The Wiccan Diaries

Chapter 10 – Lennox




Dear John,

I am sending this care of Massimo––hopefully, it will reach you before you leave Prague. I have studied the blood of the revenant, although, at this point, I think it will be more beneficial if we begin referring to them as zombies. A lot is happening here.

Straight in.

Blood flow is achieved by way of a four chambered pumping heart. This is significant as it suggests the dead bodies that are being raised are capable of independent survival.

According to an unofficial source, the origin of the spread can be traced to a ‘king-sire.’ I think this must be the boker him- or herself. According to the source, this carrier may pass as a human being. That includes being able to think and speak.

When I stumbled upon a figure I thought was the boker, it hissed at me.

The infection is spreading. I have no choice but to acknowledge this. Your idea of checking the dead bodies at the morgue paid off, unfortunately.

That means he/she/it isn’t just raising the dead. He/she/it is creating the dead. Killing some people.

The police are already swamped with another serial killer. There is a pair of fangs on the loose, here. I leave it to you to decide what, if anything, we are to tell the Lenoir. I cannot see them being happy about how things are progressing. While I do not fear open hostilities, I cannot help but think we are arming the Lenoir with just what you were afraid of: justifiable excuses to do what they please.


Rome isn’t the soft, wide open place it used to be.

As for the blood. Open sores in the mouth account for the means, and ease of the spread of the disease. It just has to break the skin to pass it. It may have progressed to the point where we don’t have any other choice. Lenoir involvement may be required.

The ‘venom’ includes a flesh-eating toxin similar to the bite of the brown recluse––a terrible North American spider that is responsible for numerous deaths each year.

Something bothers me, maybe you’ve thought of it already: the nature of the disease itself. The way in which it is transmitted, through biting, and the way it invades and takes over the body of the victim, altering significantly everything from the structure of the blood, to the metabolism––almost nonexistent––to the neuroinvasion and rewiring of the electrical pathways to the brain. It’s like it transforms the individual it works upon. It’s not unlike siring.

Lennox.

* * *

I sealed the letter with a piece of wax using Occam’s own stationary and made it out to Massimo in Prague. It was 2:30 in the morning. The motorcyclists were still racing around, out in the streets. What bothered me was that now that I thought about it, I had smelled them on her. I wondered if she would like me if she knew how possessive I could be?

I took out a new piece of thick cream-colored stationary and dipped my nib into the inkwell.

To my family, I wrote. I scratched it out.

* * *

Dal,

It’s me.

I need to see you.

It’s important.

Lennox.

* * *

This I folded neatly. I took the signet out of the drawer. I pressed it firmly into the malleable red wax, and addressed the letter to Venice, Italy. I left the place and deposited them in a red slot in a wall, and went to the vendor who sold me newspapers he got delivered early. I bought one. I spent the rest of the night alone on the Temple of Saturn.

There was still nothing.

“Rome is silent for now,” wrote Emmanuela Skarborough. “A short intermezzo before Peter acts again. As surely he must.”

It would be quite some time before I thought of this serial killer again. When I got home, I sealed myself in my room, whereupon I slept like the dead.





Halsey



Weeks went by and I was in two worlds. The days I spent at Ballard’s uncle’s motorcycle shop where Ballard and I worked on decrypting The Magus Codex. It was a puzzle locked in mystery sealed in shadow. “I don’t know,” was a refrain I often heard from my cohort in the occult. “Does any of this actually work?” he asked. We learned, for instance, that there were three levels of magical study, and that I had not achieved any of them––not even close. They were neophyte, adept, and then, finally, fledged. Each had signposts along the way and transition periods; each was celebrated with events, ceremonies, etc. It was like coming of age, or getting your driver’s license. I realized there was a whole lot more to this magic thing than I had ever realized before.

The sisters of St. Martley’s went on about selflessness and circumspection. All of which taught us nothing about actually using our powers. And what powers!

Spells, incantations––there were such things as familiars, charms, wards, shields; there was a whole philosophy of Magic. Magical ingredients. There were things you could do, and things you could not do. And there were things that, it suggested, you should never do. But all of that didn’t matter, because as the Codex said, “The true secrets of the craft are reserved for those few brought in by their excellence alone. Until such time as one is initiated, one shall not craft.”

Cockblocked.

Here was something that I couldn’t just read out of a book. I had to be initiated. Somebody had actually to vouch for me.

Becks was her usual charming self.

“I told you so,” “Why didn’t you just hold on?” were some of the things that she said, via e-mail. I was thinking of dumping her as my bestie. But then I realized she was my last link to St. Martley’s, to everything, really.

It was graduation day at St. Martley’s. The Last Class. The Last Class was when you finally “Saw.”

