It began at dinner.

"Sarah, eat your vegetables."

"Don't wanna."

Nothing out of the norm, just a little girl not wanting to eat her vegetables.

"You won't get any dessert."

"Don't wanna."

"You don't want any dessert?"

The little girl looked suspiciously at her mother.

"What's in it?"

"It's apple pie."

"Ick. Don't want apple pie."

"Then what do you want?"

"Blood," Sarah replied almost immediately, licking her lips.

"Blood?"

"Blood."

"Why?"

"It's yummy. Can I have some vi'gin blood?"

Bernadette stared at her four-year old daughter.

"Virgin blood."

Sarah nodded vigorously.

"Why virgin blood?"

"'Cause it's pure. You're not a vi'gin." Her lips parted in a grin, revealing tiny sharp white teeth. "But Stacey is." Stacey was one of Sarah’s classmates at school, and the girls had sleepovers all the time.

Or used to.

Lately Stacey’s mother avoided Bernadette in the checkout line of the supermarket.

Bernadette felt something stir within her uneasily.

"What about Jean?" she asked, referring to the girl's babysitter. Both she and Steven knew that Jean was sexually active, but Sarah couldn't possibly…

"Jean is icky."

Apparently she could. Well, she might have guessed. Bernadette tried again.

"What about your cousin Peter? Is he a virgin?"

"Dun like boys."

"O…kay. You don't like male blood… Honey, how can you tell?"

"Used blood tastes nasty. Pure blood is sweet, like spring water."

Something was wrong here. Sarah confirmed it a few nights later, when Bernadette was putting her in for a bath.

"Mommy, why do I have to use water to wash with?"

"Because water gets you clean, hun. What would you want to wash with?"

"Blood."

Again with the blood. "Why?"

Sarah's eyes suddenly grew old, and she looked like she was seeing something very far away.

Eerie words came out of her mouth in an even weirder tone. "To keep me young."

The words jolted something in Bernadette's memory. Where had she heard them before? She racked her brain for a few moments while Sarah looked off into space, but she couldn't remember anything.

She put the child in for her bath, and resolved to look up the words on the Internet after she'd put Sarah to bed.

"So, sweetie, what did you do in school today?" she asked the little girl playing glumly with the water.

"Made pictures from macaroni and played on the monkey bars. Mrs. Keever got mad and put me in time out for an hour."

"Why?"

"I bit Stacey again."

Again?

"You bit Stacey."

"I bit her 'cause she's a vi'gin. Her blood was yummy."

It’s a phase, it’s a phase, it’s a phase, it’s a phase, it’s a phase…

"Yummy?"

"Yummy."

The phone rang after she'd put Elizabeth to bed, and Bernadette wondered who would be calling this late. The Caller ID didn't show anything, so she picked it up, thinking that it might be Steven calling from work to say he’d be late again– the usual, these days.

"Mrs. Vallen?" A withered voice asked.

"Yes, speaking."

"This is Mrs. Keever from Hillsdale Elementary. I'm calling to speak with you about your daughter, Sarah."

"Oh, She was just talking about you disciplining her today."

"Yes, I suppose she was. Did she happen to mention why I did so?"

"Something about her biting Stacey."

"Biting Stacey?" Mrs. Keever asked incredulously. "She's been biting any girl she can get her hands on! She doesn't even do it for a second, just pulls them down and sits there, sucking the blood! I've had parents complaining every day for the past week, asking me why their girls come home with bite marks on their arms, legs and necks! Does your daughter have an obsession with biting people, Mrs. Vallen?"

"Not that I know of, but I have been noticing a few odd things lately…" she said quietly, trying not to incite the woman.

"Well, see that you fix it! I'll not have children skipping my class because one girl has a mental problem!" The old matron proclaimed.

"Mental problem!" Bernadette exclaimed, appalled that any teacher would accuse a young girl going through a phase of having a mental problem. And her little girl! "Mrs. Keever, I assure you that Sarah has no problems whatsoever, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even saying that!"

The old woman abruptly hung up on her without even a goodbye, and after a moment, Bernadette placed the phone back into its cradle.

"Bitch."

The Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1615) married Count Ferencz Nadasdy at the age of fifteen, and became lady of the hold almost immediately, as her husband was often away. By the time she died in 1615, she had killed more than 600 girls and young women, claiming to be using their blood to keep young. She had four cohorts; Ilona Joo, János/Johannes Ujvary, Dorottya Szentes and Anna Darvulia, three of which were burned at the stake before Elizabeth died. The only survivor, Anna, was not convicted because of lack of evidence. Elizabeth Bathory first discovered this fetish when, one day in her chambers, a maid was brushing her hair. When the woman pulled too hard, Elizabeth slapped her hard enough to draw blood. A drop fell on the Elizabeth's hand, and she imagined that it immediately made her skin grow younger. Later that day, she ordered the lady stripped and killed, and had her blood drained into a vat in which Elizabeth sat in and bathed her skin, seeing herself as immediately younger and more beautiful.

Bernadette stared at the screen. No way.

She clicked on a link that pulled up a picture of Elizabeth Bathory, and almost screamed when the picture uploaded onto the screen. It looked almost exactly like Sarah! If you fleshed out the cheeks a lot and shortened the skull, and took out the--was that imagined? Bernadette didn't think so--cruelty in the woman's eyes, she could be almost a dead ringer for Sarah.

What would Steven say?

