The Wiccan Diaries (20 page)

The second day was equally intriguing. I managed to get
Lennox to open up some more about himself. Ballard was often in the room with
us, studying and looking into things. Lennox spoke easily in his presence and
withheld very little. I continued to dig.

Today it was the Lenoir. I had gotten Lennox to reveal the
great Vampire Lords of the Underworld, as they became known in my imagination.
Apparently Paris was their home. I recalled Club Change and the story of the
First War.

“If it is a rogue vampire that is responsible for all these
killings, why don’t the Lenoir do something?” I asked.

“That is why Marek is here,” he said. “He’s following his
own leads. An independent investigation.” Then he explained to me about
vampers.

They were the lowest of the low, when it came to Immortals.
“But I doubt it’s a ‘vamper,’” said Lennox. “‘Vampers’ never get age on them.
They fight and kill and die, squandering everything. They are led by their
passions, and they are often mistakenly sired. Although I have heard of a
vampire or two who sired one
as a joke
.”

Somehow, being so cavalier with immortality was beyond my
ability to understand it. And regardless of what he said, vampires sounded
mean.

“Oh, we
are
. Half
the time, all we think about is the slaughter. That’s another thing. Vampires acquire
grace, speed, as well as our strength and bloodthirstiness. But we lose
something when we are begotten.”

“Don’t say your ‘humanity,’” I said. It felt like he kept
trying to warn me against him.

“No. We are the middle-aged. The uninspired. For a vampire,
time means nothing. You will never find a Rembrandt or a Picasso vampire. Being
undead
makes
us dead. I think that’s
why we favor European cities. It’s uncanny. Die in Tucson, come to Rome. With
the rest of the monuments.”

“You’re not dead inside! You’re alive!” I said. I had to
make him see. He smoldered at me; but I think part of him was joking.

His attractiveness had not abated for me; I wanted him but
it was becoming more profound. And as we delayed, more monumental.

Bad thought of words
,
I choiced.
Er
...

I wondered who had made him––just not at their
choice
of making him, if that made
sense––but thought better than to ask. It must have been someone
who wanted a soul mate. A Lennox for their very own.

Had a woman made Lennox?

“If Paris is
vampires
,”
I asked. “What is Rome?”

Ballard looked up from his newspapers. “I think I may have
thought of something,” he said, waving them around. “Look at this. I’m going
over the bodies, right? The people who have died?” He lifted up the
photographs; I didn’t want to see. “And, get this. They’re all really young,
right? Female.”

I nodded.

“But there is another set of bodies, in this folder here.”

I saw Lennox flinch.

“What is it?” I said.

“Nothing. Go on,” he said.

“And these are all twentysomethings and kind of middle
forties, and men,” said Ballard.

Lennox said, “Those are something else.”

We watched as he drank a blood cup.

“And you say
I
withhold,” said Ballard, pointing.

“That’s rude,” I said.

Lennox said, “I guess I was getting to it; I should’ve told
you from the start. There are
two
––”
he held up his fingers like a pair of snake fangs and picked a fly out of his
blood cup.

“Ew. Okay. That’s
gross,”
I said.

“Sorry. Right. Where was I? There are two disparate death
events happening simultaneously throughout the city. I and Marek are working on
the other one. You wouldn’t know about it. So far there hasn’t been any
linkage; I must’ve left the folder out. Nothing connects the young women being
murdered to the men who are dying.”

He could tell this wasn’t going down.

I thought I heard Ballard say “Pussyfoot.” I narrowed my
eyes at him. “Explain,” I said to Lennox.

“Anyway,” said Ballard––

“But I have to interject,” said Lennox. “I find that crime
is an underworld and murder is the skeleton it hides in its closet, yes? Marek
is following some leads: snitches and so forth. Fairly unpleasant stuff. He and
I think one may lead to the other. That is to say, finding out what is killing
here may lead to who or what is doing the killing over there. The girls’ killer
may give us the guys’ killer. Do you understand?”

Ballard said, “Look! I have a point. The guy killing these
girls, whether he’s called ‘the Exsanguinator’ or, or ‘Peter Panico,’ for god’s
sake, he’s just some dude preying on helpless young women.

