"For ten years Elizabeth's loyal inner circle scoured the countryside in search of suitable young girls, free of sin and untainted by illness, which, was not as easy as it sounds in those days. Numerous peasant girls, born into ignorance and poverty, were offered a chance of a lifetime: positions as chambermaids and scullery servants in the comparative grandeur of the castle.
"The moment the new 'serving girls' arrived at the castle, they were drugged, bound and butchered like sheep. Like the slaves who toiled and died to build the Great Pyramids, these nameless peasant girls transcended their insignificance by serving to restore one of the Living Wonders of the World to her full glory. Over the next ten years over forty young girls were fed to Elizabeth's beauty. And it would have continued for another decade, possibly a third, if a fatal case of mistaken identity had not been made.
"When the young daughter of the Arch Duke arrived at the castle for an unannounced visit after a particularly long and arduous journey, she was mistaken for the most recent recruit and summarily drugged and bled out before anyone realized who she was.
"The Arch Duke became concerned when his favorite daughter did not return from her trip. He wrote several letters to Elizabeth, asking what had become of his child. At first Elizabeth assured the Arch Duke that the girl was fine and had merely decided to extend her stay. But when he still did not hear from his daughter, the Arch Duke became more insistent. Elizabeth then claimed that the young girl had contracted a fever and could not be moved. This news upset the Arch Duke greatly, and he promptly sent a messenger to the castle to inform Elizabeth that he would be leaving his palace to personally attend his ailing daughter.
Halfway to the castle, the Arch Duke was met by one of Elizabeth's retainers, who said the Arch Duke's daughter had died of the plague and that the castle was under quarantine. The Countess had been forced to burn the body of the Arch Duke's daughter for fear of contamination.
"This last piece of news was more than the Arch Duke could bear. He had heard rumors of the goings on at the castle, but had not given them credence. He knew his child was dead, but he suspected her end had come by mortal hands. The Arch Duke petitioned the King for an investigation into the goings on at the castle. Elizabeth's cousin, the vice chamberlain, tried to block the request, but since the King was also the cousin of the Arch Duke, he was unable to stop it being approved.
"A division of the King's army, lead by the Arch Duke and accompanied by Inquisitors, stormed the castle. They found the Arch Duke's dear, departed daughter moldering in the dungeon, her highborn corpse alongside the daughters of swineherds and hod-carriers.
"The lowborn accomplices who had served Elizabeth so loyally and so well over the years were put to the Question and quickly turned evidence against their mistress. For collaborating with the state, the witnesses privy to the secret behind Elizabeth's unique beauty treatments were rewarded by having their fingernails pulled out with pliers, their kneecaps broken, and then they were hung and dismembered in the public square. The witch, for the additional crimes of blasphemy, was broken on the wheel and then burned at the stake.
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"There was a great deal of excitement about the case, and thousands of people came from far and wide to see the accomplices to the bloodthirsty countess put to death. Those unable to attend the executions read about them in widely distributed broadsheets, which recounted the story in gruesome detail, and, for those unable to read, featured numerous graphic woodcuts of the crimes committed by and the punishment meted out to the criminals.
"Because of her high station, Elizabeth was not put to death. Indeed, she was not even placed on trial. Instead, it was decreed that she would spend the rest of her natural life under house arrest. And to make sure that her sentence would be as short as possible, her jailer was the Arch Duke.
"The day after sentence was passed on Elizabeth, the Arch Duke arrived at her castle and ordered all the fixtures removed. The beds, chairs, tables, tapestries, even the chamber pots, were taken from the castle and distributed amongst the families of those who had lost their daughters to the blood bath. Once the interior of the castle was as bleak and bare as its exterior, the Arch Duke ordered what few servants remained to leave the premises.
By the end of the second day, all that was left inside the once-grand castle was a pallet of dirty straw, a crooked foot stool, a rough-hewn table...and Elizabeth.
