House of Bathory (7 page)

Chapter 12

C
ARBONDALE,
C
OLORADO
D
ECEMBER 6, 2010

B
efore she left, Betsy had spoken with her neighbor at Marta’s Market—a Mexican food and clothing store—who had eagerly promised to take care of Ringo anytime Betsy had to be away from home.

“This is just a quick trip,” Betsy promised. “A few days in New York.”

“
No hay problema
,” said Marta, and her two teenage boys had nodded their heads, smiling from their work stacking crates of fresh vegetables. A waft of fresh roasted chiles came in from the back alley, green chiles blistering in a metal drum over a propane flame.

“We take Ringo for walks, give food, water. Doctora no worry,” said Luis, the eldest. He put his bear-like arm around Betsy.

Luis was the biggest—but gentlest—young man Betsy had ever known. The Latina kids in the neighborhood called him “Arbolon” or “Big Tree.”

Then Marta shooed him away and gave Betsy a kiss on the cheek and a generous
abrazo
herself. She smelled of sweet corn masa from making tamales.

“Luis and Carlos, they take good care of your doggy.”

Betsy left them the key to the house, a bag of dogfood, Ringo’s leash, and the number of the vet only a half block away.

And her cell phone number, just in case.

Several times a day and once a night, Carlos or Luis walked to the town park with Ringo on a leash, occasionally letting him run loose when they knew a police officer wasn’t around to ticket.

One evening, just after sunset, a girl with jet-black hair and a black wool coat and boots stopped Luis on the sidewalk.

“Where did you get that dog?” she asked. “He’s not yours.”

“It’s Doctora Betsy’s,” said Luis, eyeing her up and down. “Hey, where is the funeral?”

“What?”

“Where is the funeral, girl? You all dressed in black.”

“Funny,” Daisy said.

Luis shrugged, his heavy shoulders lifting and falling with a seismic shift.

“You know Doc Betsy?” he asked.

“Yes, I am a…friend. I was just going to visit her.”

He eyed her silently. Friend, he thought. No, she must be one of the Doctora’s
locos
. No matter. Underneath all that black-and-white makeup, the girl was
bastante guapa
. Even with the wild
colmillo
, a crazy tooth like a
lobo
.

“Good. La Doctora’s friends are my friends,” he said, winking. “Come have a beer with me,
amiga
. Doc is out of town for a couple of days.”

Luis noticed the creases in her brow, plastered in white makeup. “You and me and a Tecate,
bruja
.”

“I can’t. I’m—underage.”

“Yeah? Cool, me too. Come on, funeral girl. Cheer up with some
cerveza
.”

“I can’t, really. Hey, just let me pet the dog, OK?”

“Sure. Sure. Girls always go for the pups.”

Ringo pushed close to Daisy, licking her bare hand as she scratched his ears. Luis watched as Ringo twisted his body, wagging his tail frantically at the girl.

“He likes you,” said Luis.

“Yeah. I like him, too.”

“Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got to feed him.”

Daisy straightened up from petting the dog. “You have a key to the office, I mean, her house?”

“Yeah, man. She trusts me with the dog, the house. Everything,” he said, puffing out his chest.

Daisy hesitated for just a moment, then, “Sure, yeah why not?”

They walked back along Main Street just as the streetlights flickered on. A gust of cold wind from the mountains barreled down the road, biting at their skin. Daisy put on a pair of black wool gloves.

“Whew! This is when I wish I was back in Veracruz, man. Drinking a
cerveza
, eating ceviche. Watching the girls in their bikinis. Everyone sweating, drinking, having a good time. Mariachis—”

Luis dug a house key out of his front pocket as they started up the walk. But as they approached the house, Ringo gave a low growl. Luis grabbed his muzzle, silencing him.

Daisy saw movement in the office window, beyond the aspen trees. She put a hand on Luis’s arm. “Someone’s in there!”

Luis’s body turned stone hard. He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and snapped it open.

“You wait here and hold the dog.”

“The hell I will. I’m coming.”

They crept closer to the window.

A man in black stood hunched over Betsy’s desk.

“What’s he doing?” said Luis.

Daisy squinted in the darkness.

“He’s going through her papers,” said Daisy.

Ringo growled again. Luis tried to hold his muzzle, but the dog tore away and began to bark frantically. He leapt at the window, snarling.

Luis raced to the door, struggling with the key in the lock, leaving Daisy with the dog, which lunged at the glass, still barking.

The intruder looked up at the snarling dog. His eyes were the palest blue, the shade of a washed-out sky. His skin was ashen, with a bluish cast—the color of dead flesh.

He looked straight into Daisy’s eyes, as if he could see her perfectly in the darkness. And then he smiled.

She screamed so loud all Main Street heard her.