“But who are the women?” he said. “Look at them: practically
half of them are unidentified. They were taken from hostels mainly, where
anybody can sign in with a fake ID or just make stuff up. They’re Jane Does.
Homeless.

“Homeless,” he said again. “Then, look at the guys. Forgive
me, but they left scruffy-looking corpses.
Who
are these guys?” It was a rhetorical question. “Let me ask you something,” he
said to Lennox. “You went there, right? You saw this? At
the––the––”

“At the morgue,” said Lennox.

“Did they smell bad?”

“What does that have to do with it?” I asked him.

“I wanna know, did they reek? Were they really foul? Hmm.”

“Yes,” said Lennox.

“Unshaved?
Dirty?”

“They were incredibly dirty,” said Lennox.

“Well, my friend, I think you’ve been living too poshly, if
you’ll forgive me. You may have forgotten what it’s like to be on the streets.
These are homeless people. The victims are all homeless.

“It’s simple, if you think about it,” Ballard continued.
“Homeless people aren’t missed. How many times have you looked the other way at
a homeless person? They’re put up with. I think the last census had some seven
thousand homeless people in Rome, the majority of which are
foreigners
. No one knows about them.
There’s no one to call the police, if John Q. Nobody goes missing. In short,
they’re the perfect victims for crimes. Likewise the girls. There was an
article in the newspaper the other day about Nigerian baby farms. Girls are
impregnated and sell their offspring that end up in Human Trafficking circles.
The world is full of people society allows to be victimized. I’ll tell you
something else, too. If it were somebody important, you could bet the
caribinieri would have something to go on, other than just hot air.”

Ballard had worked himself into a steam. “There’s more to
it, than that,” said Lennox, who nevertheless got excited by what Ballard was
saying.

“What? I’m listening. Tell me,” said Ballard.

It was quiet. Finally, Lennox turned to us, and said, “What
do you know about... necromancy...?”

It was like time stopped. I realized Lennox was not the only
one withholding. Nor had Ballard been. I was equally guilty of keeping things
close to my chest. I was a pussyfooter, too!

“It’s magic,” I said. That would have to suffice for now. I
couldn’t share any more... Not––not yet, anyway....

He looked at me and he got this look. Inscrutable, was the
word. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t quite like it, either. Did he know?
Impossible, I told myself. My powers were indeterminate, suspect, like the
shadow we hunted. I had never even
shown
,
much less conjured. I smiled back, trying to be equally nondescript. I didn’t
have Ballard’s gift for indifference.

Which, by the way, was cracking. He seemed to have a natural
aversion to people being hurt in any way. Like he was a protector, almost. This
leaning was more well developed in him than in anyone I had ever met.

Necromancy....

Ballard surprised me: “It’s a magical discipline of many and
multifarious
things
,” he said. “Why?”

“I want to take a break,” said Lennox. It was noontime and I
suspected he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. However wearing this had been
for us, he was doing it doubly. I thought about Marek... out there, and if he
had any leads? “I think we’ve been sitting here for too long; we need to
stretch our legs. Let’s say,
an hour
.
The place is free to explore. Let’s meet back in one hour,” he said. He left.

I didn’t know what to do. I looked at Ballard, who just
shook his head.

* * *

When we reconvened, Lennox had a newspaper under his arm,
but being as I didn’t know the language, I was heavily dependent on both of
them to translate. How to rectify that? I thought Lennox looked a little hot
under the collar. He was
smoking
––literally.
“
You went out,” I said. It was
midday. He could’ve been burnt to death, or to undeath.

“I collect the paper. First things first––
Ballard, you look like you want to say something.”

“It’s best to be methodical, I am.”

“Go on.”

“Necromancy encompasses a bunch of stuff,” said Ballard.
“But, basically, it’s all about three things. Getting people to
see
what you want. Getting people to
feel
what you want. And also getting
them to
do
what you want, by making
them hallucinate and feel stuff.”

“Yes?”

“The communing with the dead is just the flashy part,” said
Ballard. “Even then you’re manipulating demons... What do
they
want?”