Strong arms wrapped around her from behind. "What's that, honey?" her husband asked.

"A website. Steven, can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"Have you ever noticed Sarah doing anything… well, strange, lately?"

"Strange in what way?"

"Strange as in biting things and sucking their blood?"

Steven eyed her. "Babe, you been getting into the liquor cabinet again?"

"No, I'm serious. Has Sarah been biting things lately?"

"Not that I've noticed. Why?"

Bernadette decided to tell her husband the truth. "She's been obsessed with blood lately, and she said that she's been getting a lot of time outs in school for biting the other children."

"All children go through a biting stage. It's just a phase."

"That’s what I thought until her teacher called me to complain tonight. How many children sit there sucking the blood?"

"Not… not many, but I'm sure that there are more than you would think."

"Sarah likes to drink it, and just tonight she said that she wants to bathe in it to get younger."

"She said that?"

"Well, more in sort of a creepy 'Children of the Corn' voice, but yeah, she said it. And she knew that Jean was having sex, because she tasted “icky.” She said that we taste icky, and she doesn't like male blood. Only female 'vi'gin' blood."

"Uh-huh. Blood. To get younger. Maybe it's just a phase?"

"I doubt it. Look at this website." Steven looked over her shoulder while she pointed out the odder facts, including the fact that Sarah was born on the date of the Blood Countess's death, and the fact that Sarah hated being alone in the dark, possibly a product of the fact that Elizabeth Bathory died after being locked in a closet.

"Should we have a doctor look at her?" He asked doubtfully.

"I don't think it would help. Maybe she's possessed," Bernadette said hopefully. What could be possessing her, though? It could be a demon from Hell, or a ghost, or--

"Possessed by what?" Steven asked.

"A spirit? The spirit of Elizabeth Bathory?"

"You can't be possessed! It's impossible," he stated firmly. "She could be a reincarnation, though."

"A reincarnation is more possible than a possession? What do you take me for?"

"I don't know."

"A religious nut? Just because I'm a good Christian housewife, you think-"

"That's not what I think, honey. I'm just worried, that's all."

She leaned back into his comforting embrace. "Can we just have Father Tom look at her in the morning?"

"Of course, honey. Of course."

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come…"

After both parents were finished blessing themselves, Sarah sandwiched firmly between them, they turned to face the priest.

"Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Father Tom."

"No trouble at all," the young man said. "Now what seems to be the problem with Sarah?"

"Nothing really wrong, she just seems to be exhibiting some… vampiric tendencies, and we just wanted to have you check her out, that's all."

"Ah." Tom squatted down to Sarah's level so he could look her in the eye. "Sarah, have you been drinking blood lately?"

The girl squirmed and would not meet the priest's eyes.

"Sarah?"

"Dun wanna talk to you," she protested.

He smiled the charming smile that had had many of the local ladies swooning over him.

"Now, Sarah, why don't you tell Father Tom about why you've been drinking blood."

"Dun wanna."

"Sarah," Bernadette reproached her. "Be polite and talk to Father Tom."

Sarah looked pleadingly up at her mother. "But mommy, I don’t want to. Please don't make me talk to him. Can I go to school please? Wanna go to school." She pouted, but there was a hunger in her eyes that made Bernadette's blood run cold.

"Why?"

"I wanna drink."

"You want to drink their blood?"

The girl's head flew up and down rapidly. "I'm getting old. Need to be young."

Father Tom watched the little girl carefully.

"Need vi'gin blood."

Bernadette looked at him pleadingly and he looked like he was weighing some options. Finally he sighed and look from Sarah to Steven, who had stayed mute the entire time, and lastly back to Bernadette.

"I can exorcise her, but I don’t know if it will work, or if anything is even wrong with her. You sprinkled her with holy water before and after you came?"

"Yes, Father."

"She's wearing her cross?"

The mother pulled Sarah's hair back to pull the cross out from underneath her blue overalls, and the priest frowned.

"She prays every night?"

"The nightly prayer every night before she goes to bed."

"And she shows no signs of discomfort during any of this?"

"No, Father."

He sighed again. "I'll exorcise her, though I don't know what good will come of it."

"Oh, thank you, Father!"

He brought them and their to the rectory behind the church, into the spare guest room used for visiting preachers, and bade them strip her and dress her in a white robe that he produced from a chest. It proved to be an unused altar boy's robe, and he apologized for the lack of other clothing. Bernadette changed her daughter while Steven and the Father waited outside, apparently chatting.

When Steven came back inside, he was looking thoughtful, and Father Tom was smiling. Bernadette wondered what it could be about, and from Father Tom's triumphant smile, it looked as if he were trying to get Steven to see the light of God and he was succeeding.

A young, chestnut-haired nun came in a little while later, bearing a large silver bowl of holy water, a small pitcher of wine and a few wafers all on a tray. She nodded a greeting to the parents, and Father Tom leaned over to them.

"She's going to help Sarah understand what we're going to do, but you two are going to have to wait outside. Come on out. It'll be easier on Sarah if the Sister explains it to her alone."

He led the reluctant parents out of the room and into the hallway, leaving Sarah and the diminutive Sister Mary alone in the room.

Mary carefully placed the tray on the dresser and sat down beside the child on the bed. "Now, Sarah, I'm going to explain the entire exorcism to you, and if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask, okay?"

The little girl smiled a bloodthirsty smile and stared at Mary with an uncanny light in her eyes, and the young nun felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"You're a vi'gin…"