House of Bathory (37 page)

Chapter 113

B
ATHORY
C
ASTLE
D
UNGEON
H
IGH
T
ATRA
M
OUNTAINS,
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 29, 2010

T
he Count escorted Morgan to a high-backed chair on the dais. Two skeletal men stood on either side of her, dark pools under their eyes like bruises against the white of their skin.

Peering around the border of the tapestry, Betsy watched the tableau from the corner of the room.

“Call off the ghouls,” Morgan said, slurring her words.

She’s drugged
, Betsy thought.

“No, I think it would be best if they were at your side,” said the Count. “Be a good girl now and don’t interfere, or we will have to tie you to the chair. Most undignified. Especially unfitting for the role you will play tonight.”

He called to the woman attendant, beyond Betsy’s field of sight.

“Bring in Dr. Path now,” he said.

Betsy held her breath as her mother was led in, shackled. A fuchsia-haired woman set her down in a heavy wooden chair with leather straps on the armrest. Betsy heard the rip of Velcro as the attendant opened the straps and closed them again around her mother’s forearms.

“Good evening, Dr. Path,” said the Count. “Welcome to the four-hundredth anniversary of the Countess’s arrest. We will proceed with the night festivities.”

He turned away from her and walked to the lace-covered table. Betsy watched him touch the objects there, one by one, in deep reverence. The decanter, the golden funnel. He unwound the cord and opened the leather satchel. He held up a gleaming blade. Then another. He smiled.

He touched the silver spoon. Finally he stroked
The Red Book
with an open palm. His fingertips lingered on Jung’s words.

“That’s
The Red Book
,” said Morgan, blinking hard to clear her head.

“Ah! You know Jung’s masterpiece?”

“Why? Why do you have it?”

“It is the journey of the soul. The diary of a madman, not afraid of darkness. I am not afraid either, I embrace it. I shall paint my own masterpiece in blood.”

Then he frowned. He touched the spoon again.

“Akos, Andras—” He said something in Hungarian to the two men guarding Morgan.

They both glanced at the red-haired young woman, then left her. They closed the door quietly behind them.

“Why did you send them away?” mumbled Morgan.

“Do not worry, my beauty,” said the Count. “Relax. Tonight you must simply enjoy.”

Grace struggled against her leather fetters, saying nothing.

The Count walked to the opposite wall from Betsy’s hiding place, which was also covered in ancient tapestries. He lifted the corner of the hanging next to the portrait of Countess Bathory, uncovering a safe set into the stone.

He punched in a combination, swung the safe open, and withdrew an ornate ebony and ivory box.

Betsy watched as he brought the box to the table. He opened the box, dipped the silver spoon into it and brought it out, filled with white powder. He took a knife and leveled the powder perfectly. He dropped the contents into the large decanter.

“What’s that?” asked Grace. “What are you putting in there?”

“Uncontrollable desire,” he answered and laughed quietly. “No, no, I jest,” he said, regarding her intent stare. He snapped the lid closed on the box. “What we will add tonight is ambrosia. This is merely a dash of spice.”

Morgan started to rise from her chair, unsteadily.

“NO!” he snapped. His hand shot out, covering the box. “Stay there, or you will be punished.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You drug them,” she said. “What is it? Heroin? Their teeth, eyes—”

The Count turned on her. “Don’t say another word, Dr. Path. I warn you—”

“They’re all addicts. That’s why they’re so pale and thin. They’re addicts, not vampires!”

The Count strode over to her, seething. He slapped her face.

Betsy started to lunge from behind the tapestry. Something stopped her.

“Shut up!” shouted the Count. “They live on blood—they cannot live without it!”

“You want a cult of vampires,” Grace said, slowly. “But they’re just a bunch of crazed junkies!”

The creases in his brow deepened. He stared at the imprint of his hand blossoming on her cheek.

“You total shit!” screamed Morgan. “You just hit a helpless old lady!”

“My Countess…” he started, turning to Morgan. “Do not listen to her. I have created a perfect world in the image of you.”

“I’m not her,” said Morgan, shaking her head. “That psychotic Countess.
You
are psychotic.”

His eyes flew open. “Oh, my darling. Do not say that. I worship you!”

He tried to take her hand. She snatched it away.

“Get away from me.”

A wild light danced in his eyes. His cheek twitched.

“Look, I bring you pleasure.” He barked orders into an intercom. “You will see. I will amuse you thoroughly. I have followed your ways—”

“Go to hell, you creepy bastard!”

Bathory stared at her silently. His scowl returned. The wild light died.

“Of course,” he said. “For an instant I thought you were really her.”

“Think again, asshole.”

The two guards reentered. Count Bathory barked an order in Hungarian. Andros picked up a length of rope hanging on a steel spike, jutting from the wall.

“You will be tied now, my Lady. I will not tolerate any more interference,” said Bathory.

The guards seized her, securing her arms to the heavy chair. Morgan struggled against their grasp.

A girl was marched in, her hands bound, her face preternaturally pale, as if she had never seen the sun.

“Ona, bring the girl here.”

“Daisy!” Morgan screamed, still wrestling against the men and the rope.

Daisy stared at her sister without a flicker of recognition.

“You’ve drugged her, too. Daisy!”