Becks said the word reverentially. Apparently everyone I went to school with now had a new pair of eyes. “Graduating changed me. I think I’m ready to face tomorrow’s challenges head-on,” she wrote. “I can’t explain it.”

It was “So worthwhile, staying,” and “obviously the sensible thing to do. Your choice was also valid,” she wrote. But it was obvious from her tone of voice that she thought otherwise. I had some soul-searching to do. I knew it.

She gave my e-mail address to Chloe, a fifth-year Senior, who wrote, condescendingly: “After high school, everyone finds their place. Don’t you think? The cream rises, etc.”

I liked the et cetera.

It was the same borrowed vernacular. I had heard it infinite times before. “The dregs––they find their way to the bottom.”

Was she saying I was a dreg?

But that was how it was at St. Martley’s. You couldn’t see your enemies for the friends.

I replied with something cutting, and then deleted it. When someone insults me, I respond with a million silent comebacks.

Becca was threatening to visit.

“You should definitely come out,” I said. I bit my lip.

She probed, regarding the reason I had ‘come out,’ as I put it. I had never included her, she said, into the secret, hidden reasons I had dropped everything, dropped her.

“I just needed this,” I said. It was true. I had; I did. “You’re still my friend.”

When she asked me to expand upon my answer, I never responded back.

She said, “You don’t have to say, if you don’t want to.”

I took her up on that offer.

What could I say?

The police never bothered to respond back to me. They were fully prepared to brush my attack under the carpet. I, however, was not. There was nothing they could do, they said, when I called them. I was picking up Italian.

Now I could say things like, “I like that,” and “That tastes good.”

Ballard was working overtime a lot, trying to pay for repairs to his motorcycle. In consequence, I had a lot of spare time on my hands. It felt unusual; I enjoyed it. I decided not to waste it, however, and began to dig, in earnest, through the Codex. About all I knew was that it was so secret it wasn’t even supposed to exist. And it was massively long.

I went down to a café that I had found where a lot of other people liked to frequent; a hideaway from all the hustle and bustle of Rome, it afforded excellent opportunities for people watching. From there I drank innumerable different beverages from their teas to sambuca and of course the delicious cappuccinos, which were my favorite. I had been neglecting eating healthy well-balanced meals. They served the most delicious dish of roast peppers, marinated artichokes, olives, tomatoes, mushrooms, oven-fresh bread. I was loading up on carbohydrates with all the pasta that I was eating. The days while hotter, were growing shorter, which meant I had longer to spend on my––well, with my favorite obsession these days: Lennox himself.

He came and went at odd hours, always seeming to arrive sight unseen upon my balcony, before knocking gently, at which point I would allow him to come inside. Neither one of us had worked up the courage to define what exactly it was we were doing together. For his part, he said he just missed an American accent.

I hated the way my voice sounded. I was not infrequently the victim of accusations of trying to affect British airs at St. Martley’s.


He came. That was all I cared about. I had no will in the matter. But what was he waiting for? Some more obvious invitation. He had not even tried to kiss me yet. I berated my journal for hours coming up with theories, all of which left me as unfulfilled as he had.

I had reason to believe he cared for me. After all, he saved my life. I was determined for our relationship to take the next step. If he wouldn’t initiate things, I would. Tonight.

I got butterflies in my stomach, suddenly. We didn’t go out. Not ever. We had not had very meaningful conversations yet. I didn’t suspect him of idiocy. The problem was I had feelings for a non-talker. He just mostly stared at me. Then I would freak out. It was also hard to breathe around him.

Lunch today consisted of vegetarian risotto and a glass of wine.

It looked delicious. I opened the Codex to where I had left off and read a very esoteric passage on the god and goddess Wicca and the duality of the sexes. Something about the yen and yang. I didn’t know.

“While traditional Wicca takes its cues from elements of the Craft, leading some researchers to believe early Wiccans somehow managed to get their hands on at least a few partial leaves of the Codex, its subsequent development has proven unsystematic and ineffectual.” Like our relationship. “Wiccans have managed to conjure––but not all of them. The majority report interest in the subject only as a social lubricant.

“Those who know the Codex, meanwhile––” me “––are assured of success.” Yay me. “It is the true demonography.”

Someone had scrawled in a minute hand, lengthwise across the page, “Wiccans may have only scraps to go on, but from what I’ve read, they are the essential scraps.” It turned up along the outer margin, the scrawl, then ran upside down over the top, left to right, so that I had to turn the book to read it. “Take for example the Lover’s Sarcophagus, as it compares to the God and Goddess, and the theory of the Super Bitch. FF.”

Frobenius Foucart.

It had to be.

