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old blood; it had to be virgin's blood if it was to be effective in restoring
her youthful looks.
You don't have to be a whiz at algebra to see the eventual problem. According
to records kept in her own hand, over six hundred young women disappeared
before her bloody reign was stopped.
As you might suspect, the numbers eventually did her in.
For years the nobles refused to take action against one of their own.
Erzsébet's attitudes toward the peasantry were hardly confined to her own sick
and twisted little mind as I said before, life was cheap and the nobles traded
regularly in its perverse coinage. But first she made the mistake of losing
her husband.
Ferencz Nádasdy, the "Black Hero" of Hungary, was rarely home, spending the
greater portion of their marriage on the battlefield striking terror into the
hearts of the Turks. His status as a national champion protected her
proclivities on the home front while he was alive. But the hazards of a
soldier's life eventually caught up with him: he was stabbed to death in 1604
by an angry whore who claimed
Ferencz had stiffed her after, well, "stiffing" her.
Greedy eyes began to consider the count's estates and potential scenarios
wherein the family landholdings could be made forfeit.
Then the Widow Báthory made a political mistake that was her undoing.
Over a ten-year period Lizzie had not only exhausted her primary source of
virgins, it was beginning to look like the original formula was losing its
effectiveness at turning back the clock. Anna Darvula, who was rumored to have
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been a witch and Erzsébet's lover, had died by then and the work of
procurement had been taken over by one Erzsi Majorova. Erzsi's take on the
problem was that peasant blood was too base and coarse to have the proper
qualities. Her advice was to switch to virgins of more noble birth.
It was really bad advice.
When some highborn girls disappeared, the aristocracy finally stepped in and
said: "Up against the wall, red-to-the-neck mother!"
She and her servants were tried for "crimes against nobility," there being no
such thing as "crimes against humanity" back then. All the servants, save one,
were found guilty and executed in a most unpleasant manner.
Liz, being a noble herself, was above such vulgar things as capital
punishment not so different from today, I suppose and was placed under house
arrest. Lacking the technology for electronic ankle bracelets, they did the
next best thing: They walled up the doors and windows of her private chambers
and slid her food in through a slot where the door used to be. Since there's
no mention in any of the accounts of openings large enough to allow the
emptying of chamber pots, one might question the compassion of life
imprisonment over the death penalty.
Anyway, maybe the historical take on the countess was wrong. Maybe she didn't
start her bloody baths as an elixir of youth. Maybe she got an overdose of
sunshine and it was the first-aid treatments that got her hooked.
If so, maybe I was closer to the precipice than I initially feared.
Not the same, the voice murmured inside my head. That which you may take from
the blood bank vault was given willingly.
Maybe, I thought right back, but it was given willingly so that others might
live. That the precious gift of life might continue to flow through the veins
of those whose time should not come prematurely. Not sit in the belly of a man
who had no place among the living or the dead.
What about your time? Did your life not end prematurely? What about fairness?
What about justice?
Hey, if life wasn't fair, why should I expect anything different to come
afterward?
You make your own justice.
Yeah, pervert the gift of life and steal it keep it from reaching the
twelve-year-old victim of a hit-and-run accident or the father of four
children undergoing open-heart surgery; head it off before it reaches the
hemophiliac who just might find the cure for cancer if she lives to spend
another couple of years in her lab.
Yeah.
Sure.
Make justice out of that.
The other voice shut up for awhile and I drove past the blood bank.
I turned around before crossing the Ouachita River and headed for the eastern
edges of Monroe.
I drove past churches, their lighted crosses and illuminated spires offering
refuge against the spiritual darkness in this world and that which came from
beyond. Was there succor there for me? Or was I
already damned, like some unholy Buzz Lightyear, "to eternity and beyond?"
Away from the main part of town was a huge complex of buildings fairly new
buildings from the look of things. It looked like some freeze-frame from a
Jerry Bruckheimer/Nipponese Sci-Fi flick where a lustful oil refinery runs
amok and tries to mate with a nuclear power station. And it was all tricked
out with barbed electrical fencing, security checkpoints, and the words
"BioWeb Industries" trapped inside a
huge block of clear Lucite. Even from the road you could see the letters
change colors, shading from blue to purple to red and back again.
I eased on down the street without stopping, but I gave the place a good
look-over from the front and pondered the little I knew to date.
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BioWeb was involved in cutting-edge medical research and treatment options.
Chalice Delacroix mentioned working in their R & D labs during our first
interview and apparently was involved in the area of genetics from what I
could put together so far. Call-me-Lou had been hot to discuss business with
Nurse Jensen and the words "umbilical cords" had slipped from his trembling
lips. I could think of only one likely reason: stem cell research.
My Hunger was momentarily forgotten as I swept back toward the highway. The
security lights from the BioWeb complex glimmered in my rearview mirror like
multiple beacons in the darkness.
Brighter and more promising of redemption than any glowing crucifix or
floodlit steeple.
* * *
They were waiting for me as I pulled into my driveway: three adults, one
child. I wasn't sure of the genders until I was close enough to make out their
clothing.
Even then I wasn't sure.
The boy was white. The adults I wasn't really sure. What skin remained showed
a mottled gray.
Those facial features that still existed had become puffy and distorted past
any kind of racial profiling.
One of the adults had misplaced his lower jaw.
I've known women who will never appear in public without wearing makeup. This
woman (I think)
seemed willing to come out for a visit without putting on her face.
I opened my mouth to ask what they wanted and caught my first whiff. I turned
away and nearly spewed a liter of half-digested blood.
Tic-Tacs, I thought, my mind tilting crazily they were in the glove [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]