Lights, Camera, Blood: Ch. 06 Devil

Authors' Note: This is the eighth part of a chain story by a sextet of Literotica authors: @Tio_Narratore, @StillStunned, @pink_silk_glove, @Erozetta, @AlinaX and @Omenainen. You will be able to find all the chapters eventually in this list: Vampire Chain Story.

6.1 Fiction

How long had it been, Mina wondered, since that fateful night. The wine had been good, and Mina had as so often been entertaining secret fantasies of penetrating her blonde friend's armour of correctness. "You know," she had said, thinking only of the mischief she could cause, "you should go for that job."

Lucy was trapped. Anyone could see it - except Lucy herself. On paper, her boyfriend Richard was a good choice. Or a sensible choice. A safe choice. Financially stable, educated, good looking. But where was the passion? Richard treated Lucy like a possession, a well behaved and very unadventurous possession, and the bright spirited Lucy that Mina loved was lost under all that expectation.

Almost lost. The one spark of independence Richard had been unable to stamp out was Lucy's love of movies. Not merely watching, but taking them to pieces and analysing almost to death. Blockbusters, on the whole, bored her, while independent arthouse productions made on a shoestring budget could make her scream with excitement.

A monthly binge-watch of recent horror releases was one way Lucy and Mina kept their friendship fresh and alive. "Are you sure you're not a lesbian?" Mina would tease her sometimes.

Lucy was straight. There was no questioning that, but perhaps... Perhaps.

"Of course I'm not!" Lucy's usual answer. "I've got a boyfriend."

Hah! That was no answer. It was part of the armour, the denial that Mina had longed to strip away. And now that it had been stripped away - by Adamir, by Mircalla - it felt like Lucy had been stolen away from her. That the victory that should have been Mina's now mocked her instead.

With the cameras rolling, recording the event for future millions to watch, Lucy had yielded to a passion she had never admitted before. Mina doubted that Mircalla, no stranger to cinematic porn, had ever embodied eroticism with such utter conviction as Lucy had in that earthshaking moment.

And now Lucy was up at the castle, alone with Adamir, triumphant and determined, barely recognisable as Mina's reserved friend. Between that and all the ominous disappearances they had uncovered, this adventure they had embarked on together with such enthusiasm no longer seemed quite so sweet.

"Be careful, Lucy," she whispered to the night, and headed out into the dark.

*

"Are you accusing me of harming people involved in my productions?" Adamir demanded.

"Accusing? No." Keeping the tone light but professional was a definite challenge for Lucy. She was sitting on a table, quite naked, conducting the first serious interview of her new career - and quite possibly the last also - with a world-famous director of erotic horror films. Perhaps she was accusing him of being a monster in real life, or at least in being complicit in covering up what was potentially a chain of gruesome deaths. "Just find it an odd coincidence that in thirteen different filming locations, there have been disappearances of locals or tourists at eleven of them within a month of wrapping up filming. And given you like to 'see women squirm'" - certainly he'd enjoyed making her squirm - "and enjoy filming them dying because they evoke strong emotions from an audience, I'm sure you can see why my curiosity might be piqued."

Lucy was feeling really quite proud of herself. She'd done the research, had prepared the questions, and, well, everything Adamir had put her through in recent days had taught her to be fearless in his presence and unashamed to bare herself like this. The old Lucy, for whom even a risqué photograph was daring in the extreme, would not have recognised the woman she had become.

"I don't go looking for people disappearing from my sets," Adamir was saying. "What made... Vladan?"

Vladan and Valeska, the newlyweds whose car had broken down outside the Danica, had been seduced by Adamir into playing a role in his film. They had swapped a honeymoon of sunshine and sand for dark nights and brittle cold, for eroticism and adventure, for cruelty and betrayal. In one startling scene, Vladan had exceeded the script and made love to Mircalla's Bathory while the cameras rolled and his captive wife watched helplessly.

And afterwards, consumed with shame, he had fled the hotel. "He still hasn't been found, right?"

They had all been watching the final scene together, in a makeshift cinema in the hotel. "He wandered off," Adamir said, but there had been more to it than that. Vladan had looked quite ill, and really someone should have followed him out. "We were all there."

No one had seen him since. Once Mina and Lucy started looking seriously into the disappearances, inevitably it led them to ask if maybe Vladan had not merely got lost or gone into hiding. Perhaps someone had actually followed Vladan and... well, something terrible. "Wolf wasn't." Mina and Lucy were both pretty sure about that. "He's been your lead cameraman since The Office, right?" Now that was perhaps a wild accusation, but there was other evidence - circumstantial, but compelling. "The disappearances started right after that."

"No," Adamir whispered. "I don't believe it. It's a coincidence and nothing more."

His reactions confused her. Adamir was shocked, not defensive. Lucy stopped the recording, and listened as he revealed more than she could have hoped for about his early years with Anna and Josh, Adamir's closest friend and his original cameraman.

"You loved him?" she prompted at one point.

"And her. The three of us. It was always just the three of us early on."

The fire was neglected while they talked, and chill night air crept in, making her shiver. That, as much as anything, stirred Adamir into action. He reached for his phone.

"What are you doing?" Lucy asked.

"Checking on Wolf."

"Isn't he at the hotel?"

"Yeah. I'm texting Anna. She should know if he's there."

*

Anna was a rare creature, and one that had fascinated Mina from the start. Not merely Adamir's chauffeur, she was the line producer, a camera operator, and also the principal editor. Often the first of the crew to be seen in the evenings, and quite often the last to retire, she stayed not in the hotel but in the large van that acted as the video editing studio. Anyone who was awake at four o'clock in the morning and was curious about the footage shot during the night could knock on her door.

Mina had taken to doing it regularly. She told herself it was for the job, gathering what little information and gossip she could to add a complementary depth to Lucy's eventual article, but in truth it was a fascination with Anna herself.