I turned to the frontispiece. There in his chicken scratch was the name Foucart. Below that, my father’s. And below that, hers, my mother’s. On an inspiration, I took a pen out of my bag and signed in neat lettering, HALSEY ROOKMAAKER. It felt like I had two family heirlooms now: the locket and the book.

Mistress Genevieve always said my mother and father were a powerful witch and wizard. She would not elaborate. No amount of social lubrication worked with her, including flattery. She was immune to everything. About the only thing I knew she enjoyed was bossing me around.

Becca... saw...

What did that mean?

I felt futility. I felt a waste. I felt my decisions like irreversible mistakes; each would end up costing me. I felt terribly alone. If I could perhaps find Foucart... Better: find the school.

There must be, mustn’t there? A school? For magic? For honing witches and wizards here in Rome?

My copy of the Codex offered no evidence, except the three written names. Foucart must have passed it to my father, who passed it to my mother. Maybe that was how they had met!

“Rabble-rousing around...”

I turned to look.

“They had to have been racing around all night...”

It was a groggy-looking English couple, sitting next to me, commiserating, no doubt, on their lack of a peaceful night’s sleep.

“Isn’t this place supposed to be ancient? What are these kids up to that the city doesn’t institute a crackdown against street racing? Don’t they have work to do? School?”

“Now, hon...”

“I say we go on to Morocco. At least if they howl, it will be from the tops of minarets, not racing around underneath our hotel window.”

He tried to console her to no avail.

“And have you heard about the murders? I tell you, this place is going to the dogs!”

On the contrary. From what little I had seen, it appeared they had a cat infestation, instead.

They were simply everywhere: half-wild house cats roamed the Eternal City, skulking around corners, running across the tops of walls. Black ones, grey ones, calicos; Siamese, white, tabby, hairy, hairless. They were all over the place. When the sun went down, they yowled. You heard them everywhere: hissing, fighting, making love. Or else they hunted. Alone or in packs.

People seemed to treat them with great respect. The house cat was the mascot of Rome.

A mosquito, fat and happy, landed on my arm, and sucked the blood. When its small body intercepted my open fist, it exploded with a fierce joy, emptying its guts upon the summit of my wound. “That’s what you get,” I told the little wet spot.

There was an e-mail from Ballard, when I got home. I didn’t have a phone, and he was stranded for the remainder of the summer, unless he decided to take the metro (“Which, I never do,” he wrote). It was inviting me to something called Festa de’ Noantri, a festival of sorts, in Trastevere. “Who knows,” he said, “this may be your one and only hot Roman summer. You don’t want to spend it hovering above Tourist Central. Here is a chance for authentic Rome.” I accepted the invitation for tomorrow night, gratefully.

I had learned something distressing. My waiter, at the café, passed on the unfortunate news that due to the rising heat index in late July, Roman citizens, including coffee shop owners and their staff, tended to leave the city in droves, in August. I listened on, perplexed. “You mean they just leave?” I had never heard of such a thing.

He assured me it was true. They all went on extended leaves of absence, taking with them their families to the seaside.

Amazing.

I finished my cappuccino, glad that I still had two weeks left to enjoy easily available, good food.

I bathed and got ready. I had purchased a blow dryer so I could dry my hair. By the time I finished, he was standing there. “Hello,” he said.

I marveled at him and then gave myself an inward shake to basically wake the H up and stop messing around. “How do you do that?” I asked, not a little put out by his finesse, especially since I was relatively unathletic, and I was beginning to think maybe we were too different.

“Do what?” asked Lennox.

“Par for the course,” I said. “Sneak up on me––fly up to my window; move around without my hearing you? And other unexplained behaviors.”

“Unexplained behaviors?”

“Okay. You really need to stop doing that. Unexplained behaviors: coming and going, disappearing before I can even get to you, you never talk about anything, and you stare.”

“I stare.”

“You stare.” I felt myself breathing heavily. Go, if you want. I don’t care. We’re doing this.

“You stare, too,” he said. He had smiles. I saw a new one: The Devastator. Side effects included making me lose my balance.

Something in his eyes. He needed a warning label. Now he asked me a question.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

He helped me up from the floor. My hair was all in my face. I felt his radical touch. It was like my nerve endings didn’t end where they were supposed to, anymore. Touching him was like touching possibilities: They went on forever.

I gaped at him. “Say that again. I didn’t hear it.”

He sighed. “You need to pay more attention... Halsey.”

Squeeeeeeee.

“What did you say?” I gasped breathlessly.

He was still holding on to me. I felt his hands, warm and tender, upon my arms. Neither one of us considered breaking the connection. If anything, he squeezed me tighter. I turned to mush.


“I said––”

The purpose of our mouths was not in words. His lips pressing to mine, stole my secret essence. We kissed there on the balcony.

