The Wiccan Diaries (22 page)

He was warning me off face values. Being in his presence was
like being lightheaded. He made me dizzy.

“Are all vampires so, I don’t know,
insane
?” I said. “They never tell you what they’re thinking.
They’re just cryptic all the time!”

“Have you ever had associations with more to lose? With more
power?” asked Marek.

I thought about that. St. Martley’s had taught me
crypticness myself.

“I come from somewhere, too,” I said.

“Ah. So we are both travelers in foreign lands. When I am in
my own backyard, I do as I please, when I am in Rome...”

“Cryptic again.”

“Forgive me,” he said.

I said of the stained glass: “They’re a vampire and
something else. All I can think is the vampire is the warrior of the dark, and
the other one is meeting it on the field of combat. Is it Light’s assassin?”

“The story,” he said. “We should have intervened
sooner
. If we had, you wouldn’t have
such half-co––fairytale notions in your head.”

“Are you saying that story wasn’t true?” I said, beginning
to realize I was talking to a Sphinx.

“It had some plot holes,” said Marek.

I inquired as to what these plot holes may have been. He
said something about personification, “When really, vampires aren’t human. But
in its marrow, it’s true enough.”

This was rather difficult; I had to think about it some
more. “So what are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m saying that there was a third creature, the storyteller
Galaxy talked about,” said Marek.

That was a sentence I wasn’t ever going to hear again. I
plundered my memory-hoard for some signpost to the right answer. Nothing.
Blank.

“And still a healthy dose of unreality,” said Marek. “Your
mind won’t let you acknowledge what’s staring you in the face.”

“A vampire?” I said. He laughed. His eyes were much more
soulful than I remembered. There was
more
to this Marek than what I had thought at first.

He asked me a question.

“I think I don’t lie to myself unless the alternative is to
come face to face with something really awful,” I said. “In which case, if I
survived, have I played a mind game on myself, and can’t remember what really
happened after all?”

“You out-cryptic cryptic,” he said.

“It’s a transformer, a shapeshifter,” I said, pointing to
the stained glass window.

“Tell me,” said Marek, “why, in nature, will an animal
transform? A chameleon will change its color. A caterpillar becomes a
butterfly.”

“But we’re talking about human beings, not animals. Not bugs
and reptiles, either.”

“We’ll let proverbs settle it. A dog is what? Man’s best
friend. But a cat can look at a king. A leopard, meanwhile, cannot change its
spots. And while a cat is away, the mice will play. I prefer the Italian,” said
Marek. “‘Happy is the home with at least one cat.’ Are you
cat
-ching on?
Beware of
people who dislike cats.
For, in a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.
Curiosity killed the cat. And there are many ways of skinning them.”

“But a cat has nine lives,” I said, unsure of what we were
speaking about exactly.

“All cats look gray in the dark. Maybe you’re mistaking one
for many of them,” said Marek.

“When rats infest the Palace,” I said, “a lame cat is better
than the swiftest horse.”

“True. But the cat who frightens the mice away is as good as
the one who eats them––” He walked away.

* * *

I was alone in the maze of cardboard, dust, and
abstractness, with no clear picture of how he had gotten so far into my head,
but with the clear sense that he was there now.

Marek.

I left the place as fast as I could, but there was no
catching up to him. He would be off, prowling the night, doing whatever it was
he and Lennox got up to. Like Lennox said: Investigating their own avenues. I
suddenly realized that I was lost.

“There you are,” said Lennox.

I turned and found him.

“I just saw Marek,” he said. “He didn’t bother you, did he?”

“No
, of course
not,” I said with some chagrin. “Why would you say that?”

But he didn’t answer. “We’ve had a breakthrough. Come on,”
he said. He led me back to the library; it was my least favorite room.

* * *

Ballard rubbed his eyes, blearily. “So we think we know
where he is. It’s just a matter of going there.
Infester,”
he said, when he saw I wasn’t following along. My head
was too full of other things.

“Oh. Right. Good,” I said, remembering the
half-man-half-cat, and wondering if Ballard was one. So far as I knew, he had
never transformed in my presence, other than becoming more dear to me. And as
for Lia and Gaven and I Gatti––their gang did mean
‘The Cats.’

Maybe I
was
catching on

Chapter 17 – Halsey

It was the first day of August, when we finally set out to
find Infester. It was Ballard, myself, Lennox, and also Marek––he
had decided to accompany us. Ballard gave Lia an ultimatum.

“Everyone else deserves a holiday, so do I!” he shouted.
This would be a working holiday,
away
from the shop.

It was Ballard who had pieced everything together.
Apparently,
The Urban 411
was like a
map––it led to its creator.

Infester’s idea was that anyone who found him would be worth
knowing, particularly in a foxhole, when worst came to worst.

“Apparently the Suck has a basis in ancient lore,” said
Ballard, as we descended the stone steps, to where Lennox’s car was at. The sun
had chosen to come out today, and the weatherman expected high eighties.

