by Marvin Kaye
"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 corner 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 shalt 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. And 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 the 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 truckstop 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 dayto-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 doubt 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.
"Which one you mean? The old lady?"
"No. The blonde pushing the wheelchair," the woman in the leather jacket said,
tapping the picture.
The bartender shook his head and tossed the photograph back onto the
counter. "Naw. Can't say I recognize her. Sorry."
"How about this one?" She flipped a second photo out of a small deck held in
a fan like playing cards.
The other photograph was in better focus, although taken under the same
conditions. It was of a sexy brunette in a red cocktail dress being helped into a
sports car by a slightly balding middle-aged man in evening clothes. The
bartender's eyes narrowed.
"Now this one looks familiar. She wears her hair different, but I'm pretty sure
