding any more and when she was certain he was stable she left him to come to his senses in his own good time. She’d had enough to drink and was thoroughly satisfied, happy in the knowledge he hadn’t seen her and she’d stopped well before the thirty breaths.

  On the way back to the castle she was puzzled by the fact that the man had collapsed when she bit him. The same thing had happened to the girl she bit to Erzsébet’s orders as well as the little one the day before. It was so instant that it was before any of them had the chance to grow faint from the blood loss. She'd assumed that the girls had blacked out from the shock but the man had not seen her coming and with some luck he would wake up with a hangover and attribute the lost time to that. She wondered if this was something that was caused by the Affliction and set out to test the theory once again.

  This time she hid in an alley and waited for someone else to walk past. After a brief time a bosomy woman with bright red lips rushed past in a wool cloak and Kati followed her. A few minutes down the road the woman went into a dark house and closed the door behind her. Unperturbed, Kati went round the back to find a different way in and managed to unlatch the back door and enter into a small kitchen area. She could only smell the woman in the house so she felt encouraged to go searching for her. As quietly as she could she climbed the few stairs to where the sleeping area was and found the woman undressing with her back to the door. Seizing her chance, she approached her silently and swiftly bit into her neck. Within a few moments the woman also collapsed to the ground just as Kati got visions of her with her dress pulled half way up and her legs round the waist of a man. Shocked and embarrassed by what she had seen, Kati dropped her, unable to stifle a giggle. On leaving the house she thought that the woman would have a harder time explaining this to herself in the morning than the man.

  She left the house as carefully as she had come in, checking that nobody saw her come onto the street, and quickly made her way back to the castle. Puzzled by the effect of her bite on people, she wanted to talk to the groundskeeper about it. Did it happen to everyone? Did the Countess have this ability too?

  Overwhelmed and confused, Kati returned to the castle which was eerily quiet. It seemed that those servants that could leave did not stay a moment longer than they had to in this factory of horrors. The ones that lived there locked themselves in their chambers and did not venture out unless absolutely necessary. The corridors were dark and damp and since she had been bitten it seemed as if the smell of decay was everywhere. She wondered how much other members of staff knew of what really went on in the castle. Though she hadn’t seen many since being here, she had definitely smelled them since becoming Afflicted. They probably understood a lot of more than what the entranced Countess thought them capable of, but well-paying jobs with nobility were scarce in these predominantly rural areas where one bad crop meant starvation for entire families.

  Back in her room she saw the dresses on the chair and retrieved the duplicitous pearl from her pocket. She rebelliously pinned it on the torso of the dress where the heart would be and crawled into her bed hoping that sleep would wipe away the thoughts of the poor girl that had been tormenting her all evening. She didn’t even know her name. She pictured the girl’s mother who would probably be frantic about now. Her own mother would feel the same if she disappeared.

  She thought of the old man and the Pastor. Why was no one stopping this insanity? How many people had to die before this woman was arrested? She felt her eyes well up. Maybe nobody cared what happened to the girls in these woods. She wondered what the servants made of it all. No doubt everyone who worked here knew that terrible things happened in the dun
geons but no one dared speak up even outside the castle walls. They realized the Countess's hand reached far and wide and any “false” accusations would land them and their families in quite a lot of trouble. They all worked in fear, trying to not be seen or heard but most importantly trying not to get killed.

  She wanted to visit the old man, but she didn’t dare do it when the Countess was at the castle. She closed her eyes to sleep. The sun was just beginning to rise.

  Nineteen

  The following afternoon Katalina was in the courtyard playing with Mačka. She could see some increased activity in the kitchen by way of greater food deliveries than normal but she knew better than to approach.

  The sound of the carriage from the front of the castle made her investigate. The day was considerably overcast, a fact which allowed her to venture outdoors. The Countess had had the same thought because she was entering the carriage which she hardly ever did in the daytime. Spotting Katalina, she gestured for her to approach which she diligently did.

  “Katalina, I’ve been called to Vienna on urgent business, but I’ll be back tomorrow as more girls will be arriving at the Gynaeceum in a few days." Katalina was overjoyed at the thought of Oriana returning but then thought of the risks. Her heart did a skip.

  “Prepare the barn and make all the beds. This time there will be more students.”

  “More? Yes mistress.”

  “And make sure to fill the basement with more hay, won’t you please?” Though her tone was sweet, Kati felt her stomach turn at the thought of the basement. She nodded. What will she do to these girls?

  “Don’t look so despondent, child, our work here is very important,” she announced before closing the carriage window in Kati's face and drawing the curtain. The dull knock on the front of the carriage gave the driver the go ahead to set off.

  Come nightfall, Katalina realized this was the opportunity she was waiting for to learn more about her situation. When she was certain that all the staff had retired for the evening she headed straight for the Countess’s room. She didn’t know exactly where it was but something told her the smell would guide her to it. She hoped that looking around the room might reveal something beyond the journals, especially something pertaining to the biting. It was a long shot, but it was important. She climbed the stairs through the back passages and found herself in front of a little wooden door roughly where she knew the room would be. Using her apron to push on the latch so she wouldn't leave a scent, she realized it wouldn’t open. Remembering that this floor also had a balcony across several of the adjoining rooms she exited the hidden passages and went onto the corridor proper after making sure no one was around. Faced with a series of rooms, she waited to hear and smell if anyone was inside them and once she established the entire floor was empty she tried to see if there were any open ones. The first in line was locked. The one next to it, which she knew belonged to the Countess, was also locked but the third one, an empty, dusty affair which served as a furniture store, was open, its lock visibly weathered and useless. Pushing her way past the broken objects she walked onto the balcony. She was immediately struck by the enormity of the castle and its courtyard, which she'd never seen in its entirety before. The height gave her a whole new perspective to her surroundings.

