Countess Dracula (17 page)

So what was it?

As they entered the city it became a bit harder for Fabio to follow Nayland as the traffic built around them and forced him to stick closer than he would have liked. Nayland gave no sign of having spotted him – in fact, he seemed to have enough problems just keeping on the road. The car had jerked violently a couple of times, once nearly hitting an old dame as she stepped off the sidewalk to cross the road.

‘Watch where you’re going, you blind bastard!’ she shrieked, making Fabio laugh to hear such salty talk from a creature who looked like anyone’s grandmother. Nayland gave no sign of having heard her. He just drove the car around a corner and continued cruising his way towards downtown. He was drunk, Fabio decided, that was why he was driving like such an idiot. So much for not having a problem with the bottle! Drunk in charge of a false beard – this was getting more interesting by the minute.

Soon they were in one of the sleazier districts and the traffic thinned out once more. Fabio hung back as Nayland began a slow crawl around the side streets.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, lowering the window slightly to let out some of the heat, ‘don’t tell me he came all this way shopping for hookers.’

It certainly looked that way as Nayland pulled up and beckoned a pair of girls over. Not the kind of ladies Fabio would have ever considered inserting a piece of himself into. They looked as rough as sailors and as classy as a dildo at a dinner party. Still, whatever turned you on … if Nayland liked them rough then Fabio could live with it, though he’d be insisting this client had regular medical checks if he was going to make a habit of indulging such tastes.

Fabio pulled in for a moment, watching as Nayland completed his transaction.

‘Hey, honey?’ called a voice from Fabio’s passenger-side window. ‘You looking for something?’

‘Yeah,’ he answered, lost in his own thoughts. He turned to look and his heart, that most ill-used and cold organ, almost thawed. The kid was no more than thirteen or so. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘what are you doing out here? Go home to your mother, for God’s sake.’

He lived in a world of sin but he had never become hardened to this. Didn’t everyone deserve at least a few years of innocence before the world stripped them away? The one time he had ditched a client for moral reasons had been when he had found out that she liked boys on the wrong side of puberty. Let people wallow in whatever filth they choose but he’d have no part in that.

‘Can’t go home without a couple of dollars,’ the kid said, ‘or she’ll beat me so hard I’ll be out of work for a week.’

‘Oh God …’ Fabio grimaced at the thought and reached for his wallet. He pulled out five dollars. ‘Take this and go home.’ On reflection he snatched the note back for a moment. ‘Even better,’ he said, ‘go somewhere else. Any mother lets you out here at your age is a no-good bitch and you should keep away from her.’

The girl shrugged. ‘You gotta stick with your family,’ she said, as if she was discussing a disagreement over seating arrangements at a wedding. ‘They’re all you got.’

He sighed and handed her the note. ‘You don’t need anyone but yourself, remember that. Just get out of here and take the night off, understand?’

She nodded, took the note and wandered off. No doubt she’d be back selling herself within the hour but there was nothing he could do about it.

He looked back over to Nayland in time to see his car turning the corner at the end of the street.

‘Shit!’ Fabio accelerated after him. He was damned if he was going to have driven all this way only to lose him now.

He nearly did. Turning along the next street he could see no sign of Nayland’s car and it was a full three or four minutes before he spotted it at an intersection to his left, waiting for the lights to change. He resumed his careful tracking, creeping as close as the traffic allowed until they were on their way out of the city and he could relax a little, hanging back and keeping Nayland in sight a little way ahead.

So Nayland had come all the way over here just to pick up a couple of hookers? It just didn’t make sense. He had enough contacts closer to home. Fabio was really starting to get a bad feeling about this. Something smelled bad and, determined as he was to find out what, he was beginning to suspect that the answer would create as many problems as it solved.

As they got closer to home, Nayland went past the turning that would have taken him back to his house and carried on up into the hills.

‘Where the hell are you going now?’ Fabio muttered.

Nayland pulled off the main road and onto a narrow dirt track. This presented Fabio with a problem: did he dare try and follow? Surely it would be obvious that he was tailing the man if he did so. He could hardly have a good reason for also using the track.