"Ah, Mina, come in, sit! Krushka?"

Krushka was a home-brewed pear brandy that Mina had learned to enjoy. "Please."

Not that Anna waited for a reply. She had two shot glasses ready and was pouring the clear liquid, kept chilled in a small fridge that contained nothing but more bottles of various spirits, while Mina thought through the impossibility of saying no. It was good stuff, though. "Živeli," she said, and sipped carefully.

Anna grinned, and echoed the sentiment. "Živeli."

Her attention, though, was quickly back on the multiple screens showing the digital editing software and multiple streams and stills from the evening before. Lucy, perched on the edge of the bath tub, her legs wide open to allow Mircalla to shave her. The camera capturing perfectly the moment the razor sharp blade drew blood. Real blood. Not stage blood. Lucy's blood. The sight of it seemed to transfix Mircalla, or perhaps it was an act. Mina was never sure where Mircalla ended and the bloodthirsty Countess began.

In another video stream, the camera lingered on Lucy's face and chest. To Mina who knew Lucy well, her expression hinted at fatigue and anxiety and her lips looked unnaturally swollen, but the flush of arousal and the gleam of sweat suggested a woman lost in pleasure. Her vampiric lover poured warm honey over her breasts, and bent to capture a nipple that was swollen with desire.

Mina scowled at the displays and sat back, sipping the krushka and looking instead at Anna's inked shoulders and arms. Bats. Skilfully drawn, artistic, but ugly and sinister at the same time. She had the potential to be a beautiful woman, tall and slender with grey-blue eyes and long red hair, kept tied back in twin braids that reached almost to her waist.

She had the pale skin of one who prefers stars to sun, which served to emphasise the dusting of freckles on her face, her shoulders, her arms. Her breasts. The green vest that Anna usually wore seemed designed almost to reveal as much skin as possible, to show off those seductive freckles and disturbing tattoos.

Anna set the computer to rendering and swivelled round to face Mina. "Your friend," she said, "is a natural. She has a virgin's air of innocence coupled with a yearning hunger. Whenever she forgets about the camera, that is."

Mina had observed as much herself. Under Mircalla's spell, Lucy transformed from a shy, straight Englishwoman into a fantasy of lesbian submissiveness, and Mina wasn't convinced it was entirely an act.

But she didn't want to think about Lucy. "What do you really think of all this nonsense?" she asked, with a nod of her head towards a still of Mircalla's Bathory, fangs bared.

Anna chuckled, and refilled Mina's glass and her own. "Živeli," they chorused. Literally, "Let's live!" - an irony amidst scenes of dying and undeath.

"Nonsense? Do you mean vampires? Or Bathory in particular?"

"Both," Mina replied. "But let's start with Bathory. The real Countess was nothing like this. She was a murderer who tortured hundreds of young girls - to their death. The stories of her bathing in blood to remain young and beautiful were invented hundreds of years later."

"Someone's been doing their homework," Anna murmured with a glint of amusement in her eyes. For someone who couldn't have been much older than Mina, twenty-five at a guess, there was a depth of experience in those eyes and more than a hint of patronising indulgence. "Some people say the accusations were false, manufactured as a way to strip a powerful woman of all her wealth and weaken the influence of the Transylvanian Bathory family. Much the way your queens - Numbers Two and Five, yes? - were accused of terrible things before having their heads chopped off."

"I don't think that's quite the same," Mina said uncertainly, but between the lateness of the hour, the fuzziness from the alcohol and the distraction of the red-haired beauty in front of her, Mina quite forgot what it was she had wanted to say.

Anna shrugged. "Or perhaps you're right. Perhaps the Countess made girls stand naked in the river midwinter, pushed pins into their fingers and thrust red hot pokers into their vaginas, but who wants to believe such cruelty is possible? Who would ever watch a movie with such horror in it? But a vampire? Beautiful and terrifying, seductive and cruel, victims whipped until lost in pleasure as much as pain? So what if it's not real.

"People don't want real. They want stories. Four hundred years have passed and there's no one alive who knows the truth." Anna grinned with sudden mischief. "Except vampires, and technically they aren't alive either."

The grin was infectious and Mina couldn't help smiling back - until Anna stood and held out a hand in invitation. And despite all her misgivings, all her suspicions, Mina's hesitation was brief. She allowed herself to be brought to her feet, a small part of her mind registering a startling coldness in the fingers that entwined with her own; but perhaps it was Mina herself who was on fire, because there was electricity in that touch, the kind that ignites a fierce desire within.

Her eyes were drawn, as often, to the constellations of freckles. They marred the perfection of Anna's skin but highlighted the simple beauty of the underlying features. This distraction was brief also, Anna's cool lips pressing against Mina's, and she melted into the kiss.

And what a kiss. Anna's lips were soft yet firm, playful and explorative, neither too wet nor too dry. Mina half feared to encounter fangs with her tongue, and was oddly disappointed not to.

"Wow," she breathed after, her heart hammering, and shook with a sudden laughter of happiness. Mina hadn't come to Anna's crazy lair in hope or expectation of being seduced like this. Almost of their own will, her fingers traced the outline of the ugly creature inked just below Anna's left shoulder. "Why," she started to ask, why disfigure yourself like this, then kicked herself into silence.

Anna smiled in recognition of the question, but did not answer. "Come," she said instead and retreated into the interior through a web of cables to a cot scarcely big enough for one person to sleep in; and stripped out of her vest with a sinuous ease, despite the cramped and awkward space, to reveal further macabre designs in flight across her bare skin.

"Is there space?" Mina asked, her hesitation less out of concern for space, more a last desperate questioning of the sense in taking this step. Sleeping with a woman she hardly knew in the back of a van in the middle of nowhere. A woman who seemed to worship bats, of all things. A woman who could, in the perverse corners of Mina's imagination, yet be a real life vampire.

