She saw flashes of colors, drifting twigs and spots ascending and descending, a carnival of motion. She could feel her heart pound against her rib cage.
No. She could hear it.
She saw red. Flowing red. She jerked back her right hand in horror, the slickness of the rock suddenly sinister. She stopped, paralyzed, watching the pulsing tide surround her.
A figure gestured from the corner of her eye. She jerked her head around to see.
Her right foot slipped. The sudden jolt pulled her right hand from its hold. Loose rock rattled down beneath her, echoing through the blackness.
Her left hand and foot strained, as the right side of her body searched blindly for purchase, her knees and hips banging hard against the rock.
She pressed her eyes shut. The colors extinguished, her toe struck a ledge. With her right hand pressed flat against the wall of the cave, she slid her weight up. In her blindness she felt her way.
A vision flashed, of the blind worms and eyeless fish living deep in caves and on the floor of the ocean.
She did not want to open her eyes. Even with her eyes closed, she could still see the contours of rock, the cave itself.
She thought of John and his logic. The way his eyes would open wide as he assessed a problem. She inched her way forward, eyes shut tight.
There were voices. A steady conversation, just beyond her hearing.
No. There were no voices. The murmuring was her mind searching desperately to fill the absolute silence.
The murmurs continued. She strained to find words.
Her rip-proof jacket—her favorite for skiing in the trees—protected her skin from the rock. A bulge in her zipped back pocket had twisted around, pressing against her side.
She thought about taking it out, leaving it behind. No, this book of girls’ names was somehow important. Her father had hidden it behind his most beloved book. She twisted her jacket around so she didn’t feel the pressure. Now she felt the hard lump of her pocketknife against her upper thigh.
She shifted her jacket again.
She wriggled wormlike through a level passage, an endless journey. Dust from fallen rock made her cough. She could not risk letting anyone hear her approaching.
She tied her bandana over her nose and mouth.
She choked back phlegm, not allowing herself to cough. Her chest tightened with the effort.
The rocks were smoother now, like the polished rocks in a river. To her cut and bruised hands, they felt like jewels.
A smell made her stop. A foul, human stench.
She opened her eyes.
She could see light, only a few feet above through the cracks in a wooden panel. She stopped, listening.
From the other side of the door, she could hear moans.
Chapter 99
BATHORY CASTLE DUNGEON
HIGH TATRA MOUNTAINS, SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 28, 2010
Stand up,” said a woman’s voice.
Daisy slumped on the carpet, against the foot of the bed. She struggled to open her eyes, rubbing her arm where the man had inserted the needle.
“I said stand up!” cried a woman with fuchsia hair.
Daisy rolled to her knees. The woman grasped her forearm and yanked her to her feet. She plastered Daisy’s face with cold cream. With a towel, she removed the white makeup with quick, hard strokes.
“You must dress. Put on shift. Put on gown. No sleeping!”
The woman ripped off Daisy’s clothes. Daisy spun clumsily on her feet as her garments were stripped.
“You! Pay attention. Put on shift.”
“Who are you?” Daisy mumbled. “What’s a shift?”
“We no have time. Put on shift. Put on gown, stockings, shoes.”
Daisy stared at the woman, not comprehending. Ona pulled the shift over her head.
“Sit down,” said Ona. “Put on stockings.”
“Stockings?” said Daisy. “I don’t wear stockings.”
Daisy’s eye wandered to a table with fruit arranged on a platter.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Good,” said Ona. “Put on stockings, you get food. Do not, and I will whip you.”
“Whip me?” said Daisy.
What the fuck?
Ona smiled, her lips stretching a cold thin line across her face.
“I am very good with whip. You shall see. You must dress quickly. Soon you will not be able, when drug begins.”
“OK, OK,” said Daisy. “Whatever. Give me the stockings.”
“Good,” said Ona. “When dressed, meet other girls.”
“Just put her in the corridor,” said a guard. “The Count will want her soon.”
A man supported Daisy by her elbow, steering her toward a barred door. She stumbled, the drug affecting her motor coordination.
He pushed her through the door, swung it closed, and locked it behind her.
“Make some friends,” he called, laughing.
Daisy, dressed in seventeenth-century garments, approached a barred cell in front of her. Her steps were unsteady. She pulled a red apple from her sleeve, looked at it with puzzlement, and handed it to the filthy prisoner’s grasping hands.
“Who are you?” asked Draska, biting savagely into the apple. She shook in spasms as she chewed her first food in days.
Daisy frowned, looking down at her white lace apron. She rubbed the starched linen between her fingertips, shaking her head.
Draska noticed a thin streak of white makeup at the girl’s jawline.
“I—” said Daisy. “I know a way out of here.”
“But you no have key,” said Draska. “How can I follow?”
Daisy stared at her blankly. She gave no reply.
“What is your name?”
“She will kill you if you show terror,” Daisy said. “She feeds on terror. And on blood.”
“Who? She?” said Draska, swallowing the last of the apple.
“Countess Bathory.”
“Count Bathory. Is man!” corrected Draska.