Chapter 13

D
AISY
H
ART
’
S
J
OURNAL
A
SPEN,
C
OLORADO
D
ECEMBER 6, 2010

A
fter I saw the burglar, I was so freaked out all I wanted to do was talk to Betsy.

But she isn’t here. When I need her most. When she needs me the most, damn it! I got an eerie sense. Someone is out to hurt her bad.

That dude rifling through her drawers had looned-out blue eyes, the color of glacial lakes. A sinister blue. He was looking for something—I bet it wasn’t money.

I’m doing some research, trying to get a fix on Dr. Betsy, where she is taking me with all this journaling. I’ve been Googling Jung. He is wicked intense—like he was surfing the darkness when they were just inventing cars and stuff.

But I totally get it. I’m thinking of starting a blog, especially for Goths. Dreams, especially.

Ever since I started with Betsy, my dreams have become more…disturbing. I used to remember just bits of a night’s dream, weird fragments—a checkered tile floor or stones in the battlement of a castle. Red shoes.

Now the dreams are intense. The colors scream, and every detail sizzles.

There is one dream I will not share with anybody.

I dream of blood. Vats of blood. Human blood. A woman made of white marble slides into a shiny brass tub with wide bands of copper. A tub of blood.

Her body submerges shoulder deep and she sighs with satisfaction. Ahhh! she says. Ahhhhh!

Like she was in a freaking bubble bath.

She cups her hands and splashes her stony face, the red liquid clotting in her cuticles, coloring her fingertips.

It is so freaking Goth, but it totally creeps me out. I wake up bolt upright in bed, screaming my head off.

My mother runs in, shouting, “Wake up, darling, wake up!”

But I can’t forget the last image in the dream: the rock woman smiling, slowly gliding down into the bath until she submerges completely, disappearing into the blood.

Chapter 14

S
OMEWHERE IN
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 7, 2010

G
race felt a cold draft from an open door and heard the hollow echo of footsteps. Blinded by the hood, she focused her other senses and her wits. The echoing footsteps. The cold draft, despite the warm fire she could feel and hear crackling somewhere nearby. She must be in a large building—too cavernous to heat effectively. There was a smell, musty and rich—and cold. Beeswax, cedar, the tangy odor of ancient carpets and mildewing tapestries, damp from the humidity of constant rains. The scents of a castle.

“Are you ready to talk now, Dr. Path?” asked a man in fluent, if accented, English. Someone drew off the hood, making her gray hair stand on end.

She looked around the room. Three emaciated women stood, staring at her, their eyes sunk deep into their sockets. They looked pathetically unhealthy—starving and pallid.

She blinked, trying to focus her eyes. The women were wearing white face paint. There was a hunger in their eyes—starving beasts watching something to feast upon.

She turned to the speaker—and recoiled in surprise. It was the man who had bought her champagne for no apparent reason in Piestany an hour before she was kidnapped. The stranger, a tall man with white hair, had skin as pale as a corpse, except for his purplish lips.

“Why am I here? What do you want from me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“I only want to meet your daughter,” said the man, folding his hands in front of him. “I believe she has something that rightfully belongs to me.”

“Who are you?”

“You may address me as Count.”

Grace blinked her eyes, trying to focus. The man was a blur of white skin and sensuous lips.

“Would you like your spectacles?” he asked.

Spectacles, she thought, not glasses. His accent is possibly Hungarian. He must have been schooled in England, or had an English tutor as a child.

“Yes. Please,” she forced herself to say.

One of the stick-thin women clicked open Grace’s leather briefcase. She took a pair of glasses from a case, handing them to the historian.

The woman lingered there, breathing deeply. Grace could hear an audible sniff, as if the woman was smelling her.

“Not those,” snapped Grace. “In my purse,” she said. “The ones you have there are just for reading.”

The woman looked at the Count. He gave a curt nod. From the shadows, a fuchsia-haired woman pulled out Grace’s purse.

“Yes, the ones in the beaded case.”

Grace held still while the skeletal hands adjusted them on her face. As the woman drew away, Grace looked at her arms. Purple and yellow bruises, withered skin.

“Where am I?” she asked. She glanced about, taking in her surroundings. The fireplace was fifteenth-century granite with a marble mantel, smooth from centuries of wear. A muted fresco of Roman emperors and Habsburg rulers was recessed in the coffered ceiling above her head. A Venetian artist, she decided. Fifteen, sixteenth century at the latest.

“You are in my home. In Slovakia. Welcome, Dr. Path.”

“Welcome? How dare you! You kidnapped me!”

“Kidnap? That seems such a hostile term. I have invited you to sojourn in my castle.”

“Why? What do you want with me? I am a historian, what could I—?”

“Again, I ask only what we can do to persuade your daughter to come and pay me a visit.”

Grace pretended she didn’t hear. “Why are you holding me prisoner?”

The Count arched his brow.