"I'm not a vampire," Anna said, as if reading Mina's mind. "In ancient Greece, they believed people with red hair were vampires. It's understandable, I guess. We have pale skin and burn easily in the sun. We're often left-handed too. When you're visibly different to ninety-nine percent of the population, people do tend to fear you."

Mina felt the heat of embarrassment in her cheeks, but since Anna did not look in the least offended she chose to laugh it off. "Ninety-nine point nine in your case."

Anna grinned. "You might need a few more nines on that."

Mina reached a decision and dared to step forward, through the web and into the lair. "Nine," she said with each careful step. "Nine, nine, nine."

And then perhaps it was too late as she was caught in her vampire seductress's embrace, surrendering willingly to demanding lips that kissed her with possessive hunger as Mina's hands caressed tattooed skin and soft, perfect breasts.

She cried out softly as Anna's demanding lips kissed her ear, kissed her neck; then more loudly, "Ah!" as she felt teeth and sharp pain. "No biting!"

Mina pushed her away in sudden fear, touching her fingertips to her neck in a sudden certainty that there would be blood - but there was no blood, only laughter from Anna as she bent to unlace her army boots.

No blood, but Mina had no doubt there would be a love bite visible for Lucy and the others to see. She scowled at Anna, but her irritation gave way to astonishment. As Anna slid her trousers and underwear down her toned, muscular thighs, a cock sprang out, semi swollen and already impressive in length.

"You're trans?" Mina asked, as if the answer wasn't right there in front of her.

Anna shrugged. "If you want to put a label on it. That a problem for you?"

Mina shook her head slowly, unable to tear her gaze away from the jutting member. "No," she said. "Just... unexpected." Putting it mildly.

"Well, then," Anna murmured, stepping close to Mina and kissing her, soft and romantic this time, no teeth. "Let's get these clothes off."

And Mina was only too happy to help.

*

There was a video feed on Adamir's phone. The resolution was bad and the image kept freezing, but it looked like the lobby of the Danica. "What's that?" demanded Lucy.

Adamir explained about the security cameras he'd installed in the hotel. "Not in all of the rooms," he hastened to add. Not in the room Lucy shared with Mina. Not in the suite reserved for Mircalla. "I'm not that much of a pervert." There was a camera in Wolf's room, but the room was dimly lit and little could be seen in the grainy image on Adamir's phone.

They swapped phones. "Watch the cameras," he instructed her. "I'm going to go to Wolf's room.

Lucy, meanwhile, had hurriedly dressed herself. She grabbed his arm. "Best case scenario, this is all a strange coincidence. Worst case is you hired a serial killer who may have killed your friend to get the job. Maybe you shouldn't go looking or let him know you're onto him?"

"I'm the director," Adamir said, his tone reassuring. "I have reason to go to his room and it's not unusual for me to do so." Lucy was reminded of the night of the car crash. It had been Adamir who reacted instantly, striding out of the hotel into the darkness to see if aid was needed. "Besides," he added with a smile, "I'm not going to confront him, I still have some scenes I need to film..."

Lucy was far from convinced by this performance. Adamir was someone who thrived on being in control - a born director - but the script for this story was not his to write. Wolf could be anywhere, and Anna was yet to reply to Adamir's text. And what of Mina? Adamir had said that Mina was with Mircalla, but Lucy thought that unlikely.

"Between you and me," Mircalla had whispered to Lucy earlier, "I'm shattered. I'm going to have a long, hot bath and crawl into bed - and God help anyone who tries to stop me." There was something quite bewitching about the Hungarian. Neither Mircalla nor Lucy were lesbians, and yet they had shared a profound and passionate intimacy beyond anything Lucy had ever before experienced.

Lucy stumbled in the dark as she followed Adamir down the hill from the castle. The sky was clear and the stars were bright. The Moon, low in the sky, was almost full, but still the path was shadowy and treacherous - and slippery with patches of ice. The air was bitterly cold and soon set her teeth to chattering.

In the far-off distance a lone wolf howled... but no answer came.

*

Ignoring the muffled sounds of normal daytime in the world outside the dark seclusion of the van, Mina and Anna lay together on the cot that had proved robust, though at times precariously narrow. Anna was big spoon, her arm coiled protectively about Mina, her well used cock nudging against Mina's thighs.

"What did you learn about Anna Darvolja?"

The question startled Mina to full alertness. Such questions did not sit well in the zone of contentedness that her mind had been adrift in. "Bathory's torturer," she said quietly. "The Croatian devil. Died the year before Bathory's arrest."

"Yes, but not a devil, and not Croatian either. Like me, she was a Serb. Red hair too, red like the rivers of the town she came from. When the Turks settled nearby, they named their village Djake, which means blood, because of the rivers of Đavolja Varoš. Not Anna Darvolja, but Anna from Đavolja, Devil's Town."

Mina shivered as her imagination conjured up an image of the woman who had just made love to her, whose arm still held her tight, wielding a bloody whip against a legion of young servant girls. "That can't be real," she insisted.

"Oh it is. Popular tourist destination these days. It's said the Devil persuaded a brother and sister there to become lovers, even to get married. When none of the wedding guests objected to the union, the fairies of Devil's Town were enraged and turned all gathered there to stone. They stand there still now, weathered by centuries of rain, and to this day their screams can be heard in the wind."

"Now I know you're lying."

"It's true, all true. As true as Bathory's reign of vampiric terror, anyway."

"Why are you trying to frighten me?"

"They're just stories, sweet one. Everyone loves stories, even the terrifying ones. Especially those. Like the flame-haired witch of Devil's Town who would grant magical wishes but demand terrible payments, and I often wonder..."

"Wonder what?"

"Oh, only what the price would be for the gift of eternal youth."

