House of Bathory (22 page)

Chapter 63

B
RATISLAVA,
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 25, 2010

D
aisy woke late in the afternoon. She looked around the simple room, eyes sticky with fatigue. Sleet streaked the windowpanes, blurring the view across the tiny street.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” she whispered. “Some Christmas!”

She struggled to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. Her naked face looked back at her, vulnerable and childlike. It had been a couple of years since she had gone without her daily white makeup.

She fumbled through her bag and brought out the white foundation. With savage sweeps of her fingertips, she covered the naked skin.

When she came downstairs, the receptionist looked startled. Then she smiled.

“You are Goth,” she said, nodding her head. “Many Goths in Bratislava.”

“Really?”

“Many, many. You see them. I can tell you names of bars that have Goth scene. You like?”

“Sure. I can’t speak Slovak, though.”

“Young people learn English in Bratislava. English to survive,” she said, opening a map of the city. “OK. So. Are you lesbian?”

“What?”

The purple-haired woman shrugged. “I want to send you to the right bar. Straight or lesbian?”

“Straight,” said Daisy in a loud voice, looking over her shoulder. “Like really straight.”

“OK, OK,” said the receptionist. “This is the one.” Then a cloud of doubt crossed her face. “You must be very careful, though. Bars are safe, but do not leave with strangers.”

Daisy sensed the woman’s sudden anxiety.

“Why?”

“There was murder. Goth girl, like you. Last week.”

Her cell phone rang, the ring tone “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors.

Daisy frowned at the number on the screen.

She pressed
ANSWER
. “What do you want, Morgan?”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Bratislava,” she said, looking up at the pastel plastered ceiling of her hotel room. “Pretty cool. They like Goths here.”

“Do you know Mom has called the FBI, Missing Persons, and Oprah?”

“Oprah?”

“She thought she might do a feature on runaway Goths. Maybe get some international attention. You know Mom.”

“That’s fucking freaky. I’m fine. And I told her where I was going.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Following a hunch.”

“You followed your shrink, right? Mom says she’s there, too.”

“So what?”

“So that’s fucking weird. Patients don’t follow their shrinks to strange foreign countries.”

“Yeah, and you are really an authority on normal behavior. Daughters don’t usually—”

“Don’t say it!”

“Whatever. You are weirder than I could ever try to be, even as a Goth.”

Daisy pressed the
END
CALL
button hard, as if she were killing an insect under her fingertip.

Nightfall came earlier than Daisy expected. By 4:30 it was dark, and it was an ominous reminder that she had traveled to a distant land without a clear understanding of what she hoped to do.

Why had she come?

To protect Betsy. To battle some unseen force.

That seemed pretty lame now, as she lay staring at the ceiling of her hotel room.

No, it was the recurrent dream, the sense of foreboding. The castle and the woman in blood. In her dreams it made her heart jump in her chest, so she woke screaming.

Somehow this dream was connected with Betsy, Daisy just knew it. She couldn’t shake that premonition, no matter how hard she tried. It haunted her, urging her on.

“I’ve got to get out,” Daisy said, her voice strange in the empty room. She yanked her black coat from the armoire. The hangers jangled against each other.

Daisy walked to the corner where the taxi had let her off that morning. She didn’t really feel like sightseeing—that wasn’t a Goth thing, right? But the Michalska Brana Tower, rising above the ancient town gate, was spooky enough to make her want to explore whatever might lie inside.

But the door to the tower was locked. A sign said 9:00-17:00. Daisy looked up and began walking backward, her head tilted up to see the top floor and the green patina of the cupola.

A fat raindrop splashed in her left eye. Then another down her neck.

It had started to rain again and she didn’t have an umbrella. Umbrellas weren’t something that Aspenites carried. She tightened her scarf around her neck.

Her boots splashed through the puddles and rivulets along the cobblestone street as she hurried back to her hotel. She gave the receptionist a wave as she waited for the glass elevator up to her room.

“Wet weather,” said the woman. “But it may pass soon.”

Staring out the window at the night sky, the idea that she had run away to Bratislava seemed absurd. She didn’t even really know where Betsy was.

Daisy rubbed her misaligned tooth with her thumbnail. She stepped into the glass elevator.

“You are a total idiot,” she whispered to herself.

She stepped out of the elevator and walked to her room. With a twist of the brass key, she let herself in. She flipped open her computer and opened her blog.

“OK, Goths. I’m going to check out some local bars here and nail down the Goth scene. Next entry will be a porthole into Eastern Europe’s Freak World.”

She shut down her computer and walked to the safe. She entered the code, looked inside, and when she was satisfied the cracking pages were still secure, she locked them up again.

