The Wiccan Diaries

Chapter 6 – Lennox




I pulled into the underground parking garage thankful for the respite from the July sun, which had been beating upon the hood of Occam’s Charger. It was the start of the shift change at Police HQ. I had driven because in his wisdom Occam had installed bulletproof tinted glass that kept the sun’s rays at bay. He said it was just because he wanted to look cool, but I knew he did it for me. He had made his ride vamp accessible, in case I ever needed to use it. I crossed my fingers, hoping his trip was going well. Occam never left home unless it was an absolute emergency and even then he procrastinated until the final moment; all in the name of research, as he so often told me. His house was awash in books and half-forgotten parchments, the kinds with cracked leather bindings that were handwritten and illuminated.

Some were so old the pages were spilling out. They were worn and smelled faintly of mildew. His arcana. I was forbidden to touch them. If one were so much as out of place....

I sighed.

For the last eight hours I had been hard-pressed to get her out of my mind. I thought of nothing except what I was going to say to her, the next time we met. It interfered with my ability to concentrate on anything else.

I tried looking into necromancy, but Occam’s stores of knowledge on the subject were exhaustive. I was in no fit state to bury my head in books. My preference was always to enlist the help of others, when at all possible, rather than to rely on textbook explanations for things––to press the flesh, so to speak.

That was not to say I could not piece things together for myself.

I had cultivated very few close relationships––too often that meant revealing one’s self to someone, and letting them in on the secret existence of our kind. See rule number one. It was absolutely forbidden.

The only justifiable excuse in revealing yourself to a non-vampire was if it meant the difference between the life and death of a vampire. Humans dying was another matter. Let them.

The second rule was not to interfere in the affairs of humans.

There was only one other Law of Vampires.

I flashed my lights at a member of the Questura who was headed across the half-empty parking garage to a set of lifts that would take him upstairs. He looked over.

I saw recognition dawn upon his face. He raised his hand and came over.

It was a singular experience to see a human and know they knew who I was. That was a death sentence, generally––for the human, and the vampire, unless the vampire could explain what was going on.

Lieutenant Moretti had ten years working Homicide. Before that he had been a beat cop. He got a call one night and responded to a disturbance.

It turned out two ‘vampers’ had set upon a night watchman at this or that museum. Moretti was the first on the scene. He managed to save the night watchman, but drew the ire of the vampires. I happened to be there.

He drew his pistol and stopped one vampire dead in its tracks––he thought. I did not manage to get to him in time.

When he rolled over, with part of his face hanging from his chin, he fired. The bullet tore through the second vamper who had been about to run me through. Time was critical and I couldn’t bother to be discreet. Both of our lives were on the line. I ran the second vampire through.


Moretti witnessed firsthand the destruction of two immortals, that night. It cost him his innocence, in a way. Ordinarily, I was supposed to come up with a cover story. Only, I could not explain away what happened to the vampires he had helped to kill. “They disappeared into thin air!” he said. Since then, we had cooperated on a few other cases.

However, I had never before come to him with explicitly otherworldly problems. That would be flaunting the fact that we had gotten around rule number one. Big no-no.

“Lennox. I was wondering when you would show up,” he said.

I saw the jagged scar that cut across his chin, memento of the night we had met. It looked like something had mauled him. “Have time for an old friend?” I asked.

He held out his arms. “But, of course. I know why you are here.” He looked around a second to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “‘When a form of superstition is prevalent everywhere, and in all ages,’” he said, “‘it must rest upon a foundation of fact.’ Am I right or am I right?”

“Sabine Baring-Gould,” I said, recognizing the quote. “Will you help me?”

“What d’you need?” he said.

* * *

He gave me everything: logbooks, crime scene photographs, reports of responding officers... news clippings... I was amazed at his thoroughness. Included was a series of autopsy reports from The Office of the Medical Examiner. This would detail exact cause of death, plus list any pertinent facts about the condition of the bodies. There was also a criminal profile that had been done, of who to look out for. I looked at Moretti. “Thanks, man.”

“Just make sure you don’t let those fall into anyone else’s hands.” He looked around again. “Especially that reporter.”