*

For nearly two weeks now, Lucy's schedule had been nocturnal. Usually that meant waking up in time to have breakfast while the sun set, and being back in bed after a meal at sunrise. It was a deeply unnatural way to live, and Lucy had at times felt disconnected from the real world. The previous two mornings, she had made short trips into the village to access the internet and do her research, and had found the sunlight and all the hustle and bustle of human life to be quite startling.

Except, no, somehow she'd missed a whole day. There had been take after take after take, with Lucy herself the focus of the scene, and night had become day and then night again. Adrenaline, or something, had kept her going, had helped her push through the fatigue - that and Adamir murmuring his lecherous desires in her ear and Miralla's skilful tongue exciting her in ways no man ever had.

And then the interview. Preparing for that at the hotel, returning to the castle, now back to the hotel... No wonder she was exhausted, practically tripping over her own feet. Only her fear for Mina's safety kept her going - that and the need to get back to the warmth of the fireside.

The first light of the impending dawn was in the sky as they reached the hotel. The staff were cheerfully preparing the morning meal, and a van arrived with a delivery of fresh bread from the bakery in the village. A handful of the crew were at the bar, laughing and arguing loudly amidst a small forest of empty beer bottles. They fell abruptly silent at the sight of Adamir, and Lucy could sense in the way they examined her that they were probably imagining her naked.

"Joining us, sir?" one asked.

"Not this time," Adamir said. "Is Wolf around? Or Anna?"

Their reply was a collective shrug.

Adamir led the way upstairs, and they parted ways at the top, Lucy heading for her room, Adamir to check on Wolf. Two minutes later they returned to the stairs. "Mina's not there," Lucy said.

"No sign of Wolf either."

"Mircalla?"

"Fast asleep - by herself."

It was hard not to imagine the worst. If Wolf had abducted Mina, Lucy didn't know what she'd do.

"Come on," Adamir said, charged down the stairs again, and back out into the frosty morning. Lucy hurried after, the gravel crunching under her feet as they crossed the courtyard to a large van parked by the wall, its generator humming. "Anna?" he shouted, banging on the door. "Are you there?"

Perhaps a minute passed before the door slid open to reveal the bemused occupant. Her long red hair was free of its braids for once and draped messily around her shoulders, obscuring the bats inked into her pale skin. "What's the emergency?"

"Where is Wolf?" Adamir demanded.

"And Mina," Lucy added.

Anna frowned, confused rather than alarmed.

"Um, I'm here," Mina said, peering around the edge of the door, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"Oh," was all Lucy could say, feeling a bit stupid for worrying so much.

"And Wolf?" Adamir insisted.

Anna picked up her phone and made a call. "Vuk. Gde si?" She listened for a moment, and laughed. "I'll have a latte - actually, make that four. I think my morning off just got cancelled."

6.2 Dreams

"We all make mistakes," Anna said.

Mircalla, who had been lost in realms of imagination as she relaxed in a deep, warm and aromatic bath, tensed up at the sound of the other's voice. Since the very beginning of the whole grand adventure, Mircalla had felt caught between Adamir's gothic imagination and Anna's insistence on anchoring the role in its terrifying historical origin.

As an opportunity for Mircalla to finally make it big, to escape the drudgery of small parts and modelling work, and the constant fear that even such roles would dry up as the years rolled by, it was fantastic. She loved being the focus of Adamir's passion - or one focus, at least, because in truth it was his vision for the movie, his creation, that drove him ultimately - but Anna never let her forget that Elizabeth Báthory had been a real woman, intelligent, capable and deeply cruel.

It tore her in so many different directions that also weaved together and tangled inside. She was Mircalla the struggling actress whose fear of no longer meeting the high standard of beauty demanded by the industry had led to an addiction to pills; and she was Countess Bathory, so terrified of ageing that she stole youth itself from innocents.

That was Adamir's version of her, at least. Seductress and vampire, glamorous and manipulative. Adamir was fascinated with the details of history, but once the cameras rolled it was all about his art. His ability to set up what was basically a hard-core porn scene and then light it and shoot it in a way that concealed essential details - while also suggesting them - was so impressive. Where actual porn made penile penetration the erotic focus and male cum the ultimate expression of pleasure, Adamir teased the viewer with deadly fangs and had them longing to see the blood. It was no gore fest either. No bukkake of spurting veins. A single crimson droplet falling from her lips could promise both ecstasy and death. Swallow; don't spit.

Mircalla loved being part of that process, but if Adamir was the creative force that drove everything, it was Anna's competent management of the money and her strict control of the details of the production, as well as her careful and precise camerawork, that made Adamir's vision possible.

Anna, although she had said nothing about it, had weaned Mircalla off her reliance on pills. She had insisted that Mircalla eat properly, and through aromatherapy and massages had helped her to find peace with herself - and as Mircalla had embraced ever deeper the role and even the persona of Elizabeth Bathory, she had learned to be grateful for Anna's intimate care.

But gratitude did not eliminate fear. If Mircalla still dreamed of the dark countess herself, sometimes she dreamed of Anna too, or someone much like her. Someone in the shadows, tall, pale-skinned; long red hair. Mircalla shied away from those shadows. They echoed with screams and smelled of blood and burning flesh.

"Mistakes?"

"A long time ago," Anna said softly, kneeling on the floor by the bath, her lips by Mircalla's ear, "a witch gave birth to two girls. Twins, they were, and much alike, and like their mother and her mother before, they had hair like flame."

Her fingertips traced patterns in the soapy surface of the water. "It was tradition in the family that the eldest daughter be promised to the goddess, and since the girls were born together, they were both raised in preparation for this honour. Together they learned the art of lifting and bestowing curses, and together they collected garlic blossoms to lay at the feet of the goddess, whose temple their mother tended."

To Mircalla, garlic seemed like a strange thing to offer to a goddess. This wasn't the first time that flame-haired Anna had talked of such things. "Frankincense was a traditional offering to the gods," she had explained the very first night of Mircalla's stay at the hotel. She had poured a few drops of the oil into the bathwater, along with other essential oils, and its exotic fragrance had filled the air. "It keeps the skin youthful."