“Because you might be useful to me. Your husband was not, I am afraid.”

Useful. The word rang in Grace’s ears. A throbbing sound—her heart?—pounded, deafening her.

“My husband died in a car accident ten years ago!”

“Yes. We thought that might bring your daughter here again. Unfortunate death, but necessary.”

Grace’s mouth went dry. She made a clicking sound when she tried to talk. She swallowed hard.

“What do you mean, again?”

“Ah, you have forgotten. Years ago, when she was a child of—what, five or six?—you brought her in tow to a research congress in Bratislava. It was a congress on the reign of Matthias II.”

Grace’s memory raced. There had been so many researchers and experts there. Hundreds of people. There had been a moment of panic when she couldn’t find Betsy—the little girl had disappeared.

Then she remembered, the moment from decades ago suddenly perfectly clear in her mind. The tall, elegant man with a silver-topped cane who held her daughter on his knee, gazing into her eyes
. Who is that man?
she had thought. As she rushed forward to reclaim her daughter, a tinkling voice drifted through the air. “Ah, Count Bathory. Is it not enough you have captured all the women’s hearts in Czechoslovakia and Hungary? Must you cast your spell on American hearts so young and tender?”

“Count Bathory,” Grace whispered now as she looked at the man who held her prisoner. “I remember—you had my daughter—”

“Ah, good. So you do remember me. I was quite offended when your husband pretended he could not. Especially after all our—time—together.”

A stab of pain struck her chest and she closed her eyes.

“I have heard you are researching my illustrious ancestor, Countess Bathory. You realize that we are approaching a very special anniversary in the next few days?”

Grace stared at her captor.

“Of course you know—”

“What do you want with my daughter?” she interrupted.

“That is my own personal business,” he said. “But let’s just say she might possess something I need.”

A shadow crossed his face. The light in his eyes turned flat.

Then he forced a smile, drawing back the vivid lips, exposing long white teeth.

Chapter 15

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 7, 1610

Z
uzana spied on the new horsemaster from the arrow slits of the keep. She had known him as a youth from Sarvar Castle in the flatlands of Lower Hungary, but it had been thirteen long years since she had seen his boyish face.

He had grown—in physique and in confidence. Her first recollection of Janos had been as a silent boy sipping beer in the corner as their fathers exchanged stories, clapping each other on the back.

But that was before he became her best—and most loyal—childhood friend. The boy who had taught her to ride.

Now she watched him speak to the head guard, self-assured in his stance, despite his beardless face.

Janos’s father, Anastatius Szilvasi—horsemaster to Count Nadasdy—was a close friend of her father, Ales Bende. Ales was the castle smithy and his skill in shoeing Count Nadasdy’s vast stable of horses was appreciated most by the horsemaster himself. Szilvasi and Zuzana’s father had ridden many campaigns together against the Ottomans. Bende ensured that the horses were expertly shod, keeping Nadasdy and his cavalry well-mounted.

The horsemaster was known to dip a ladle into their ale barrel on occasion, breaking coarse bread with the family. Zuzana’s brother Ladislav had worked in the stables during his short life and had been a favorite stable hand.

“Your brother had a way with horses,” said the elder Szilvasi. He chucked little Zuzana under the chin, ignoring her pocked skin and deep scars. He lifted her up on his knee, jogging it under her as if she were on a pony ride. She squealed with delight. She loved nothing more than horses.

“I think my own son, Janos, has the gift as well, but time will tell.”

Horsemaster Szilvasi would bring Janos in tow, a small boy who remained quiet and serious, listening as the two men, blacksmith and horsemaster, exchanged news about horse breeding, the encroaching Ottomans, Habsburg politics, and the Bathory-Nadasdy involvement in the Austrian-Ottoman War.

Zuzana, only five years old at the time, stared across the room at the boy. He ignored her for she was only a baby, a baby with a scarred face.

“Did you fall into a fire pit?” he asked her one day.

“No,” she said, bewildered. “What fire?”

The boy reached out his left hand. For the first time, she saw the long white scar on the edge of his hand.

He stroked the rim of a deep pock on her face, solemnly tracing the scar. Zuzana snatched at his wrist, flinging his hand away from her face.

Zuzana touched her skin with her baby fingertips, ducking her chin down like a scalded swan. “Mama says it was the pox. The angels saved me.”

“Angels? No, you must have had the wink of a witch to save you from death. You are born lucky.”

Janos Szilvasi was the only soul to ever call her lucky.

The next morning, Zuzana woke with a terrible cold. Her throat burned when she swallowed, her nose ran constantly, soaking her linen rag.

How can I attend the Countess in this condition?

Zuzana powdered her nose, to conceal the red swelling and chafed skin. She stuffed the linen rag in her apron, trying hard not to sniffle.

The Countess settled into her high-back chair for her morning toilette. She looked up at her attendant in mirror.