“Ballard,” I said. “Where did you learn all this?”

He just looked at me.

Lennox opened the paper to the obituary section.

“Your insight about the homeless people is brilliant. I
called my contact within the Questura,” said Lennox, “Lieutenant Moretti.
They’re still following the sanguinists––the Starbucks vampires.
According to him, they have a team of investigators looking through databases,
trying to find someone with a history of mental illness who likes to dress up
in vampire outfits. It will be up to us to pursue the real,
supernatural
avenues. From what I
understand of necromancy, you talk to the dead, yes, who may reveal information
to you, about what, I’m uncertain: the future, the winning lotto numbers, I
don’t know. But what I’m interested in is the
raising
of the dead.

“Halsey, what I didn’t tell you about the Lenoir is they get
very panicky. We have two issues. The thing killing homeless men, and
whatever’s killing the girls. If they’re interrelated, uh-oh; if they’re not,
great. The thing killing the men is bringing them back to life. I’ve
seen
them. And so have you,” he said to
me.

“Wait a minute? What?” said Ballard.

“Halsey, the thing that attacked you, the night we met, is
what’s doing this, I’m almost
positive
of it,” said Lennox.

“Why did it come after me?” I asked, ignoring Ballard.

Ballard looked from one to the other of us.

“That I don’t know, but it’s good it didn’t get to you,”
Lennox said to me. “What’s happening is these
things
it is raising are coming back, I dunno, messed up. They have
this virus. If one of the things that is being brought back
bites
somebody, you become one of them:
a mean, nasty, fast-walking revenant zombie hate beast.”

“Zombie?” said Ballard, who was standing at this point.

“However, I am almost certain that the two killers, or
groups of killers, are not connected at all. The thing that’s biting the girls
is killing them; they are not coming back. They are also not infected. They’re
just lunch,” said Lennox.

“A
vampire
,” I
said.
“Peter Panico.”

“What is going on here?” said Ballard. Lennox held up his
hand.

“I’ve been researching with my friend, Occam, and we think
this Zombie Master, for want of a better term, is connected
telepathically
with the people he’s
killing––it’s not unlike certain powers vampires have,” said
Lennox, “which is another reason why the Lenoir are so nervous. Sires can
communicate telepathically with the vampires they sire. If the Paris Coven
becomes too agitated, they will come here, and shut things down. They view this
as a Vampire Plague... The Suck. Rome will be quarantined.”

“The Suck?” said Ballard.

“This is not the kind of quarantine that lasts for
such-and-such length and people are allowed out,” said Lennox. “It’s the kind
of quarantine where people are rounded up and made to disappear forever.”

“I need to tell my sister about this,” said Ballard. “Gaven...”

“No, you can’t tell anyone,” said Lennox. “The more people
who know, the greater the incentive for the Lenoir to show up. They don’t like
loose threads.”

“Ballard...” I said, but he shook me off.

“They need to know, Halsey! You don’t understand. They have
an obligation to protect people. If these
vampires
are coming here––” it was almost like a swear word,
“––we need to get ready,” he said.

“Wait,”
said Lennox.
“It isn’t as dire as it sounds, Ballard.”

“The hell it isn’t!” said Ballard.

“Wait.” Lennox produced a book. It had an orange cover. I
could see two eyes; in one, a moon; in the other, the sun.
“The Urban 411,”
said Lennox. “It’s a guide to the Apocalypse.”

“The Apocalypse!” shouted Ballard. Lennox grabbed him before
he could storm off. “Get your hands off me,
bloodswine
.”

“Ballard!” I said.

“Halsey, he’s talking about the end of the world. I gotta
let Gaven know.”

“Just hear him out,” I said, pleadingly.

Lennox released him. “I’m not a fool. I have a plan,” he
said. “I know if we work together, we can do this, Ballard. If I think it’s too
late, then we’ll let the rest of your people know. But not until then! It has
to be this way. Believe me, Ballard. You don’t want an army of cruel, vicious
vampires coming in and treating Rome like a Leper Colony. They’ll level the
place. I
swear
.”