I thought, if there
were
zombies, it would be a hot box––they would be itching to get out
and about, wherever they were. But we were going into the zombies’ den, if we
could find it. For that, we needed Infester.

“There was such a thing as
blood guilt
,” jabbered Ballard, “which is why rulers oftentimes
elected others to do their dirty work for them––karmically, it kept
their hands clean. I read one scribe, who said vampirism was a curse the gods
laid upon mortals who killed another without getting their hands wet. The gods
marveled that such men could sentence others to die. So they gave them thirst,
and need of blood, hoping it would sate their bloodthirstiness. Instead, it
just made them hungrier.”

“That sounds about right,” said Marek, who laughed in spite
of himself.

Ballard, discussing vampires with two....

“I think we just exist,” said Lennox, taking the pragmatic
point of view. “But I think you’re right about the disease being related to
vampires.”

“Maybe it’s our comeuppance,” said Marek, winking at me. The
prospect of adventure had awoken him. I smiled sheepishly back as we got into
the car.

There was smog without the congestion. The usually messy
traffic was gone.

“This kind of worked out, didn’t it?” I said. “If we have to
battle an Undead Army, I mean.” I was only half serious.

“Fewer people will die,” agreed Lennox. Marek said nothing.

* * *

Ballard sipped his soft drink, getting the last of the soda
out of the ice with his straw. I looked on, rolling my eyes at him, and ate my
own happy meal. There was something so wrong about going through the drive-thru
with supernatural creatures that weren’t supposed to exist. I included myself
among them. When was I going to come clean to Lennox about me being potentially
a witch?

He deserved to know, didn’t he?

“So I went online to do some research,” said Ballard. “They
put him in a hospital for crazy people, thirty years ago. He swore the
Apocalypse was upon us. This is Infester I’m talking about. There was something
about
warriors
and being sent down
into hell––or
a
hell––to do battle with unspecified baddies. Supposedly, he broke
out––from the mental hospital, not hell. So now, I guess Infester’s
on the run.”

“But where do we find him?” asked Lennox.

“I thought we were going to kill something today,” said
Marek. He was so huge he was getting claustrophobic.

“I’m sure he gets tired of everyone calling him crazy. I bet
he just wants to be left alone,” I said.
“Infester.
He probably doesn’t make it easy for people to find him. I know I wouldn’t. I
would hate having people gawk at me, waiting for me to do something ‘crazy.’”

“Crazy is knowing something and believing in it, when other
people do not,” said Marek, hoping to get a gold star.

“Fat lot of good that does us,” said Ballard.

I picked the pickles out of my cheeseburger and wiped my
hands on a napkin. “Boys! We just need to use our heads,” I said.

Lennox found a nice traffic circle and we drove in it,
around and around, with the sunlight glaring off the hood.

I grabbed Infester’s zombie book,
The 411
, from Ballard, and proceeded to read from it, aloud. “‘Vigilance
is the difference from falling (being bitten),’
blah blah blah
, ‘in the first wave, and surviving the onslaught to
regroup. In any simulation of the Apocalypse, the first seventy-two hours is
like Nagasaki and Hiroshima... It is like Chernobyl and the Aswan Dam. Like the
outbreak of some terrible new Plague and the Communist witch-hunts of the
1950s.’”

“There.
Go back to
that,” said Ballard.

I read it again. “What is it?” I said.

“Remember that story I told you about Romulus and Remus?
This may be crazy, but the guy does sound like a historian,” said Ballard. “He
talks about all those disasters, right?”

Marek and Lennox listened up.

“Well, anyway, what about disasters that have struck Rome?”
asked Ballard.

“Have there been?” I asked.

“I don’t get it,” said Marek.

“Rome has been sacked a bunch of times,” said Ballard. “The
history of Rome is in its roads––they were built to carry troops to
parts unknown. Like that road I showed you.
Via
Appia Antica
. Conquerors would return triumphant––gold, jewels,
slaves. But there was a flip side. The roads could bring sackers back.”

He explained about the Vandals and the Visigoths, and a
bunch of other people I had never heard about before, laying siege to the city.

“Something similar happened during Romulus’s reign. There
weren’t enough women for the outlaw men, so they kidnapped them from a
neighboring tribe. The Sabines.

“Long story short, the fathers of the Sabines got real
angry, and decided to attack Rome; they got a big army together and marched on
it.

“The husbands were nearly defeated and had to fall back to
the Capitoline Hill. This is where they made their last stand. They would have
fallen, but the kidnapped women, now their wives, begged both sides to
reconcile and end the fight. So that’s what happened.

“My point is,” said Ballard, as we drove around and around,
“when Rome was attacked, when Rome was under siege, its founder, Romulus, holed
up at the Capitol; it was like the Alamo. Then, of course, they all joined
sides, and Rome became this great place. But Infester, being historically
minded, might be there. At the Capitol. Waiting to do like Romulus did. Dig
into Rome’s heart and make his final stand. And it sounds like he also has a
computer. He runs
simulations
of the
Apocalypse?”