“You are the most––”

It was like breathing and dying, simultaneously. I felt the warm heart of his embrace and offered up the only thing I had in return.

Our tongues met.

“And I know I shouldn’t,” he was saying.

“If you leave me, I will die. I will seriously die,” I said. I just managed to get it out before he kissed me some more.

I didn’t know where I was. It felt like we were entwined. By blood and by purposes.

My own surging heart I took for granted, thudded now, with an intensity I had never experienced before. It was like someone else was in control of my desires. I had no say. Who was driving the ship?

Standing on tiptoes, I put my arms around his neck, and felt his hands slide naturally to my waist. We were like that for ten minutes straight. I felt his mouth explore my own.

Eventually––though I could not tell you how––gravity, like time itself, seemed to have no bearing. We were lost in one another, simply, completely. I didn’t know where I began and he ended. And it was only getting more intense. I knew that there were rules, to this type of game. Even some rather funny maxims.

About cows. And free milk.

I couldn’t remember them.

“We need to stop,” he said.

I did something with my tongue that put an end to that conversation. I could feel the animal within him. “Never stop,” I said. He groaned, mightily.

He withdrew, and turned his back on me. At the parting of his lips, I lunged halfway towards him.

“I shouldn’t have lost control like that,” he continued, angst-ridden.

I took secret pleasure at how he moved with familiarity through my apartment. The sheer canopy of the four-poster exposed the lavender color of my bedding, which was the color of his eyes.

I had lit the interlacing iron roses, topped with scented candles. He was silent for a while.

The atmosphere was moody, electric. The gentle flames flickered from the breeze through the open French doors. “Like us,” he said.

I nodded, licking the taste of him off my mouth. First from my top lip, then the bottom.

“We are like the iron roses,” he said, still turned from my beseeching stare.

I thought it was too beautiful an analogy to endure.

And with that, a particularly strong draft extinguished one of the candle flames.

“We are like the iron roses. One cannot wither without the other dying as well.”

With his fingers he snuffed the final flame and it was unnaturally night. I looked for him, but he had gone.





Lennox



Stupid! Selfish! I berated myself. Idiot! Are you trying to get her killed? The Spanish Steps were overrun with fashionistas, haute couture celebudrones. It was the Alta Moda Fashion Show. Every day in the summer something new was going on. The onlookers watched dispassionately as impossibly spindly-legged women in ridiculous getups paraded in front of them. I thought they had nothing on the girl whose apartment I had just left. Dallace, my cousin, for all intents and purposes, had written to me, in hastily worded scribbles, from Venice, “Do not eat her.” I had given him play-by-plays up till now, along with assurances I would not if I could help it; but this was just for me. No doubt he was enjoying my predicament with the rest of the Venice Coven, all of whom loved me. And I them.

Even Camille had something to say about it. She was Dallace’s wife. They met in the Roaring Twenties, back when she had a heartbeat––the first thing she lost when she became immortal.

“A girl’s place is a statement,” she said. “A girl showing you her place is an even bigger one.”

Understatement. Rather than moving in and changing her surroundings, Halsey had changed to her surroundings. I had no basis for comparison, of course, between pre-Rome Rookmaaker and who she was now; only the feeling that she belonged.

It was I who did not.

Dallace wanted me to come back to Venice. I think he thought I might go off again, relapse, go off alternate blood fuels. “It’s murder. Killing her is murder,” he said.

But not killing her was murdering me.

When I said she and I were like the iron roses, she nodded; even blind I could feel her body move. So attuned was I to her. If only she knew what I meant by that. I raced home, through the crowd.

It was like... a complex thought... I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Before I knew it, it had taken root. The more I thought about it, the deeper it got. If I fooled... with her, she would become iron... like me... A vampire! Cold and invincible!

And if I didn’t, I would just end up killing her. And to snuff her flame would be to snuff my own. I knew I could never consciously harm her. The stalker that crowed within me, so sure-footed, had slipped.

We will turn her, he said; but he no longer had any power. I had thorns.

She might prick herself upon them. And then she would bloom, crimson and inviting, and I would turn her to my Dark Rose, a creature of the night.

She was fragile as a candle flame, and burned as sweetly as the lavender I smelled between snuffs of her skin scent. She was not made to last, and she was my light; in a dark eternity that would be once she no longer existed, she was my fatal inamorata.

There was no clear path.

I cannot help my nature. That I have fangs is a just impediment. I will conceal my fangs, and the lust I have for her blood. But not to harm her. Not, as in a trap, to masquerade as what I am not. Am I not a human, if I choose to be? She made that seem possible, somehow.

I will try to be what she needs, if it breaks me, I decided. Because, otherwise, it’s over. My life. Everything.

Living in a world without her was no longer an option.