The Wiccan Diaries (19 page)

“This symbol––” He pointed––

“––is the sign for many, a
coven
of vampires. It’s simple enough.”

“Hum,” I said. “So it is.” I put it away. He looked where it
went, in my bag.

Marek and Ballard had their Vespas opened full-throttle. I
think I loved them.

“So where were we?” I asked.

“I’m a vampire. You’re not,” he said.

“Well, at least you’re smiling. Before it was like you were
hiding things. Now I know all of your little secrets.”

“I doubt that,” he said. “And being a vampire isn’t a little
secret.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“Maybe some other time.”

I was going to take him up on his offer, whether he knew it
or not.
Now
, in fact.

“If vampires are supposed to be descended from what that
story said, which is Evil,” I said, referring to the light show, “how come you
keep saving me?”

He got a contemplative look. “I don’t know,” said Lennox.
“We’re not supposed to. The first rule is not to interfere.
Primum non nocere
; ‘first, do no harm.’
Stay out of the way. Don’t let them notice you. People, I mean. You keep
getting drawn in to things... You shouldn’t
be
.”
He emphasized the last three words––it was almost like two separate
sentences. “I want to be good,” he said, gripping the steering wheel.

“So I got you to admit that, at least,” I said.

“What?”

“That you’re good. If you were evil, Lennox, you wouldn’t
keep an eye on me.”

“If I were evil, that’s
exactly
what I would do!” he said.

“I just realized something,” I said.

“And that is?”

“Well, you’re a vampire, right,
immortal
? Don’t you need, like, permission, before you storm into a
place and save a bunch of people?”

“Usually,” he said, “I need an invite. Otherwise, humans
wouldn’t be safe anywhere. But that was a public place. Run by vampires. When
it’s a vampire, you don’t need an invite.”

I suddenly wanted to know all the rules. About garlic and
mirrors and stakes through the heart. And a part of me wondered what my parents
were doing with a book about vampires. “So is
bloodsuckers
an offensive term?” I asked, hoping to get a reaction
out of him.

“Actually, it’s a pretty fair assessment,” he said. “How do
you think we ‘live?’”

“If you’re trying to warn me, it won’t work.”

“I’m beginning to grasp that,” he said.

Something occurred to me. “You let that man go and Marek was
against it. Has anyone ever, you know, found out about vampires?”

“Just Hollywood,” he said. He looked over at me and laughed.
I wanted to kiss him. “Anybody else, and we kill them.” I shivered,
involuntarily.

“And can, you know, you hear the beating of my heart and
stuff?”

“Some people we have need of, and they are ‘brought in’,”
said Lennox, “but we watch them afterwards for signs that they may betray our
secret, then we kill them, if they do.”

“Right. So no betrayal,” I said. “What do vampires
do
with immortality, anyway?”

“Mostly we guard against outsiders finding out about us,
including cover-ups.”

“What do you mean? Wait, you guys didn’t kill Kennedy, did
you?”

“No,” he said, laughing again: it was a brutal sonata.
“Again, we do not interfere. The human world is not our world. We expect the
same courtesy from those mortals who would attempt to know us, to seek
us
out.”

“What happens if they do... know you?” I said.

The biblical connotation was not lost on either one of us.
He thought a bit.

“I suppose it’s like Roswell,” he said. “We are like the
modern day equivalent of an alien invasion, except in our case, we really are
among you. You just don’t know about it yet. So long as there is a fringe,
humans will insist it be lunatic. Tales of vampires, for the most part, are not
taken seriously.”

“I can’t get into trouble, if I know about you, can I?” I
asked.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

“No. Answer me.”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” he said.

I thought about that. “And Ballard?”

“Him I wouldn’t worry about,” said Lennox.

“Why not?”

“Ask
him
.”

We were arriving back in Rome. I had only minutes left.
Lennox broke from them. I looked to my left and saw Ballard and Marek swing
off. “Where’s Marek going with my bike?” I asked.

“He’s taking it to my place.”

My eyes lit up.

“How will I get it? Will I see you tomorrow? I want you to
come up.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Nonsense. I invite you.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I will show you everything tomorrow.”

* * *

Dear Diary,

Lennox is a vampire
and I can be killed for saying that. I have just made you my accomplice in
crime, Diary. To think of the self-control; he must abstain worse than I do. I
wonder if there is a St. Martley’s for the pale. If he gets sired... And he
sires... and his sired sire a bunch more who sire––the world would
be overrun with sirers. Sireously.

I have so many things
I want to ask him....

