The Wiccan Diaries (21 page)

Ballard shrugged. “Whatever you say. But hear me now. When or
if this decision is made, it will be by me, Lennox.
Not you.
I don’t care what you say. This is
our
town. You need to know that!”

“Very well,” said Lennox.

I looked between them both; Ballard didn’t bother to
withhold his angst. He sat down and eyed Lennox, waiting to hear what the other
had to say. It better be good.

Lennox said, “The name changes. Master Zombie. Zombie
Master. The boker.
King-sire.
It’s
even there, in the name.
Sire.
The
telepathic connection and the resemblance to vampires.”

“So what of it?” said Ballard, his arms crossed. He looked
menacing.

“Whatever this
king-sire
is planning, he hasn’t done it yet,” said Lennox. “His drones, which are these
zombies, have to do what he says; even if he just thinks it. Do you see them
infecting people?”

“Them. Plural,”
said Ballard. “They must be.”

“No. You’ve forgotten...
Necromancy,”
said Lennox. “The king-sire is raising an army. He is not killing, not yet. He
is bringing back to life those who were already dead. It’s like you said.
They’re the
perfect
victims. No one
misses the dead. They’re buried away from the light of day.”

“Kind of like
you
,”
said Ballard.

Lennox sighed. “What I’m saying is that while the king-sire
is alive, he is in control. They must do what he says. So far he isn’t telling
them to do anything.”

“Then he’s building his numbers, waiting for his chance,”
said Ballard.

“Likely, that’s correct,” said Lennox. “Which gives us an
opportunity. If we can find them, if we can get to them in time––I
mean, obviously, they must be gathering somewhere––then we can take
these zombies out! Destroy them. And we can kill the king-sire last. But I will
do that part myself.”

“So you want us to help you look for these...
nests
, is that it?” said Ballard.

“You said it yourself,” said Lennox. “Somebody is collecting
homeless people. They die on the streets. Old age, malnutrition, sickness,
whatever. He brings them
back
. But he
does it just so, so as not to draw any attention. Scan the obituaries, what do
you see? The stories of people who were loved. These are the forgotten people,”
he said, pointing and jabbing with his finger to the pictures of the dead
people.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

He tossed Ballard and me
The
411
. “Read that. Figure out where the author is. Find him. Get him to help
us. Then we go and we find these nests,” said Lennox. “And we take them down.
And this remains a city with just one vampire in it.
Me.”

Chapter 16 – Halsey

It was the end of the hottest month, but Lennox was like an
ice cube, not just cold to the touch, but aloof. The fire of our first
encounters was replaced by something else. I had to get to the bottom of it.

Ballard had
The 411
memorized. It was written by someone named Infester. That had to be an alias of
some sort. They were trying to find him through the publisher, SURVIVOR BROS
PRESS. So far, nothing. It needed a woman’s touch.

Instinctively, I had switched my schedule to night owl
status. Ballard, meanwhile, was engrossed in his newfound hobby: reading everything
he could get his hands on in Lennox’s library. It was not infrequent that I heard
him go “Ah-hah!” and “Yes,” and “Why didn’t I think of that?” He had begun
living in the library. I couldn’t.

One night, I bid them farewell, then whispered in Lennox’s
ear, so that only he could hear me: “Please, don’t stand me up tonight... okay?”

I left so he could think about that, so he could think about
me.

I could hear I Gatti as I drove home; they were “tearing it
up,” as Ballard would have said. I was just taking my diary out from underneath
my pillow, when Lennox showed up.

I put my pen down and looked at him, my eyes obscured by the
canopy of fabric around my four-poster. He traced the outline of my body with
his eyes. Somewhere inside, a voice said,
Yes
.

Silly me. Lennox was a vampire. It was his nature to be
cold. I wanted to be his ice princess.

“Turn the lights out,” I said. I lit the iron roses. He did
as he was told. I felt the air move, he went so fast. One flame flickered,
nearly went out, then steadied, and reignited, like our relationship, I hoped.

“Come over here and lay beside me on my bed. I want you to
hold me. Do it!” I said, when he didn’t respond. I was going to have to teach
him everything.

“Have you ever been with a mortal?” I asked him. “There are
ways of embracing besides just taking them.”

