Bathed In Blood. Alex Archer
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Название: Bathed In Blood
Автор: Alex Archer
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Сказки
Серия: Gold Eagle Rogue Angel
isbn: 9781474028950
isbn:
Fertile hunting grounds for appetites that grew harsher as the years went by.
Annja knew the countess had gotten bored with castle life. She and her husband wrote letters back and forth, as any married couple might do, but Elizabeth and Ferenc talked about methods of torture to be used on the Turkish prisoners. She would suggest new techniques and her husband would report the results back to her; some of those letters were still stored among the Nádasdy family documents in the National Archives of Hungary.
Soon the countess was trying out techniques of her own on her staff, all peasants—and therefore of no consequence in her view—from the surrounding villages. Severe whippings and beatings were frequent, often for the slightest infractions.
As time went on, more girls were lured to the castle under pretense of working for the countess, and then those girls started to disappear. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the people could do about it. Báthory not only controlled the land they lived on but was related to the very authorities the villagers would’ve brought their concerns to.
What a terrible situation. Parents forced to watch as their daughters were taken from them with impunity. One of history’s monsters, indeed.
Báthory had finally paid for her crimes. The countess was imprisoned inside this very castle. She’d lived alone for four long years before dying from some unknown illness. Even the date of her death was conjecture; several plates of food had sat untouched just inside her chambers, so there was no way of knowing if she’d been dead for a few minutes or a few days when she’d been found.
That’s it! she thought. That’s the opening!
Annja rushed over to the camera, snatched up the remote and got into position. She took a few deep breaths and then stared directly at the lens as she pressed Record.
“Four hundred years ago, a woman was walled up inside the castle that now stands behind me. Her crimes were so terrible she would earn a reputation as the world’s foremost serial killer. Her name? Countess Elizabeth Báthory. Her rumored victims, six hundred and fifty in number, were all young women, and the savage way in which they were killed earned Báthory the nickname by which she is more commonly known—the Blood Countess. But was Elizabeth Báthory a monster? Or was she also a victim, caught between two sides of a titanic struggle for power that reverberates through this region today?
“Join me as we examine the reality and the myth surrounding the Blood Countess, Elizabeth Báthory, here on Chasing History’s Monsters.”
Annja spent another hour shooting video of the castle ruins, footage she could splice in during the editing phase, and then packed up her gear. By the time she’d loaded the rented four-wheel-drive vehicle, the sun was just about down.
She drove through the small village of Čachtice, home to some three thousand residents, and headed for her hotel in nearby Nové Mesto nad Váhom, a town about five miles northeast of Čachtice.
Annja had been driving for less than five minutes when her headlights picked up a figure standing by the side of the road, frantically waving his or her arms. As she drew closer she could see it was a young woman of about twenty-five, dressed in hiker’s boots and jeans and wearing a canvas jacket against the chilly evening. Behind her, Annja could see a backpack sitting on the ground.
Her first thought was hitchhiker, but then she caught sight of the young woman’s face and realized something was terribly wrong. She pulled to the side of the road about ten yards away, turned off the engine and got out.
“Are you all right?” she called from her position by the driver’s door.
The woman shouted something back at her. Annja recognized the language as Hungarian, or Magyar as it was known here, but it wasn’t related to any of the half dozen languages she did speak, so there was no chance of her getting the gist of what was being said. The woman’s frantic hand motions spoke a language of their own, however.
Come here! Quickly!
Most people would’ve been concerned at this point. A dark road with no one around made the perfect place for an ambush, and a woman driving alone in a foreign country would no doubt be an attractive target. Not only that, but she had just made it easier for any would-be bandits by getting out of her vehicle.
Annja wasn’t concerned. If this was a setup, she’d deal with it. She’d been in tougher situations before and had managed to extricate herself just fine. It helped that she was the bearer of Joan of Arc’s weapon, a broadsword she could pull out of where it waited for her—the otherwhere, she called it—with just a thought.
The sword had been shattered by the English commander who’d overseen Joan’s execution, the pieces scattered into the mud like so much waste. In the wake of that sundering something miraculous had occurred; the lives of the two men who had been assigned to watch over Joan, a knight named Roux and his apprentice, Garin Braden, were extended indefinitely. Both were over five hundred years old and still as hearty as they had been the morning their charge had met her fate.
Roux had set out to retrieve the pieces of the sword, and one by one they’d been reunited. Annja had been present when the very last piece had been added to the puzzle and the sword had restored itself in a flash of power that bound her and the blade together in a stunning, and rather unexpected, fashion. The sword wasn’t bound by the rules of time and space and so was available to her at any moment with just a thought. It made getting out of tight situations much easier.
The way the other woman was reacting, the obvious relief on her face that someone, anyone, had stopped to help, made Annja think that whatever this was, it wasn’t a trap.
When Annja got closer, she realized the ground had given away on the side of the road. The woman was still talking nonstop, but now she was pointing frantically into the darkness.
Annja suddenly understood what the woman wanted.
Down there. He’s fallen down there.
Annja turned around, intending to go back for a light, and the woman shrieked and rushed forward, grabbing Annja’s arm.
“Easy now, take it easy,” Annja began, but the woman wasn’t listening. She was clearly in panic mode, more than likely thinking Annja was leaving. The backpacker was talking a mile a minute, pointing into the darkness over the edge, and paying no attention to what Annja was saying.
Annja knew how to fix that, at least.
She dug in her heels, pulled her arm back sharply and yelled, “Wait!” as loudly as she could.
The sudden blast of sound broke through the woman’s panic, and she snapped her head around to stare at Annja.
Annja held up her free hand in a “take it easy” gesture. “I’m not leaving,” she said soothingly, hoping the woman understand a little English. “I’m going to get a light, so we can see.”
She mimed shining a light over the edge and looking down after it.
Understanding blossomed on the other woman’s face and she calmed down.
Annja turned and hurried over to СКАЧАТЬ