There was frankincense in her bath this time too. Mircalla found it relaxing and troubling in equal measure, for it stirred up the images and feelings from her dreams, almost as if memories were being triggered. Memories that were not hers. Which of course was absurd.

"But there was a curse on the girls," Anna continued. "As they matured into adults, their hearts turned to love for one another, and not the love one sister has for another. This was love that, like fire, consumes all until only ashes are left."

Mircalla arched her back so that her breasts pressed up against Anna's hands and her teasing fingers, only questioning the impulse after. That sudden, intimate contact startled her - but, once done, there was no thought of retreat. Anna's gentle, insistent pinching of her nipples was like the electricity of life itself.

"For years this unnatural affection was reserved for the shadows, but one sister grew impatient and with skilful magic cooked a broth that she fed to the other. 'This will give you a man's part,' she said after, 'so that we may live as husband and wife, and have children to call our own.'

"And for a while this was possible -"

Mircalla chuckled, the bathwater rippling about her. "The best bit of a man, without a man attached."

"- but the transformed sister was unhappy with the change forced upon her. She went to the goddess and begged that the magic be undone so that she could be a woman once again.

"Alas, the goddess was enraged to perceive the unnatural lust shared by the sisters, and she cursed them both to wander the shadows of the earth for all eternity."

"I don't know that one," Mircalla murmured. "What was the mistake? Incest, I guess."

"Love is never a mistake," Anna said, her voice sharp. "The mistake was in expecting compassion from a god."

Mircalla's own fingers found their way between her thighs, massaging her skin below the surface of the water, edging ever closer to the core of her desire. "Close your eyes," Anna whispered and Mircalla did as asked. This time she did not fight her mind's descent into the past.

It was as Elizabeth she opened her eyes again, and she looked out over the fields and vineyards of Čachtice that Court Master Deseo could be trusted to manage. He was one of the very few she still trusted.

Elizabeth was tired. Tired of the squabbling greed of the aristocracy, whose war had made her husband Ferenc a hero, and which had been funded in large part by her own tireless labour. They feared her, of course, but now that Ferenc was dead they dared to make excuse after excuse, finding any and every reason not to return to her what was due.

She was tired too of the clergy. They had bent over backwards to forgive Ferenc's cruelties and excesses, but now they sharpened their knives and wrote letters with vile accusations, questioning everything and daring now even to cry from the pulpit that Elizabeth must change her ways - the impudence!

And she was tired of the peasants for their stupidity and their weakness - but it was their incompetence that angered her the most. The same with the young women of the lesser nobility who came to her for tuition. Not one of them yet had shown half the wits and skill Elizabeth had had at their age. Nor the endurance.

She was running out of time. Anna's elixirs kept the lines of age at bay, but Elizabeth could feel the dream of youth slipping through her fingers.

The sun setting in the west marked the fateful moment. "Anna?"

"Mistress." The voice came from the shadows behind her, and Elizabeth turned to -

Mircalla awoke with a gasp. "You!" she cried, not daring to turn. "You were there!"

"It's just a dream," Anna murmured, drawing away, standing. "Just a dream..."

*

Just a dream, but a persistent dream, and not the only one either.

Ferenc, home from the war, still dressed in his military uniform, lust for her burning in his eyes.

Elizabeth was prepared, but anxious. Days of preparation, ensuring the castle would be ready to feed and accommodate an army and its celebrations. Ferenc was a good husband, arguably the best, a proud and brilliant warrior, always bringing home trophies - more, sadly, than she was able to sell or barter.

With him this time, unusually, was a woman. Tall, pale-skinned, red hair. "This is Anna," he declared, and with a roar of laughter added, "from Devil's Town, she says, and I can well believe it."

Elizabeth stared at the young woman in consternation. If she was another of his mistresses, it was inappropriate for him to bring her with him like this. She did not seem like the type, though. She was no peasant girl, nor dressed like a noble woman, and there was a coldness in her eyes that sent a shiver racing up Elizabeth's spine. "My lady," was all she said.

"Anna here is a true expert in the art of torture," Ferenc enthused. "I taught her the Turkish method myself, which I have found good and effective when time is pressing, but Anna's skill and patience is such that even the most stubborn of criminals will confess all."

Elizabeth nodded. She knew this side of her husband only too well. Had suffered from it herself on occasion too. "I have brought her here," he continued, "for you. To bring discipline to the servants who still, I have observed just today, are lazy and waste time in merriment."

"Thank you, my gracious lord," was all she could say to that.

Just a dream. And another:

Elizabeth was in bed, her head pounding, the shutters closed to block out the light. These episodes had tormented her all her life, and were only made worse by the demands put on her by the pressure to manage the Nadasdy estates, and especially the need to play the role society demanded of her.

Her patience for other people had worn so thin. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be young and carefree - although, even as a child she had had to work hard, studying languages and politics. The Bathory family was rooted in the power and struggles of the world, after all.

"My lady," Anna whispered. "Come with me. I know a way to banish this pain. Why should you suffer like this?"

"It's wrong."

"Who will manage the estates if you do not? What would your husband want? A wife who is kind but ill? Or one who is vigorous and ruthless?"

There was no arguing with that. "Very well."

And Elizabeth allowed the torturer to lead her into the shadows.

Dreams...

She kept a ledger. She was never sure why, but it mattered to her that she did. They had died under her care, and not by neglect or by accident, but like casualties in a war between Elizabeth and her demons.

Of which Anna was merely the most visible.

Elizabeth's husband was long dead but the family name and honour still needed to be preserved. There was always so much to do, and so many people to talk to. She did not neglect any of it, but the headaches...