Daisy’s confused look warned Draska that something was not right with the strange girl with the dyed black hair.
Daisy shook her head and walked aimlessly to the next cell.
“How did you get out?” asked a British voice. “Or are you one of them?”
“Get help!” hissed another voice. “You are the girl from the nightclub! It’s me, Lubena. For God’s sake, help us!”
Daisy’s eyes studied the steel bars. She touched them gingerly with her fingertips. “They are different,” she muttered. “The cages—they have changed.”
“She is as crazy as the rest of them,” muttered the English girl, starting to cry. “Look at her eyes.”
Chapter 100
BATHORY CASTLE
HIGH TATRA MOUNTAINS, SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 29, 2010
Go away, now!” commanded the guard. “It is past midnight. I am warning—”
“Stop!” cried the Count’s voice on the intercom. “I am sending a car to the gate to fetch my guest. Miss—?”
“Morgan.”
“Slecna Morgan, do you have a surname?”
“Morgan will do,” she snapped. “Do you have my sister in here?”
Silence. Morgan heard the ice crystals pelt the window of the guardhouse, rattling the glass.
“Perhaps you should come and see for yourself, my dear,” he said at last.
“Run,” whispered the guard, his hot breath in her ear. “Run away while you still can. You don’t know—”
A black limousine appeared, its tires crunching the icy crust. Big wet flakes of snow were illuminated in the headlights.
The driver with white hair—but a young face, she noted—opened the door. He bowed, low and stately.
The guard reluctantly opened the gate.
Morgan threw back her hair with a toss of her head, heaving her backpack higher on her shoulder and stepping into the backseat of the limousine as if she had been waiting for
it all her life.
Chapter 101
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 29, 1610
The rider set off just before dawn. Aloyz alerted the sentries that the horsemaster needed to leave on urgent business.
The gate was opened and the bay mare trotted down the rocky path toward the main road northeast of Čachtice. Aloyz watched as rider and horse disappeared into the thick bank of fog below, gleaming an eerie silver in the moonlight.
In the blaze of dawn, Zuzana was able to canter her horse, the road flattening and following the Vah River. The cold air stung her skin. She breathed in the salty warm scent of the horse. The smell comforted her in the cold mist.
She had gone only a few hours from the castle when she came upon a troop of soldiers, watering their horses in the river. She spied the double-headed eagle insignia of the Habsburgs, flapping yellow, black, and red over the tents.
Her mare whinnied at the scent of the horses and in an instant a mounted scout galloped out of the dark woods. He overtook her on the road, before she could react.
“Stop! Who goes?”
Zuzana’s heart thumped. If she spoke, he would know her gender instantly.
The scout pulled his horse alongside her. A rough hand snatched back the hood from her face. Her face was splattered with mud from the rutted road, but he could see her blue eyes sparkling with defiance.
“What do we have here!” he crowed. “A maiden riding astride?”
“Let me go,” she answered. “I have urgent business with the King.”
She drew her sleeve across her face, wiping away the mud.
The scout dropped his hand from her hood, seeing her pocked face.
“The King?” he gasped. “A poxed witch to see a Habsburg?”
“Pray, let me continue on my way!”
The scout’s face loosened further in astonishment, his jaw dropping.
“Where do you come from?”
“Čachtice Castle.”
“We ride there this very day. These men are Count Thurzo’s party.”
“Count Thurzo? The Palatine?”
“I dare not say more. I will accompany you to his tent,” said the scout. “But cover your face with your hood so you don’t draw attention from the troops. They may take you to be an evil omen.”
Count Thurzo was washing his face in a stream when the scout approached him. He squinted at the sound of footsteps, blinking away droplets of water from his eyes.
“What have you got there?” said the Count rising.
“A maiden who says she is from Čachtice Castle,” said the guard. “She brings news from Janos Szilvasi.”
The Palatine accepted a towel from his servant and wiped his faced dry.
“How do I know she is not a spy, attending the Countess?”
Zuzana drew back her hood and leaned forward in the saddle where the Palatine could see her clearly.
He gasped. “It’s you. Countess Bathory’s little monster!”
Zuzana stared back at him.
“You remember me, Count Thurzo,” she said. Her mare moved restlessly. Zuzana reined her in, swinging the horse’s head back to face the Palatine. “I come in the name of horsemaster Janos Szilvasi, who lies ill in Čachtice Castle.”
“Why does he send you on this mission?”
“Because my absence would not raise as much suspicion. Because I can ride. And I know a way you can enter Čachtice Castle without laying siege, for her guards will fight to the death to keep you out.”
“I have the King’s soldiers here!” the Count snorted. “Bathory’s men will not hold out for long.”
“And she will disappear into the warren of tunnels beneath her castle, never to be found. You will not bear witness to her crimes. The Countess will take refuge. She will find an ally. Perhaps the strange visitor they call the Dark One. He wears a Bathory ring.”
Count Thurzo clenched his fists at his sides. A flush of red colored his damp face.
“The Dark One? You say he wears the Bathory ring?”
“Yes.”
“There is only one Bathory as cruel as she—Gabor of Transylvania. If she flees to him, no one, not even the King, can stop her.”
