Gator Baitin' (The Grateful Undead series Book 2)

by Susan Stec

  "Even if she is an ancestor Julie cannot replace her, Dorius. And what if she is responsible for these deaths? What will you do then?" Marcus ran his hand through his hair, taking in a long deep breath.

  Dorius' fingers smoothed his goatee. "I don't know, but I am going to make a trip to Csejthe castle. I've been there three times and was never able to get in. I get to the foot of the hill and wake there the next morning. God help me, but I must get into her bedchambers. If I find any bones…with today's forensics…"

  "Surely you don't think she's still alive?" Marcus asked in wonder.

  Dorius put his head in his hands and shook it.

  "I think this has been an obsession of yours for too long, Brother. You should remove yourself from this investigation."

  Dorius reached out and the connection broke.

  "What the hell did we miss?" Paul asked.

  "Shit, I have no clue," Mom answered.

  "But I sure stepped into it, didn't I?" Christopher said, a great big smile on his face.

  "Hell-yes-you-did," Zaire said. "And let me tell you, that is one bad bitch. Erzsebet killed over six-hundred women—fucking 'Bloody Lady of Cachtice', bitchen 'Blood Countess.' Don't you people read?"

  "Are we going to the mall tomorrow?" Resi asked. "I need some eye shadow."

  Who the hell is this woman? I pushed at Marcus.

  The only woman Dorius has ever loved, and she is Hell incarnate.

  ~~~

  Chapter 16

  Time is on my side, yep it is

  ~~~

  "Just pull up her name, for Christ's sake! Quit screwing around, damnit. Typing in 'Vampires of the sixteenth century' is not going to find her, Mom." I nudged her aside, took a seat in front of the laptop, and typed in Erzsebet Bathory, then hit the search key.

  "Where's Marcus? Why don't you go fight with him for a while and get out of my frigging face? This was my idea, not yours," Mom said. Her teeth nipped at my shoulder as she reached for the keys.

  "Actually, Chick, it was Zaire's idea," Christopher told her, clearly amused by our quarrel.

  I yanked my shoulder out of my mother's reach, glaring at her. She smiled back with nasty lips.

  Turning away, I scanned the sites with references to Erzsebet. Wikipedia was a good place to start.

  "Use Wikipedia, they usually have everything," Christopher told me, pointing at the screen. He was sitting on top of the table by the computer, his legs crossed, little toes wiggling inside his Spidey sandals. I gave him angry eyebrows and clicked on the site. He pushed several empty blood bags aside and scooted closer.

  We were going to the Winter Park Mall as soon as the rest of the group was ready to leave. Gibbie was out at the dock briefing Mort. Paul and Jake were at the barn burning the few animal carcasses we hunted up this morning before daybreak, and Marcus was up in my room taking a shower. It was a perfect time to get the scoop on this Erzsebet woman.

  "Holy shit, look at the picture. It's the same woman." Mom shoved me, fighting for a better position in front of the laptop. "Look at her. She looks so sweet."

  I rubbed my shoulder and nudged her away. "Don't you dare bite me again or I'll slap the crap out of you."

  "Just trying to get your attention," Mom sang.

  "Well you got it, now back off."

  Christopher picked up a pen from the table and pointed to the screen. "Look, it says she was convicted on only eighty counts of murder, but Zaire was right. One witness stated she tortured and killed over six hundred. Shit, this woman was a real sicko."

  "Oh God, she burned them on the face and… what's genitalia?" Mom was salivating and wiggling next to me. "Must be some Hungarian word for a body part. And look, look, she bit them!"

  I kept my body as far away from her fangs as possible. My eyes searched the page.

  "Genitalia is the part of Susan's body you're trying to keep Marcus from penetrating," Christopher snorted.

  "Where did you see that, Mom?" I asked, eyeballing Christopher.

  Mom pointed half way down the page. "Right there under the descriptions of torture. You mean she burned the women's pussies?"

  I winced. "Stop being obnoxious and put your fangs back in your gums. You're drooling on me for heaven's sake."

  "Talk about burning bushes!" Christopher laughed.

  I clamped my teeth together, rolled my eyes, and flared my nostrils. "Are you done?"