Worse and worse. Only through the pain she inflicted on others could she find the strength to escape the black rage. Death for many of them was a mercy, and perhaps in time her own death would be a mercy.

She kept a ledger of their names, but no longer had the strength to count them. "What evil possessed me to listen to you?"

"Evil? How many hundreds did your husband kill? How many thousands? Did they all deserve it? Do you think he bothered to keep a ledger of all the husbands killed and wives raped? Or was it only the riches he plundered that had value?"

Plundered riches that for the most part still rotted unwanted in tunnels beneath the castle. "That is no answer," Elizabeth said.

"The truth is you chose to live, and sometimes you must choose to sacrifice others so that you yourself can thrive. But you must not waste the lives you take. Their youth can be yours, and their innocence too, but you must be willing to take it. Why do you think I insist on your servants being maids, untouched by the corruption of men?"

"Is that why you do it?"

"Do what?" Anna seemed genuinely surprised.

"You whip them, their feet especially, until they cannot walk."

"The feet are particularly sensitive, are they not?"

"Yes, but I have heard that you delight in licking the blood from the wounds when you believe no one is watching."

Anna sighed. "Yes. You are right. It's in the blood. The youth you seek, my lady, is in the blood."

*

"They're not just dreams, are they?"

Mircalla paced about the great hall with anxious breaths, hardly daring to look at Anna for confirmation, or denial. It was absurd to think the dreams might be real, and yet they plagued her. Haunted her. Until she hardly dared sleep.

Anna, meanwhile, had the camera trained on her. "Come with me to the castle," she'd said earlier. "Let's rehearse the scene where Mariska learns of the blood curse."

Mariska, the virgin girl, ignorant of her illustrious ancestry. Perversely, one of the earliest scenes in the movie. Mircalla had become so invested in her portrayal of the Countess that playing a modern innocent felt entirely wrong. A rehearsal, absolutely, was needed.

"They're not," she insisted. "Are they?"

"Tell me about them."

"I remember when Ferenc brought you to me, proud of your skill at torture, prouder still that he had taught you his own brutal methods too. I remember -" It all poured out, dream after dream, memory after memory, like a story desperate to be told. It poured out like water from a breaking dam, violent and unstoppable. Until...

Mircalla faltered. "You're a vampire," she snarled, glaring at Anna, "one who delights in cruelty."

Anna was silent, the camera still focused on Mircalla. "You still don't remember," she said eventually. "Not what is important. Look around you."

It was the great hall at Čachtice. Mircalla knew it intimately. But some stagehand had brought out the copper bath again, a hook dangling above it, the same hook and bath that Valeska had fallen from; and had brought out the bed, the same bed that Vladan had fucked Mircalla on. A scene that seemed forever ago to her now.

But there was something else about the scene. Something...

Another bride had once dangled from that hook. Not dressed in white, but rather the flowers and ribbons of local custom. Most startling was her pale skin and the shock of red hair. Rope suspended her above the copper bath, no stool to ease the strain, and she was gagged to silence her screams and pleading.

"She looks like you," Elizabeth noted.

"She is my sister," Anna said. "No innocent, of course, but her blood flows with the same strength as mine. Its touch will banish wrinkles and spots and all evidence of time's cruelty, and should you drink it you will remain young forever. The cares of the world will fall from your shoulders and you will be free to live as you have never lived before."

"You would sacrifice your own sister for me?"

"She abandoned me long ago. I have been alone so long I almost forgot what she looks like. But she is my past, my lady, and you are my future. Let her blood be yours."

"No," Elizabeth whispered. "This cannot be." She waved her hand in silent signal, and the shutters on the high window were flung open. Sunlight streamed down, the beam centred on the pale-skinned torturer.

Anna screamed and flung herself from the light - or tried to. Elizabeth gripped her wrist and held her in place. "It's time for you to come out of the shadows, devil."

"How?" the other cried.

Elizabeth laughed. "The sun sets later up high. All I needed was a mirror and for you to stand where you are."

Far too quickly, even this sunlight diminished into a dull red glow and was extinguished - but Anna had stopped her struggling, and when her eyes opened again the colour had been leached from them. She stared blindly in front of her, one hand held out tentatively, searching perhaps for Elizabeth."

Mircalla gasped. "Your sister!"

"Deprived of blood and sight, she did not live long after that. But the damage was done, and long before. The curse was in Elizabeth's blood even before the birth of her son, and it has passed down through the generations, all the way to you, Mariska."

Mircalla blinked. Once again, fiction, dreams and reality were getting confused.

6.3 Reality

"Adamir's reclusive reputation is well earned," Lucy read out. "He has a small, hand-picked crew who are steadfastly loyal to him, following him from one unlikely project to the next. Like Adamir himself, they are an eccentric bunch but passionate about their craft. The quality of their work speaks for itself."

Mina nodded. "A good start. But tell us more. We readers want the goss. Is it true the actors fuck for real?"

Lucy wagged her finger, admonishing her impatient friend. "The seclusion and secrecy of Adamir's productions are not mere affectation. They are essential to the way he works, and even the actors themselves are often startled by the twists and turns. His critics love to dwell on plot holes and continuity errors, but even they praise the raw emotion he captures and the authenticity in the performances."

"You could drive a double-decker bus through the plot holes," muttered Mina.

"You could say that Adamir is a proponent of 'found art'. This reporter was startled to find herself drawn into the movie with a small but very exciting part, and a young couple fresh from their wedding were likewise offered parts. The skill of Adamir's careful staging more than compensates for our inexperience as actors - or does it? You tell me!"

Mina yawned theatrically.

"I know what you're all wondering: Do the actors fuck? Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to leave you wondering. I guess you'll just have to watch and decide for yourselves. But I will tell you this: Those are my real breasts, and I can't believe the whole world is about to see them."

"Mmm... Tasty."

