Bathory's Curse

Authors' Note:

This is

a

(not

the

) final part of a chain story by a sextet of Literotica authors:

@Tio_Narratore

,

@StillStunned

,

@pink_silk_glove

,

@Erozetta

,

@AlinaX

and

@Omenainen

. You will be able to find all the chapters eventually in this list:

Vampire Chain Story

.

*

Mircalla's dreams were red and black, like a blood moon glimpsed through a widow's veil of restless cloud. Waking was an effort that often defeated her, the sun a source of terrible migraines. It was a lingering malady, one that robbed her of sleep, and perhaps it

was

Covid and not (as she dared not let herself believe) some darker and more insidious infection.

Her appetite suffered too, and she found little pleasure now in eating. Food had become tasteless and she ate out of routine, a daily chore. It was a cruelty of her chosen profession that looks were everything; she could live on red wine and breadsticks for only so long before it showed in her already too pale skin - an after-effect, no doubt, of too many nights on set.

But that was not the worst of it. The visions that had beset her during filming, that Mircalla had dismissed as a product of withdrawal and psychoactive elements in Anna's peculiar but effective aromatherapy, had not diminished with time. The character of them had changed, however. Away from Cachtice, away from that blunt reminder of ancient monstrosity, the Countess herself was rarely glimpsed, but her servant, the one called Anna who looked the spitting image of Adamir's Anna, seemed more real than ever.

Unlike Mircalla, this imaginary Anna delighted in the sun. "Wake up, Mircalla," she whispered, her lips soft and warm against Mircalla's cheek. "The day is young and there is much to be done." Fingertips teased their way between Mircalla's parted thighs, brushing between her labia and circling her clit with a precise, feather-light touch.

"Don't," Mircalla pleaded, twisting away from the contact and thrusting away the bedsheets. The sweet electricity in that brief, unwanted intimacy sparked an arousal that would only lead to frustration. As she sat on the loo a few minutes later, her hands itched to continue what the redhead had begun. She denied the impulse, however, just as she tried to deny Anna's continuing existence in her life. When Mircalla locked the bathroom door each morning, it was more an attempt to block Anna from her thoughts than a futile effort to deny her physical presence.

Exercise was one way to banish her ghostly companion. It was a sunny Saturday morning, early April, and Mircalla was staying near Crystal Palace Park. The large park was busy with families enjoying the spring weather and she was not the only one running. Dressed in a yellow tracksuit and with her long, dark hair tied in a ponytail, Mircalla followed a five-k circuit past the lake with its paddle boats and, amusingly, past several dinosaurs.

As she circled back towards the exit nearest her apartment, she found Anna sitting on the park bench she seemed to like - and that other joggers and visitors to the park always seemed to avoid. "Come join me," she said, patting the wooden slats.

Like Adamir's Anna, this Anna was a tall, slender woman with long red hair, pale skin and freckles. No tattoos, however, and her choice of clothing was a whimsical irrelevance. This time it was a black-and-white summer dress with 'Dior' printed down the side - a dress that Mircalla herself had considered buying. "What's the point of wearing designer clothes if no one can see you?" Mircalla asked.

"You can see me."

"Unfortunately."

A young mother pushing her sleeping infant in a buggy glanced uncertainly at Mircalla, and hurried past.

"If Adamir were here," Anna said, "he would say, 'Observe, my dear Countess! The flush of heat in that young woman's cheeks... Can you not hear how her heart races? What would it be like to bite her lip as you kiss her? She must taste of youth and innocence!' Ahh, yes, she must, and aren't you curious, Mircalla?"

"Stop it!" Mircalla hissed quietly, fighting down a rush of shameful arousal. "I'm not

her

anymore. I'm not a vampire."

"No," agreed the other. "But you can't deny the idea of it excites you. Not the blood, no, but the power in it. Being an apex predator, the one in control, playing with others instead of being the one played with. To never again be manipulated by ruthless bastards. Like Adamir."

"Like you?"

Anna laughed. "I have no patience for timidity. You have such ambition, Mircalla. You can have it all, if you dare. Have you not sacrificed dignity in pursuit of success? Have you not risked even your sanity to achieve it?"