  He wiped a tear rolling down his cheek and kept right on hammering it into the ground. "Or… or…blazing Uterus'!" He slapped the table. "How about, hot nooky? Maybe, flaming…"

  "She's got it, Christopher," I warned.

  Mom's teeth whipped back into her gums and she swallowed hard. "Jesus, I thought our family was nuts. Too bad they didn't have dildos back then. I bet it would have helped the poor woman. Hmm, all of her victims were girls. Young girls. Look, it says she beat them with whips, stuck pins in them—oh, shit!—she took one girl outside in the winter, kept pouring water over her till she froze then had her servants carry the kid out to the woods for the wolves. All these girls worked for her, for Christ's sake. I bet she had a hard time staffing her castle." Mom grimaced.

  I felt Marcus moving around in my mind.

  Could I not get an ounce of privacy from this immortal?

  Drink from me, Susan, and gain the ability to tune me out.

  I avoided the drinking thing. Yeah, well I have a lot of questions for you about this countess, buddy.

  I am perfectly willing to share my past. You only need to ask… or drink from me.

  Before I could come up with a snappy rebuttal, Mom got my attention. "Look, her family married each other and screwed like rabbits. No wonder she wasn't right," Mom said, pointing to another part of the web page.

  "Breeding within the family was something a lot of the aristocrats did back then, Chick. They thought it strengthened their bloodlines." Christopher grinned at Mom, clearly enjoying her comments.

  "Yeah, well it didn't strengthen my bloodlines. My sister-in-law's kid, Peter, married Stella, his first cousin," Mom said. "Their three kids didn't come out right. Remember, Susan? Kathryn got her seasons all screwed up. She thought winter was summer and summer was winter."

  It was funny as hell watching Kathryn lay on a beach chair in a bathing suit in December with snow on the ground while sipping drinks with umbrellas in them.

  "And Jeffery, her older brother, ate paper. He pulled half the wallpaper down in my living room one year at Christmas before we caught the little shit. He wore diapers until he was nineteen—always had the shits."

  Christopher was laughing again.

  "That's enough, Mother," I scolded. But did she listen? Hell no.

  "I bet your dad's family married each other for years. Who else would have them? No wonder you and your sister are idiots."

  "I'm not the eighty-three-year-old with a dildo in my dresser drawer, Mom," I scoffed. I felt Marcus' amusement.

  Christopher was holding his stomach, rolling with laughter. I tried to ignore all three of them as I read.

  "Look, Erzsebet's a legend, and she actually might have inspired Bram Stoker. He wrote Dracula," I stated, getting them back on course.

  "It says she killed girls in all eleven of her castles, even in Vienna. Is that near Italy? I bet that's where Dorius met her. This woman's really nasty. What'd he see in her? Do you think he made her a vampire?" Mom was really getting into this.

  "She was a sadist, Chick." Christopher sat up and leaned into the screen, his watery eyes searching.

  "You know Mom, it says she was sentenced to imprisonment in Cachtice castle and died there. Since he's been there three times and never got close enough to check it out, I wonder. He said he wanted to find the remains."

  "They not only nicknamed her the 'Bloody Countess' but the 'Countess Dracula,'" Christopher added. Both of them had their faces close to the screen, lapping up all the information.

  "Sounds like vampire to me," Mom said, hitting the down arrow.

&
nbsp; I slapped at her hand. She kept it on the keyboard, one eyebrow reaching for her widow's peak.

  "They married her off at fifteen. It says her husband was Ferencz Nadasady, but he took her name, Bathory," Christopher said, breaking our little standoff.

  "Crap, will you look at what he gave her for a wedding present?—a damn castle in Hungary? A whole frigging castle complete with servants. I got a doublewide trailer. The murdering bitch gets a castle." Mom pounded the down arrow.

  "Hold on, damnit, I'm still reading!" I jerked her hand off the keyboard and tried to catch the words sliding up the page.

  "Well I hope they locked her butt in her stupid castle, and I hope she died in that damn room. A frigging trailer—that's all I got. Maybe she's not immortal after all. And maybe Dorius will find her ugly dried-out old bones." Mom crossed her arms over her chest with a triumphant grin.

  "Dorius is 1500 years old. So he was at least, what, 1000 years old then?" I asked Christopher and he shrugged, eyes locked on the page.