Lennox

It was the perfect opportunity; I passed Marek, who nodded
imperceptibly. Trastevere was the therian’s bailiwick. We avoided it at all
costs. Particularly since it would lead to war, if we did not. I wasn’t sure
how well vampires would fare in that endeavor.

“I want you and Ballard to come over to my place tomorrow,”
I said.

She nodded, lost in her thoughts. “I’ll send him an e-mail,”
she said. “Although, it would be nice to know where you lived first.”

“It’s close. Just across the water from him.”

That wasn’t a coincidence. Perhaps they could help me work
on this problem together––like our own little United Nations. I
told her where it was at.

I was disturbed more than I could say by the fiasco at the
club, particularly since the three vampires Marek and I had dispatched seemed
to have a working knowledge of the rift between Paris and Rome. That wasn’t
supposed to be known by their kind. By the vampers, that was; I felt myself
falling more and more into step with the guardians of the supernatural
underworld, the Lenoir, who had tasked me with policing this place. At the same
time, I didn’t want to be associated with them. Not if it meant more killing. I
had too much blood on my hands already.

“...it’s like Roswell,” I said.

Human beings, in their endless creativity, had managed to
talk themselves out of our existence, even to forget us.

It was remarkable how quick they were to explain away these
recent spate of killings as the work of just some serial killer.

That was typical and one of our best insurance policies
against human beings finding out about us. It also happened to save their
lives. Not knowing about us saved their lives. Nobody knew just how many
vampires there were, or what we would do to them, if they ever found out.

Marek had been sent.

Whatever else, he had been
sent
.

I needed to remember that about him. He was an agent of the
Lenoir, with a duty to report back to them.

“You know why I’m here,” he said to me, earlier tonight,
when he knocked on my door.

The Lenoir were not to have moved until speaking with Occam.
Instead, they sent Marek, who had a short fuse. I had to admit, though, with
his help, the two of us could probably stop this boker and his zombies, while
containing the spread of the contagion.

Marek was a good vampire. He was not
in
. But he was a good vampire. The Lenoir were wise to send him.
But I didn’t have to like it.

Chapter 15 – Halsey

Becca wanted to know about how things were going. “You know
how you can get halfway to something, and never touch it? And get halfway
again, and never touch it? When all you have to do is reach out your hand?” I
said, via e-mail.

Lennox had extended friendship, and also something else.
Acceptance. Acceptance that I could know his secret without him having to worry
about me blabbing it around everywhere. Now I just wanted to be close to him so
I could reach out my hand.

I didn’t have long to wait. I e-mailed Ballard Lennox’s
address in Campo de’ Fiori. It truly was across the water. I couldn’t wait to
see it. Just one more thing I was going to get to know about Lennox. I treated
each little confession on his part as a sacrifice he made just for me. Ballard
responded nonchalantly: “Okay. But we need to be careful. Okay?”

I just needed to know when to go there. I figured it would
be nightfall, I told Ballard, before–– But Lennox surprised me
again. I turned and he was standing on my balcony; I motioned for him to get
inside. It was morning, after all. What was he
thinking
?

“The streets are so narrow and the buildings so high,” he
said, “I can move around unless it’s midday.” He looked at the map on my wall.
I had forgotten I had put it there.

“I’m e-mailing Ballard,” I said.

“Have him meet us at my house in half an hour,” said Lennox.
He went to the map and poked around on it with his fingertip, then caught sight
of the iron roses, and my bed.

I was behind him. “You don’t have to rush in and out when
you come here,” I said. “I
like
it
when you visit me. In fact, you don’t visit me hardly enough.” It was true and
I felt good saying it.

I felt like we needed to confess certain things to each
other.

I pulled a multicolored tack out of my desk drawer, and
said, “I’m
here
,” and put it into the
map where my room was located. “You can visit me anytime.”

“That gives me an idea,” he said, ignoring this. I pretended
to be hurt; I wanted him to touch me.

Instead, I went to the bathroom and got dressed in jeans and
boots, because I didn’t know what we were going to be doing, and I put on a
T-shirt that said ‘bella’ on it, which meant ‘beautiful girl.’

I wished he would see me for who I was, who I
could
be, with him. Which was his.

When I came out, he noticed me, finally. There was this heat
between us; it made my breath go ragged. “You look beautiful,” he said.

“One problem. I think, if we go past my landlady, she might
lock me in a convent or something. I’m not supposed to have guys in my room.
She’s kind of flesh-eating.”

“That won’t be a problem,” he said. Before I knew it, he was
climbing down the balcony, with me hanging on to him by my arms and legs; I
buried my face into the cool of his jacket and squeezed my eyes shut. No one
noticed anything. I saw what he meant. Shade was everywhere.