  Away from the edge she curiously looked into one of the rooms that she couldn’t get into from the front. The window was fitted with wooden shutters but she could still peek through the slats. The bed was grandiose and covered in rich linens of forest green but it appeared unused. She got the distinct impression that this room was being reserved for or had belonged to someone who had perhaps passed away. The thought crossed her mind that it might be a room she had her other Afflicted victims live in before she killed them but it smelled old and unused like it had been kept pristine for a long time.

  She moved on to the Countess’s room and to her good fortune it did not have shutters but strange doors made of dark glass. With her heart beating out of her chest she carefully pulled back the latch and saw that the balcony door opened allowing her to enter the apartments.

  Though the two adjoining chambers were quite stark for a woman of Erzsébet Báthory’s rank and status, they were nevertheless more luxurious than anything Kati had ever laid eyes on before. In the far end against the wall near the fireplace stood a magnificent four poster bed. It was made of a thick brown wood and every last inch of it was intricately carved with leaves and flowers and forest scenes similar to the box of silver knives. It was covered in sumptuous red velvet drapes which were trimmed with gold tassels. The head of the bed was covered by multiple pillows and cushions and decorated with more embroidered red velvet brocade. By the foot of the bed was the pelt of a black bear with the head still attached and the jaws wide open. It had black glass eyes and rich fur which shone under the dim light that entered the room.

  She noticed that the balcony door she had come in from was clearly newer than the rest of the building and sported that unusual glass she’d noticed from the outside. Instead of the regular white pieces of glass most windows had, this one was made with yellow segments peppered with dark streaks and dots, most probably to dull some of the sunlight. Immediately to her right stood an upright hourglass-shaped mirror which had clearly seen a lot of use. A small clay talisman similar to the one outside the binding room and a small bunch of herbs and flowers were secured to the top of it. The wooden frame was polished but in places it had been worn out like an old church pew. Kati peered closely at the glass and she could see handprints right where the face of the person reflected would be. To the side of the bed, by one of the larger windows, stood a dressing table with a cushioned stool and another large mirror. She realized that though the countess needed the light to look at her face in order to apply her potions, she also couldn’t tolerate the brightness and had to diffuse it as much as possible with the darker panels. In fact, all the windows were adorned with a complicated system of drapes; behind the thick dark velvet ones were lengths of linen of varying thicknesses probably used to regulate the glare according to the Countess’s ability to tolerate it on any given day.

  The surface of the dressing table was filled with myriad glass bottles of different shapes and sizes all filled with oils and potions she couldn’t identify. The smell that came out of some was disgusting, while others smelled of flowers and others of alcohol. Several were filled with blood and other unguents. On smelling it she felt herself drool a little. All the bottles had labels with all sorts of descriptions and flower names.

  In the corner across from the standing mirror lay a large plain desk and chair which did not really seem to go with the room. It was large and stark and quite masculine with a gloss that the rest of the furniture didn’t have. Next to it stood an equally large cupboard and under it a closed leather chest. On top of the desk lay an open leather bound notebook, with what looked like frantic writing on and some drawings. Some of the pages were smeared with blood and in places the ink and the blood met. The notebook was half filled with odd recipes but she had never heard of any of the ingredients before. Most of them were roots and powders based on their descriptions but she couldn’t understand the use of them. Next to the notebook stood two large candlesticks with rivulets of dried molten candle wax along their length which reached and fused to the table top, a sign of many a night spent under their supervision. The quill and inkwell had also seen better days.

  Walking a little bit further and into the second section of the room through a stone arch where the bed was, she saw the enormous fireplace that a room this size needed to keep warm. On the opposite side of the window stood a large wooden chest of drawers made in the style of the bed and which was filled with dresses and chemises and undergarments of every fashion. On its marble surface was a box of precious jewelry. It was all so shiny and beautiful! Rubies and garnets and pearls, crystal and gold… so much gold! There were brooches and earrings and tiaras and rings, beautiful large rings with the Nádasdy and the Báthory coats of arms and s
maller delicate rings, more than you could fit on all the fingers of both hands. Then she glanced at an open pendant which lay on the table. On one side was a tiny portrait of a young man no older than sixteen and on the other a perfectly white lock of what she assumed to be his hair. Her son? The man was fetching, with skin so pallid it was practically translucent and that white hair, which hung loose almost reaching his shoulders. His eyes were also very pale and appeared to differ in color from each other. It seemed as though the picture did him no justice at all. She thought it extremely peculiar that someone so evil and twisted as Erzsébet Báthory would hold anyone in any esteem and would lovingly wear their picture around her neck, but the journals reminded her of a younger, gentler Countess before her life had corrupted her.