I referred to his need to bite, to kill. He was not in his
superhero getup. I could feel his form beneath my tracing hands. I kissed
him––first slowly, savoring the taste of his mouth, then pressing
my lips firmly to his own. He responded, aggressively.
Good.

Let him be alive, I preyed.

“I think sometimes you have a wiring problem,” I said to
him. “In case you missed it, buster, I’m into you.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond; I kissed him some more. He
was going to get it. Even if he didn’t realize, I was going to make him see
that he couldn’t live without me.

I closed my eyes and allowed the kiss to become
wetter
. Our teeth bumped, clumsily; not
that I cared. I touched his skin and felt him moan. It was like one of those
statues, except he wouldn’t break apart with age. I would.

“Stop,” he said.

“No.”

“Stop.”

He didn’t give me a choice; he broke apart. I grabbed for
him, but he got up. I think he dragged me off the bed.

I was clingy. Needy. “Why?” I said, kneeling with the bed
sheets in my hands, and not embarrassed about it one bit.

He didn’t respond. He just stood at the balcony.

I went out to him and put my hands on the cold stone.

“It’s cold,” I said, touching it.

Then everything went wrong. He went,
“Cold.
That’s
it
!”

“What is?” I said.

He went over to the desk and turned the lamp back on. “Don’t
you see?
Coldness.
The zombies have
pumping hearts, but they’re cold-blooded. It means they can’t regulate their
body temperatures. But they do have to feed!”

He was scattered, all over the place. I wanted to do
this
.
Us.
I didn’t want to think about zombies or the Apocalypse or any
of that horse––nonsense.

I realized that at first I
hadn’t
realized that he was so cold. That in our tenderness
together I had responded to him as a woman does to a man. Or at least how a
seventeen-year-old can to a young man of indeterminate age who nevertheless at
least
looks
age appropriate. Back
then, he was
hawt
.

Maybe I was the one who was wired all incorrectly. I
couldn’t feel the cold for the heat and he couldn’t feel my heat because he was
so cold. I had to warm him up.

“Later,” he said.

“That’s a promise you just made, buster.”

“We need to tell Ballard. If the zombies are cold-blooded,
it means we can locate where they’re at. Do you understand?”

He grabbed the box of multicolored tacks and started
peppering them around the map I had pinned up. “We’ll need to find Infester
first, of course. He’s the zombie aficionado. But this is huge.”

* * *

“
The zombies are probably
hiding among
stones
,” said Lennox,
when we got back to his place, and found Ballard pouring over old manuscripts.
I yawned slightly. I couldn’t help it. “That’s another good reason for why they
haven’t been found yet. That way they can stay warm at night.”

Believe me, I was just seeing how cold my nights could get.

“A lot of monuments are off-limits, still others are closed
to the public, unless it’s daylight. Don’t you
see
? When it’s warm, they’re okay, but at night the zombies have to
find shelter where people aren’t at,
away
from the cold. The stones retain heat,
”
said Lennox. “It’s the
perfect place!”

“So we’re looking...” said Ballard.

“We’re looking for an old Roman monument, perhaps several,
where enough zombies can be safely stowed, that the public won’t notice, that
are
warm
, made out of stone.”

“That’s all of them.”

They got out the maps. I wandered out of the library. Just
to get away.

Lennox’s house was huge, and he had invited Ballard and I to
explore it with the enthusiasm of a museum curator. He assured us that each
piece of furniture, each decoration, had a story to tell. I was not prepared
for how many rooms there were. Each one filled with a lifetime of memorabilia.

I saw movie posters; various Sword and Sandal epics, and the
Spaghetti Western, were featured most prominently. I wondered how long he had
been in Italy? There was an entire room dedicated to Jubilee, a party Romans
threw every quarter century.

As I moved from room to room I began to realize that Lennox
truly was older than I was, that before me, he perhaps had lived lifetimes, and
that after me, he would live lifetimes still. Suddenly, it felt like we could
never be together.

We were too different. I was too young, for one thing. He
was too old. I didn’t even know how old he was.

The last room I entered was different from the rest. Ages of
thick dust lay upon the floor, across which I traipsed. Spiders had abandoned
their webs. Burlap covered mounds of indistinct things, too heavy to push
aside; I tried.