  He had been immortal for 1083 years, Susan. We are both very old, Marcus pushed.

  Dang! I pushed. God, when you have history like this in front of your face, you really get a clear picture of just how old they are. I sat there thinking of all the things both Marcus and Dorius had been through in their long undead lives and my mind was spinning.

  I have a lot I could give you, Susabellaluna, Marcus pushed.

  Everything comes with a price, Fang-Boy. I was wondering what it would have been like to live in a cold, dank castle in a faraway country.

  "Carcasses are cooked. We all ready to leave?" Paul asked from the front door. He walked into the living room with Jake.

  Jake frowned at Mom. "I want to stop at Frisch's Big Boy and get some French fries and have a big hamburger on the way, and I don't want you to suck your teeth because I won't be able to eat."

  "Yeah, and I wish you'd stop stinking up the place." Mom slapped the laptop shut.

  Gibbie flew in the back porch, buzzed into the dining room and landed on the table in front of Christopher. "We ready? Zaire and Resi just pulled up in the boat. Zaire's arguing with Mort. He doesn't want her to tie the boat on his side of the dock. She's spitefully tying it there. The girl needs some serious drugs. I'm thinking Prozac. I don't know how Resi puts up with her. She sure has an attitude problem."

  "Not as bad as the woman Dorius went in search of," Christopher said.

  "What? Did I miss something? I hate missing something," Gibbie squealed.

  Marcus walked into the kitchen. "I'm sure you will hear all about it on the ride to the mall. The three of them have researched Erzsebet on the internet. They've found quite a bit of gossip. While I was not witness to her affair with Dorius, I did live near the Nadasady castle in Italy and was present at the inquest in Hungary. We formed the council at that time to avoid further behavior such as hers."

  "She brought about the Book of Rules?" I asked.

  "Yes, darling, she did," Marcus answered. His hand waved in the direction of the Suburban parked in the front yard as he picked up a cooler packed with blood bags off the counter.

  The sun had just come up and the sound of birds chattering as we opened the front door brought welcome thoughts of a saner world.

  "We're stopping at Frisch's Big Boy, right? There's one right across from the mall in Winter Park." Jake's butt cheeks tightened as he followed Mom out the door.

  Mom said, "No one with fangs is going to sit down in a public restaurant on my shift."

  Jake burped a two foot flame. Thank God we lived on one hundred acres in BFE.

  Mom grabbed her head, ducked, rolled and glared.

  "I'll go in with you, Jake," Paul said through a smile and offered Mom his hand.

  Mom slapped it away.

  Jake held a hiccup and a grin behind his palm.

  * * * *

  "So what did you find on the Erzsebet woman, Mom?" Resi asked from the back of the Suburban.

  "I don't think we should discuss this, do you?" I said.

  "I agree. Maybe we should wait until we get back home." Paul smiled and his eyes sparkled in the rearview mirror.

  Marcus rumbled softly beside me.

  "Oh, just give them the frigging basics." Mom adjusted herself in the front passenger seat.

  I looked at Marcus, hoping he'd put an end to the line of conversation. He just added to it.

  "She was a sadistic woman, convicted of murder and sentenced to live out the rest of her life in a locked room in Castle Cachtice where she was said to perish on the twenty-first of August in the year sixteen-ten," Marcus said.

  Mom turned in the front seat, elbow on the leather compartment between her and Paul.

  Zaire leaned over the back of my seat, in the middle, and glared at Gibbie who was perched on Christopher's shoulder next to me. "She killed a shit-load of women. If anyone's a bitch, she is."

  "You don't have to kill someone to be a bitch." Gibbie's wings vibrated invisible, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  "You wanna see a bitch, bug, keep right on giving me shit," Zaire snapped.

  "Did Dorius make her immortal?" Resi pulled Zaire back in her seat.

  "I don't know," Marcus answered, "but you can ask him as soon as he gets back from the castle."

  "Do you think they have mice at Frisch's?" Jake blurted out.

  "Jesus H. Christ, you are a hemorrhoid on the left side of my asshole." Mom scowled.

  Marcus laughed, clearly amused with Jake's question. "I'm sure they do not have mice, Jake. But if you like, Paul can send Gibbie inside to make sure."

  "I can do that," Gibbie added in a shrill voice.

