“Dublin,” she replied, shaking her head gently to decline his offer. He took a cigarette from the pack and replaced the pack in his pocket. He lit the cigarette and turned towards her. He blew a stream of smoke up and away from Elizabeth’s face. “Have you come to Prague before?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted. “Have you?” She smiled again, resting the tip of her tongue against her teeth. She could feel the man’s nervousness dissolving as tension of another sort built.
“Me?” he asked. “No, no. I have not been to here before.” He glanced at his feet and then back into her eyes. He smiled.
“How long are you here for? You seem to be alone… Are you… sad?” Elizabeth leaned a bit closer and rested her hand on her new friend’s forearm. She could feel his excitement at her touch ripple through him.
“A few days,” he answered. “Alone? Yes, I came to see Prague myself. But sad? No… thinking. How do you say in English? Taking the night air.” He chuckled.
“Are you here on business?” she purred in his ear, her lips brushing the nape of his neck. “Or pleasure?”
His eyes closed in delight, the cigarette dangling from his fingertips. Then, realizing she had asked a question, he shook his head slightly as if to clear his thoughts. He opened his eyes and smiled.
“Would you believe both?” His voice had gotten deeper, fuller, richer. He stood and she could see his erection through his trousers.
“I might believe that,” she told him, standing too and taking the cigarette from him and tossing it into the river. “What kind of business?”
“Imports. Exports.” He reached his arms around the back of her shoulders and pulled her towards him.
“And what kind of pleasure?” She laughed quietly, tipping her head back and exposing the skin of her throat to his gaze.
“What kind might you think?” he laughed gently, running his cheek along her throat.
Elizabeth relished the effect she had on men like this one. Confident, handsome, self-assured men who quickly forgot whatever they had been concerned about once she turned her attention to them.
“Shall we go someplace a little more private?” she whispered, nibbling his earlobe. She felt him shudder with delight, pressing himself more closely to her.
“Hotel?” he asked, pulling his head back just a bit. He seemed to struggle to focus his eyes on her face.
“Hotel? No… that would be too far. Here… beyond the lamplight.” She gestured with her head. “Near those boulders.”
She wasn’t sure if he understood all the words but he understood the gesture. They slid out of the circle of lamplight and maneuvered into the shadows behind the boulders. She pressed him into a crevice between the great rocks and straddled his hips.
Her Turkish friend relaxed against the stone, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes, groaning softly in a language universally understood. Clasping his hands at the small of her back, his hips rose to meet hers as he pulled her down against him.
She slid her tongue along the taut muscles of his neck and then along his open shirtfront. She reached up to undo the rest of the buttons.
“There is no reason to maintain this mask now,” she thought, glancing around them. No one was there and in the dark, no one could see them anyway. She pulled the unbuttoned shirt off the man’s shoulders and drew her tongue along his collarbone.
His eyes jerked open. She knew the sensation of her tongue against his skin had become rough and sharp-edged. She knew he struggled to understand what was happening. She knew what he was seeing now that she had let her mask slip.
The Turk struggled, trying to push her away. Elizabeth knew her beautiful red hair and milk-white skin had melted away to reveal a leering skull, withered skin stretched taut across the ridges and valleys of bone. Ragged wisps of hair floated around what was hardly capable of being called her face. Her withered yet ponderous breasts hung out of the tattered red shroud draped around her. Her scrawny, almost skeletal hand reached out to stroke his cheek with grimy talons and her eyes were filled with desire and expectation, a sharp hiss escaping from between her razor-sharp teeth.
“No…” He strained to choke the syllable out.
Her talons raked his throat and shoulders. She pressed her face into the wounds, lapping up the blood as quickly as it spread across his skin. Her teeth frayed the edges of the wounds, the pain cutting deliciously through him—she knew—even as the blood flow into her mouth increased. She could still feel his erection against her and she pressed her hips into his.
Blood flowed down his chest as she cut the wounds deeper with one claw and clamped the other across his mouth, preventing him from calling out. Struggling against her, he mimicked the convulsions of sexual ecstasy despite himself. Elizabeth watched him swiftly sinking into unconsciousness from blood loss, and knew the last thing he would feel was his throbbing climax spewing onto her shroud.
When she had lapped up the last of the blood, she began to rip shards of flesh from the man’s abdomen with her teeth and then reached into the wound with her talons to slice through his internal organs. She chewed and swallowed, especially relishing the Turk’s liver and heart. What little blood there was left in her victim’s internal organs was smeared across her face, dripped down her breasts, spattered on her shroud. She peered around the boulders. There was no one in the park now. Picking up the corpse, she heaved it into the river and watched it hover a moment before it was swallowed by the current.
Readjusting her mask so that no one would guess the foul reality beneath, Elizabeth walked back along to the river towards the plaza, the bridge, and the hotel, where she could rest now that she was no longer hungry.
