Serial Novella: Slave to Blood Chapter 3

The first glimpse into the Bathory diary - short chapter

Elizabeth

I am cold, so very cold!!

My beloved guard does all he can to keep the castle fires stoked, yet I feel the bones in my hands turn to ice. I fear that my time is coming, that death is reaching out to me, and that I may not have time to tell my story. I must do whatever I can to write my confession, and while I do not believe that God will have mercy on my soul, perhaps He will spare me from the pits of Hell so that I may someday return home.

With so much to tell, I am unsure where I should begin, so it is perhaps best that I go back to my childhood, as that is where I first learned that there was power in cruelty.

I was a sickly child, with headaches and fits that would cause me to foam at the mouth while my body refused to work. As nobles, my family had ready access to mages and men of medicine, all brought in to treat my sickness. Some believed that I harbored a demon inside, a wicked creature trying to tear itself loose from my fleshly bonds. They would smear blood on my lips and grind the bones of the dead into the blood, creating a soupy gruel that they would feed to me in hopes of quelling the devil inside. That I felt better after these treatments showed me that blood was a valuable commodity.

My father, George, would watch as I writhed in agony, seeing that I would finally become calm once given access to blood. I remember him coming to me after a fit of mania and wiping away the blood that had escaped my lips as I hissed in agony. He stroked my hair and called me a warrior, told me that greatness was my destiny. He spoke of my conquering worlds, but he also said that the blood treatments had to stop, as losing the demon that lived inside me would turn me into a woman good for nothing but spitting out children.

I believed him, yet I still craved blood.