The Avenger 33 - The Blood Countess (5 page)

Leaning closer, old Bouchey said, “She had another name then, when she lived in Castle Csejthe in northwestern Hungary. They called her the Blood Countess. Elizabeth Bathory,
senhor,
is a vampire.”

“I never quite get used to it.” Elizabeth was holding onto Dick Benson’s arm as they walked along a forest path.

Some ten yards behind them, one of the girl’s guards was tramping through the afternoon forest.

“The bodyguards?”

“Yes, and especially Weiner. He’s the one huffing and puffing along in our wake,” said the girl. “I was brought up to believe everyone had his own guardian angel. But they were supposed to be invisible, and they didn’t have big feet.”

“Despite the noise, you should feel secure.”

A bright-colored bird went flickering overhead.

“They really don’t do much good, all the guards.”

“What do you mean? Do you think someone could get through them?”

“Yes, someone has.”

“Who?”

“Me,” she replied.

Up ahead, now fragments of the ancient temple showed—great blocks of yellow stone, grayed by time and tangled with vines.

“You’ve been giving your guards the slip?” the Avenger asked.

“I think so, Dick. I . . . I’m not really sure.”

He watched her pale face for a moment as they drew nearer to the ruined temple. “This has something to do with what you couldn’t talk about yesterday,” he said. “I think you’ll have to tell me now, Elizabeth.”

There had once been wide stone steps leading up to the central room of the temple. Roughly half the steps remained, a thick blue-green moss growing in the cracks and ruts. Most of the main building still stood, a squat thing of giant stone blocks. Each of the blocks was carved with likenesses of long-forgotten gods and depictions of blood rituals.

The girl slowly mounted the ancient steps. Seating herself on the topmost one, she said, “We’ve already talked a little about these spells I’ve been having. I have stretches of time I simple lose.”

Benson sat beside her.

Weiner, the burly guard, halted down in the forest and leaned, arms folded, against the trunk of a tree.

“This has been happening how long?” Benson asked the girl.

She replied, “Months now. It started in Europe after I was freed from . . . after I was freed. Since we’ve come here, things have grown much worse. It’s funny . . . I wanted to spend time here at the castle because I thought it would be relaxing.”

“About these spells, what exactly happens?”

“I seem to jump from one part of time to another. I mean, it’ll be ten at night and then it’s three in the morning.” She laughed, though not with amusement. “Yes, I know that’s what happens when you go to sleep. This is nothing like that.”

“It always happens at night, though?”

“Yes, since we’ve been at the castle, anyway.”

The Avenger said, “There’s more to it than just blacking out, though, isn’t there?”

“I think . . . I think I get out of the castle at night. I sneak out and do terrible things. I seem to have memories . . . very faint . . . memories of killing and blood. Always blood.”

He put his arm around her slender shoulders. “You’ve obviously heard about the murders in this area. Probably you’re imagining—”

“There was blood on my clothes yesterday, clothes I must have worn. And mud, still damp, on a pair of shoes,” she told him in a soft, deliberate voice. “Dick, I really think I must have murdered Leonard Rodney. Rodney and all the rest. I’m some kind of . . . I don’t know what.”

“Look, Elizabeth, if you were going out of that place at night, someone would see you. The guards, your housekeeper. Certainly Erika would be aware of it.”

“That’s a very old castle. There are all kinds of ways to get out without being seen,” said Elizabeth. “As for Erika, I think maybe she has seen me leaving.”

“Has she said so?”

“No, because it’s her job to protect me. She knows something about me, I’m sure. Something awful.”

Benson was silent for a moment. What the pale girl was telling him, it all tied in with what Dr. Bouchey had been saying earlier today. But it wasn’t possible that Elizabeth was . . . was a vampire. “The information you have to give me,” he said finally. “When you first arrived in Panazuela, could you remember it all?”

She nodded. “Yes, then, but in the past few weeks all sorts of information and ideas seem to be slipping away from me. I must be having a breakdown.”

“That’s not what’s happening,” he assured her. “The Nazis are setting up some sort of contingency plan. They intend to use this country as a place to hide their major war criminals when the war ends. You implied that much to Colonel Heberden. Can you remember anything else?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “It sounds familiar. I have the feeling I do know all the details of a plan that is something like that. Details given to me before I was smuggled out of occupied Europe. But, Dick, I can’t dredge up one blessed fact. I’m so sorry I had you—”

The Avenger was on his feet, facing the half-crumbled entry of the temple.

“What is it?” the girl asked.

“Stay out here.” He sprinted to the entryway. From inside the temple he’d heard the unmistakable sound of a foot scraping on stone. Someone was inside the place.

“What’s a matter?” hollered Weiner as he started up the temple stairs.

The Avenger’s .22 was in his hand when he entered the temple.

The light was slanting down in stripes across the humid dark. Part of the temple roof still held, and the sunlight, filtered through foliage, only got through here and there. The floor was made of large slabs of stone, moss thrusting up between the joinings.

Across the vast room stood a high stone altar. A slice of light touched it, showing the stains of blood shed centuries ago.

Slowly Benson walked toward the altar.

“Something funny going on in here?” Weiner called from the doorway.

“Stay with the girl,” the Avenger told him without turning.

He stopped in front of the altar, listening . . . then suddenly vaulted over it.

There was no one on the other side.

No one else in the temple at all, as a careful search soon revealed.

Yet the Avenger knew he’d heard someone.

And that someone might hold the key to what was happening to Elizabeth.

The Avenger had to find that someone.