“Come on,” he said, and led me to his car.

This was something else I noticed for the first time.
Ballard probably hadn’t seen me through the vehicle’s
glass
––it was entirely opaque. I was sure light
couldn’t penetrate it. It reminded me of the topmost floor of Club Change.
Hadn’t the third floor also been entirely non-see-through-y?

“Just a precaution,” he said, and started the engine.

Now that I had him alone, I didn’t know how to behave. I had
spent half the night tossing and turning, and was suddenly uncomfortable. Had I
sobered up? Would I stop thinking about a future that could never be, once the
realities of it revealed themselves, by the light of day? No, I told myself. I
was not prepared to end this. To end
us
.

“You said last night that vampires have
rules
. What are these rules and who enforces them?”

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” he said.

“What if I don’t care?” I said.

I played a little fantasy with myself.
MTV Crypts.
Like I was going into the den of a vampire and he was
going to give me a tour.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping in a coffin?” I asked.

“Actually, I do sleep. But I prefer beds, not coffins. I don’t
like reminders of death. I know that I’m not alive, strictly speaking, but I do
not want to forsake my humanity altogether. There is nothing more against life
than lying in death.”

“How old are you?”

He frowned. “Full disclosure?” he asked.

“Nothing else,” I said.

“Old. But not
that
old. Compared to the millennia some vampires have seen, what am I to them?
However, for a vampire, I am very young, not yet...”

“What?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” he said. I squirmed with
pleasure that he would even want to. “We have a rite of passage, vampires,
called
the Agonies
. It is
administered when that vampire is ready, but always before the first century.”

“What happens if you’re not... ready?” I asked.

“Do you really want to know?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“If a vampire fails to pass the Agonies, and I assume they
are... that vampire is destroyed....”

“Vampires
die
?” I
asked. I couldn’t believe it.

“Everything dies. Including the three that almost got you.”

“You
killed
them?”

“It’s my job,” he said.

“So what are we going to do today?” I finally asked.

He seemed to brighten somewhat––the former
conversation forgotten about. “Since Ballard and you seem to be so keen to get
into what I can only describe as impossibly dire peril that includes finding
out about the existence of bloodsucking creatures of the night, including yours
truly, I thought you could help me with a problem I have. It will need the same
kind of proficiency in skullduggery, you and Ballard seem to possess in so
great a quantity,” said Lennox.

“Neat,” I said.

He reached over and grabbed a device from the glove box. It
happened again. When our skin touched, there was an electric pulse that shot
through every fiber of my entire being.

“Whoa,” I said.

“I know.”

I looked and a huge gate was opening soundlessly before us.
It led down a short stretch, to a courtyard. But that was nothing to the
building. It was huge and ancient, and very Roman. It had all the trappings I
associated with authentic Roman architecture, including ivy that scaled the
face of it in every direction.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s beautiful. The crumbling plaster,
everything.” For all I knew, it dated back to the Renaissance; which was not
atypical.
And it was his.

“Actually,” he said, “it’s my friend’s. I’m just
house-sitting.”

Vampires house-sit?

“This friend... She wouldn’t be a
girl
, would she?” I asked transparently.

“No. He’s more of a teacher, Occam.”

“Oh,” I said.
Weird
name.

I looked and Ballard had appeared. He saw our car. I tried
rolling down the window, but it wouldn’t budge. “They don’t go down,” said
Lennox. “One of my friend’s fail-safes. As much as he can, he’s made this place
vamp accessible.” He honked and Ballard understood. As Ballard followed behind
us, the gateway rolled back into place.

That was it. We were trapped inside,
together
. I nearly squee’d.

* * *

The courtyard of Lennox’s three-story mansion was filled
with orange trees in the center, potted wisteria and other flowers on the
outside, and had a set of stone steps that ran to the second floor, in a zigzag.

I could see the pale rosy brickwork beneath the plaster and
the faded wooden walkways that ran entirely around the U-shaped interior of the
courtyard. The windows were all lead glass with intricate design work. They had
trefoils
––arch shapes I
associated with churches. From the upper levels you could see past the
cypresses to Tiber Island. It was vampiric without seeming so. Understated.

Not drawing attention to himself was something I imagined
Lennox found both easy and difficult. Easy, because he obviously had money, and
could afford to sequester himself from the likes of me. Hard, because if he
ever went out, it would be impossible for people
not
to notice him.

I was beginning to recognize a kind of uniform
attractiveness in vampires. I had seen five so far, all of whom were definite
eye candy, even the women, though it pained me to acknowledge it. Something
told me Lennox could take his pick.

He was way too beautiful for me.