Mircalla snorted. "Risked? Look at me, sitting on a bench talking to an invisible woman. I must be mad already."

"No, Mircalla, not mad. Merely cursed."

"I'm not sure that's better."

"It's cruel and it's painful, but it is better. I speak from experience. Come, Mircalla. Aren't you tired of sucking cocks when you could be biting them instead?"

Mircalla wrinkled her nose in disgust, but couldn't quite suppress a giggle at the picture it created in her mind.

*

Playing Adamir's bloodthirsty Countess had messed her up, and Elizabeth Bathory's mocking laughter still echoed in the corners of her mind. It was impossible to play such a demonic role and not be touched by it, but it was proving to be the launchpad she had hoped it would be. Adamir's vampiric masterpiece was not even released yet and her agent was inundated with offers of work.

"Mircalla Bartok," she intoned dramatically while doing her makeup at the mirror. "Professional actress. A star in the making." And maybe so. How soon, she wondered, before people started sharing her porn in an attempt to diminish her?

"If there is one constant in life," Anna murmured. She was luxuriating in a chair by the window, her lithe, naked body bathed in warm sunlight. She continued, "It is that successful women get torn down and slut-shamed given the least opportunity. Far better to hold your head high and become an avatar of unfettered sexuality. The more they attack you, the more you will be desired."

Mircalla's phone chirped. Another message from Lucy full of bright concern and curiosity. "How are you, Mircalla? Where are you? It would be great to meet up sometime! Any plans to visit the UK? I promise we do have sunlight here - sometimes, lol! Miss you!"

Anna sighed. "Sweet, innocent Lucy. You really should reply to her. If she finds out you're in London without telling her..."

Mircalla was only two years older than the blonde English woman, but in experience she felt a lifetime older. Lucy had lived a sheltered life, and had only just emerged into a world she viewed as one of risqué excitement. She knew nothing of living on the edge, of hunger and homelessness. She knew nothing of the constant fear of irrelevance. Mircalla had lost out on too many major parts to take success for granted, and every passing year brought fewer opportunities. Every day was a fight against ageing, against imperfection. Gym memberships and beauty treatments cost money.

So of course she'd allowed herself to be seduced into the porn world. On the one hand, it felt like a professional defeat, but on the other it had given her life stability again as she continued to pursue her dream. And if you were the sort to believe everything happens for a reason, then... well. Life had brought her to Adamir, or had brought Adamir to her. Her desperation and experience had matched his audacity and macabre genius.

Mircalla had done her homework. She knew what she was getting into - or had thought so, at least. She had gone into it prepared to give one hundred percent! She learned her lines off by heart, adapted quickly to last minute changes, embraced a trio of roles like multiple personalities until her own sometimes struggled to breathe beneath. The innocent, the monster, the madwoman, Mircalla herself. And all while in withdrawal from the little white pills.

Mircalla pushed her phone away. "I tried to protect her. I really tried."

She had tried to protect Lucy, just as she herself had been protected by another during her seduction into porn. That had been a very different world to the one she knew, and also to the one she had expected. Clean and professional, honest and unsubtle. For one such as her, still with youth, beauty and curves, there was power as well as money - provided she was willing to surrender to the demand for extremes.

But Mircalla had had a different dream. Her passion was for the play, delighting an audience with word and gesture, something she had always excelled at. There was a satisfaction in theatrical performance far beyond the ephemeral thrill of taking three cocks simultaneously.

That dream had come true when Adamir had offered her a starring role. He was an internationally respected director - as well as a reclusive genius with a penchant for macabre and erotic horror. Mircalla was more than willing to endure the latter to work with the former. She doubted there were more than a handful of women in all the world who were both trained actresses and experienced in porn. Or maybe more than a handful, but how many would have embraced the role of Elizabeth Bathory?

The visceral joy in finally living out her potential had been undercut by the symptoms of abrupt withdrawal, and by strange visions conjured up by some nefarious hallucinogen, and by the games played by Adamir and his Anna. They had forced her to immerse herself in the character she played, until she had scarcely known what was real and what was imagined.