An overcast night, no moon showing. There was a restless feeling in the dark forest that surrounded the Pedra Negra castle; the animals and birds seemed reluctant to settle down. Anticipating something, afraid of something, perhaps. As the Avenger moved soundlessly through the darkness, not a snapped twig or a crackled leaf betrayed his passing. His car he’d left over a mile from here.

Even though Colonel Heberden had assured him Elizabeth was being adequately guarded, he wanted to see for himself. The girl believed she left the castle after dark, despite the guards. The things she’d told him that afternoon had disturbed him, much more than he’d indicated to her. He gave little credit to what old Dr. Bouchey had told him about Elizabeth Bathory. He did not believe the Blood Countess was still alive after centuries. And yet . . .

Richard Henry Benson had encountered a good many odd things in his career. Since he’d founded Justice, Inc., he’d seen dead men walk, and he’d fought against werewolves. He was not going to dismiss the possibility that a vampire was roaming the countryside around Mostarda.

But that vampire could not be Elizabeth Bentin.

He’d seen Leonard Rodney’s body. The man had been nearly strangled, then something had attacked his throat. A good deal of blood had been lost, and only a little of it remained at the place where Rodney’d been found. An animal could have ripped his flesh like that, but human hands had first tightened around the late consul’s throat.

The idea that Elizabeth could have done something like that . . . No, he couldn’t accept that at all. The Avenger was far from being a sentimental man; the fact that he’d been in love with this girl years ago didn’t influence his current judgment. While he based his conclusions on facts and logic, Benson did allow instinct and feeling to play a part. He felt strongly that the girl had not killed Rodney.

Then who had?

The other victims, according to what he’d learned from the Mostarda police, had been local people. A farmhand was one of them, a wine merchant another, and there had been an old woman who sold flowers. No reason why they couldn’t have been the chance victims of a madman, slaughtered only because they’d had the ill luck to be out and alone on a night when the killer gave in to his urge for blood.

Rodney, though, was different. His death, too, might have been due to chance. Yet, he’d died on the eve of the Avenger’s arrival. A coincidence? Maybe. It was fairly certain there was an information leak in Rodney’s office. Had he known about it? Or was he himself the one who’d told the other side about Benson’s coming? In either case—

There was someone. A figure gliding across the darkness. Eyes less keen than the Avenger’s would have missed it entirely. A figure wearing a night-black cloak.

It had come through a tumbled-down place in the wall around the rear courtyard of the castle. There was no sign of a guard following, meaning the person in the cloak had been able to slip out undetected.

Was it Elizabeth?

Dick Benson couldn’t be certain. The cloaked figure moved in an odd, floating way, straight and stiff as a sleepwalker.

He followed.

The figure was heading for the forest path he and Elizabeth had taken this afternoon, the path that led to the ruins of the temple.

Was it even a woman?

The Avenger had a hunch it was. Yes, a woman wearing a full-length cloak.

The figure was definitely heading for the temple.

Keeping off the path, Benson stayed among the great twisted trees.

When the person in the cloak reached the ruins, the front staircase was not used. The figure instead went around to the side of the ancient stone structure.

The Avenger was close enough behind to see the figure step through a narrow stone doorway that was half-overgrown with brush and swirling vines.

He waited a full minute before going through the doorway himself.

McClurg ran his fingertips over his cheek, discovering a tiny patch of whiskers he’d missed this morning. It was nearly noon, and he, wearing a freshly pressed tan suit, was entering the lobby of the inn where Richard Benson was staying.

Facing him across the curved registration desk in the corner was a pair of bare feet.

“Not much of a way to run a hotel,” said the temporary consul.

The feet jerked and disappeared behind the counter to be replaced by a rising curly head. “I have adopted the Spanish custom of the siesta,
senhor,”
said the young man. “Forgive me.”

“Wouldn’t think it was very healthy to run around the lobby here barefooted.”

“It is very healthy, sir. I can show you a United States magagine, barely two years old, which advocates taking off not only shoes but clothes as well. One’s pores, it seems—”

“Would you give Mr. Benson’s room a buzz, please?”

“I could, though it will produce no results.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is not in,” replied the curly-haired young man.

“Out, eh? Well, did he leave a message for me? I’m Anson McClurg; we’re supposed to have lunch.”

“There is no mesage,
senhor.”

McClurg went closer to the counter so he might drum his fingers on it. “That’s strange,” he said. “Do you know where he went?”

“No,
senhor.
When he took his leave last evening, he—”

“Last evening? He hasn’t been here since last night?”

“No, but I gather Americans are noted for—”

“This is very . . . strange,” decided the temporary consul. “I know he has a reputation for being impulsive, yet this . . .” He walked out of the lobby.

The clerk returned his feet to the top of the desk.

Elizabeth put out a hand toward the window, as though trying to keep the gathering darkness away. “Something’s happened,” she said.

“He’s not that late, is he?” Erika crossed to the clock on the mantel. “Not really, Liz.”

“He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“Something probably came up,” said the blond girl. “He’s working for Colonel Heberden, after all, and—”

“No, Dick Benson isn’t working for anybody,” said Elizabeth. “He’s a free agent. Nobody could tell him not to come here, unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

Turning away from the darkening day, Elizabeth said, “Maybe he doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”

“Honestly, Liz. You sound like some sorority girl waiting for her escort to show up for the prom,” said her companion. “From what I’ve heard of Richard Benson, he’s not the kind to quit a job in the middle.”

“I told him, you know, Erika. About what I think I’ve been doing.”

“Yes, I imagined you would. He’s not the type to be frightened off, even if your suspicions were true.”