“Come in Katalina,” she said without turning. Kati approached and waited, breathing faster and faster, her sweaty hands beginning to clam.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you. You always fail me.”
“No amount of apologizing can make up for my error, Your Grace.”
“Indeed.”
“But to my defense she was pig-headed, Your Grace,” she twiddled her fingers nervously.
“Who do you think is stronger willed my dear? Her or me?”
“You of course, Your Grace.”
“And who do you fear more, her or me?”
“You, Your Grace.”
“Did you forget this in your dealings with her?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“No, Your Grace she says… no, Your Grace,” she mocked Kati’s tone. Then, without saying anything else she grabbed the cast iron candle holder that was illuminating her desk and whacked it into Kati’s face shattering her cheekbone and dislocating and cracking her lower jaw, splattering blood and molten candle all over the floor. Kati lost her senses and fell to the ground. The Countess wiped the blood on her fine apron, repositioned the candle holder where it previously stood on the desk and relit it before going back to her writing.
Kati woke to find herself strapped to the floor in the dungeon while the Countess was going to work on one of her former students. The Gynaeceum charade had not lasted long, barely a few weeks as autumn moved towards winter. The girl was hoisted up by her arms and the Countess was working on her. She kept a low profile, trying to avoid looking at whatever was happening and trying not to crave the blood.
After she was done torturing the girl, who’d stopped making noises for some time now, the Countess proceeded to cut a line from her throat to her navel, pushed the skin aside and carefully but swiftly removed three of four ribs which were then followed by her barely beating heart. With delicate movements she placed it into a fine glass container which seemed specifically designed to hold a heart in place upright while somebody worked on it. Next to her on the floor was a tall book stand with a small red book with foreign writing in and next to that an equally sized one filled with the Countess’s writing. Kati recognized the small red book as the one given to the Countess in Vienna by the Läuse. "Wake up you useless little shit!” she said while nudging Kati with her foot. “I expect you are restored after your little beauty sleep?” She asked sardonically.
“Yes mistress,” confirmed Kati without showing that she was still in some pain after the beating she’d received earlier. Thankfully because of Margaréta's blood she’d almost healed.
“Then come help me.” Kati stood up and approached the table.
“Do exactly as I say, and be quick about it, time is of the essence here.”
“Yes mistress.” The Countess was wearing thin leather gloves and was cutting with the fine set of silver knives.
“Hold the heart still while I do this.” She uses the hearts like the Priest wanted to do to her boy. Over the years Erzsébet had merged a series of writings and belief systems in order to create a cure for her aging body but she was failing miserably in her haze of madness and desperation.
Kati took hold of the slippery warm heart from the vessels at the top while the Countess tried to pull the outer lining off and empty its contents into another glass container. The sparse liquid that was extracted was sprinkled with a foul smelling powder before the Countess mumbled some unfamiliar words in Latin and Slovak and then proceeded to drink the concoction. She stood silent for a few seconds while the potion made its way down her throat and then opened her eyes as if completely refreshed. She ran to the closest mirror and with her bloodied leather gloves she ran her hands over her skin. Her shift dress was completely saturated in blood as was her loose hair.
“Good, very good!” She kept repeating to herself with that glazed look in her eye. Then she suddenly turned to Kati, “Clean all this up, and then come sleep in my room when you are done, I don’t want you wandering.” Kati looked around at the by now familiar scene that was the dungeon and got to cleaning the carnage like always. Sometime around 3:00 pm she was done and went to Countess’s chambers like she’d been instructed and slept on the ground by the bed utterly exhausted. At dusk the Countess woke still in her blood soaked shift which had now congealed into a solid mess. She stood up immediately and ran to the mirror to examine her skin in the fading light that came in from the amber glass. Without warning she let out a blood curdling scream and knocked off all the jewels and bottles that stood on her dresser before starting to cry with her face buried in her hands terrifying Kati in the process.
“I don’t understand! I did everything right this time! I didn’t cut the pouch, I saved all the liquid, I said the incantation and I used the powder just like the witches instructed! I did everything right!” She paced up and down the room for a good while, talking to herself and trying to understand what had gone wrong. She was mumbling and was clearly beside herself. From the nonsensical mutterings of this woman and by all she’d read in her journals Kati realized that in recent years the Countess had merged a series of items and experiences to a formula, that only made sense in her now unstable mind. She was using the priest’s knives on the heart because she thought they wielded some sort of power and was reading the book from the Americas for technique while sprinkling local herbs given to her by her mindless cohorts. She was constantly wearing pagan talismans and carried many little pouches of hideous herbs and spices that Darvulia said were good for something or other. This woman had clearly lost her way and there was no coming back. Each day that passed where she remained old and dying was another little push towards the cliff of insanity for her already jaded psyche, and each new breath she took was a reminder of the distance that was being put between her and her precious boy.