"The Arch Duke then summoned his master mason and ordered him to brick up every door and window in the castle...save for one. The sole egress from the castle was a small window in Elizabeth's bedchamber, accessible only via a long ladder. It was through this narrow portal that Elizabeth's jailers pushed her daily meal of black bread and stone soup.
"Elizabeth's isolation from the world was total, as she was forbidden pen and paper to pass her days, candles or fire to illuminate the darkness or warm herself, and her keepers were forbidden to speak even one word to her, under pain of death.
"She spent four years sealed away from the light of day. Four years spent shitting in the ballroom fireplace. Four years spent prowling the dark for rats and mice to supplement her diet. Four years spent licking condensation off the walls to quench her thirst. Four years spent freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer.
"Her only clothes were those upon her back the day the master mason sealed her away.
Her only blanket was a tattered piece of tapestry that had been overlooked by the Arch Duke's men the day they emptied the castle. Although her family had been spared the shame of Elizabeth being put to death in the public square, in truth it would have been far less cruel if she had been broken on the rack and burned alive as a witch than left to dwell in filth and darkness, perpetually on the edge of starvation.
"Finally, after years of such ill treatment, Elizabeth collapsed in her bed chamber, too weak to rise. As she lay dying on the hard, chill floor, the shadows in the corner of the room took a form familiar to her and knelt beside her, its eyes flickering in the eternal gloom.
'Thou breathe thine last, fair Elizabeth, but despair not. In life thou embraced monstrosity, and, in doing so, secured for thyself unlife never-ending. In three days time thou shah rise and walk the earth once more, as one made in mine own image.'
"When the guard next climbed the ladder to pass Elizabeth her meal of black bread and stone soup through the window, she was not waiting for him. He glanced into the room and saw a woman's body sprawled motionless on the floor.
"The guard informed the Arch Duke, who had one of the castle doors unsealed. They
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) found the body of Elizabeth, reduced to little more than a skeleton, covered in filth and open sores. Although the Arch Duke would have gladly thrown her corpse on the dung heap for the dogs to tear apart, he had no desire to offend her powerful relatives. So he had Elizabeth's body placed in the family tomb, without the benefit of clergy, alongside her long-dead husband. And so ended the story, as far as most people are concerned.
"Except that the night following her entombment, Elizabeth rose from her resting place and walked out into the darkness, never to return to her native land. For He Who Makes was as good as his word; although dead, she did still move upon the earth. She was now one of the Unliving, who walk by night and feed upon the blood of mortals.
"But Elizabeth was different, in many ways, from common
enkidu,
those creatures who humans know as vampires. She did not have fangs to bite her victims, but instead absorbed their blood directly through her skin. And now that she was Undead, she no longer had to worry about the blood being that of a male or a female, virgin or sinner.
"So Elizabeth wandered the world, eager to quench her thirst and continue the existence she had once known. She soon learned that the best cover for her operations was that of the brothel. Men, as a rule, were far easier to entice to their deaths...and much less likely to be missed than virginal young maidens.
"Over the centuries she went from country to country, city to city, establishing a series of bordellos notorious for their willingness to cater to the more perverse—and wealthy—patrons. Rome, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Venice, Moscow, London: she knew them all, and they knew her, under a dozen different names. But always the same title: Countess.
"Empires rose and fell. Religions were founded and destroyed. The ancestral line of which she was once so proud grew anemic and fell into decline. To her eyes, human society was like a castle made of sand, constantly being washed away and rebuilt. The one thing that remained unchanged was her beauty...and the blood that fed it.
"And so things would have remained until the world's end, except for the Blue Monster.
"The Blue Monster was a fearsome creature that hated all things inhuman. It had mirrors for eyes, leathery black skin, and a single, deadly silver tooth, which it plunged into the hearts of its hapless victims. It scoured the world in search of vampires and other nonhumans, stalking its prey without mercy.
