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

by Romina Nicolaides

  “Theodora. You really think they would do that?”

  “Would you put it past them? Can’t you see how much money we make for them? It stands to logic that if they can’t catch more of our kind then someone would make more and sell us to them.” I felt goose pimples grow on my arms by the yet more shocking information about the people who claimed to fight the minions of the Devil. How were they fighting him if they encouraged this slave trade?

  “I’m certain that if asked they would have a perfectly dogmatic explanation.” She shook her head in agreement, shifting her ample weight to make herself more comfortable and putting a pillow in the small of her back.

  Twelve

  Lying on the ground, her face deep in the book, Katalina hadn’t seen the Countess hovering above her.

  “You can’t get help to save your life anymore.” The rage was making her voice tremble.

  Katalina looked up to see her enraged mistress standing inches away from her in what looked like the robes the Order in her journals wore. When did she get back? How did I not hear the carriage?

  “You lied to me? I can’t stand liars, Katalina, I can’t abide them for a second and I can’t allow them to live.”

  The robe had draped off her shoulder and Katalina could see the odd shaped tattoo she’d first seen on her arrival here, but it had moved, instead of her shoulder blade it was now on the front just under her clavicle.

  She grabbed her by the ear and twisted it so that the girl had no choice but to follow the pull for fear it might get ripped right off, she was led into a man-shaped metal device against the back wall of the room and shackled in by her wrists and ankles. The device, which consisted of two pieces like a clam shell, was old and rusty. Kati couldn’t move. Grabbing at a handle in the shape of a ship’s steering wheel at the device’s sternum the Countess began to turn it to the left with all her might and with each turn Kati felt more trapped as pressure built on her wrists and ankles. She struggled to move but there was nowhere to go, the device refused to give and the more she fought it the worse it felt. Tears filled her eyes, and she started to scream, louder and louder as the pressure got worse but then her voice gave out. She went to scream again but nothing came out but silence as she drowned in her terror…

  The bang to the back of the head woke Kati up. She was seated on the ground in the binding room leaning against the wall, which was what she had hit against. The journal she’d been reading had been catapulted across the room from the violent jerk her body made when she came out of the dream. Her eyes were wet from crying and she was covered in sweat. Her throat was coarse from screaming. Her heart felt like it would jump out of her chest.

  It was just a dream, it was just a dream, she thought, trying to regulate her breathing.

  She stood up, retrieved the ejected journal and went to get a drink and clear her head for a minute. Her reading had started to get to her. She decided she would bind the journals at night and selectively read in the day picking the most important bits, trying to keep calm despite the shocking information she was constantly unearthing. She knew this might be her only chance to discover everything she could about the Countess and pass it to the old man and the authorities before she returned from her break in Vienna so she couldn’t stop now.

  Over the course of time I accepted that I had to remain in the Breedery for however long they wanted me to. After all, it was cleaner and quieter than the rest of the Keep and all I did was rest. Feeding on the blood of these young boys was a luxury I’d never even dreamed of and gradually I felt myself become fatter and stronger. I only accepted I was pregnant when my belly began to grow and I felt my baby move inside me. Here I was, after a couple of centuries of life and I was going to be a mother. The thought filled me with unimaginable joy as well as sadness that my child would be born in this place and would never know what it is like outside in the fresh air, the moonlight, or even at sunrise when just before the forbidding glare comes that sweet mellow hint of light in the sky with all the colors that only God knows how to order so beautifully. In all my naive innocence I had visions of Vyktor and I raising our child as a family unit, unconventional as we might be.

  My time in the Breedery was to come to an end approximately eighteen months after I had gone in there. One night, a few hours before dawn, I felt a sharp pain at the base of my now enormous belly and sat up to the realization that I was bleeding profusely. I screamed in pain and the guard approached with little urgency.

  “Baby time,” he said with scorn in his voice and a raised eyebrow, the moonlight from the open portholes illuminating the top part of his face. He had seen it all before. My neighbor slept on with her back to me or at least pretended to as I writhed in agony. Francesca had given birth some months previously and I didn’t know where they’d taken her. I presumed she would be back soon with a new pregnancy. In no time at all the head nurse appeared out of nowhere with a large torch which she placed at my feet and a large bundle of linens. She was still half asleep and wiping the crusts from her eyes.

  “You sure know how to pick your time, you girls!” She said with that sickly sweet jolliness again. Approaching my head she supported the back of my neck and made me swallow some lukewarm concoction that tasted strongly of bitter lavender and sage and soon the pain subsided a little, while my thoughts were pushed to the back of this cloudy sensation. Images started moving more slowly and sounds became more distant. She then proceeded to command me to push and assisted me by doing the same on my stomach. After several times of being told to push I vaguely remember her telling me that if I were not done soon she would cut me open, after which I pushed as much as my exhausted body would allow and felt a mass leave me. My senses were in complete haze at this point. She remained hidden behind my legs for a time and afterwards I saw her standing at the foot of the bed smiling down at a bundle of white cloth swaying from side to side. After this I lost consciousness.

