Elizabeth, for the first time in her long career, wished she knew a little more about the military. She'd never really paid the least attention to it. It had always seemed such a clumsy way of solving things when she had magic, murder, seduction, and treachery as possible options.
She was almost sure generals and princes did not normally lead their men on night-sorties and raids. Emeric didn't. Perhaps that was why he lost so many battles. Perhaps it really was necessary or just wise. But right now it was interfering with her plans. She really did not like that. She'd come, with a small but well trained staff of suitable 'loyalists'-if they'd known that they'd been chosen as expendables to make sure that her departure with Vlad was not interfered with, they might have been less loyal. She'd expected to be able to seduce him, work out where his defenses were. Overwhelm them, seduce him and get him back to her nearest facility. She had a suitable nunnery a little further south down near Caedonia. She really really needed to get off this vile primitive mountain. She hated it. Yes, she'd put up with far worse to gain the power she had. But she'd done it so that she would not have to do this sort of thing.
Well, she'd mostly done it for power and a perfect skin, and the appearance of a seventeen year old. She had all that provided she used the treatment-the blood.
She ground her perfect teeth in frustration. She could seduce-by magical means granted to her-anything that was still breathing. She just couldn't do it long distance. Vlad had acquired certain protection, had some power. He'd also taken the edge off his appetite with some other woman. He still should not have been willing to go off in the night. All she had been able to do was to get him to take one of her boyars with him.
She looked at herself in one of the mirrors she had had transported up to this place. She always had at least three mirrors. She liked to see what she had paid such a price for. It was very satisfying. Looking at her eyes she detected just the tiniest hint of a line developing. It was the sun up here! Thank heavens winter was coming. The leaves were starting to turn, and it would start to snow one of these days. She looked at her eyes again, and then at the other tell-tale areas. She'd need more blood, and soon. Royal blood if possible. She wondered what had happened to the girl. Vlad's little sister. Thirteen. Such a desirable age, thought Elizabeth, her lips quirking into a smile. Perhaps she would catch the girl, seduce her and then kill her slowly, with the whip and much screaming, before draining her of all that delicious blood. She would have to do it over a bath, so as not to waste any. She licked her lips slowly. Well, she would ask the Vila. Perhaps they would know where she was hidden.
In the meantime she needed to take some steps to investigate the military. She walked outside into the darkness to find suitable material. Vlad had put one of his best men to guard her tent. She supposed it was a compliment besides being convenient. "Sergeant," she said. "What is your name?"
"Emil, Duchess," he said, looking like a suitably hypnotized rabbit. He smelled. He was under-washed and his raiment was shabby. There was definitely stubble on his chin. Well, she thought, needs must when the devil drove. And the devil drove her, drove her harder with each passing year. "I need you to come and help me with something inside my tent, Emil," she said, exerting her will, stirring her magic. And her hips. He stood stock still. For a moment, an awful moment, she thought that she had lost her power somehow. That it was not just Vlad, that the magic of this vile land was robbing her of what she had given a mortgage on her soul for. Then he stepped forward and took her breasts in his big coarse hands. She ignored the roughness of them and, reaching her hand between his legs, led him into the candle-lit interior of the tent. She reflected that men were all the same. Once you had them by the testicles, their bodies, their hearts and the minds they contained would follow, for you to do whatever you wished with. And of course if the bodies didn't follow, then you could always have pleasure of ripping the testicles right off. Her victim gasped in pain. It gave her sufficient frisson to say: "I'm sorry. Did I squeeze? Let me kiss it better." She did, expertly and at length. She let him undress her. He would suffer later for the careless handling of the velvet.
She had arranged the mirrors suitably. At least watching herself was pleasurable. More pleasurable than his desperate rutting. "You are so enormous," she said throatily. It pleased him and he pushed her thighs higher. Ha. She'd experimented with a few non-humans that had seriously threatened to split her. Them she'd had to restrain. That had been back when she'd been curious about whether size or shape would provide her with pleasure. She'd since found that it was all in her mind. Inflict a little pain-or better, a lot-and the dwarf Ficzko could give her more satisfaction.
She could have bespelled him to believe he'd had the wildest orgy of his life. But she needed to lay some deeper enchantments on him. His spittle-on her breasts-his blood-she'd have that on her fingernails from his buttocks in a minute, when she faked a climax-and his semen. She'd bind with chains that would make him her absolute slave. Chains that would evade-after a day or two, magical detection. These spells altered the nature of the victim. They drew on what was there, but usually controlled. They drew on the beast in the man. That thought and sticking her nails into him was some consolation.
Afterwards, when the stupid rabbit was done, she lay there between her candles-the fool had not even noticed the number or the pattern-and traced the sigyls of binding on his forehead, chest and thighs, with the inks she had just collected.
And then she started to question him on the military and other matters she wanted insight into. He was in no state to realize that, however. He thought, now, that he was enjoying another round of exquisite pleasures, an illusion built within his own mind. She didn't need to put up with it twice.
"Who is this woman Prince Vlad is sleeping with?" she asked.
"Rosa," he answered. There are no real secrets from sergeants in an army camp.
"Some pretty little village maiden, who loves him dearly?"
"She's a whore."
Elizabeth was almost angry enough to kill Vlad right then.