Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) (18 page)

“Yes, and the likelihood of escape is even harder here than it is in the rest of the Keep so you might as well forget about it.” 

Oblivious to her words I pressed on. “Do they sleep here at night?”

“No, they have their own dormitory like the rest of the clergy, but there’s an armed guard here instead. You’re better off behaving anyway. They seem to take it easy on you if you obey.”

“How close to the surface are we?”

“I don’t know, quite close if not completely at ground level.”

“Have you ever heard voices from outside?”

“No never. These walls are too thick and the windows too high.”

At that point the head nun walked in and we had to stop talking. She had two young boys with her. They looked no more than twelve years old and were dressed in plain grey clothing. They were not in clerical robes of any kind but appeared to be ‘civilians.’ She said something to them and they sat on the ground in front of us.

“Feed from them,” she commanded. My one smelled of sweat and I could also detect a faint whiff of animal dung and milk on his clothing. They were innocent, greasy and pimply like any young boy would be but they appeared to be cared for. When he loosened his clothing to allow me to bite, I noticed the same scars on his neck as on the nuns from the Feeding Halls.

When I bit into him, for the first time in a long time I received images other than self-loathing, corporeal sacrifice, obedience, prayer and vicarious sexuality. This boy was fresh and as yet untouched by this sect. I sensed carefreeness but also work, flowers, cows, goats and chickens and sunshine and I couldn’t help but smile. Oh how I missed the sunshine; pure warming sunshine in combination with the fresh air on my skin. Utter bliss! When I finished drinking by myself for a change and without being prompted by anyone, I put my hand on the young boy’s head without realizing, perhaps in gratitude for what he had unwittingly just offered me. He gave me a slightly unnatural smile and then he got up and left after the head nun said something to them in a language I didn’t understand.

After feeding time they locked us into the dormitory, presumably to rest, and left for the afternoon.

“How was that for a proper meal in how long?” Asked my bunk mate.

“Better than I have the words to describe,” I said closing my eyes and remembering the relayed images. “I might not be pregnant, but I am enjoying this little gift of chance."

“Don’t be foolish, of course you’re pregnant, if they brought you here then you’re definitely pregnant.”

Why was everyone so convinced I was pregnant? I had abandoned the thought of having children so this was not an option I intended to entertain. Changing the subject I asked, “Why are they feeding us with outside people?”

“They believe that male blood is stronger than female, which supposedly helps our babies.”

“And are they not afraid of us? They do not appear to be indoctrinated in the faith and from my past experiences men are terrified of blood sucking demons.”

“From what I have deduced from the images I get from these outsiders, they are babies who were orphaned or abandoned to the Church because their parents could not afford to raise them, so the nuns and priests do it. They are the closest thing they have to a family so I’m guessing they believe what they are told. They’re slowly brought under the wing of the Priests and gradually introduced to the faith so it doesn’t all come suddenly to them. They’re some of the ones that eventually become guards and low-ranking nuns. I recognize a lot of them from up here when I get back into the Keep.”

“How many times have you been here?” I asked in amazement.

“In the ninety three years I have been in the Keep, I have experienced four pregnancies.”

“But they said we are hard to breed?”

“It would seem my particular skill is to be fruitful.”

“And have all your babies lived?” I continued with some trepidation.

“No, not all,” she said with tension in her voice.

“What happens to them after…?”

“They take them.”

“Where?”

“They have secret nurseries. Not even the regular nuns are allowed in there.”

“What about the father, what happened to him?”

“At first they kept us separate, but after some time they allowed us to meet again. Presumably to see if we would mate again, their word not mine, which inadvertently we did. They felt so accomplished by these games with our lives. They feel like real instruments of God when things go according to their plans. The third time I was returned to the Keep we decided to no longer be intimate so they killed him in front of me as punishment.”

I gasped.

“The fourth pregnancy was when they promised one of the slaves his freedom if he forced himself on me. I don’t know what happened to him and if they kept their word, but he was successful. I hate myself both for my ‘gift’ and for being responsible for the death of someone I cared for. Presumably I am doomed to perpetual impregnation until such time when I take my life or they do it for me.”

“I can’t say that is particularly surprising,” I said with resignation. “We are perfectly disposable for them. How did you end up here?”

“I was born in Sicily but was Afflicted when I came to the mainland looking for work. Rome is a particularly popular place for our kind and our hunters as a consequence. Some have gone as far as to say that there is a group in operation that provides this sect with the freshly Afflicted for a substantial fee. I suspect that was what happened to me because I was arrested as soon as I approached the city with some feeble excuse of stealing and attacked and Afflicted in one of the cells during the night, before being brought here almost immediately. I don’t recall much of the journey as the condition was taking hold of my body quite violently but this is the only place I have known since I was bitten. Most of my knowledge about the world comes from whatever I've heard from other slaves and I’ve seen little beyond my village. I’m Francesca by the way.”

“Theodora. You really think they would do that?”

“Would you put it past them? Can’t you see how much money we make for them? It stands to logic that if they can’t catch more of our kind then someone would make more and sell us to them.” I felt goose pimples grow on my arms by the yet more shocking information about the people who claimed to fight the minions of the Devil. How were they fighting him if they encouraged this slave trade?