Victoria had worried and fretted anxiously all day. Her friend Magdalena had hidden some mysterious experience that she didn’t quite understand from her and had reached out to contact powers whose existence seemed more real to her than her oldest, dearest friend. It all made no sense. There had seemed no way to reason with Magdalena on the phone that morning. Magdalena had claimed to meet the ghost of a woman named… Fen’ka? Was that it?… burned for witchcraft in the Old Town Square during the 1350s. Magdalena had also said that a Jesuit named George had come to attend the conferences and that he was the Grand Master of the covens in New York and knew all about the occult and had promised to teach her his secrets. Magdalena had claimed the Jesuit thought she was talented and beautiful. Victoria was certain that Magdalena would make herself unavailable for any serious conversation as long as the conferences were going on, but Magdalena had even speculated that she might leave Prague with George for New York when the conferences were concluded. There might be no time, let alone words, to speak with Magdalena. Victoria was heartsick.
Could she talk with Magdalena’s employer, Professor Hron? “No,” she reasoned to herself. “He’ll be busy with the conferences himself, maybe even more busy than Magdalena. If he hears what she said, he might think she’s crazy and fire her, and then Magdalena will never speak to me again for sure. That won’t work. Oh, this whole thing is crazy. What can I do? Who can I talk to?” There seemed no one Victoria could turn to without further alienating her friend.
That evening, she hardly ate the simple meal she prepared. She poked at the food and didn’t even have the energy to put away the leftovers. She sat in her living room, staring ahead without seeing what she was looking at. A tear slipped down her cheek. If Magdalena left her, she would have no one she considered a real friend in the city. As the sun set and the room slipped into dusky gloom, the light from the kitchen sliced across the couch. Victoria felt totally alone and unable to do anything about it.
She was unsure how long she sat there but gradually realized that across from where she sat was her bookcase. On the shelf directly opposite, highlighted by the light from the kitchen and at the height of her eyes, were the handful of magical handbooks she and Magdalena had purchased together.
“That’s it!” An idea struck her with the force of lightning. It seemed o
utlandish and foolish, but if Magdalena was convinced that all this was real, then perhaps… Victoria leaped across the room and snatched the books from the shelf. Taking them into the kitchen, she sat at the table and began looking through them. Surely somewhere in one of these texts must be the answer to her problem, but what it would look like, she had no idea. She was only certain that she would recognize it when she found it.
She made her way, page after page after page, through one book and then another. Nothing in the books seemed directly related to her situation with Magdalena. Nothing that seemed even indirectly related to her situation. Would this be as fruitless as her conversation with Magdalena? Victoria hoped not and bit her lower lip as she opened the last book she had retrieved.
She turned a page and glanced at the table of contents. She turned another page. Then another. She ran her eyes over all the words printed there. It all seemed so foreign. How could either of them have ever thought any of these rites held the answers they had been searching for? How could Magdalena have become so convinced that the occult was everything they had ever hoped it would be? Victoria turned another page.
It was there, in a small paragraph at the bottom of a page. “In the Middle Ages,” she read, “it was thought that if a thief had stolen an object from a neighbor but there was no proof, then there was one method to induce the thief to acknowledge the truth about himself and his actions. The wronged villager would make a footprint in the earth and then light a candle in the footprint. When the candle burned itself out, the thief would be exposed to all for what he was and the truth discovered. The authorities would then be able to deal with the malefactor properly.” The text went on to describe some other method it recommended to recover a lost object.
That was it! Magdalena might not be a thief but the man who had stolen her friendship certainly was. His deception demanded exposure. What authorities would be equipped to deal with him, Victoria was not sure, but she was positive that someone would be in a position to deal with him properly. Magdalena needed to see the truth about this man. She needed to see the truth about herself and her actions and acknowledge that truth. Magdalena needed to be exposed to someone who could help heal the rift she had created between herself and Victoria. The candle-in-the-footprint seemed the perfect solution.
Victoria fumbled in her kitchen drawers, looking for a candle and some matches. She found a pair of new candles she had bought for a table centerpiece but never used. Would one of them work? No, she decided. Too big. It would take too long for one of them to burn itself out. She needed a short candle, one that was already almost used up. She kept looking.
Finally, she found the short stub of a nearly used-up candle in the far reaches of one of her kitchen cabinets. She had a box of matches on the stove. She was ready. Now all she needed was a patch of earth to make a footprint in.
“Oh, and a pair of shoes that will make a good footprint!” she realized. She rummaged in her bedroom closet for just the right pair of shoes. She pulled out an old pair of sneakers, dirty and worn, but with deep grooves and ridges still on the soles.
“Perfect!” she exclaimed aloud. She put on the sneakers and tied them tightly. “Better to do this now,” she whispered to herself, feeling slightly foolish. “There’ll be no one to see me tonight. If I wait until morning, someone will ask what I’m doing and I’ll feel stupid or get in trouble for lighting a candle under the hedges—or both!”
Taking her candle stub and matches, she set out the door.
Victoria lived a few blocks from Magdalena, further up the Little Town, towards the Hradčany hill but to one side from the castle and cathedral. It was dark when she stepped out. It was late. Pavement and cobblestones covered the ground. Where would she find a patch of earth to make her footprint in? She began walking, away from the castle and the Little Town and towards the plaza she frequented on summer weekends.