"One day, not too long ago, while returning from an exclusive sex club in Monte Carlo, Elizabeth was accosted by the Blue Monster, who attacked without warning or provocation, slicing her with its horrible silver tooth. It took all of Elizabeth's strength to escape the dreadful beast.
"Although she had avoided true death at the hands of her enemy, the Blue Monster's silver tooth had done its damage, turning her legs gangrenous. To keep the rot from spreading, Elizabeth had no other choice but to have her legs removed. Although the surgery was successful, her existence was forever changed. As all vampires know, wounds dealt by silver weapons never truly heal, and limbs lost to silver never regenerate.
"For the first time in centuries, Elizabeth was unable to feed her beauty, and without the blood of her admirers the full weight of her years began to bear down on her brittle bones.
Elizabeth needed a companion to help restore her youth and beauty; a companion who would do her bidding without question or qualm; a companion who would deceive, seduce and kill for her. Most of all, she needed a companion who would protect her from the Blue
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) Monster.
"Elizabeth looked in penthouses and boxcars, prep schools, and prisons for such a companion. Then, one night, while at an interstate travel plaza, she noticed a young girl dressed in a tank top and cut-off jeans going from rig to rig, soliciting the truckers for sex.
She watched as the girl climbed into one of the cabs, then exited ten minutes later, her hands stained with blood and clutching a large roll of paper currency. It was then that Elizabeth knew she had found her companion.
"Elizabeth took the girl away from the truck stops and rest areas that had been her world and gave her nice clothes, money, expensive cars, and took her traveling around the globe.
And in exchange, all the companion...who was, in reality, a Secret Princess...had to do was keep Elizabeth's beauty fed with fresh blood. Which proved very, very easy. The End."
"But you didn't say if Elizabeth and The Secret Princess lived happily ever after,"
"How remiss of me! And Elizabeth and the Secret Princess lived happily ever after forever and ever. The end."
"I like it when you do the voices," Phaedra said, her voice drowsy.
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) The next John whose name wasn't John was a Japanese business executive with an Osaka electronics concern. She picked him up at a gentleman's club while wearing the red wig and driving the Lamborghini. He had insisted on vaginal intercourse, but didn't last three minutes. Not that it mattered. In the end he met the same fate as all the other nameless Johns she had slaughtered in the service of the Contessa's beauty.
Still, she was beginning to worry. They had been in one place far too long. And the cycles between baths were becoming disturbingly short. When Phaedra first began working for her, the Contessa only required one bath a week. Now it was two, sometimes three. The local police would eventually tie the various disappearances together, despite her care in changing her appearance and making sure she didn't trawl in a discernible pattern.
Even if the cops were slow on the uptake, there was no guarantee the papers wouldn't smell a story and start writing about the sudden spate of missing mid-level executives.
Neither the cops nor reporters really concerned Phaedra over much. She was used to dodging both. What she was afraid of was the story getting picked up by the wire services.
That meant the Blue Monster would be headed their way.
Phaedra felt much safer in Europe than the States. Part of that was personal. After all, nothing bad had ever happened to her on the Continent. She had repeatedly begged her mistress to leave the country, but she remained adamant in staying put. Phaedra feared that the Contessa's frequent aging cycles had somehow affected her mind. Sometimes she seemed distant and disjointed, as if centuries of memory were playing inside her head at the same time. On occasion she called Phaedra by different names and spoke in languages she didn't recognize.
There were other changes, too. The torpor that followed her rejuvenation now lasted hours. Now all the Contessa seemed interested in doing was sitting on her bed and staring out at the night, watching the moon's reflection on the lake's liquid surface. The only thing that seemed to interest the Contessa, besides watching the night, were the fairy tales.
Phaedra liked lying with her head in her mistress's truncated lap while the Contessa absently stroked her hair and told her bedtime stories. It was something her mother had never done for her as a child. Her stepfather used to come into her room and put her head in his lap, but that was different.