  I awoke in the morning in a different room. There was one other girl there but she was gagged and would simply stare at the ceiling, her eyes distant. My head had cleared for the most part but I felt tired and heavy, probably the after effects of the potion they had given me. I touched my stomach to find that it had gone and gazing under the sheet I saw that I was dressed in the usual long white shirt but my thighs under it were covered in dried blood. My hair was matted with old sweat. I tried to get out of the bed but both my right arm and leg were chained to the wall leaving me little mobility.

  “Mother!” I called with all my strength until the little nun came into the room.

  “Yes dear?”

  “Why am I so restricted?”

  “It’s for your wellbeing my dear, so that you don’t fall out and hurt yourself. It’s only until the medicine wears off.”

  “It’s worn off,” I lied.

  “Don’t worry dear, you’ll just be here a few more days and then you’ll go back to your old lodgings. The discomfort won’t last long.”

  “You mean back in the Keep? What about my baby? Where’s my baby?”

  “I regret to inform you that your baby didn’t survive, dear.” I felt a sharp punch in my stomach at that casual announcement, followed by nausea, followed by denial.

  “No, that’s a lie.”

  “I’m afraid not.” Her previous kindness had begun melting away.

  “And when were you going to tell me this?”

  “We were only going to worry you if you asked, dear. Some girls don’t remember their experience due to the shock.”

  “What on earth are you talking about, you insane bitch?” I lunged at her but my chains left little room for movement. “Not remember my experience? I've been confined to this bed for almost two years and I wouldn’t remember my experience? You’re all insane! Stop treating us like dogs, we deserve better than this!” My eyes filled with tears and I was spitting out the words without thinking. “Bring me my baby, bring me my baby!” I repeated again and again in hysterics. Suddenly another one of their members had
made my fantasy hate list. If only I could've reached her throat… “You keep us in here for decades and decades and treat us worse than dirt, you’re disgusting, sad excuses for human beings and you can be certain that if I am ever within reach of your throat your blood is all mine, every last drop of it!” I felt as if my eyes would pop out of my head in rage. Calm as anything she approached my bunk and slapped me across the face with more strength than I imagined a person of her stature could muster.

  “I’ll attribute this little outburst of yours to the disruption of your humors and the fact that your foetus didn’t survive, and you'd better consider yourself lucky that I won’t report this scene to the Father Superior or you’d be very sorry indeed. You’ll be returned to normal duties in the coming days, and you’d better keep your legs shut if you don’t want to see me again, because if you do, I promise your stay here will not be as pleasant the second time around.” She enunciated the word “pleasant” emphatically, without lifting her gaze from mine, before turning around and leaving the room.

  I fell back into my pillow and cried for what seemed like hours until I fell asleep. I felt numb both emotionally and physically.

  Two days later, after one last feeding on the farm boy, a guard came to get me. I was returned to the main part of the Keep and put straight to work as if nothing had ever happened. My new job was in the laundry. Even though I’d been in the Keep for two centuries I’d never worked here before. All slaves were kept on a rotational duty system to avoid working with each other for too long even though no talking was permitted during work. The laundry was set up in the deepest part of the cave system and took a long downwards climb to get to. I was greeted by the sight of large boiling cauldrons which slaves were stirring with vigor and from which emanated a pungent acidic odor. There were also several small streams that came from deep within the cave wall and disappeared through an opening on the opposite end. All along the sides of the streams slaves were hunched over, scrubbing red robes against the stones and I was instructed to do the same. The weeks that followed were quick and hazy. I felt no motivation to think or feel and I breathed only because it was automatic.

  At night my cage felt like a coffin. It had housed me for so long and I hated every square inch of it. The memories it invoked were too intense. Shaq’ al, the rapist, the first time I’d made love with Vyktor: Most of the significant events of my life had taken place in this tiny nook on the cave wall and when I died they would simply replace me with some other unfortunate tenant, just like all the ones who had come before me and whose marks the wall silently bore. They were the only testaments to some other souls having existed in this squalid dent in the stone. Where was God in all of this? Not their small, vindictive and plastic God but the real God, my God. I would not be ruled by the same God as they, my God was greater and stronger. She was why we have been created to be better than humans. If theirs was the God of the day then mine would be the Goddess of the Night and She would give me the strength to put up with the small minds and earthly desires of these acrid men who lived solely for wealth and material goods. Our God had given us the ability to walk through the centuries, to mature and grow far more than these ‘demon’ fearing misanthropes ever would. My God had proven her existence and her love by making me better than they were; what had their God done? My God had taught me patience and that pain is an inextricable part of life. Maybe she wanted me to accept my fate, maybe if I let go I could join her in the darkness and be free…