"But the questions you really should be asking are: Is the blood real? Why do we never see the crew during the day? Is Castle Čachtice haunted by the spirit of Countess Bathory who bathed in the blood of virgin maids to stay forever young? I cannot answer these questions for you, but I can tell you that the ethereally beautiful Mircalla Bartók has a very sharp bite, and I can't wait to see what roles she will sink her teeth into next."

"Excellent!" Mina cried, clapping her hands.

"Adamir's Bathory is, inevitably, a vampire film and clearly takes inspiration from Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness and Jesús Franco's Vampyros Lesbos. Indeed, Mircalla Bartók has more than a passing resemblance to the divine Soledad Miranda, and she captures something of Delphine Seyrig's enigmatic cruelty. Being very much a method actor, the aristocratic vampire she portrays can sometimes be encountered offstage as well - which, trust me, sends quite a shiver up the spine."

"Indeed."

"But ultimately this is Adamir's vision. As a writer, he is well versed in the details of Elizabeth's life. 'Perhaps,' he says excitedly during our interview, which you can read here in full, 'perhaps she was innocent of her crimes! Perhaps! As a woman with great influence, there were many who would benefit from her destruction. Or perhaps the worst of it was true. Just imagine - six hundred and fifty! So much innocent blood, enough even to bathe in."

Mina snorted. "Vampire or not, that's just yuck."

"Adamir the director is very different. 'History is irrelevant,' he insists. 'Or no more relevant than any other character in the story. History is a bard singing of what was, a story told for entertainment, stripped of all that is ugly and tedious. I have no interest in documentary. Nor does anyone. To seduce the modern audience, I must translate and be anachronistic. I must dare more and... and... and excite my actors to reveal truths that they themselves are perhaps unaware of.'"

"He certainly does that."

"In many ways, the unsung hero of this production is Anna, whose calm attention to all the tedious details - like money - ensures that everything goes smoothly day after day. She excels too as a camera operator and as editor, tirelessly stitching together scenes from the night's footage while the rest of us mortals sleep."

"Hmm."

"I asked Anna what it was like to work with Adamir, and she said, 'Never a dull day. He is... a true genius, seeing possibilities where few men would think to look.' And although I have only known him a few days, I must say I agree."

Lucy smiled. "What do you think? Honestly?"

"Well, together with the interviews -"

"And your photos."

"- and my photos, yes, I think you'll have Charlie eating you out."

"Mina!"

"Eating out of your hand, I meant to say."

"Uh huh."

"I mean, I bet you could have him eating you out too."

"Mina!"

"Isn't that where you want him? On his knees at your feet?"

"Stop it!"

"Poor Charlie. It must be driving him nuts that there's no internet here."

"I think he came in his pants when I told him I'd be in the movie."

"I bet he keeps a pocket pussy in the drawer of his desk."

"Eww!"

"You do realise, don't you, that all those dirty photos you've been teasing your fans with are going to seem tame once they've seen you in this."

"I know... I still can't believe I'm doing this. Mum will have a heart attack. And Richard..."

"Fuck that dick."

"Been there, done that."

"Lucy!"

"I do feel sorry for him. A bit. He was nice. Just..."

"Boring? Self-obsessed?"

"That wasn't entirely his fault. I wasn't exactly Miss Adventurous."

"Indeed. How was Richard to know the best way to make you come was to have a lesbian dominatrix bind you in chains and whip you."

"Mina..."

"Would you like me to do that?"

"Mina!"

"I'm serious, Lucy. You can't pretend the touch of a woman doesn't excite you. I bet you've come more times with Mircalla these past few days than you ever did with Richard. You may not be a lesbian, but sure as hell you're not straight."

Lucy glowered back at her friend. "This is all a surprise to me too. I keep telling myself it's just a movie, that I'm just acting a part, but whenever I'm with her I have a yearning to surrender, and I've never felt that way about anyone before. And what really drives me crazy is I can't tell if Mircalla likes me at all or whether it's only Elizabeth Bloody Bathory."

"Tell me, Miss Lucinda Luna, intrepid reporter, just how sharp is your lover's bite? Does she draw blood with her ivory fangs? Precisely why are you scratching your neck?"

"I'm not... oh. It's nothing. Just a rash."

"That does seem to be going round."

"Don't be absurd, Mina. Vampires aren't real."

"I do hope you're right."

*

Vampires might not be real, but serial killers were.

"So, what's this all about?" Anna had asked, after recommending the four of them take half an hour to wash and get dressed, and reconvene somewhere warmer.

In a cosy private lounge, they sat sipping the freshly brewed coffee that a rather grumpy and dishevelled Wolf delivered, muttering, "Ko rano rani, dve sreće grabi."

"What does that mean?" Mina asked when he was gone.

"That it is good to rise with the sun," Anna translated. "Now, tell me, Adamir. Why did you demand to know where he was?"

Adamir waved towards Lucy with a sour expression. "Our intrepid reporter has a theory."

Fighting off the impulse to close her eyes and surrender to sleep, and struggling to find again the conviction she had felt earlier, Lucy explained, "There have been a lot of disappearances connected to Adamir's shoots. Two men in Castelo Branco, three women in Austria -"

"If you mean Johanna," Anna interrupted, only to be interrupted in turn.

"Yes, I know she was arrested on suspicion of murdering the other two, but it never went to trial and all three women had disturbingly erotic deaths in Terroroids. Indeed, that's a major reason the film became an instant cult classic. And what if Johanna wasn't responsible? What if she was another victim? And now Vladan from this set? At least sixteen people have gone missing from eleven shooting locations over the years."

Anna snorted her opinion of this. "If Adamir's genius were for romantic comedies, you would have dismissed all this as life's little coincidences, but because he's a horror director you see evil in every shadow. You are like those politicians who outlaw violence and porn, saying that people do what they see."

