Even when I was speaking with her, researching my master's thesis, she wasn't this cold. At least then, she was apologetic. There is no trace of that now. I don't know if it's the fever talking or if she was putting on a show all those years ago.
It's not like she doesn't know how to act. To pretend. To manipulate. She did it for years while she was playing wife and mother.
"I think the time for civility is over." T-Bone's voice is pitched low, only for my benefit.
"One second," I beg. I take a step toward my mother, willing her to listen to me. There is nothing of my mother in her eyes, but still, I can’t give up. I have to believe that I can get to her. “Mom, please come with me.”
And just like that, her eyes go impossibly colder again.
“You know what they called me?” Mom’s voice is high pitched, so high it makes my teeth chatter. “The Bloody Doctor, a nod to Elizabeth Bathory, the Bloody Countess. That’s what they called me. Like I was some kind of crazed lunatic who killed all these young virgins to bathe in their blood. That’s not even historically accurate.”
I open my mouth to argue with her, but a shadow comes up from behind my mother.
And that’s when I see it.
A gun pointed directly to my chest.
12
Mila
It doesn’t take me very long to figure out who the armed man is. It’s Oscar Trow. I put my hands up defensively and look straight into his eyes as he comes into the light.
He’s in his early forties, with a bit of a gut, a wide red nose, and a balding head of pale yellow hair. There’s an ashen quality to his skin, and I’d bet anything he has also taken to injecting foreign blood into his veins.
“You’re the daughter.” His voice is raspy with surprise, the gun still aimed at me. His eyes move to T-Bone, and his face breaks out in a disturbing smile. “Do you know that story? The one about Elizabeth Bathory?”
I swallow loudly, my heart racing in my chest. Having a weapon pointed at you is never the right time for a history lesson.
With my hands up, I can’t reach the gun I have strapped to my hip. And it’s not like I want to whip out my weapon at this precise moment. I don’t intend to shoot anyone. I also have very little field training. After I was done with the basic six months training at FUCNA, I went directly to the lab. It’s not like my aim would be true, and I don't actually remember how to deal with this situation. No one is trained to come face to face with my mother.
It doesn't help that Mom takes a step toward Oscar. She's on his side. The man pointing a weapon at her only child.
T-Bone looks as cool as a cucumber, his face calm, though his shoulders are set wide and at the ready as he rounds the corner, right beside me. I really hope he has a weapon hiding in those ugly cargo shorts of his.
"The Bloody Countess." T nods, engaging Oscar. "Isn't she that countess who killed over six hundred people, all her female servants? Wasn't she one of Bram Stoker's inspirations for Dracula?"
"Do you actually think that it happened that way?" my mother asks, the hysterical edge back to her voice. She hates the comparison between her and Elizabeth Bathory.
In fact, the entire time she was on trial, she kept interjecting into the court proceedings, raving that both she and the countess were being vilified. She was held in contempt of court and then eventually flat-out removed from the room during her own trial.
"Honestly?" T-Bone answers. “I've never spent much time thinking about the validity of it."
"Turns out," Oscar said, "she was a very rich, very powerful countess in Hungary. She was also a widow in the early 1600s with all of this land and money. Her accuser was none other than her cousin, a political enemy. It was all a lie. She didn't kill six hundred people, and she didn't bathe in their blood. It was all done to vilify her."
"Has Sveta been maligned?" T asks, still completely collected.
"Of course." Oscar's hands are shaking slightly, no doubt a symptom of blood poisoning. He’s been injecting himself too. "Sveta is a genius. She's found the answer to aging and disease in the blood of the young. If we can harness it, pull it from healthy donors, then we can eradicate all illnesses. We could all live forever."
"So, she didn't kill hundreds of people?"
I can't help my sharp gasp at T-Bone's question. It's a dangerous thing to ask a deranged man who is pointing a gun at me.
Although now the gun is aimed between T-Bone and me. I don't know if it's because Oscar has lost focus or if it's because he doesn't know which one of us to shoot first.
"She did. But that's the price to pay for brilliance. She shouldn't be locked up. She should be celebrated."
"Interesting," T-Bone volleys back. "And so were these test subjects willing participants?"
"No, but—"
"There wasn't enough blood from the volunteers," my mother interrupts. “I needed it all. I needed to drain them dry to get all of the life force in the blood. The formula wouldn't work without it."
Apparently, when she was in the very beginning of her mission to cure all diseases, she did get a few volunteers to donate blood. A couple of them testified at the trial. But it soon wasn't enough. It didn't take long for science and magic to get confused in my brilliant mother's head.
"Do you know how they killed her?" Mom asks. "The Countess was bricked into a single room of her castle, where she died. That's what they were doing