Ballard and he hit it off immediately, which was nice. I
felt bad that I hadn’t informed Ballard of my relationship with Lennox, which
was still only half formed in its outlines, but I hadn’t known there was this
much to tell.

He didn’t mention it. It was not a problem. Ballard was here
for
me
.

“Obviously, my Uncle Risky knew vampires. So did your
parents,” he said to me, when we had a second to ourselves. Lennox was giving
us the tour.

“How about it Ballard? Do you get that vibe thing from him?”
I said, pointing my chin at Lennox’s retreating back. Lennox was busy pointing
at everything, showing it off.

“He points like a rude American,” said Ballard, “but I don’t
get the creeps from him, no.”

It was good enough for me. “Excellent,” I said.

Finally, the tour was done. It was time to get to work.

He showed us into the huge private library on the third
floor. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, in endless stacks as far as
the eye could see. There were oil paintings: most of them dark and shadowy,
with contents too gruesome to describe. And in the center, a huge desk filled with
papers spilling out everywhere.

It looked like command central. But for what?

Without asking, Ballard went over to them, and pulled out
the newspapers I had seen before. All the articles seemed to be written by the
reporter, Emmanuela Skarborough.

That didn’t begin to cover the contents of Lennox’s library
table. There were also pizzas and cokes. “I don’t suppose you’re
hungry
,” I said. I noticed Lennox popped
the top off something unfamiliar looking. I finally caught a glimpse.

Blood-in-a-Cup.

“Full disclosure,” he said, seeing me eye it, and took a
sip. Ballard grimaced slightly. Then a bunch of pictures of dead people spilled
out of a manilla folder Ballard had opened haphazardly.

“Victims,” said Lennox, “but not from me. And that’s what we
need to talk about.”

* * *

We worked all day that first day. Lennox could very
succinctly state a problem, as well as enumerate the finer points, while
Ballard was good with the research, and coming up with ideas. Both of them drew
sensible, logical conclusions. Conclusions I did not like one iota.

“This is what we know so far,” said Lennox. A small pile of
blood cups had grown up around his spot at the table. When I inquired about
them, he said it was like the difference between sugar and saccharin, “A matter
of taste.”

I took that to mean he didn’t drink human blood.

“This is what we know so far,” he said. “Somebody is killing
people. The police are stumped, but I have a guy on the inside who says they’re
drawing some interesting conclusions. Basically telling me to watch my back.”

“They think it may be vampires?” I asked.

“Precisely.”

“What do you suspect?” said Ballard.

Lennox flipped through the papers. Was he seventeen?
Eighteen? When was his Sire On Date?

“I suspect vampires,” he said, “or at least
a
vampire.” He held up the Skarborough
articles. “Your cousin was calling him ‘the Exsanguinator.’ When I went to the
morgue, I noticed holes in one of the victim’s neck.”

Ballard said, “Have you seen this profile?”

“It’s a workup,” said Lennox, “of who to look out for. Cops
use them to get an idea of who they’re after.”

“What does it say?” I asked.

Ballard said, “It’s a guy, first of all. They’re saying he
may have a Dracula fetish. I quote: ‘one of the thematic qualities of vampires
that we have from the Victorian Era is that of blood and woman’s sexuality,’
end quote. It goes on to talk about broomsticks and how Satanist women had
intercourse with the Devil.

“The occult is tied up with sex,” said Ballard. “Then it
talks about the victim selection process and what he gets out of this. They’re
women, so he’s heterosexual, and the act satiates his
lust
.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. It makes reference to
sanguinists
. Fetishists with a bent for pretending they’re
vampires.” He looked up at Lennox.

“It’s a surprisingly large group of people,” said Lennox
with distaste.

“The last bit,” said Ballard, “is about rage. And that the
killer
flaunts
.”

“Naturally. They’re displays. But where, I think, the police
trip up,” said Lennox, “is thinking he dumps the bodies. If he
is
a vampire, he does not dump the
bodies, he takes them where they stand; and he’s a thirsty bastard, our guy.
Vampires don’t ordinarily drain bodies. It’s called
sucking
and it’s frowned upon. Not least because by the time you
get down to the dregs the soul has already left. Where’s the fun?”

He talked like he had experiences I didn’t want to know
about. “Have you ever... anyone?” I asked, in a very small voice.

A shadow came over Lennox’s face, then. “I did not know what
I was, when I was made. When I awoke I awoke with fire. It was as natural as
taking a draught after a long day. It was not until much later that I even knew
that I
was
a vampire. I was not
self-aware. I was young and stupid. And I was sireless. By then, I had killed
some people, yes.”