"I'm not saying that!" Lucy protested. "I'm saying - " She took a breath to calm herself. "Maybe it is all a coincidence, but maybe it isn't. I'm saying: maybe someone in Adamir's crew is a killer."

"Ah, and you think that killer is Wolf. Why?"

"The disappearances started around the time he joined the crew, and he wasn't watching the edit with us when Vladan left the hotel."

"And we have received several complaints about Wolf from extras," Adamir noted.

Anna shook her head, clearly exasperated. "I leave the two of you alone for an hour and you cook up an absurd conspiracy theory? Wolf's a man, and he's a Serb. His heart is good, but he speaks his mind and his sense of morality is sometimes stuck in the Dark Ages. Of course he causes offence, but it's all bark and no bite.

"But," she added, sitting back with a wry smile, "you're not entirely wrong. Wolf was outside the hotel that night. He did run into Vladan."

All three listeners cried out in surprise and leaned forward. "He did?" cried Lucy. "Why didn't he bring him back to the hotel?"

Anna shrugged. "Vladan wanted to get away from here. Apparently the pair of them had a major drinking session in Bratislava. Vladan was still there - and still very drunk - when Valeska tracked him down yesterday."

"Oh," Lucy said. "That's... good, I guess."

*

Lucy watched in awe as Mircalla descended the stairs like a goddess. She wore a floor-length corset dress, midnight blue with cobwebs as silver detail, her long black hair was ironed and lustrous, and she seemed to float effortlessly on what must be five-inch heels. Her steady gaze was focused on Lucy and seemed to promise... something. Pleasure, perhaps; pain, inevitably; more likely a sublime fusion of the two.

Mircalla had been beautiful already when Lucy had first met her, as might be expected of a Hungarian model and Adamir's choice of lead actress, but her growing confidence in herself during the shoot added a glamour that emphasised the beauty.

Lucy was more worried than she let on. Not about real vampires, of course, but certainly about the way fantasy and reality blurred in Mircalla's mind. Mina's joke about Mircalla being a lesbian dominatrix was not very wide of the mark. When in character, Mircalla-as-Elizabeth sometimes had that same serpentine eroticism as Amanda Donohoe's Lady Sylvia Marsh - it was no surprise to Lucy that Ken Russell was another of Adamir's influences.

What was it about the human psyche that made the monstrous feminine so sexually fascinating? Was it merely that a woman with the power to disregard the patriarchy and its power structures would automatically be a threat to the status quo of male dominance? It made no sense to Lucy that a figure representing both tyranny and anarchy should be considered seductive.

And yet... as evil as Elizabeth Bathory supposedly was, and as darkly sinister as Mircalla's portrayal of the countess's vampiric alter ego was, the sensible part of Lucy's mind quickly gave way to a real, physical hunger whenever she was alone with her. "I'm not a lesbian," she kept reminding herself, but that did nothing to still the butterflies - or perhaps it was a swarm of miniature bats roosting within her, for the fluttering she felt had nothing to do with romantic love and was always most restless with the setting sun and the emergence of Mircalla from her luxurious suite.

Mina had been right too about Richard. Lucy had been attracted to him for the simplicity and convenience of the relationship he offered. The sex had been simple and undemanding, and he had given her the peace and security she had craved while focused on her studies. The past few months, though, working at Tights and Titillation (as it might well have been called), embracing a world of sleazy art and pornographic horror, had made the idea of a lifetime of routine, unimaginative sex almost more horrifying to her than getting raped by tentacles from Outer Space. (Maybe she should be worried that tentacles no longer disgusted her the way they used to.)

Mircalla was the very antithesis of Richard. Or maybe not. Both viewed Lucy as someone to be possessed and controlled, but where Richard had needed her as eye candy, a live-in maid and... and... as a pussy to fuck, Mircalla acted as if she would die if she couldn't wring every last drop of pleasure from Lucy's tormented flesh.

"Are you ready to die, little one?" Mircalla-Elizabeth murmured, her lips a hair's breadth from Lucy's own. "I hope you have said your farewell to the sun. The moon is full and the sky is clear, and when you rise again you will see the true beauty of the night."

Scripted words, but spoken with such sincerity they made Lucy ache for them to be real. "You are the only beauty I need, Countess," Lucy whispered back, following the script and meaning every word of it.

"Then hurry up and get dressed," Mircalla said with a cheeky grin. "I don't want to freeze my ass off waiting for you out there." She wrapped a warm coat about herself and hitched up her skirt, ditched her heels for boots, and walked out into the night.

It took Mina tugging on her hair to bring Lucy back to Earth. "You are so smitten," Mina said.

Lucy laughed. "Can you really blame me?"

*

The full moon was huge and bright, a mid-November supermoon on a clear night, frost on the ground. The crew congregated in islands of relative warmth whenever there was a break from filming, but the fateful hour had come and it was time for Lucy to die. Again.

She was grateful at least that the stone sarcophagus she lay on was polystyrene and not actual stone, but the air itself was brittle with cold and her breath condensed like steam above her - proof of life, if nothing else.

Mircalla's dark blue dress seemed to fade into the night, her hands and face ghostly in the moonlight. Lucy wore white in contrast, a white dress with nothing beneath it, along with white boots. ("These boots are made for walking," Mina sang on seeing them.)

Cold too were the silver chains that Mircalla wound about Lucy's ankles, then her knees, and her wrists. "Sweet child," Mircalla said, "it is time. The fools wait only for the dawn, their torches ready to burn my house to the ground. But I will be gone by then, and you will be by my side, tomorrow and forever. Let them have their shallow victory. You will be mine."

"I am yours, Countess."

"Your heart, perhaps, but your flesh still lives and ages and will die too soon, far too soon. I need one final act of surrender from you, my love, and then nothing will stand between us ever again."

"I am yours, Countess."

"No, but you will be."

Lucy's last thought, as Mircalla's dark lips descended onto her neck, was that she'd expected it to hurt more.