He left. When I raced to the balcony, he was gone. I looked down into the street, following the steps of certain individuals. His outline was not among them. I had it memorized already. I could not live without it.
I could not live without him.
Lennox
I felt her blood call to me, I had to get away. Things were getting complicated. I couldn’t help it, I had been enjoying her touch. I let myself go, momentarily. I only just stopped her. She had almost tasted my blood. That would have been bad, catastrophic, reprehensible, dangerous. I disappeared quickly. I had to get away. What she did to me!
Halsey Rookmaaker.
I was irrational and wild with thirst. I thought, for the umpteenth time, of grabbing somebody, ripping out their throat. I suddenly wanted to earn her. Somehow, I did not think she would approve. Yet, I had had it with stale blood. Hers was like an elixir to me. I had followed it, from the thick, finger-sized arteries, to the furnace that beat in her chest, to all the capillaries in-between. Her blood was alive. Something precious. Something fragile. A liquid stream that I could trace to its source. And then destroy that source. No.
I would teach myself a control beyond the limits of what I had previously believed possible. Otherwise, I would make her a meal. It had not been easy, control. I had struggled and fought and finally won only a measure, a measure, of the self-control that I would need.
Being near her was agony. All the more sweet because of what I could do to her––what I had, at all costs, to prevent myself from ever doing to her. Feeding on her blood.
That was too pedestrian a description.
I had seen the worst in our natures. This went beyond that.
I think it was Occam who described it best, when he said, “Vampires really are stupid.”
This was years ago. “Why, John?” I asked.
“What is a vampire but an immortal human being,” he said. I could feel a big philosophical rant coming on. It was better to get it over with. So I coaxed him. “More, yes, good,” I said.
He didn’t say anything else. In all the years, since then, I have pieced it together myself––which may have been the whole point. It went something like this:
Vampires are immortal humans. What would a human do with immortality? Certainly not destroy humanity. All the works of art, etc. How could you kill humans while at the same time appreciating their beauty? What they were capable of? It was nonsense.
I thought I knew until I met Halsey Rookmaaker what kind of immortal I would be.
I yearned for a voice to speak with, somebody with whom I could connect. I had more people in my social network than just John Bonham Occam, Supernatural Occult Detective, Esquire. It was time I contacted them.
* * *
I could run across the countryside like a blur, unannounced, a total ruffian. Or, I could send them a letter through more conventional means. Either way, I needed someone with whom I could discuss the Halsey Problem.
Because she was.
How to word it?
I hadn’t spoken to my family for a while. Years, in fact. There was no point. Now, however, I could use their guidance. Ugh. They were going to rip me for this.
As I sat, perched on the side of a building, with my claws dug into the stone, looking like a gargoyle with an intellectual problem gnawing at him, they appeared.
I had been so busy thinking about what I was going to do and all of the ethical considerations––not to mention the whole loss of privacy issue that went with it––I hadn’t even heard them creep up on me, which was unusual, and so unlike me. Ordinarily I was alert and sober. She had made me, what, drunk, inebriated? Intoxicated. That was the word. I was intoxicated by her. Great.
It was hard to walk a fine line, or at all, besotted. The word fit me to a T. Am I ‘in love?’ I wondered. I couldn’t give it the time it deserved.
They revved their engines and I started running.
I loped on hands and feet, leaping from one building to the next. It looked like their whole friggin’ gang.
They kept pace below on their motorcycles. I was getting tired of them. Especially their name. I Gatti. The Cats.
To them, I was just some ordinary vamper. Put a stake in it and be done. You don’t meet the tiger and not get the claws, I told myself.
They followed with their motorcycles whining, as I ran now flat out, trying to escape them. I was on the cobblestones, taking cross streets, wary of the fact that they had the numbers. Such was the playbook of I Gatti.
Track and pack. They wanted to close in upon me, leave me nowhere to go. Didn’t they know Rome was dead?
I, being somewhat older and more experienced, managed to elude them––but it was a close thing; at one point, I faced the leader head-on. I could tell he was the leader by virtue of his size.
Vampires had something similar. It was age we admired. I could see the head gatto weigh me on his scales. Then I leapt over him and disappeared.
I could hear them in the distance, for what seemed the length of the night, occasionally they even zipped past my house. But they never found me. Even if they had, Castle Occam was a fortification masquerading as a regular red-roofed building. It could withstand their attack for a time.
* * *
If I were looking for the worst possible time for this to happen, I had found it. When the Lenoir got here, they were going to want to test me. I was sure of it. I needed to get Halsey out of my head.
The first thing I had to do was harvest the revenant.
“It just keeps getting better,” I told myself, sarcastically.
I put on a new T-shirt and headed down the hall, to the library, to see what Infester had to say.
I didn’t know why but I trusted Infester. Part of me wondered how he knew so much about zombies. Surely they weren’t so mundane a threat as to be wandering around aimlessly in groups large enough to draw Infester’s eye. Had he been able to study them at his leisure? Maybe I missed the memo. Zombie Alert. Watch out.
I had to give it to him. Infester’s sketches and physical descriptions were spot-on. Not to mention the fact he knew what zombies smelled like. That had to account for some firsthand knowledge on his part, surely.
“As the outlaws roamed, so too, the zombie, preying, as it did so, upon the dregs and other outcasts, for they could be taken in dark places,” he wrote.
But how do I capture one for study? I asked myself.
I decided to look into their strengths and weaknesses. Again, Infester had thought to include those sections. He was painstaking and methodical. He described zombies with a passion which dumbfounded me.
“Zombies are fast. Foremost is their speed. They are icy. Cold. Dead.”
Check. Got it.
But I had reason to think that they had pumping hearts. I decided to get a new journal down and label it ANATOMY. The rest of the night would be turned over to the gruesome. The physical act of writing spurred other thoughts.
“If,” I wrote, “Infester is correct––and having handled one, I cannot doubt it––that zombies are cold, it would go to the fact that the boker is bringing to life dead bodies. Stiffs.
“But if they have pumping hearts, shouldn’t the blood warm the body?”
All this talk of blood.
“This suggests the revenants may in fact be cold-blooded. Such that the process of transformation changes their metabolism. I can see two good things coming from this.
“First,” I wrote, “if they are cold-blooded, it means they need less nourishment to survive. Warm-blooded creatures have a higher metabolic rate. They have to maintain higher body temperatures. Which means they have to consume more food. So the zombies are consuming less food. That means fewer victims,” I reasoned.
“Second. They may be more susceptible to changes of temperature. Lizards, snakes, and other cold-bodied creatures, cannot regulate their body temperatures. They are driven to find shelter. Hot when it’s cold, cold when it’s hot. They may be alternately attracted and repu
lsed by cold or heat, therefore.
“The downside is that even though zombies may not need to feed often, they do need to feed.”
I had to think about that. I put the journal away. Infester tended to go off on tangents. The gist was this: zombies moved fast, they were cold, they were powerful, and they liked to kill. “...The only thing more powerful than a zombie,” wrote Infester, “is a vampire.”
I closed the book. Who was this guy? And how did he know about vampires or zombies?
I could think of two things more powerful than a zombie. Three, if I included myself and all other vampires. And they were all here in Rome. I went downstairs to meet the zombie, taking with me the tools to do the job.
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.
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