The Count considered the money, soldiers, and resources Gabor would amass with Erzsebet’s alliance. Sarvar, Kerestur, Leka, Ecsed, Wallachia, Transylvania, possibly even Poland.
The Ottomans. Gabor had sent his emissaries to Stamboul.
“Then you must take her by surprise,” said Zuzana. “Tonight.”
Count Thurzo nodded slowly, studying the glint of her eyes. Chips of the bluest sapphire.
“Choose a small party from your men. A small band of soldiers. I will guide you. Stealth is your ally.
“Then you will catch the Countess in the act of murder.”
Chapter 102
BATHORY CASTLE
HIGH TATRA MOUNTAINS, SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 29, 2010
The driver escorted Morgan to the drawing room. She shook the snow from her hair, a cascade of auburn locks swirling about her shoulders.
“Such a late night visit,” said the Count. “From a beautiful stranger. Still I feel we have met before.”
“You have my sister here,” said Morgan. “I want to see her immediately. She is coming home with me.”
“What?”
“You have kidnapped Daisy Hart. You are to release her immediately or a contact in the United States will send the coordinates of this location to the FBI and the CIA. And the American ambassador in Bratislava. Got it?”
“Sit down,” said the Count, reaching for a chair himself. “I do not understand.”
“Did I stutter?” said Morgan. “What’s not clear?” She reached for her backpack and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and extinguished the match with an agitated wave of her hand.
“You—you are related to the witch girl?”
“Goth,” said Morgan, blowing out a plume of smoke. “She likes to be called Goth.”
“But—you are—nothing like her.”
“What does that matter to you?”
Morgan felt the presence of the driver still close to her side. He looked tense, shifting his weight from side to side.
She looked up at him.
“And they will arrest you, too, Mr. Chauffeur. As an accomplice.”
“Bartos, you can leave us now,” said the Count. He stood unsteadily and walked over to the crystal decanter.
The chauffeur hesitated, watching the count’s wooden motions.
Bathory poured himself another glass of wine. He drained it with one tip. An ugly grimace seized his face, twisting his features.
He is insane, thought Morgan.
Glass shattered as the Count hurled the empty goblet at the stone fireplace.
Morgan shielded her eyes from the flying shards.
The Count’s eyes wandered unfocused about the room. His gaze stopped on a portrait on the wall, a small, ancient rendering of Countess Bathory.
He cocked his head, listening.
A strange smile spread across his face. He looked at Morgan again with an intense stare.
“Of course,” he said, though he didn’t seem to be speaking to her. “I had forgotten. Of course.”
“Of course, what?” said Morgan.
He waved his hand, dismissing her words. The motion was like erasing a chalkboard.
“Wait. Bartos—inform the attendants we will have one more guest at tonight’s games, a very special lady indeed. And bring”—he arched one eyebrow—“a welcoming draught, for the beautiful lady.
“She seems to have forgotten herself. We will help her to remember her former glory.”
Chapter 103
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 29, 1610
Brona ground cloves and cinnamon in a stone bowl. She sprinkled the mixture into the warming wine.
She poured the mulled wine into the Countess’s goblet. Then she thought again of the murdered girls. Her hand tig
htened around the goblet.
“The mistress is distressed,” said a crying servant girl as she rushed into the kitchen. “She asks again for her wine at once. She is in an evil temper. She pinched my arm. Look.”
A reddish-blue welt spread across the girl’s upper arm.
“I’ll serve the mistress myself,” Brona said, as the maid started to take the tray away.
“But—”
Brona put on a fresh apron. She tidied the linen cloth on the tray.
The Countess looked up from her needlework.
“Brona,” she said. “What brings you out of the kitchens?”
“To better serve you, Countess,” she said, bowing. “I so rarely have the honor of seeing you.”
The Countess’s eyebrow arched.
“You are not a handmaiden, Cook! You smell of onions and garlic. See that you stay in the kitchens where you belong.”
Brona set the tray on a little table beside the Countess. It was so dark in the room she could not understand how her mistress could see the needle.
“Since you are so eager to talk with me,” the Countess said, taking the goblet in her hand, “tell me why you are spending such an exorbitant amount on flour. We cannot afford such—”
Brona bumped the Countess’s outstretched hand.
The wine sloshed from the goblet, splashing red on the white apron that covered the Countess’s gown.
“You clumsy peasant cow!” said the Countess, leaping up. “Look what you have done.”
Brona snatched the linen napkin from the tray and doused it with water from a jug.
“Mistress, forgive me! Let me take the stain off immediately before it sets.”
She began soaking the Countess’s apron with water, blotting the stain with the napkin.
“You clumsy fool! This gown is Venetian silk!”
Brona spread out the apron to its full width, lifting it clear of the silken gown.
“You fool!”
“Forgive me, Countess, but I must remove your apron before it soils your dress.”
She untied the apron, helping her mistress out of the garment.
Her hand dug into the pocket of the apron, extracting the ledger. She shoved it into the pocket of her own apron.
“Oh! Look at your shoes. And the hem of your dress.”
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