Bathed In Blood. Alex Archer

they lay the injured woman across the backseat, and then Csilla climbed in back with her while Annja got behind the wheel.

      “Hang on!” Annja cried as she started the vehicle, threw it in gear and stomped on the accelerator, sending a stream of gravel flying out behind them as they shot down the road in the direction of Nové Mesto nad Váhom.

      The village of Čachtice was closer, but it didn’t have a hospital. Nové Mesto might be a few miles farther, but it had three separate hospitals, one of which wasn’t all that far from her hotel. That was where Annja headed.

      Knowing time was critical, Annja kept the accelerator mashed to the floor, rocketing down the narrow road as fast as she dared. She was betting they had two and a half, maybe three miles before they hit the town limits, and she let the SUV eat up the distance like a hungry beast, racing through the night.

      A gentle melody broke into her train of thought, and when Annja glanced in the mirror, she found Csilla singing softly to the woman cradled in her arms. Annja didn’t understand a word, but the tune and the tone of the lyrics was soothing, making her think it might be some kind of Hungarian lullaby. Csilla must have sensed she was watching, for she looked up and caught Annja’s gaze with her own, then shrugged, as if to say, What else can I do?

      Annja nodded back at her, understanding exactly how Csilla felt, and then focused on the road once more, demanding that the car go faster, as if by force of will alone they could beat the clock that was silently ticking down around them.

      It wasn’t long before they hit the town limits. Nové Mesto was nearly ten times the size of Čachtice and had the corresponding increase in traffic as well, but Annja didn’t slow down as Csilla leaned over the front seat and said, “Siet!”

      Annja didn’t need to be told twice. She leaned on the horn and began weaving in and out of traffic, shouting at people to get out of her way despite the obvious fact that they couldn’t hear her. It didn’t matter; the yelling helped release some of her stress, which, at the moment, was a welcome relief.

      By the time they hit the town center they’d picked up a police escort. Annja barely heard the warbling of the siren—she was completely focused on keeping them alive long enough to reach the hospital. When the white multistory structure with a big red cross on the front appeared, she gave a shout of victory and roared into the parking lot, the police close behind.

      Annja slammed the SUV into Park and jumped out, hands in the air, as the police car braked nearly on top of her. As soon as the officer managed to extricate himself from the car, he ran for the hospital doors. By then Annja had the door to the SUV open and was taking the still form of the injured woman from Csilla’s arms. As she turned toward the hospital doors they burst open from the inside and the cop returned, this time with a doctor, an orderly and a rolling stretcher.

      The doctor said something in his native tongue and she shook her head. “I don’t speak Hungarian.”

      “What happened?” he asked, switching to English as he helped her lay the injured woman on the stretcher.

      “I don’t know. We found her halfway down a ridge by the side of the road a few miles north of Čachtice.”

      The doctor glanced at the cop, then bent over the patient. “Was she coherent when you found her?”

      Annja remembered the comment she thought she’d heard. Blood Countess.

      “No,” she answered, brushing off the memory as a figment of her imagination. “She looked at me and seemed to understand what I was saying, but that’s all.”

      The doctor nodded to show he’d heard her, but his attention was mainly on his patient. He began giving instructions to the orderly as they wheeled the stretcher toward the door. They were met by a pair of nurses and the little group quickly disappeared inside. To Annja’s surprise, Csilla followed them.

      As she watched them go, someone beside her said, “You should get that looked at.”

      Annja turned to find the police officer pointing at her leg. Looking down, she was surprised to find a nasty scrape across her right calf leaking blood into the top of her boot. She hadn’t even been aware she’d cut herself, the adrenaline rush masking any pain she might have been feeling.

      “Lovely,” she said as the pain finally hit. It wasn’t a serious injury, but it stung like a son of a gun. She glanced toward her SUV, then back at the police officer. He was a young guy, in his midtwenties or so.

      “Don’t worry, miss. I’ll keep my eye on it while you get that taken care of,” he said, standing a bit straighter under her scrutiny.

      She gave him a smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it,” she said, and then limped into the hospital after the others.

       5

      “Why don’t you tell me your side of the story?”

      Annja was sitting in an interview room at the police station with a fair-haired detective named Alexej Tamás. He was in his midthirties, and might have been attractive if he didn’t have a permanent scowl plastered on his face. He’d found her at the hospital after she’d had the cut on her leg cleaned and bandaged, no doubt summoned by the officer outside. Tamás had asked her to accompany him to the station to give a statement, and she couldn’t think of a good reason not to.

      Now she was starting to question that decision.

      Annja had been in more police stations than she liked to admit, had given more statements than she cared to recall, but still bristled at the insinuation that she was telling a “story.” She might bend the truth occasionally, especially in situations that involved the sword, but this time around she was telling the whole story, and the detective’s pessimism annoyed her. Still, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Getting upset would only make her appear suspicious, and Detective Tamás already seemed predisposed to find the worst in people.

      Better to be as cooperative as possible, Annja decided.

      Smiling, she said, “Of course, Detective. I’d be happy to.”

      She told him about filming at Csejte Castle earlier that afternoon, being flagged down by the woman named Csilla and then climbing to help the other woman.

      Tamás let her talk, making occasional notes on the legal pad in front of him, but didn’t interrupt. Annja tried to read what he was writing, having gotten pretty good at reading upside down over the past few years, but the detective was writing in his native language, which might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics.

      Then again, she probably could have translated the hieroglyphs.

      Several long moments later she sat back and waited for Tamás’s response. When it came, it was on a tangent she wasn’t expecting.

      “What were you filming at Csejte?”

      She frowned. “I’m sorry?”

      “I asked what you were filming at Csejte.”

      “Oh, just some filler for a piece we’re doing on Elizabeth Báthory.”

      What else would someone be filming at Csejte?

      “We? There are more of you?”

      “Ah, no. I’m here alone. I meant ‘we’ in the sense of the television series I work for.”

      “Ah, I see. What television series would that be?”

      “It’s called Chasing History’s Monsters. We look at historical figures and try to...”

      He waved her explanation aside. “So you claim you didn’t know the other woman—” he checked his notes “—Csilla Polgár, until she flagged you down.”

      This time Annja let her irritation show, but just a little. “Yes. I said that.”

      “So