  One morning as I was gazing into the soapy mess of clothes I was holding I slipped and fell into the water. Surprisingly the stream was deeper than it appeared and it dragged me away with its force under the stone wall and down along its length. I struggled to breathe and was slowly suffocating for what seemed like several minutes of being dragged by the strength of the current in a constricted stone channel when I came to an opening and an abrupt stop. The water continued to flow but the ceiling was higher than the water allowing me to come up for air and catch my breath. As I soaked in the flowing water I realized that even though the stream went on there was some kind of barrier blocking the exit. I dove down to find that it was a cast iron grate intended to stop anyone swimming through the hole. The grate appeared to be centuries old and though sturdy, time had taken its toll on it. I pulled at it trying to see if it would come off but I was running out of air so I stopped investigating and went up.

  When I surfaced two guards were standing on the edge and I was grabbed and pulled out of the water and dumped on the bank. They waited a few minutes so that I could catch my breath and then made me walk back to my post. Surprisingly I was not disciplined for my little adventure as the particular spot where I had been washing the clothes was known for being deceptive and slaves falling in was a more frequent event than they'd anticipated.

  The following morning a guard came to get me. I’d not been assigned a new Keeper yet and thus I hadn’t fed in several days. He escorted me to the Feeding Hall and delivered me to the hands of another mindless nun who took me to her Sister to feed off but I refused to eat. She smacked me in the face but I would not comply. She produced a sharp knife from her belt and cut the kneeling nun’s neck so I would be tempted by the blood. Its smell was unbelievably tempting but my desire to die was stronger that my need to eat. She grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the hall where she handed me back to the guard who proceeded to punch and kick me. It was time I left this place and if dead was the only way, so be it.

  When I woke up I was on the floor of my cage. There was dried blood on the outside of my mouth but I still felt overwhelmingly hungry so I guessed they must have tried to force feed me and failed. I soaked a rag in some water and tried to wipe it away. My reflection in the water revealed someone I didn’t know. This woman was tired and thin and carcass-like. I was lost in my thoughts when I heard footsteps walking on the gravel and the smell told me that it was Vyktor! As soon as I saw him I was flooded with emotions of love and tenderness and realized how much I’d missed him. He came into my cage, knelt on the ground beside me and we embraced for a long time and then we began sobbing.

  “I’m so sorry Theodora. I’m so sorry I let them take you. And I’m sorry for everything they’ve done to you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault Vyktor.” I had missed his familiar face so much over the last two years and it felt so good to be in his arms again. He stood there for a long while just looking at me, with more love than I’d ever seen in his eyes. He was holding my face with his hard, callused hands and they were the only hands I wanted touching me. “They made me get you pregnant,” he said with angst in his voice and looking deep into my eyes, afraid of my reaction. Somehow the revelation did not astound me on their part, but I felt a fluster in my chest at his confession. When I said nothing he continued. “I loved you though, they had nothing to do with that. I love you still and I meant what I said to you about being free one day, just be patient a little longer," that part he whispered into my ear in case someone was eavesdropping as they tended to do.

  Against my better efforts, my eyes filled with tears and they streamed uninterrupted down my face.

  “Love cannot be faked, Vyktor. It is one of the few things they can’t control in this place. Our love was so strong that it created a baby, despite our cursed bodies!” Realizing he didn’t know, I told him what had happened to our baby and with that my stream of tears turned into a flood. Vyktor stood there holding me with his nose in my hair and together we sobbed, mourning what was never going to be.

  Pulling himself away with difficulty he said, “I can’t stay long or else they’ll come get me but please drink this blood and stay alive, Theodora. I promise you this is not the end. I don’t know when we’ll see each other next but we just have to separate for the time being.” He pressed a small leather satchel of blood in my hand.

  “Promise me you won’t give up.”

  Reluctantly I agreed. After that Vyktor and I rarely saw each other. I was given a new Keeper, but he was o
ld, mute and with only one functional eye. If I had to guess I would say losing his tongue and eye had been some form of punishment and he was now barely a shell of his former self. I too felt the full burden of this place and went about my duties in the laundry room trying to keep the thoughts out of my head. The pain of losing both my baby and Vyktor again was unbearable. We had agreed to stay away from each other both in defiance to the Order and out of realization that loving someone in here only made us weaker. Giving the priests an insight into our softer sides was something we’d all learned to instinctively avoid and thus no bonds were ever created. Knowing full well that we'd initially been manipulated into mating we gave them no more cause to think that what we had together had been anything more than physical.