Count Bathory’s face twisted in a smile.

“Yes, but the drug she has is ever so much stronger than yours. Yours is meant to relax, nothing more. Hers is—well, she has been in a different dimension, I would say.”

“Daisy! It’s Morgan. Daisy!”

Again, a blank stare.

But slowly, a flicker of recognition grew. In the recesses of her mind, a dim memory.

It was the voice that pulled Daisy from her dreams. A voice that had called to her before, when evil had stalked her years ago. Morgan had intervened.

This is true evil
, thought Daisy,
not like the things I thought I experienced in the cemetery or a Ouiji session or a haunted house.

As a Goth she had played at daring the dark side. Her black clothes and the corpse paint on her face paid tribute to what was beyond mortality, to the spirit world. Her Goth ways were a nod to a dimension far beyond the petty cares of life in the twenty-first century. Daisy was intrigued by the shadows, pulled by the tide of mysticism.

That world had called to her, ever since her parents divorced.

No. Ever since her father’s visits to the girls’ bedrooms.

Daisy’s throat tightened. She began to gag.

“She’s choking!” screamed Morgan.

The Count looked at Daisy, his mouth puckered.

“The drug has never had that effect before,” he said. He studied the gasping victim with a clinical eye.

“Daisy!” whispered Morgan, her voice soothing despite her fear. “It’s all right. I’m here, baby sister. No one will hurt you.”

Daisy closed her eyes, her chest heaving.

The darkness enveloped her again, soothing.

Goth. She had welcomed that thrill. She had sought dark tales and magical rites. It was a game. She plunged deep into the pool of shadows, forgetting everything else. The taste of darkness, so rich—she savored its opium.

To forget, the most perfect gift.

But now she knew that unfathomable evil lurked this side of the netherworld. Here in her realm, in this world, a psychotic stranger raged with a madness that summoned the bloodiest nightmares.

This was no tale from a dusty book. This insanity was real, lethal.

And somehow her sister had penetrated this world, just as she did the other nightmare.

“Do not worry. This drug will not last much longer. Potent but a short duration,” said Bathory, observing Daisy’s eyes.

The Count studied Daisy, tapping his walking stick on the rock floor. After a moment, he gestured with the cane and the guards pushed her down into an iron chair, bolted into the rock. They bound her arms and legs to the metal.

The Count opened the ancient leather case. He picked up a blade.

“Do not move,” he said. “It will go easier…for now. Andras!”

Andras hurried with a white porcelain tray. He placed it under Daisy’s wrist.

Count Bathory looked once more at Morgan.

“For you, my lady,” he said, bowing stiffly

He sliced the white skin of Daisy’s wrist with a deft cock of his wrist. Blood splattered into the tray.

“You sick fuck!” shouted Morgan. She twisted, struggling against her ropes. “You monster, leave her alone!”

As Betsy watched, her breath felt trapped deep in her lungs. She forced herself to breathe.

She remembered her father warning her.

Swear to me you will never treat delusional patients. Never!

But why, Papa?

A patient in his
past had haunted him,
was all he said. This patient was the reason he had fled Europe for good. He refused to tell her any more.

There is ugliness in the world I will never relive,
was all he would say.
It is best left buried.

What kind of Jungian are you, Papa?

The Count laughed as the blood collected, pooling in the ceramic tray.

“Does this not amuse you? Oh, I see. Not yet.”

Betsy gathered herself to leap into the room, then she stopped.

Her instinct was to run to help her patient, to free her mother and Morgan. But she could feel Jo
hn
’s presence by her shoulder whispering,
Wait! Think, first.

She stayed behind the tapestry in the darkness, trying to collect her thoughts. Anguish burned her throat. But to show herself now was certain suicide. What could she accomplish?

Betsy caught a whiff of blood, the odor of copper coins. This madman had kidnapped these two girls, her own mother. He was torturing Daisy—an innocent girl who had tried to protect her.

Betsy had spent her life working on the side of sanity, trying to preserve human dignity in the face of madness. But this was more than madness. This was evil. This could not be cured. It could only be killed.

Extinguished.

Her mouth twisted with hatred, with rage. The tendons of her neck stood out as she clenched her teeth. She felt a fire deep within her, an instinct to strike, to kill this man who threatened those she loved.

You are the other
, her father had said
. The unspeakable thoughts, the basest desires, the unfathomable horror. All of this is part of you as much as you deny it. It is your shadow.

When you realize that, you will indeed be a Jungian. What decisions you make, given the ugly face of your shadow, is who you are.

Remember: Nothing human is alien to me.

The sour taste in the back of her mouth gave her the urge to spit. She choked back the bile and watched, her left cheek twitching.

She remembered the ledger, zipped in the back pocket of her jacket. The names of all those girls.

The Count motioned and Ona applied a tourniquet to Daisy’s arm. Then she bandaged the wound, using butterfly adhesives. Her practiced hands indicated that the sinister chore was a familiar one.

Using the golden funnel, the Count carefully poured the blood from the tray into the crystal decanter.

He swirled the blood around, watching the red liquid in delight.

He walked toward Morgan.

“Get away from me,” she snarled. “Get away! Leave me alone!”

Daisy’s voice cried, small and distant.