Loretánská Námĕstí. Loreto Plaza. That was the place. The plaza, though made of cobblestones, was ringed with hedges and flowers. There was earth along the edges of the plaza, plenty of it. She would certainly be able to make a footprint there.
She stepped from the side street and into the plaza. The walls of the Loreto cloister loomed above her on one side of the plaza. She hastened to the bushes near an empty bicycle rack. She glanced around. She saw no one. She looked over her other shoulder. No one. Good. But there was no telling if someone might step out into the plaza at any moment from a side street and might be dangerous. She stepped into the bushes and ground her foot into the earth and then stepped back onto the cobblestones.
“The book didn’t said anything about words to say or anything like that,” Victoria realized. “I suspect that the candle-in-the-footprint will know who needs exposing and how to manage it.” It needed no instructions from her.
“Just as well,” Victoria muttered. “Let the angels and saints tell it what to do. After all, this is the Loreto chapel!” The area around the chapel, built in the 1620s near a chasm that was said to lead down into Hell, was reportedly one of the few places in this world where the angels and saints and souls of the righteous were able to pause and rest, to “catch their breath” as it were, as they traveled between earth and Heaven. The air surrounding the chapel was rumored to be thick with angels, full of the souls of the righteous on some errand that required them to travel between dimensions. If this was not the perfect place to expose a wicked thief who had stolen her best friend, then no place in Prague was.
Victoria leaned over and wedged her candle stub into the middle of her footprint. She struck a match and held it to the wick, where the two blazed together briefly. Then, her fingertips burning, she blew out the match and ground it against the cobblestones.
The small candle flickered in the night air. Was it safe to leave it burning there? It wasn’t really under the bushes, after all. It was in the dirt and certainly near the bushes, but no branch or leaf hung directly above it. “Should I wait here for it to burn out?” Victoria couldn’t decide if she felt safer keeping vigil with the candle to prevent any accidental fire from burning out of control or back in her apartment behind her locked door.
The candle continued to burn gently. A drop of wax splashed onto the earth. She still felt uneasy leaving the candle untended though she felt even more uneasy remaining there alone. “What was I thinking? I must be as crazy as Magdalena!” Victoria sat on the bench beside the bicycle rack to watch the candle for at least a few minutes before walking back home. A star fell across the sky toward the castle. Though there was no breeze, she felt a chill and shivered.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any extra change, would you?”
“Maybe you’d like to share a beer with us, wouldn’t you?’
Victoria swung around to face the two deep, gravel-voiced figures behind her. Where had they come from? How had they walked up behind her without her hearing them? They were big men, husky but dirty and disheveled in torn jeans and leather jackets. Long chains hung from their belts and looped back into pockets. Victoria heard a “click” and saw a switchblade flash open in the hand of the larger of the two men, the one without a can of beer in his hand.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” growled the one with the knife. “Share a drink with a coupla new friends, why don’t ya?”
Victoria was terrified. Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t have spoken even if she had known what to say. Not long ago, when the Communists had governed the country, she would never have come out into the night like this. What had made her think it would be safe now that the Communists and their police state were gone? She stood and slowly took a step backwards but realized she was trapped between the bench, the bicycle rack, and the hedge. Why had she come here, alone, in the middle of the night?
“Not thinkin’ of cuttin’ out on us, are you?” asked the one with the beer can.
A flash of movement caught Victoria’s attention just beyond her field of vision. A dark shape hurtled through the air as a loud snarl ripped through the pla
za.
A large coal-black dog lunged at the men and closed his jaws around the forearm of the one who held the knife. The man screamed and kicked at the dog, who held tight and continued to snarl. The knife clattered to the cobblestones. The man with the beer dropped it as he scrambled to get away before the dog turned his attention to him.
“Call yer dog off, lady!” cried the thug who had dropped the knife. “Call off yer dog!”
The dog dropped the man’s arm and took off after the other, barking and snarling and chasing him across the plaza. The one who had dropped the knife ducked into the shadows down a side street.
Victoria gasped for breath, realizing she hadn’t taken a breath since she’d heard the men’s voices behind her. Where had that dog come from? His timing was nothing short of miraculous. She collapsed onto the bench.
The dog came loping back across the plaza toward her. There was no sign of the men he had chased away. The dog, which looked to be some kind of black Labrador and was probably the largest dog Victoria had ever seen, came up to her. His tongue hung out and he panted slightly but seemed friendly enough now. The dog’s tail wagged energetically. He laid his head in her lap. The now docile animal licked his lips and chortled as if pleased with his night’s work.
Victoria heaved a sigh of relief and stroked the dog’s head and then brushed the back of his thick coat. She held her face close to his and he closed his eyes and seemed to smile with delight. He had no collar or tag but was clean and well-cared-for.
“Where did you come from, boy?” she asked. “Did the angels and saints send you to save me?” She stroked his head again and he pulled himself up and took a few steps back. He whined quietly, as if trying to tell her something. He gestured with his nose toward the street she had come from into the plaza.
“Is that it, boy? And now you want me to go home before those two men come back?” Victoria asked her canine protector. But she seriously doubted that either of the men would hurry back to the plaza.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 42