The Countess ran to her bed and pulled out a hard leather box from under it that Kati had never noticed before. She lifted the lid to reveal a rich velvet piece of fabric that was covering something. She lifted that too and at first Kati couldn’t make out what the box contained but after a few moments it dawned on her. It was a mummified severed head. Erzsébet leaned into the box and whispered something to it, and tears began to flow from her eyes. “Tell me what to do Vyktor please, please! Guide me! There isn’t much time, please?" Realizing that she’d been holding her breath Kati exhaled slowly and walked towards the Countess who was now crying slouched over the box. She knelt down and caressed her hair hoping to stem the flood of potential violence that would come her way after this outburst.
“Don’t be upset, mistress. Whatever it is, we’ll find a solution for it. Please don’t cry.” There was no response from the Countess who was lost in her abyss.
The days continued like this, more girls from the Gynaeceum came in to be tortured and killed for their pericardia and every time the Countess accidentally spared Oriana, Katalina breathed a sigh of relief. One after the other they were made to suffer acts of unnecessary agony, cruelty and indecency before their hearts were extracted for that final act of misguided witchcraft that only Kati was allowed to witness. Every time she tried, she would tweak the ritual just a little and every time she failed she would scream and curse and break down and cry, before, in almost no time at all, she came up with some sort of other solution that was exactly what she’d been missing and which would be the key to her cure.
One dawn, after another manic episode, Erzsébet fell asleep, allowing Kati who was fortunately unshackled to leave the castle carefully and go see the old man. It was a risk but the situation was desperate and she had to speak to him immediately. She was certain that when all the girls were exhausted her turn would come.
He was sitting by his fire as usual and mending some netting. She opened the door carefully at the sound of which he sat up and his left hand instinctively went for the hot poker, the tip of which was always entrenched in the hot embers.
He was astonished that she’d ventured out in the sunlight. They mov
ed to the central table and she told him what had been happening in the last few days and about going into her room and the whipping she got for it. Going to his kitchen cupboard he fetched a bottle and two glasses which he placed on the rickety table. He uncorked the bottle and poured some home brewed liquor into the glass and gave her a bit. It was really strong and it tasted disgusting but she drank it in one gulp.
“She’s getting worse, becoming completely unpredictable. You shouldn’t go back.”
“I missed my chance to escape before she bit me,” she said with a slightly accusatory tone. “And anyway, where would I go? Stay here? She'll find me in ten minutes. It’s already quite risky being here while she’s at the castle, but I had to come tell you about the acceleration in her murder rates, in case anything happens to me."
“Has she discovered your gift?”
“No, not yet.”
“That’s one good thing at least,” he said also taking a big gulp of the powerful brew.
“In recent days, her madness has been growing by the hour and of course her concoctions and alchemical butchery are proving useless which is serving to irritate her even more. She’s entirely consumed by the fear that she’s running out of time to find a cure for her boy because if she dies, there’ll be no one to care for him.”
“That explains why she’s become increasingly reckless,” he said straightening his feathery hair in a gesture that seemed more like he was trying to order his thoughts than his mop. “Get the mule. We must go into town now and speak to Father Barosius, we can’t wait any longer.”
“Oh no Papa, don’t! She hates priests and she might hurt him too. Besides, I can’t make myself known to the authorities. I'll have to tell them I’m changed and then they will come after me too. You should speak to them.”
“All you have to tell them is what you’ve seen while you were serving there, no more.”
“But they know me in town, he’ll soon realize that something’s different about me.”
“There’s no other way child, if we don’t act now both you and the rest of those poor girls will be killed.”
“No Papa, it’s too dangerous.”
“Is the sun up all the way?”
“Yes but…”
“Then we’re safe. If we go now they’ll send for some troops who will be here by nightfall and she won’t even know what hit her…” Before he could finish his sentence the flimsy door to the hut swung open with incredible force revealing the Countess, who was standing at the entrance blocking the light. Kati didn’t have to look to tell that she was angry. With malice in her eyes she strolled towards Kati who grasped the old man’s hand in fear. He remained quiet but stiff as a board. Erzsébet grabbed Kati by the throat and lifted her a little off her feet. She struggled to breathe and scratched at Báthory’s hand but nothing would make her soften her grip.
“I guess what they say is true…the early bird does catch the worm! I’ve only been up and about a few minutes and I’ve already discovered so much!”