Deciding that caution was the only way forward – after all, he’d been careful up till now so why blow it at the last hurdle? – he drove a short way past and then pulled over.

He got out of the car and headed back to the start of the track. He began to walk along it.

It was hot as hell and he hoped to God that the trail wasn’t miles long. He wasn’t fit enough to be slogging along in this heat.

On both sides of the track was a dense orchard of orange trees and he decided to make life easier for himself by cutting through it. Besides, if Nayland reappeared he’d soon be caught if he was standing in the middle of the trail. He could hear the car ahead and it wasn’t difficult to follow its engine sound.

The undergrowth was thick but he pushed his way through, cursing at the effect it was having on the legs of his suit’s trousers and his patent leather shoes.

‘Frankie, this had better be good,’ he murmured as he trudged on.

He heard the car pull to a halt a short distance ahead. The doors opened and the previously quiet orchard was immediately ringing with the sound of raised female voices.

‘I don’t care how much you’re paying,’ said one. ‘This ain’t no summer house and I think you’ve been selling us a crock!’

You and me both, darling
, Fabio thought as he got close enough to be able to see them through the trees. The track ended in front of a ramshackle-looking barn, not a destination Fabio would have ever imagined. Clearly the hooker agreed.

‘I mean, this place is a dump! Who parties at a place like this?’

Fabio noticed another car parked next to Nayland’s, a smaller red coupe which he knew Elizabeth had favoured when she had decided – pointlessly, Fabio had thought – that she wanted a car of her own. So it looked like Nayland wasn’t acting by himself: this was where she came as well. He could have saved himself a journey and come straight here if he had just been patient and waited for her to appear.

Nayland was giving a particularly ineffectual performance through the trees ahead. ‘I told you it was out of the way,’ he was saying in a rough New York accent. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘The problem, mister, is my friend and I don’t like working way out in the middle of nowhere when we don’t even know who we’re working with.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have got in the damned car, should you?’ Nayland said, all trace of his accent now gone.

Fabio kept creeping closer, trying to make sure that he kept the trees between him and the group ahead.

‘Joanie,’ said the other girl, in a dazed, doped tone, ‘I think we should go home now.’

Too late for that
, thought Fabio. Nayland obviously agreed as he grabbed the first girl, the one that had a lot more edge to her voice, and began dragging her towards the barn.

‘Let go of me!’ she shouted. ‘You don’t get to just muscle me around, mister!’

‘I can do what I want,’ said Nayland and, with one drunken lurch, he slammed the girl’s head against the wall of the barn.

Oh fuck!
thought Fabio.
What the hell have I stumbled on here?

‘Joanie?’ called the doped girl. ‘You all right, Joanie?’

The door of the barn opened and whatever concerns Fabio had had before were as nothing compared with the icy spread of terror he felt when he saw Elizabeth – at least, he assumed it was Elizabeth – appear in the doorway.

She was naked, which made the vision all the more horrible. Her skin hung in great folds, liver-spotted and ancient, and she looked like a woman near death as she lurched out of the door and made a grab for the dazed Joanie.

‘Get the other one,’ she told Nayland who silently did as he was told, walking towards the girl who was still standing by the car.

‘Run, Betty, honey!’ Joanie cried, her voice cracking, stifled by Elizabeth’s yellowing fingers as they reached inside her mouth and grabbed at her tongue, trying to silence her.

Doped as she was, the urgency of Joanie’s shout still woke Betty up and she did indeed make a break for it, running through the trees towards Fabio.

Oh Christ!
He looked around, trying to decide what to do. Should he too make a run for it? If he did then he would certainly be seen.

He stayed put, more through indecision than anything else, fighting the urge to cry out as the girl tripped up and fell to the ground only a couple of feet away from him. He stayed hidden behind a tree, cursing himself for his cowardice but unwilling to step in to help even as Nayland grabbed the fallen girl by the hair and dragged her, screaming, back towards the barn.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God …’ Fabio whispered, risking a glance around the tree and watching as Elizabeth and Nayland dragged the girls inside the barn. What the hell were they going to do? If it was the violent stuff they were after there were ways you could get it without resorting to all this.

