House of Bathory(44)
“Surely you have something better to do than to skulk around here like a bunch of vampires,” she snapped.
Their eyes flew open and the women breathed noisily, almost grunting.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Grace said. “Is that the Count’s game? Really? Vampires?” She gave a bitter laugh.
The girls’ thin hands raked their wild hair—all but the youngest of the trio, a girl with blue hair, no more than fourteen, whose eyes had looked as if she could see the savory goose and steaming dumplings on a plate in front of her. She looked on in terror.
Grace played a hunch. “So the crazy Count has convinced you that you are vampires. He’s starving you to death, isn’t he? Well, you truly are a pack of fools.”
The two women growled and hissed.
“What? Vampires?” she said, teasing them with the word. “You can’t believe that, can you? That you are creatures of the night? Really! Do you feast on human blood? Really, I—”
The women snapped at each other, like a pair of frenzied pit bulls. The fuchsia-haired woman growled, catching the emerald-haired woman by the wrist.
She drew her lips back, exposing her ugly, yellowed teeth. As her mouth darted down to fasten on the skin of her prey, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy.
A howling scream pierced the air as her bite drew blood.
Grace recoiled in her chair, horrified, as the attacker sucked at the bloody wound and her victim growled.
“You are all mad!” she whispered.
She locked eyes with the blue-haired girl, who looked as terrified as Grace and who ran down the corridor screaming for the Count.
The Count bounded in with an energy that belied his apparent age. His lips were red and moist.
“Get back, Ona!” he commanded the fuchsia-haired demon. He struck her hard across the cheek, sending her reeling, her face streaked with the blood of her victim.
The green-haired girl cowered in the corner, licking the wound on her arm like a dog.
“What kind of lunatic asylum is this?” screamed Grace, still tied to the chair. “Don’t you dare leave me alone with these psychopaths again!”
The Count gathered his composure, still heaving with exertion.
“How dare you disobey me?” he said to the groveling girl, her mouth stained red with blood.
“But, Master—she knows the secret!”
The Count’s eyes widened, a graying brow arching. “What?”
“She called us—our name.”
The Count whirled around. He stared at his prisoner.
“What did you say to them?”
Grace swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and when they reopened, ferocity glimmered there.
“I told them they needed to go eat a decent meal. They are crazy with hunger, can’t you see that?”
“I will decide when it is time for a feeding.”
“A feeding?”
“What did you say to them?”
“That they should eat, take in the sun. Young people shouldn’t look like they do. They are patently unhealthy.”
The Count laughed and cut it off with a snarl. His lips twisted cruelly. “What concern is that of yours, Dr. Path?”
“Don’t you dare leave them with me. If the girl hadn’t run to find you, they both could have turned on me.”
The Count’s face twitched with fury.
“OUT!” he roared at the young women. “Do not enter this room again.” He pointed a long, shaking finger at the fuchsia-haired woman. “And Ona, I shall deal with you later.”
The women flattened their thin backs to the wall, feeling their way toward the door without taking their eyes off the Count.
The Count’s long fingers dipped into a vest pocket. He pulled out a knife and unfolded a thin blade.
Grace straightened in the chair. “You can torture me all you want, you psychopath, but I am not telling you anything about my daughter.”
The Count smiled slowly. He waved the gleaming blade near her eyes, and traced a line down her neck with its point. He let the knife trail lower, across her shoulder, down her arm—when he reached her wrists, he made a violent thrust.
Grace closed her eyes tight, wincing.
Then she felt the blood return to her wrists and the sensation of cool air on her skin. He had cut her ropes.
“I will try to offer you the courtesy due a professor of Eastern European history. Come, peruse my library. You may find something worth reading.”
The Count walked to his desk, tucked away in a far corner of the room. He pressed an intercom by the computer.
“Send in Almos,” he said into the intercom. “I am going to try to find a way to keep you occupied, Dr. Path.”
A boy, perhaps eighteen, came in. He bobbed a greeting and adjusted his glasses on his nose. Almos was clearly the Slovakian version of a teenage techie nerd.