House of Bathory(111)
“And who do you think you are?” said Daisy. “Count Dracula?”
The Count pressed his lips to the rim of the crystal glass, taking a sip.
When he met Daisy’s eyes, his own were hardened, the light extinguished. “You are a fool, witch girl! Amusing with your black funeral clothes and white corpse makeup. You intrigue me. But still…a fool.”
The Count saw a glint from the open neck of her woolen coat. The left corner of his lip curled up, twitching.
“Remove the—”
Daisy followed his eyes. Her cuffed hands reached up and she touched the crucifix on her neck.
“This?”
“Take it off, I said!”
“What’s it to you?”
“Take it off!”
Daisy stared back at him. “You take it off. How am I supposed to do anything with my hands cuffed, dickhead?”
The Count let out a scream, so anguished and shrill that Daisy ducked her head between her shoulders like a turtle. The two men who had kidnapped her stepped forward.
“Give her the full dose,” the Count said, between clenched teeth. “Dress her for the games. And remove that damned cross.”
“Yes, Master.”
They turned, one grabbing her from behind.
“Keep your goddamn hands off me!” Daisy ordered.
The last thing she remembered were thick fingers snapping the chain on her neck, and the little crucifix falling to the floor.
The Count stared at the fire. The witch girl had unsettled him. He still felt the inquisitive stares of his subordinates, astonished at her insult.
Who do you think you are, Count Dracula?
She would regret that. Oh, yes.
The shrill beeping of an alarm cut the silence. Bathory turned away from the fire and walked toward the screens showing the surveillance cameras.
On the monitor showing the castle gates, Count Bathory saw a girl, auburn hair blowing across her face. She squinted hard against the wind, but he knew that face.
He knew that face!
He shot a look at the portrait of the Countess and back at the monitor screen.
A vein pulsed erratically in his forehead. He pressed his fingertips to the cool skin as his eyes closed, his lips moving silently.
Chapter 98
BATHORY CASTLE CAVERNS
HIGH TATRA MOUNTAINS, SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 28, 2010
Betsy shone her light up at the stream of trickling water. The liquid sheen disappeared into a small hole in the rock, past the splintered remains of timbers. There was a cluster of bats roosting at the entrance, rubbery wings crisscrossed around their faces in slumber.
“Here,” the cook whispered. “Way to cave, tunnel. To castle.”
Mathilde was barely able to stand on the slippery rock. Her labored breath sent puffs of vapor, illuminated in the beam of her flashlight.
“Ano,” grunted the cook. “Yes. I think. Maybe. Yes. You go there.” She shook her head. “But I cannot. As child—yes—but now—” She gestured to her wide girth.
“No, it’s OK. I can,” said Betsy.
“Be care. There are holes, different places from dungeon. Down, down, down. You fall, you die. Stay this path. No turn. At end, door. Wood.”
Betsy scanned the rocky walls with her headlamp, looking for footholds. She planned her route up to the hole where the water emerged.
“I think I can do it,” she said.
There were only about five moves to climb the rocky wall before she could reach the opening. She was wearing her winter hiking boots, and she had climbed pitches a lot tougher than this one.
The treacherous part was the slick rock. Not quite ice, but slippery all the same. Her foot slipped twice when she was trying for a toehold, but she always had two hands supporting herself and the other foot squarely positioned.
When she reached the rotten timbers and the narrow opening, she nodded to Mathilde below her, sending a bobbing flash across the cave floor.
Now the entry.
Betsy approached the bats with caution. She had no alternative but to crawl under them. The opening was barely two feet tall, which meant squirming beneath the creatures.
She thought about rabies. She remembered stories about bats entangling in women’s hair.
Were those stories real or only myths? Myths, she told herself. To frighten children and fools.
She snapped off her headlight to avoid startling the bats.
In the darkness, she suddenly felt the weight of the small ledger in her front pocket. It would interfere with her climbing, pulling her weight across the rocky tunnel.
Betsy pulled it out of her pocket, the plastic rustling. She slipped it into a zippered compartment against the small of her back.
She did not know where she was crawling to, or how far she had to go. She did not know what other creatures might inhabit the cave. Snakes? She remembered a story her father had told her about a viper biting a woodcutter in Slovakia. Had he died? Do snakes live so far underground?