The old man froze in his chair. Cold sweat poured out of every pore in his body. The last time this Erzsébet Báthory had come to his house she’d blinded him and she hadn’t been half as mad as she was today. The Countess was still highly focused on Kati, who’d gone bright red in the face and who was slowly losing her senses. “…And to discover that you can read and have a gift too? What a pleasant surprise that is! I thought you were the most useless one of the lot, and I’d wasted my time in making you, but here you are all special and intelligent and all this time you were hiding it from Mommy.” She spat out the last word, and curled up her lips revealing her sizeable fangs.
“I should suck you dry right here, but I won’t give you the grace of an easy death. Oh no my dear, you deserve the full Countess Báthory treatment and I intend to make it last, seeing as you are one of my special little girls." Her eyes were at their greenest. She put her nose in Kati’s hair and inhaled deeply, savoring the smell before releasing her sharply at the sound of a sizzling noise and a blood curdling scream. She turned to find that the old man had struck her with as much force and precision as he could muster with his fire poker and had got her right on the spine. The smell of cooked flesh filled the air. Ignoring the searing pain she swung around, knocked him off his feet and instantly landed on top of him pinning him to the ground with her supernatural strength.
“You think you can stop me, Methuselah? There is no one you can call who can interfere with my plans! I am the law round here and everyone knows it! I own everything and everyone, even the Emperor cannot stop me! I am Queen of these parts and you are all my property, all of you! Do you hear me, you blind bag of bones? I let you live once, old man, but it would seem I made a big mistake! Simply blinding you was not enough, so now you really will pay!” And with that she plunged into his throat emaciating his neck, drinking some of his blood but spilling most. The old man struggled to get her off him but to no avail, he was no match for her Afflicted strength and before long his frail frame was left wasted and lifeless on the cabin floor.
Walking over to a still dazed Kati, who was leaning semiconscious against the wall, the Countess looked down at her and cocked her head giving her a sinister grin through her blood stained lips and teeth. Bending down she popped Kati over her shoulder and took her back to the castle and straight down to the basement where she clasped her in chains.
“This little exertion this morning has taken a lot out of me.” She said panting and sweating, her eyes visibly red from the glare of the sun. “I'll be back this evening as soon as I’ve had my beauty sleep.” As a parting shot she stepped onto Kati’s hand causing her to scream in pain as all the fine bones snapped and broke. Kati lay there writhing in agony. In a few hours she too would be dead just like the old man for whose death she felt utterly responsible. She had led the Countess straight to him and she was beside herself with guilt. She clasped the injured hand in her good one and buried her face in her forearms and began to sob loudly. The wrought iron cuffs fit tightly around her wrists and were shiny and sticky from the blood of the countless other girls they had hosted before her and which she’d so often released after death. The irony of it all didn’t escape her.
Twenty-two
She opened her eyes. They were sore and puffy from the daylight and the crying. It was still daytime, but from what few rays crept in through the cracks and the small windows at the top of the wall she couldn’t be sure of the hour. Her hand was bloated and throbbing, but had improved a little. Had she fed it would've healed in no time, but she hadn’t eaten much in close to four days and was feeling the effects. The blood crusted on the cuffs taunted her and in desperation she began to lick the restrains, at first tentatively and then with more vigor. The blood tasted old and vile but it still worked and she felt her crushed hand begin to slowly heal.
She sat up and tried to assess the situation, the room smelled of death and decay and though frequently cleaned after each torture spree it was still so laden with the force and emotion of what went on in there. Physical clues also remained: missed clumps of hair in a corner somewhere, a fingernail clawed out in desperation clung to the wall, a piece of blood soaked fabric underneath a fresh bale of hay and so on. If these nefarious walls could talk the tales that they would tell would haunt a person’s dreams forever. She sensed the ghosts of hundreds of girls who would never be named or discovered or even remembered, fallen in the name of one woman’s insanity and shortly she too would join their ranks to end up in a cold grave for all eternity.
A rustling sound interrupted Kati’s reflections. To her surprise she realized that another girl lay unconscious in a cage in the corner. She hadn’t sensed her and couldn’t discern an aura from where she was, or any breathing. She shifted positions trying to get a better look but her restrictions left little room for movement. This place had slowly been customized from a simple storage area to a dedicated torture chamber with chains and cages evenly dispersed throughout the space. All the times she ha
d released the Countess’s hapless victims from here she had tried so hard not to think what it must have been like for them to die in this dreadful fashion. Her Affliction told her to hunt and to kill to feed, but murder on this scale was unnecessary and it revealed a real darkness within the Countess, perhaps bred over the centuries of hardship, the death of her husband, her aging intertwined with the potential loss of her son or even the pressure from the Crown... or maybe it was pure unexplained malice.
Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) Page 26