He slurped his soda and shut up.

* * *

By the afternoon, I was ready to go home. The pair of eyes
on the cover of the book mocked me the same way the
Codex
did––like they were staring at me, taunting me
with forbidden knowledge, knowledge I couldn’t acquire.

In one eye was a sun––it could be going down or
coming up. I couldn’t tell. In the other, a half moon.

Lennox said something about graffiti. He saw it in the
subway, he said. The moon and the sun would look at you from weird places where
they had been spray-painted, he said.

The moon and the sun were ubiquitous. He felt like they were
following him wherever he went, like an evil monster in a terrible nightmare.
They were spray-painted everywhere. Maybe it was Infester’s way of advertising,
I said. Inwardly I rejoiced at his revealing he thought monsters contained
distinctions––that there could be good monsters, and bad monsters.

It was Ballard who said we should follow the signs. “They’re
graffiti, yes, but maybe they lead somewhere,” he said. We had nothing else to
go on. I was trying to deconstruct the book cover. The best I could come up
with was that the sun was going down on life as we knew it.

Maybe it was like a litmus for whoever got their hands on
it. Was the sun setting? Or was it
rising
from a dark abyss, surviving?

“Survivor Bros,” I said, referring to the name of the
publisher. “Maybe there are two of them.
Bros,”
I said. “Maybe Ballard is correct, and the name of the company is a direct
reference to Romulus and Remus. They were brothers who survived, weren’t they?”

“Actually, Romulus killed Remus,” said Ballard. He had told
me that before.

“I just hope there aren’t two of them,” said Marek. “Or
worse: one with a split personality disorder. He sounds cracked. And I don’t
like him publishing stuff he shouldn’t be.”

Lennox parked the car. The sun was starting to go down. We’d
been driving around all day.

“Check it out,” he said.

Anyone else would have missed it: a tiny pair of eyes
scraped onto a bench. I had to get out of the car and walk up to it before I
could tell. The artwork was very crudely done, but it was there. A perfect
replica of sorts, of the cover of the book.

Well, almost perfect.

We were standing in front of the bench, when I realized what
was wrong with it.

“Look!” I said. I tapped the cover of the book with my index
finger.

“What about it?” said Lennox.

I was so excited, I could hardly take it. “On the cover of
the book,” I said, “the eye with the moon in it is half full, neither one way
or the other.”

“So?”

“So I studied moon phases, when I thought––never
mind. Anyway, it’s called Half Moon.”

I had learned that when I was looking into werewolves. “It’s
pointing
,” said Ballard.

I nodded. “The engraving on the bench, meanwhile, has the
eye with the moon in it
waning crescent
.
Pointing to the left.”

“Thataway,” said Ballard.

We started following it.

The next set of eyes that we came to was on a fire hydrant.
Marek found them.

On these, the moon was
waxing
crescent. Pointing to the right!

We followed where it pointed, everyone spreading out, trying
to find the next one. We searched on the sides of buildings, for carvings in
trees... looking for the next one. One set of eyes had been written in white
upon a traffic sign. “Pointing
waning
,”
I said.

We continued to follow the signs, zigzagging left, right,
around the empty streets. Infester had hidden the way to get to his place in
the open!

“I can’t believe I never saw this,” said Lennox. “Have you
noticed the sun? It seems to be rising.”

So it was. The sun in the other eye would go up or down,
depending on how close we were. “Like we’re getting hotter or colder,” said
Marek, pointing to the symbol in the eyeball beside the moon.

“Keep going,” said Ballard.

It took all of us together, to find them all. When we did,
we were standing in front of an old wooden door, with a triangular-shaped stone
pediment above it, that had been carved with a full moon and a
blazing
sun. Like two giant stop signs.

We had found it. We were here. This was it.

* * *

Ballard knocked. I held my bag with the
Codex
in it. It was just about the most eye-opening experience of
my life. He was a little man. That’s what I noticed, first of all. He gave us
the runaround at first. “Who are you?” “What do you want?” All that.

He peeped at us through a small opening in the door. Then
threw it aside when he realized who we were.

He had scraggly, unkempt white hair, and his eyes, in their
sockets, contained pale cataracts, as though Infester hadn’t seen the sun in
years. He had the hands of a tinkerer and he held a string that he rolled and
unrolled around his fingertip.

He beckoned for us to come inside. He knew
instantly
Lennox and Marek were
vampires. “And I don’t hold it against you,” he said. “Not at all, not at all.”

Ballard said hello. When he got to me, Infester’s eyes did a
double take. He quickly bolted the door, when we were inside. The doorway was
nearly concealed by the rusticated masonry and vines growing over it, and also
by the location. It was the oldest of old Rome, the valley in the seven hills.
“I have never received visitors before,” he said. He called us his fellow
travelers.