Through the detritus was a weaving path. Occasionally I had
to find something to remove webs in my way. It was very dark. A stained glass
window was letting light in, from overhead. It looked like dark shimmering
waves crashing on golden sands, the light. I came to it. Dust motes went up
around me.

I didn’t think I would ever be able to find my way out
again. No one had been in here in years, it seemed.

When I looked at the stained glass window, it was like stars
in the nighttime sky. A whole bunch of them. They made figures, like
constellations. I thought I could detect two shapes: that of a man and of a
creature that was almost a man. It reminded me of something Ballard had said
about sculptures.

That if I looked hard enough around the city, I was almost
certain to find figures of animals––in particular
cats––adorned on the sides of buildings. In fountains. Tucked away
in corners. Lions, tigers––not to mention the domesticated cats
that stared at you like living sculptures.

I noticed that each figure held a shield, like a crest, and
that on each shield was a symbol. I recognized the one the man carried
instantly. It was the symbol for vampire.

The other one, however, held a symbol that I had seen
somewhere before, but couldn’t quite grasp.

“It’s a heptagram,” said a voice behind me.

I turned; Marek was watching me from the dark.

The pinpoints of his eyes were like two brilliant flames
amid the dust motes and swirling chaos, and turbulent recollections, of my
imagination. For I realized where I had seen that heptagram before.

At La Luna Blu. The club that Ballard’s sister Lia, and her
boyfriend Gaven hung out at––along with the rest of their
motorcycle gang!

I turned back around. Marek walked until he stood at my
side. Together, we looked up at the stained glass window, neither one of us
speaking. I hadn’t heard him come in.

I couldn’t help noticing how the man and almost-man looked
hostile toward one another, in the stained glass, that they were carrying
shields––implements of war.

But it was the almost-man that interested me. He was
man-shaped but with the qualities of an animal. His hands were half-claws and
his eyes feral. He had more of a stalking shape than the
vampire––and he crouched as if he would spring. He was much taller.
Even in a crouch, he stood eye to eye with the vampire.

Ballard’s story about Romulus and Remus was all wrong.
Romulus and Remus had been suckled by a she-wolf. They would have been
werewolves
––not these
creatures. Whatever these were, they weren’t werewolves!

I hissed.

“I don’t think he knows, exactly,” said Marek.

Now that I was on the cusp of knowledge, I didn’t want to
lose my edge. “Who doesn’t know what, precisely?”

“Your friend, Ballard. I don’t think he knows what he is.”

This was unexpected. I turned to look up at Marek. He was so
tall the rest of him disappeared into shadow; I realized the light filtering
through the stained glass must have been the moon. Had Marek been living here
this whole time? I hadn’t seen him since the night he saved my life.

All these vampires––constantly saving my life.

“I Gatti... they have something similar on their door,” I
said.

“That’s why I don’t go there,” he said.

He must mean
Trastevere
, I thought.

He waited for me. I thought about what to say next. I
realized that he was leaving it up to me––that if I was going to
probe, it was going to be my choice, not his.

“Lennox says you work for the Lenoir. What is it you
do
for them, anyway, M-Marek?”

He noticed the hitch in my voice––I wasn’t as
bold as I thought.

“You’re very
brave
,”
he said.

“Is that a threat?”

“I don’t usually threaten people, no. It was an observation;
spot-on, I might add.
This
is the
threat: that you will be brave with the wrong vampire. You should ask me about
the glass.”

He spoke slowly, as if every uttered line was a set of doors
I had come to, and must choose for myself, which way to go. They were not all
civilized doors, either. I sensed he had some ones that would trap me, if I
took them.

“I don’t betray confidences,” I said.

“But
is
it a
confidence, if you decipher it for yourself? I suppose it is a trade.
Cleverness for consequences,” he said. “You see too much. An unfortunate fact
for vampires. However, you show judgment in your choice of silences. That makes
you even more clever than just a fact-gatherer, because you have some sense of
retribution––of comeuppance. It is reserved for the false.”

“I’m not gonna talk about vampires!” I said.

“We’re talking about Ballard.”

“What is Ballard?”

“I don’t think he knows,” he said again. It was annoying
talking to him. Worse, because he was so unbelievably good-looking and, despite
what he said, politely rude.