  Christopher stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it around. "Damnit, someone put the fairy in the glove box, or gag 'im."

  Jake smiled and settled himself in the backseat beside Resi.

  Zaire spat, "I'll shove his ass—"

  Resi slapped Zaire and turned to Jake. "Why don't you try to rest until we get to the mall?"

  Mom took in enough air through her nose to rid the Suburban of half its oxygen as she pushed back into her seat and wrapped her arms across her chest. "No one is going in Frisch's." She sucked obnoxiously at her teeth.

  Jakes eyes popped open and smoke wafted from his ears. "Stop it! I hate that!"

  "Mother, he's been waiting for this all morning. We're going to drop them at Frisch's, so knock it off!" I said.

  "Maybe they'll have a sexy waitress I can sink my teeth into," Christopher said.

  I gave him a shake. "Mom said no vamps."

  "Yeah, you and who else are going to stop me?" Christopher leered at me.

  Paul cleared his throat. "Only another hour before we get there, anyone want to sing?"

  Marcus laughed.

  I slapped the back of Paul's head.

  "Oh boy. The mall! I can't wait." Resi said. "I wanna check out the clothes at 'Rose Leather Works.'"

  ~

  ~~

  Chapter 17

  Blessed Blood, it ain't easy…

  ~~~

  "Jake, we are not going twenty-five miles out of the way so you don't have to look at an AutoZone!" Mom said from the front seat.

  "We have to; I can't eat if I see an AutoZone!"

  "Is the one in Eustis or Apopka or on Lee Road where you saw the mouse?" Resi asked.

  "No, but any AutoZone reminds me of the incident," Jake whined from the back seat where he sat next to Zaire and Resi.

  Zaire snapped, "So? What? We can never drive by an AutoZone?"

  "Paul, do me a favor and hit every AutoZone between here and Winter Park," Mom said," and that's an order."

  "Can we all just shut up for the remainder of the ride?" I turned around and nudged Christopher who was snoring on one side of me, while Marcus sat on my other side giving me very little room on the middle seat.

  Paul whistled Three Blind Mice from the driver's seat.

  Jake shuddered violently, a small flame burst from his lips.

&nb
sp; "Okay, screw the twenty-five extra miles," Zaire snapped. "Head to the Maitland Interchange and get on Hwy 441. I just oiled my hair and it's gonna go up like a friggin' gas pilot light if he keeps spitting flames."

  Gibbie giggled uncontrollably, teetering on the back of my seat and finally falling into my lap. I scooped him up. His fluttering wings tickled my palms and I giggled.

  "What's so important about Frisch's?" Resi asked Jake.

  "Have you ever seen the Frisch's Big Boy?"

  "Yeees," Resi said.

  "Then you've seen the hamburger he's holding."

  "Oookay?" Resi questioned.

  Jake huffed.

  Everyone in the car flinched.

  Jake rolled his eyes. "It's the biggest hamburger in the world and I want to try one."

  "You've gotta be kidding me," Gibbie spit out between laughs.

  Resi stopped laughing and sighed.

  "Jake," I said softly, glaring a warning at the others, "That's not the actual size. The one the statue is holding is just big so people could see it from the road. The hamburgers aren't any bigger than Mac-D's quarter pounder. I've been there."

  Jake squished himself down on the seat, vigorously rubbed his cheeks, eyes open wide.

  "You guys aren't making very good time," JoAnn's annoying voice announced from the dashboard.

  Mom hit the red button and growled at the speaker. "The frigging dragon should have stayed at home. He's screwing up the whole mission."

  "Let's just head to Big Boy and get him a hamburger, Chick," Marcus said.

  Paul began singing Three Blind Mice.

  "I don't want to go anymore," Jake whimpered.

  "See," Mom shouted at the console. She sucked her teeth loudly and then sang along. "Three blind mice. Three blind mice. See how they run."

  Jake shot up, both hands over his mouth."

  Resi hacked up a laugh. Zaire hit her. "Knock it off. He's sitting next to me. It's not your hair that's gonna go up in flames."

  "That's it!" Mom said. "Everyone shut the hell up. Paul cut the frigging whistling! Jake, you shoot a flame of any size, from any orifice and I'm kicking your ass out of this car."