“I’m certain that if asked they would have a perfectly dogmatic explanation.” She shook her head in agreement, shifting her ample weight to make herself more comfortable and putting a pillow in the small of her back.

Twelve

Lying on the ground, her face deep in the book, Katalina hadn’t seen the Countess hovering above her.

“You can’t get help to save your life anymore.” The rage was making her voice tremble.

Katalina looked up to see her enraged mistress standing inches away from her in what looked like the robes the Order in her journals wore.
When did she get back? How did I not hear the carriage?

“You lied to me? I can’t stand liars, Katalina, I can’t abide them for a second and I can’t allow them to live.”

The robe had draped off her shoulder and Katalina could see the odd shaped tattoo she’d first seen on her arrival here, but it had moved, instead of her shoulder blade it was now on the front just under her clavicle.

She grabbed her by the ear and twisted it so that the girl had no choice but to follow the pull for fear it might get ripped right off, she was led into a man-shaped metal device against the back wall of the room and shackled in by her wrists and ankles. The device, which consisted of two pieces like a clam shell, was old and rusty. Kati couldn’t move. Grabbing at a handle in the shape of a ship’s steering wheel at the device’s sternum the Countess began to turn it to the left with all her might and with each turn Kati felt more trapped as pressure built on her wrists and ankles. She struggled to move but there was nowhere to go, the device refused to give and the more she fought it the worse it felt. Tears filled her eyes, and she started to scream, louder and louder as the pressure got worse but then her voice gave out. She went to scream again but nothing came out but silence as she drowned in her terror…

The bang to the back of the head woke Kati up. She was seated on the ground in the binding room leaning against the wall, which was what she had hit against. The journal she’d been reading had been catapulted across the room from the violent jerk her body made when she came out of the dream. Her eyes were wet from crying and she was covered in sweat. Her throat was coarse from screaming. Her heart felt like it would jump out of her chest.

It was just a dream, it was just a dream
, she thought, trying to regulate her breathing.

She stood up, retrieved the ejected journal and went to get a drink and clear her head for a minute. Her reading had started to get to her. She decided she would bind the journals at night and selectively read in the day picking the most important bits, trying to keep calm despite the shocking information she was constantly unearthing. She knew this might be her only chance to discover everything she could about the Countess and pass it to the old man and the authorities before she returned from her break in Vienna so she couldn’t stop now.

Over the course of time I accepted that I had to remain in the Breedery for however long they wanted me to. After all, it was cleaner and quieter than the rest of the Keep and all I did was rest. Feeding on the blood of these young boys was a luxury I’d never even dreamed of and gradually I felt myself become fatter and stronger. I only accepted I was pregnant when my belly began to grow and I felt my baby move inside me. Here I was, after a couple of centuries of life and I was going to be a mother. The thought filled me with unimaginable joy as well as sadness that my child would be born in this place and would never know what it is like outside in the fresh air, the moonlight, or even at sunrise when just before the forbidding glare comes that sweet mellow hint of light in the sky with all the colors that only God knows how to order so beautifully. In all my naive innocence I had visions of Vyktor and I raising our child as a family unit, unconventional as we might be.

My time in the Breedery was to come to an end approximately eighteen months after I had gone in there. One night, a few hours before dawn, I felt a sharp pain at the base of my now enormous belly and sat up to the realization that I was bleeding profusely. I screamed in pain and the guard approached with little urgency.

“Baby time,” he said with scorn in his voice and a raised eyebrow, the moonlight from the open portholes illuminating the top part of his face. He had seen it all before. My neighbor slept on with her back to me or at least pretended to as I writhed in agony. Francesca had given birth some months previously and I didn’t know where they’d taken her. I presumed she would be back soon with a new pregnancy. In no time at all the head nurse appeared out of nowhere with a large torch which she placed at my feet and a large bundle of linens. She was still half asleep and wiping the crusts from her eyes.

“You sure know how to pick your time, you girls!” She said with that sickly sweet jolliness again. Approaching my head she supported the back of my neck and made me swallow some lukewarm concoction that tasted strongly of bitter lavender and sage and soon the pain subsided a little, while my thoughts were pushed to the back of this cloudy sensation. Images started moving more slowly and sounds became more distant. She then proceeded to command me to push and assisted me by doing the same on my stomach. After several times of being told to push I vaguely remember her telling me that if I were not done soon she would cut me open, after which I pushed as much as my exhausted body would allow and felt a mass leave me. My senses were in complete haze at this point. She remained hidden behind my legs for a time and afterwards I saw her standing at the foot of the bed smiling down at a bundle of white cloth swaying from side to side. After this I lost consciousness.

I awoke in the morning in a different room. There was one other girl there but she was gagged and would simply stare at the ceiling, her eyes distant. My head had cleared for the most part but I felt tired and heavy, probably the after effects of the potion they had given me. I touched my stomach to find that it had gone and gazing under the sheet I saw that I was dressed in the usual long white shirt but my thighs under it were covered in dried blood. My hair was matted with old sweat. I tried to get out of the bed but both my right arm and leg were chained to the wall leaving me little mobility.

“Mother!” I called with all my strength until the little nun came into the room.

“Yes dear?”

“Why am I so restricted?”