Zuzana sneezed convulsively, her hands flying to cover her face.

“What? Zuzana, you are ill! How dare you approach me in this condition!”

“I am sorry, Countess.”

“I will not have you attend me with your sniffling nose and rheumy eyes,” said the Countess, her finger jabbing toward the door. “Out, immediately! Work in the kitchen toting water, fetching wood for the fire. Whatever Brona the cook orders you to do.”

“Yes, Countess.”

“Only return when you are well again. Not a moment before.”

“But who shall attend to your toilette?”

The Countess hesitated. She dragged her fingertips across her complexion, inspecting her skin in the mirror.

“Send in Vida. She may attend me until you are healthy once more.”

Zuzana ran to fetch Vida from the cold corridor, where she still lay on her palette, straw woven into her long black hair.

“Wake at once! Comb your hair—you are expected in the vanity to perform the Countess’s toilette this morning.”

Zuzana saw the horror cross the girl’s face as she scrambled to her feet.

“Me! Attend the Countess’s skin? But she commanded me never to accompany her again—”

“I have all the unguents and powders laid out. I can teach you. First you clean her skin with ambergris oil, using the white lamb’s wool—”

“Zuzana! I have heard how she attacks those who do not please her. She bloodied the face of the girl who tugged at a tangle in her hair.”

“You must not tug. You must compliment her ceaselessly, entertain her by indulging her before her looking glass. After the ambergris oil—do use it sparingly, it is dear—apply the special clay I have prepared in the crimson glass jar. It whitens her complexion. Leave it to work its wonders for a quarter of an hour. Then remove it with rosemary water. That is in the blue flask. Next…”

Vida composed herself at the door, her heart thumping in her throat.

“Countess. I have the pleasure to—”

“What has taken you so much time! The fire in the grate has gone out. I am chilled and will most likely take ill, like the wretched pox-faced girl who left me here.”

“Madame, I came as soon as I understood the ways of Zuzana’s toilette methods,” said Vida, turning white. She hurried to the grate, feeding the faint embers with dried twigs.

“I will have the fire ablaze in no time,” she said, coaxing flames with her breath.

“Bring me the ermine furs, girl!” said the Countess, shivering.

Vida glanced at the embers, still dull and stubborn. The little twigs only smoked. The Countess coughed, waving the smoke from her face.

“You are really quite useless. My furs, at once—”

“Yes, Countess.”

Vida opened the cedar chest, pulling out the sleek fur cloak. She draped it over the Countess’s shoulders.

The Countess saw Vida’s soft white hands in the mirror as the girl adjusted the cloak. Vida’s hands grazed the Countess’s.

Small, pale hands, supple with youth. As white a porcelain. As perfect as a doll’s.

The Countess looked down at her own hands, which, unlike her face, showed the march of time. Thick ropey veins meandered across the backs, punctuated by the white boney knuckles, wrinkled with age.

She snatched her hands away, hiding them under the ermine cloak.

“Clumsy girl! How dare you touch me with your peasant hands.”

“I am sorry—”

“Fetch me a hot mulled wine, boiled and steaming. At once!”

“Yes, Countess.”

Countess Bathory searched out the girl’s face in the mirror.

Vida’s skin was flawless and moist, like so many of the Slovak maidens. Her cheeks were flushed from her efforts at the fire. Her young bosom heaved, like an injured bird the Countess had once held in her hand as a little girl. The small bird flew against the leaded glass of the castle in Ecsed, her childhood home.

She had gathered the bird up in her hands, examining it. The dazed bird opened his beak, gasping for air. After a few moments it had regained its wits, breathing hard with fright. She squeezed it, smiling as she felt the tiny heart palpate under her fingers.

The Countess’s eyes turned cold, their amber color frightening the handmaiden.

She had squeezed it until the tiny heart stopped.

“Did I not urge you to stir the fire to flame? Did I not tell you I was chilled to the bone? What is the matter with you, stupid, stupid girl?” she hissed. “You shall be punished. I shall tell Brona the cook to withhold your food. You look too fat and lazy to me.”

“Yes, Countess. I shall make the flame blaze and call for hot
mendovino
to chase away the chill.”

The girl knelt at the fire, blowing with all her might. The twigs caught flame. She fed it small branches, one by one. Then she ran to the door.

She caught Zuzana in the hall.

“She detests me!” cried Vida. “She will tell Cook to starve me.”

“I heard what transpired,” said Zuzana, wiping at her nose with her soggy handkerchief. “I had my ear pressed to the door the whole time.”

“Then fetch the
mendovino
, hurry!” said Vida. “I must return before the fire burns out.”

“Ambergris oil first,” called Zuzana over her shoulder as she ran down the corridor. “Mind whatever you do, and do not drip anything on her ermine cape or you will be done for!”