The Wiccan Diaries

Chapter 3 – Lennox




Sid got off the couch and came toward me. I could smell the whiskey on his breath. He was communicating without using words, telling his offspring what to do.

It was a connection between the sired and their sires––So I had been told.

“I am older than all of you,” I warned.

They chose to disregard this. The other vampires fanned out.

Unlike Paris, I did not choose to think of them as vampers. Having a dismissive name for something showed either a foolish over-self-confidence or else highlighted a deep-seated insecurity. It was the attacker you didn’t see that got you.

Some of this fighting philosophy had saved me in the past.

Sid’s progeny were trying to pin me against the wall. It was four against one.

I could see by their appearance, Sid had preyed among his own kind. That thought led to another.

Victim selection.

I made a mental note, preparing myself for combat.

I was older, but they had the numbers. Whether he knew it or not, Sid had built for himself a nice little army.

Going against a sire was like pressing your flesh to the crucifixion. It burned.

I had never met my sire. It wasn’t until I met Occam that I even knew other vampires existed. He gave me the broad strokes, taught me how to fight. He was the one who taught me that age mattered. Before that, I had been just a regular, mundane vamper.

I did not immediately grab for the stake––choosing instead to keep my mystery intact.

“If you can make your opponent underestimate you,” Occam had said, “he will be more inclined to cut certain corners. This opens him to vulnerabilities he would not otherwise have, and you can press home the point.”

Part of me felt upset that it had come to this. Sid extinguished that concern when he suggested to the others that drinking my blood could make them stronger. They came at me, clumsily––fangs bared, claws extended. I moved in a blur, passing through them.

Sid gaped in astonishment; it was something learned, not given. I could see him communicating with his children. His lips moved like they did when he read the newspaper article I showed him.

This was actually a weakness in sires. They got so concerned with directing the troops, they forgot they were oldest.

Sid was a much more formidable vampire than the ones he had sired. They were clumsy, he was not. If I killed him, it would be like releasing them––they could fight without impediment. So I let him continue in his error.

Sid had mortal concerns. He scrounged money. He got all hung up about things like status symbols, and so forth. He was into cars and big-screen TVs. He was still that me-minded old Sid, who dreamed of leaving Topeka, back in 1976. Look where that got him. Rome with rabbit ears. Unfortunately, it made him a terrible sire.

When I passed through them, I wounded one, opening its jugular with my finger. The neck spewed blood. It was a bad cut. In a human being, it would have been fatal. But this was a vampire. Already the connective tissue was knitting together, leaving the faintest scar.

The other two didn’t know what to do; they stopped and tried to help their comrade. Sid put his fingers to his head like he had a headache, closing his eyes and concentrating.


The real tragedy was these were newborns––days old. They only existed because I had allowed Sidney. I had allowed him to be. I hadn’t sired him. But I hadn’t destroyed him, either.

And now I had to kill his offspring, made because I had been too soft on Sid.

The veins were standing out on his neck. I noticed the two other vampires who were not wounded, double up in pain. He was trying to concentrate, talk to them. It was an experience I was unfamiliar with.

“You’re losing them, Sid,” I said to him.

He fought with them while I watched the other vampire heal itself. The sinews of its neck muscles were beginning to reattach and I saw it pick itself up.

Half torn, they came at me.

They wanted to go for Sid––and would have, if they had had a choice. They didn’t. They came at me, instead. Sid looked like his forehead was about to explode.

I grabbed the remaining blood cups off the floor and threw them at Sid’s face. They broke open, coating him in blood. His telepathic connection snapped. He was set upon by his vampires.

I took out my stake. It gave me no pleasure, whatsoever.

Sid had his eyes shut, when I got to him. He was groaning miserably. I suddenly understood why.

“I heard them die,” he said, taking his hands away from his face. He was still trembling. “I heard what it sounded like... when you killed them...” I had removed them one, two, three, when their backs were turned.

He looked up at me.

“I’m sorry, Sidney,” I said, imagining what it would have been like to hear as the mental connection broke––as his vampires were destroyed. I buried the wooden stake in Sid’s heart.

“But it’s not my problem.”

What happened next, was something I never get used to, no matter how many times I am the cause of it.

