Forbidden

The Countess

Van

While most of the farmhouse was dated and rickety, it was clear they were working on restoring the home. Van spied rooms roped off and fresh patches on walls as she followed behind her mother. It was a house of projects, most somewhere in the middle, but Xandra led them to a room that was completely renovated.

Here, the hardwood floors were smoothed and espresso stained. White wainscoting covered the lower half of the walls, complimenting the sea foam paint on the upper half. A fireplace big enough to walk through took up the outer wall, and in the hearth, wood burned cheerfully and scented the room with hickory smoke. To anyone else, it was a cozy space, tasteful but comfortable.

To Van, it was home. Every color and fabric, the smells and furniture... they all bore her mother's style, and were echoes of the homes they lived in over the years.

"Van, thank you for getting this," Xandra said, settling into the chair in front of the late model computer.

She nodded but didn't make eye contact with her mother. After her talk with Luca, the anger in her middle had cooled, replaced by an unfamiliar heat that made her tingle and flush whenever her thoughts wandered to their moment in the dining room. Every so often her fingers drifted up to her lips, but she snatched them down each time, mortified by her body's betrayal.

Get it together, Van.

As perfect as the moment had been, it was just that. A moment. One I hope to repeat... Stop! She shook her head. One kiss and she was acting like a flighty teenager.

An ache spread through her. It was exactly how she was supposed to be spending this time of her life, but the people huddling around the polished desk reminded her there were bigger things at stake. There would be no more moments for any of them if they didn't figure out how to stop the Asylum.

That also meant her feelings about her mother and brother's resurrection had to stay on the back burner. Eventually, the shock and the hurt would wear off, and she would remember how much worse it had been to be without them, but for now, she could only see how another person had betrayed her.

"Xan, what do you see?" Nancy asked, squatting down to peer at the screen.

Xandra clicked on the folder labeled The Countess, and it opened to reveal several more files. They were labeled numerically, which gave nothing away.

Starting with number one, Xandra muttered, "This might as well be a Wikipedia page on Elizabeth Bathory."

"Who?" Luca asked.

"The crazy woman who bathed in the blood of girls to stay young forever? That Elizabeth Bathory?"

"You don't know about shifters and Slayers, but you know about a female serial killer?" Luca's eyes glittered with amusement.

"One is in the history books," she replied casually. He didn't need to know she had a thing for weird history. Especially weird, tragic history.

"Anything you didn't already know?" Nancy was all brisk business.

Xandra's nail scraped against the computer screen as she pointed at a few lines of text. "This mentions a secret child, but it states it as fact, not speculation. Everything else seems to be by the book."

"So what's with the history lesson?"

Van's mother looked over her shoulder to answer Luca. "There are a lot of stories about the origins of vampires, but the Slayers believe most modern vampires trace their roots back to Bathory. It's one of the few things we agree on."