And what was with Elizabeth? What he’d seen was not the beautiful sex siren he had spent the last couple of weeks promoting. With her looking like that he might have been able to partner her up with Karloff but that would be about her lot. How could she look so different?

He needed to know. He couldn’t find out this much and then let go, it just wasn’t in his nature.

Fabio moved through the trees, cutting around to the rear of the barn. There was a small window on the far side and if he could just get a quick glimpse through that …

He ran over to the wall, terrified now that he was exposed out in the open, and inched along towards the window. Inside, everyone sounded active: both girls were screaming, Elizabeth was shouting.

He reached the window and slowly, convinced he was going to find himself face to face with someone on the other side of the glass, he put one eye to it.

It was dark inside, a couple of lamps providing the only lighting. They were enough for Fabio to see Elizabeth and Nayland stringing one of the girls up from the ceiling by a length of chain.

‘I said before,’ Nayland was shouting, ‘this is your half of the deal.’

‘Grow a backbone,’ Elizabeth replied – a sentiment Fabio could only agree with when applied to Nayland – ‘I can’t manage on my own.’

She made a good fist of it, though, as far as Fabio could tell. She tore the clothes from the dangling woman who had given up struggling now, her face puffy from the beating she had received.

‘Just hold her steady,’ Elizabeth demanded, turning her attentions to the other girl – Betty, Fabio reminded himself, the poor girl’s name was Betty. Nayland did as he was told and Fabio bit his lip as Elizabeth picked up a stout length of wood and casually, almost carelessly, hit the woman over the head with it.

‘There,’ said Elizabeth, with no more emotion than if she’d just stamped on a beetle. ‘I can manage from here. Get out if you can’t bear to see what comes next.’

Fabio might well have taken that advice. But he couldn’t tear his gaze away as the unnaturally aged woman dragged a metal bath beneath where Joanie had been strung up. Elizabeth climbed in the bath, her face right against the dangling woman’s chest. She reached up and Fabio caught the glint of something metal and then Joanie was thrashing around violently. Elizabeth grabbed the woman’s legs and yanked down. Blood was gushing from Joanie’s throat now, drenching Elizabeth as she stood beneath. This was clearly part of the plan as, once the girl ceased her jerking around, Elizabeth let go of her and turned round under the crimson spray, massaging the blood all over her body like a woman taking a shower. She ran it through her hair before putting first one, then the other foot up on the edge of the bath so that she could rub the liquid along her legs. She tilted her head back and actually laughed as it ran, hot and thick, over her face.

Fabio understood. He didn’t know how it was possible, had no logic to explain it, but it was clear that what he was seeing here was Elizabeth’s ‘new regime’. This was her secret. This was the source of her renewed beauty.

He had the proof of it after a few minutes when Elizabeth stepped out of the tub and over to a large watering can. She lifted it and tilted the spout over herself, washing the blood away to reveal fresh young skin.

Fabio didn’t wait for the full revelation. He had seen enough. He was in terrible danger, he realised: anyone willing to do what he’d just witnessed wouldn’t give his continued existence a second thought.

He headed back into the trees, moving around to the front of the barn as slowly and quietly as he could.

He could see Nayland, perched on the bonnet of a car, smoking a cigarette, looking like a man waiting contentedly for someone he was picking up from a train station.
You were even more broken than I realised
, thought Fabio.
Elizabeth? I could believe her capable of anything but I thought you were a better man than this
.

He kept moving away from the barn and once he felt he had put enough distance between them he broke into a run, his nerve finally snapping. He was half-convinced that Elizabeth would leap out at him at any moment, a blood-drenched demon from Hell, eager to pull him back down there.

When he got to the car he climbed in and drove away, constantly checking the rear-view mirror for any sign of pursuit.

He realised he was driving too fast as the car skidded a little on the tight corners and he forced himself to slow down. The last thing he needed to do was wreck the thing and find himself stuck out here.