The receptionist had told her that the bar opened at nine, but there wasn’t much action until midnight. Daisy decided to take another look at the old town of Bratislava until the scene picked up. She had slept most of the day and felt not the slightest urge to go to bed.

The cold air slapped her face as she set foot on the cobblestone street. The rain had stopped and the wet wind carried the smells of wood fires, roasting chestnuts, and dampness. She drew another deep breath. The smell of grilled onions and sausages from the outdoor vendors made her mouth water.

First stop
,
sausage,
she thought.
I’m starved.

Floodlights made the buildings glow against the night sky and she marveled at the medley of colors. The pastel buildings were edged with filigreed trim, the shuttered windows a contrasting color. In the fairyland of whimsical houses, she wandered the winding streets, imagining past centuries.

From the enormous pink Archbishop’s Palace to the original crumbling walls of the city, Daisy felt a pulse of history. The buildings were as real yet ethereal as the abandoned shell of a cicada, clinging to a tree branch, molded by the life it once held. She heard the ring of horseshoes against the cobblestones, smelled the malodorous gutters, saw the bright colors of the bishop’s robes. She imagined the glint of the jewel-encrusted crown of the many Kings of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire as one by one they were crowned at St. Martin’s Cathedral.

Daisy clutched her guidebook, staring up to the illuminated buildings. A gloved hand touched her back.

“Have you seen the view from Michalska Brana, the main gate?”

Daisy whirled around, her black coat swinging against the legs of a silver-haired man dressed quite formally. He had a dark gray overcoat and immaculately shined shoes. He gestured with his cane.

“You should see it. A magnificent sight, especially at night.”

“Is the tower open? I think it closed at five. I missed it.”

“Ah, yes, for tourists that is the case,” said the distinguished man. She noticed, as he smiled, that his teeth were long and white. “But there are those who have special privileges. You should not miss the opportunity to see the whole of Stare Mesto—the Old Town—from the height of the tower. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Daisy sensed danger in this elderly man—a shiver of apprehension rocketed up her spine.

And she liked it.

Like Little Red Riding Hood, she thought. Man, look at those teeth. Maybe they’re dentures, she thought. People that old don’t have such white teeth, unless they’re movie stars.

Yet she liked the jolting tingle she felt, to discover what mystery lay ahead.
A once-in-a-lifetime experience
. It was better than staring at the ceiling in her hotel room.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Pavol Kovac.”

“I’m…Violet Jones. Nice to meet you.”

“How charming. You were named for a flower,” said the stranger.

Daisy lips met in a thin line.

“You know, Violet, I could accompany you to the tower. I have the key, thanks to contributions I have made to the city of Bratislava over the years.”

“You do? I mean, you really have a key?”

“Of course, I am a benefactor of the reconstruction of Stare Mesto.”

“You must have made some awesome donation.”

“Yes,” he said. “Come this way. I will show you.”

The lights bathed the tower rising over the arched gate. The round copper copula, green with age, stabbed the night sky.

“Come this way,” said Daisy’s companion. “We must enter the side door.”

The corridor was pitch black. Daisy heard the scuttle of mice.

“Let me lead the way,” said the stranger, pulling a small flashlight from his overcoat pocket.

Climbing the stairs, they passed exhibits of armor and weapons throughout the ages. Every floor was dedicated to warfare, weapons, and instruments of torture from the Dark Ages to the nineteenth century.

Daisy pulled out her own headlamp, focusing the beam on a huge metal structure in the form of a woman.

She stopped in her tracks.

“What is that?”

“Ah, you have found her!” her companion said, directing the flashlight beam at the monstrosity. “That, my dear, is an iron maiden, one of the most vicious tools of torture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

He flashed the beam on the wrought copper face of the maiden. Then he hooked his bony fingers around the edges of cover, pulling it open.

Daisy’s headlight beam illuminated the dozens of sharp spikes within. She approached the maiden and ran her finger across one of the spikes. It tore at her glove.

“If a prisoner is to be—dispatched,” he said, “he or she would be thrust inside, against the spikes, and then the front of the maiden slammed shut.”

“Oh my God,” whispered Daisy. In the silence she heard the muffled sound of footsteps far below.

The stranger stared at her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“Why do you wear black clothes and paint your skin white?”

“What? Because I like it,” said Daisy. “Why do you wear a black cape and look like Dracula?”

The stranger laughed. The throaty sound made her jump as it ricocheted around the tower. Pigeons roosting in the windowsills launched themselves into the darkness, their wings scraping the windows. The stranger led the way up the last flight of stairs.

“Here we are,” he said, opening the door to the balcony that encircled the base of the cupola. “For you, my charming night companion.”

He gestured grandly at the sight of Stare Mesto, its buildings and fountains illuminated in pools of light.