Sid looked like someone had just infected him with the Suck. Instead of it spreading from the wound, however, it was like all of his vitality was drawn to the entry point I had just created in his chest. Like his heart was a supermassive black hole and it was drawing in all the light that was formerly Sid.

He ate in upon himself and just turned to nothing, right there in my hands. And that was the end of him as a vampire. It was over.

I left the crypt, unaware of where I was headed, and just wandered down the hollowed out tube, until I came to a place I recognized as Spagna Metro station.

I became aware that the sucking of the life force from Sid was not unlike the sucking of the life force from one of our victims, that it was apt, and poetic, and all of that nonsense. And that one day it would happen to me. Just whoosh. Nothing.

Someone screamed.





Halsey



My landlady lived down the hall in a small fortified broom cupboard with metal bars and a tray to pass money through. It was where she conducted all her business. It was at the top of the stairs, and any time you came in or went out, she knew about it. Her eyes poked through the plexiglas window and stared at you. If the need arose, she could open the whole contraption up, and come at you with a knife––she was a fierce, fierce landlady. She never slept. I had to pass by her every time I wanted to go out. She never missed an opportunity to offer me advice on what I could do to improve myself. It was like being back at boarding school all over again. Except I had to pay her. And she was so judgmental.

She said anyone going out at this time of night was either up to no good or else looking for trouble.

“If you keep on doing what you’re doing,” she said, “I may not hear from you again. There is a killer on the loose.” She jabbed her finger at me like a knife, and pretended to come at me like the killer. It was very avant-garde. Her window offered her a proscenium arch, through which she pretended to crawl; it was like she was coming through my bedroom window, to get to me. It gave me the chills.

I showed her my index and middle fingers scissoring: “Just want to walk. You won’t know I’m here,” I said.

She just shook her head.

On the street, it was pleasantly warm––a cool breeze lifted the strands of my hair. I had pinned it up to keep it off my neck. Wisps of it jutted here and there.

Rome was a sprawl, and any microcosm of Rome was an opportunity to get lost––and experience that sprawl. I felt like what’s-his-face in the labyrinth, with the Minotaur or whatever. Except there was no Minotaur. I just felt like feeling that. I’m kinda existential. The haphazard helter-skelter screwy lack of any city planning made the streets impossible to navigate.

The city was a maze of ancient and modern. I wandered my new street with a wide smile on my face, in love with the possibilities of it.

I had money in my pocket, after all. If the need arose, I could get my hands on even more. I could spend, buy, acquire, furnish. I don’t mean lavishly. Just finish out my apartment, is all.

The word ‘freeing’ was. The shops included all of the finest clothing and jewelry, but it was the antiques I was most interested in.

Within feet were priceless jewels and multimillion-dollar works of art. Yet over all of this was my one room apartment and the faucet that hardly worked.

I walked down one street, then another. Inwardly, I was composing what I would write about, when I got home.

‘The gentlemen attend to their ladies, who hang on their arms, enraptured in Rome; and when they pass, they acknowledge one another, like You know the secret, too. I could get lost in Rome. I just know it.’

I made sure to remember my steps.

‘The buildings are tall, dark, imposing. I want to see what things look like from a different point of view. I think we get lost in our own points of view sometimes. I don’t want that. I want to know and understand everything. Everything interests me. I am intrigued by all of it.’

I knew that when I got home I would write something less than what the experience had been for me––but I always got fascinated in things. I always felt, for example, that if people paid more attention–– Instead of taking notes, all the time––

‘I want to think, know, feel...

‘I want to experience all of it. I don’t even know what “it” is yet. But I want it. I want it very much.’

It was like coming here had been a sieve. I knew I could be me, if that makes sense. That whoever I was––wasn’t who I was. I was free to choose. I could be whatever me I wanted to be.

The problems that had threatened to trap me had all been sifted away until I was left with who I was.

But who was I?

Ballard––it all had something to do with Ballard.

* * *

I passed a small café and a rental store for mopeds. A sign said that I could rent one for a day or even a month, if I so chose. I would have to park it somewhere overnight, though. I would look into it in the morning.