Mircalla darkened her eyelashes with mascara. "I knew Adamir had a reputation for tormenting his cast. I allowed it - with me." The reward would be in the finished cut. On the screen, in the few short, rough-edited fragments she had seen, Mircalla was an ethereal presence, one moment promising sexual ecstasy, the next delivering terrible death.

Lucy, in comparison, was a frightened mouse, teased and manipulated, both actress and character caught in a sticky web and stripped of all innocence and illusion. "He may not have actually fucked her - he used me for that - but his 'dark, vampiric masterpiece' might as well have been called

The Rape of Lucy

."

Anna chuckled, and cried out dramatically, "Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!" It was as good a description as any for Adamir's creation. "Vast sin-concealing chaos!"

Mircalla had failed to protect Lucy in the end. She couldn't bring herself to answer the girl's yearning for friendship.

*

Adamir had vanished. Almost the moment principal photography had wrapped, he had bid a quick and elaborate farewell to the cast and crew, climbed into his limousine (chauffeured by Anna, naturally), and departed - taking with him several large cases containing the month's worth of raw footage. Anna herself had returned a short time later, by taxi, to supervise a myriad of tasks that kept her busy into the night.

Mircalla had been in a hurry to leave too. She told everyone that she was needed urgently on another set, but the truth was simple exhaustion. She was sick of the night, sick of Adamir's games, and sick of everything that reminded her of Cachtice and Bathory. But it wasn't so easy to escape. The Bathory family had deep roots in Hungary, and the health spa she booked into turned out to be a stone's throw from Bathory's castle in Sarvar.

She accepted the first movie role that got her out of Hungary. An English production set in Paris, filmed in a chilly February, a supporting role in a romantic comedy where she was the rival love interest - an exotic, dark-haired foreigner to lead the hero astray until he understood his true love was the innocent, blonde, childhood friend. It was a low-budget production full of cliches, with a four-month post-production schedule that would see it streaming on Netflix during the summer.

After that was another romantic comedy, this time filmed in England. Mircalla was the love interest, a father and son competing over her affections. She married the son, who died tragically, and later married the father too, while pregnant by the former. An odd film but artfully made, blending tasteful eroticism with sexual comedy.

Despite a busy schedule of location shots and studio work. Mircalla could have found time to visit Lucy, but didn't. In part out of guilt, in part because any reminder of Adamir or Bathory opened a gulf of darkness below her. These new movies gave her the emotional space she needed to ground herself again, but the nightmares continued - and the haunting too.

The only communication Mircalla had received from Adamir was a letter informing her that the premiere was scheduled for October in London, and asking her to be ready for promotional work from August onwards. The thought of it filled her with dread.

*

For the first time in months, Mircalla's hunger was stirring. She had begun to suspect that her time as Adamir's muse had burned all desire for sex out of her. None of that stopped her from acting in scenes of seduction and lustful physicality, but the fire that had once burned in her core had lately been ice.

But just as winter thawed into a new spring all around her now, something within was unlocking. "Your one day off," Anna murmured in her ear. "You deserve a little excitement." Cool fingers teased her nipples beneath her new denim jumpsuit, purchased from Desigual just that afternoon.

The sun was setting, casting the streets of central London into deep shadow. Mircalla had spent the afternoon shopping for clothes and was rewarding herself with a glass of Château Maucoil at Plume in Covent Garden. It took an effort not to squirm as Anna's invisible hands caressed her belly and eased down between her thighs. "Stop it," she hissed through clenched teeth.

Anna chuckled, and her touch faded to nothing, but the familiar fire had been rekindled. "I'm tired of playing nice," the redhead said, now sitting at the table beside Mircalla, no trace of amusement in her eyes. "I'm tired of you acting the victim and hiding inside candy-floss roles. Is this the end of your life - or the beginning?"

Stung, and for a moment forgetting that no one else could see her tormentor, Mircalla snapped back, "I'm not a victim."

Anna's sudden smile was one of savage satisfaction. "Good. Then choose someone. You can have anyone you want, you just have to choose."

Mircalla hesitated. "I don't understand," she wanted to say, but the truth was she didn't want to understand. Far safer to pretend that Anna was a figment of her imagination. That she might be real, and have power beyond that of idle fantasy, was too terrifying to acknowledge.

