Edward watched Harry's face as he sat down next to the Countess in the place she had indicated for him. He saw Harry jump as the delicate white hand grabbed his own and the violet eyes of the beautiful woman between them fixed on his own.
'Harry, I grew up in a very different time than your own, many things I have witnessed would now send a person mad, ' the white shoulders shrugged gently,' maybe I was mad for a time but I want you to understand Harry that things were very different then. The law of the animal was much nearer the surface in humankind, lust, hatred cruelty were very much part of our lives. In your time Harry people pretend they do not have these emotions. Bu they are merely buried beneath the surface, under a veneer of civilisation. Dracula understands this and it is one reason why he is so deadly.' She was obviously earnest and desperate for Harry to understand and empathise with her. Strangely he was finding it difficult to feel revulsion for the bird like beauty to profess to such unspeakable acts. She carried on, still holding his gaze.
'From my childhood I witnessed terrible things Harry. My family were rich and powerful and could do as they liked with their people. Once my father was angry with a servant and I watched as he had him sewn into the belly of a dying horse. The horse and the man cried out but my father was relentless. The man was sewn up with only his head left sticking out. It looked like something created by a mad god, and indeed that is how my father was treated by the people of the land he ruled over. After hours of pain and suffering the man and the horse died. I saw the whole thing Harry. No one explained to me that this was inhuman, barbaric. I was brought up to treat absolute cruelty to others as a normal expression of a ruler. After the death of the servant people showed my father more respect, were more careful to perform his wishes exactly as he required them. I was taught, as children in your world are taught to say 'please' and 'thank you' because it will get them what they want, that this was the way to make people perform your wishes.' She looked down at her feet. Edward didn't think she was ashamed, after all these years the conditioning she had experienced as a human child would still be strong in her. He wondered if she was using a glamour on Harry, who seemed to be staring at her dumbly. Her eyes lifted and once more locked Harry in her gaze.
'My life was a strange brew of luxury and hardship,' she went on, 'nothing was denied to me. The pain and suffering of my servants was mine at the gesture of a hand.' As if to demonstrate she waved white, fragile looking fingers before her face. 'Their lives were mine to take and yet I was denied the pleasure of freedom, freedom to find out who I was, to love whom I chose. I was engaged at the age of five to a man fifteen years my senior whom I had never met. It was common enough in those days and I didn't think it was cruel but when I found someone to love me and fell pregnant then I realised what had been taken from me. The man I loved was murdered and my baby taken from me. I never saw my daughter again.' Her face looked truly sad though Harry as the violet eyes bored into his, it was strange how her beauty was mesmerising. He looked at the full mouth, pulled down at the corners in sadness as she told her story and he felt in himself an inexplicable desire to kiss her, to hold her fragile body to him and kiss her passionately. It was as though there were only he and she in the dimly lit cavern. Edward saw the glamour threading itself between the Countess and Harry and found himself unable to move to stop it. All he could see of her thoughts was the story she was weaving, the mountains and harsh landscape of her homeland contrasting with the opulent luxury of the castles in which she lived. He could smell and see the blood as she spoke of ancient tortures, he felt the venom flood his mouth, felt his thirst rise in him. Her soft voice carried on.
'I was married to my husband later that year. I became the mistress in his castle and it was natural for me to rule as my father had taught me. I was desperate for my husband to love me, to desire me but he did not. He took other women, blatantly in my own household. He treated me badly and beat me when I complained. I was only the means to having an heir for him. I gave him three children, born out of rape and abuse. My once fine looks were ravaged by labour and childbirth. Even though I was still young by the standards of your time, he told me I was old and that no one would want me. When I wept and told him of my loneliness he laughed cruelly and offered to loan me out to his servants. I was so lonely, so desperate. In those times a woman's power was only as much as her husband allowed her. I was his possession and, if he didn't value me, I was worth nothing.
One day will I was bathing, my young servant girl accidently poured some hot water onto my arm. It burned me and, in anger I lashed out and hit her with the back of my hand. One of the diamonds on my ring must have cut her cheek and the blood from the wound dripped down onto my scalded skin. I watched with excitement as the red and puckered skin became soft and white again! It was as though the blood returned my skin to its youthful lustre! In that moment I saw my way to regain my husband's affections and, through this, my power in the world. Without a thought for the servant girl, my upbringing had taught me that she was no more to me than the animals you breed for food, I had her killed and her blood drained into the bath and warmed. Though I was at first reviled by the feeling of the thick congealing blood on my skin the transformation this magical elixir wrought on my body was so complete that I swept aside my initial revulsion utterly. My skin was white and smooth again and it took on a subtle shimmer like that of sunlight on water. My sagging and pouchy stomach became gently rounded and soft as it had before my children had been born. Soon I was bathing every month in the blood of one of my servants. My courtiers marvelled at my transformation, my unearthly beauty. My husband renewed his sexual advances towards me; he was driven to fulfil my every whim by lust for my new body. I decided to punish him as he had punished me, cruelty was engrained in my nature now, and I took young lovers to taunt him. At first other young noble men who I soon grew tired of and then women, servants and gentlewomen. My beauty became a legend in my homeland and people would travel just to catch a glimpse of me as I was carried from the home of one lover back to my sumptuous palaces.
Soon it wasn't enough to bathe in the warm, delicious blood only one a month. I began to crave the transformation more and more often, imagining wrinkles and lines where they were none. Monthly baths became weekly, then daily and the people began to add the stories of the disappearing servant girls to the stories of my splendour. I did not care; I was gorgeous and invulnerable, like a diamond made off the hardest stuff known to man.' Harry gazed into her eyes, feeling as though they were deep pools of pure water, swirling around him, sucking him deeper into her story. As she spoke the images came alive and he watched them played out on the violet of her limpid eyes.
'I began to wonder, in my pride, if the blood of servants was enough. Surely the blood of noblewomen would be more potent, would bring about more change, more beauty? I killed my female lover when she told me she wanted another, that she was scared of me. Thus began my downfall in the living world. Servant girls went unnoticed but the daughters of rich men...
Soon even my family and husband could not protect me and they had me walled up in the walls of my own home.' Her eyes grew larger still at the memory.' I waited to die of hunger, of thirst but death did not come. My skin grew dull and wrinkled but death did not take me. I tortured myself with remorse for what I had done. I thought of my lost daughter, her face swam before my eyes and I wondered if she had been one of the hundreds of young girls I had killed to preserve myself. After years in the darkness with my decaying body and fevered mind there eventually came a kind of clarity. A serene calmness. I pretended to be dead and they guards took my body and buried me. I had to claw myself from my grave as so many of our kind do but then I was free. I have lived like this for hundreds of years. Now I do not have to resort to my methods to remain young but to stay alive. What was once a vain motive is now survival. So, now do you understand me a little more, Harry? Am I still so hideous to you?' Harry felt himself shake his head; saw the red lips move towards him, felt hem brush gently at his own moth. Then Edward was pulling him back and holding him tightly against the wall.
'That's enough, Your Grace!' snapped Edward a snarl curling in his voice. The young woman shook herself as if waking from a sleep.
'Of course, my apologies Edward, she murmured. 'Habits long nurtured and are hard to break.'