It would make traveling through Rome much easier if I could come and go as I pleased, instead of being landladied all the time. While walking was fun and all, I was starting to get a light patina of sweat. The roads went up, down, all over the place.

I was now several blocks from where I had started out––everywhere was beginning to look the same.

That’s... not good, I told myself, wishing I had bothered to take a map. It was pinned up still, in my room. And I had been so confident that I wouldn’t get lost.

This was something I was used to, losing my way.

My professors were always on me about paying attention. I couldn’t help it if my mind liked to wander. I tended to get lost a lot: in my head, in life. The rigors of academia were not for me. I wanted to be an artist. Or something.


My old headmistress was always threatening me with expulsion. I say old, because the truth is I never planned on seeing her again. I told her I was a lousy student, and that she should expel me! It was an idle threat on her part.

I felt the breeze change, turn nonexistent. It was just me, in a backstreet, alone. Doors ordinarily opened were locked.

It was winding, with cobbles, the street. I felt the darkness creep up on me.

Have you ever heard the sound of ‘nothing?’ I wondered to myself, existentially.

The midnight strollers had all gone home. I was utterly, completely alone. Or maybe I just wished it. Because I thought I heard something.

I looked above, around and behind me. Nothing. Disappearing into nothing. Both ends of the street were empty. A single penumbra of light lay in-between. I walked toward the lamp, stopping below it. I heard a rasping sound. It sounded like a hiss, almost. Something was coming toward me. I felt a shiver of fear. It had been so long since I had been really, truly frightened. I decided I didn’t much care for the sensation, the unpleasant cold that crept up from the pit of my stomach, licking at my insides.

“I know you’re out there,” I said.

It kept coming. When I saw its eyes, I knew I was in trouble. They were a bright, blood red. The unnerving part was how focused they were––on me. Like I was their target.

My heart began to race. I think it heard it, because it watched me for a second, then hissed again. Was this what had been killing all of those people?

I stumbled back against the wall.

The part of my brain that said, “Run!”, jammed.

“I’m not alone,” I said stupidly, for clearly I was alone, as alone as I could get. And the hissing creature knew it, too.

How many times had I imagined this happening to me? If Mistress Genevieve saw this, she would have gone, “See? Didn’t I tell you this would happen? Girls should be in school, not lollygagging around strange, foreign cities.”

“I have to know!” I almost shouted.

“Your parents died. They died! And there’s nothing you can do about it!”

I was on the ground, with my hand over my face, remembering how cruel she had been.

‘I can’t explain it,’ I decided I would write in my diary, if I ever made it out of this alive, ‘it was like she was really there.’ I felt the truth of her statement, like a blow that hit me physically.

It was like being cut with a straight razor––at first I didn’t know what was happening, then the wound opened up.

“Mistress Genevieve,” I said. She thrived on opening my wounds.

That’s when it happened.I tried opening my eyes, but the light was blinding me. I felt it coming closer! I felt myself falling as if from a great height. This was going to hurt, I said to myself. I fell back and the world went dark.





Lennox



There are moments that, whether you know it or not, define who you are to become. They can be simple moments. How many times, for instance, has someone misplaced their car keys, only to avoid that huge traffic accident that would have claimed their life? Or been held up and because of that died in an unforeseen accident.

If I hadn’t been in the neighborhood none of this would have happened. At least, not in the way it did. I found that I thought about that for months to come.

* * *

I was too low to the ground. Screams traveled differently depending on where I was at. These were high and plaintive; I was astonished that no one else seemed to notice. Something in the frequency of the one who was screaming awoke in me my old sense of mortal protectiveness. It existed to protect the pack, of which I was no longer a member, from the type of monster I had become.

Whoever it was, was in trouble. That much was clear. About all I knew was that it was a female voice. I could even tell the age.

Seventeen.

Nothing in the screams suggested any kind of prank. Whoever she was, she was in trouble. I had to help her.

I moved towards her, passing cafés and other nightspots. It was the time of night vampires fed their sanguine thirsts. We could not enter where we were unwanted, so had to rely upon the free-for-all of the street.

I had walked through the years forsaking all my immortal desires––except one. The pursuit of an inner life. The struggle to find out who I was. To know what my purpose was. I didn’t know, then, that I had found it.