"Okay," Mircalla said. "Her." She pointed to a young, blonde woman - and regretted it instantly. The young woman's resemblance to Lucy sent a momentary chill up her spine.

The blonde, who until that moment had been engrossed in conversation with a young man who was likely her lover, glanced around at Mircalla. For an instant, a heartbeat at most, their eyes met with the electricity of intimate connection - and then the blonde looked away, clearly flustered, her cheeks flushed with... embarrassment, perhaps.

As improbable as this was, the knowledge that the young woman was hers to claim, should she wish, had Mircalla tapping her fingernails impatiently on the table. "What if I'd chosen someone else?"

Anna shrugged. "Do you want to choose someone else?"

Mircalla studied the many young couples and groups gathered around tables, all talking and laughing excitedly, so full of life and happiness, but none appealed to her in the same way as the blonde who kept casting furtive glances her way. "No," she admitted.

"Must be destiny."

Destiny, or dark magic. There was something about the innocence of the young woman, in stark contrast with Mircalla's own morally dubious history. "There's a particular sweetness to virgins," Anna murmured. "Do you want to be the one who teaches her the pleasures of the flesh?" she asked. "Or should we let that young man be the one to tear her hymen and rejoice in a blood-stained cock?"

*

Mircalla denied the cruel instinct to intrude on the young couple, and waited until they had left before paying her bill. Destiny was not so easily defeated, however. A familiar face framed by blonde hair was waiting for her outside. "Um, hi," she said. "I'm Katy." Her blue eyes were bright with shy excitement, and she closed the distance between them with tentative steps.

The sun was down now and it was that long, introspective pause between the crowd of shoppers and the onset of nightlife. Mircalla, caught between going home to no one but a mischievous ghost and inviting this sweet temptation, allowed herself to be swayed. "Mircalla," she said. "Where's your boyfriend?"

Katy glanced away guiltily. "He's not my boyfriend," she said quietly.

Mircalla smiled. "Does

he

know that?"

"We're... not official. I love your accent. Romanian?"

"Hungarian."

"Ah." She laughed nervously, and the blush that had never quite left her cheeks intensified, even as the blue of the sky deepened and the streetlights brightened. "I've never done this before."

Katy shivered. She was wearing a green dress better suited to the summer, and with the sun down the temperature had dropped considerably. "Let's walk," Mircalla said, taking Katy's hand as if they were a romantic couple. "Done what, exactly? Ditched your boyfriend so you can hit on a girl?"

"He's not my boyfriend," Katy repeated, and laughed. "Yes, that too, but I mean... I've never hit on a girl before. But I saw you, sitting alone, like... like a tragic movie star, and I wanted to hold you and kiss you."

"A tragic movie star?"

Katy laughed again. "Sorry - but I mean it in a good way. No one as beautiful as you should be sitting alone on a Saturday evening."

It was Mircalla's turn to laugh. "Don't apologise. I am a tragic movie star - or at least I hope to be. I'm in London to make a movie, and this is my one day off. I went shopping." She lifted her bags as evidence.

"Oh, wow," Katy said, her eyes bright with excitement. "What's the movie? Have you been in anything else?"

"A romantic comedy. A love triangle, in a way. If you look out for me, I'll be on Netflix in the summer, and in the cinema in October. You'll be able to point me out to your friends and say, 'There's the woman I kissed on the banks of the Thames.'"

They had at that point come in sight of the river, the bright lights of the city reflecting off the water. "For that to be true," Katy said, "we would have to kiss." Her lips edged hesitantly closer to Mircalla's as she spoke.

For a brief moment, Mircalla's thoughts returned to the night she had held another innocent in her arms. How would Katy, she wondered, react to a bee stinging her lips? To being coated in honey and massaged with royal jelly? To being brought to a climax amidst a circle of watchers?

"To you penetrating her soft flesh," Anna whispered, her breath tickling Mircalla's own neck.

Mircalla was playing with fire. She should have left the wine bar before Katy. She should have spurned her clumsy flirtation. She should send her away now instead of inviting this sweet intimacy. She... pressed her lips against Katy's, and sighed with pleasure at their soft touch.