I could only imagine he meant Miss Skarborough. “You don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything. Congratulations on making lieutenant.”

He nodded. “Take care.”

* * *

As I was leaving, I caught the scent of her blood. Halsey Rookmaaker was exiting the front of the Questura, a look of disappointment on her face. I waited for her to come this way. Instead, she got onto an orange moped, and put her helmet on. Intrigued, I waited for her to pass and began to follow her.

Occam’s Charger was too big to follow behind her for very long. She got into a pack of other tourists on mopeds and I lost her. She was heading towards Trastevere. That was somewhere I avoided when possible.

But her blood smell. It dredged up memories of her from the night before. I could taste her in my mouth––without having tasted her.

The old V8 idled thirstily. I could smell the rot of the corpse I had in the back. I was not looking forward to dealing with it. Occam had kept it for a reason. I didn’t think I could stomach it much longer, so I headed across the Sisto bridge and back to Campo de’ Fiori. The refracting light off the Tiber made my eyes ache and burn, even behind the tinted glass.



As I approached Occam’s place, I picked up the infrared device which activated the cruel iron gate. It rattled aside and I entered through a pass in the large building leading to the sequestered courtyard. The gate rolled smoothly back into place. I got out of the Charger. Only direct midday sun could penetrate the courtyard. The rest of the time it was tranquil. Occam liked to barbecue.

I was fatigued and thirsty; when I didn’t sleep my muscles protested. Something about vampirism required a vampire pass the daylight hours in well-fortified repose. My bedroom had more defenses than just curtains and a locking door.

I heard it. The infected revenant from two nights before, rattling around in the back of the car.

It now had the Suck.

That’s why I wanted to check the morgue. I went upstairs, passing through corridors––they went off in every direction––to the library Occam and I used as our base of operations. I passed through the stacks on feet of silence. They were vertical and stuffed full of books. Occam put a high premium on knowing things.

A series of notebooks held our discoveries so far. I took down the first volume, marked INCUBATION. We had documented and photographed everything.

The things Moretti had given me I offloaded onto the rich mahogany desk with the green lawyer lamps. It was a large enough desk that I could spread everything out. This helped give an overview of things.

I had papers going everywhere.

“Regular time course, barring outside influence, typically forty-eight hours,” I read in the Incubation notebook. That was the time it took for the Suck to reach equilibrium in the blood plasma. There was no steady-state, however, such as happened with the introduction of any foreign substance into the bloodstream, a flu shot, for example. From there, the contagion began to spread. It destroyed red blood cells, wreaking havoc inside the host body.

“Left unchecked,” wrote Occam, “this represents a potential worldwide pandemic several orders above the HIV virus or Black Plague. Indeed, it threatens to wipe out both human and vampire civilizations. So far, my assistant and I have managed to keep it under wraps. Whoever this boker may be, if he is not stopped, he just may institute the Zombie Apocalypse.”

I fetched a microwaved blood cup from the kitchen down the hall and returned, thinking about the Zombie Apocalypse.

The Zombie Apocalypse was this theory, much like The Singularity was a theory that computers would one day rule the world.

Instead of supercomputers destroying human civilization, our very bodies destroyed us from within, which made the Zombie Apocalypse far, far scarier. Carriers passed it wholesale to every non-infected individual through biting. Examination of the disease revealed striking similarities to the rabies virus.

So far, Occam and I had studied six cases of individuals infected with the Suck. All six were revenants––previously dead individuals, who had been brought back to life. It was Occam who hypothesized their saliva was spreading the disease. A disease which made them extraordinarily fast and crazy fighting machines.

The victim in the Dodge Charger was unique in that he was the only living human being to have been infected. I remembered how he had tried to attack me. Had he succeeded in biting me, I would not have got the Suck. A carrier could not become infected to the degree that it could spread the virus until the first forty-eight hours had elapsed. Downstairs, I heard him rattling around, which meant he was fully infected.

The dying and being reborn phases had passed. It was not unlike becoming a vampire, I realized.

Occam and I had experimented on rats. A rat was physiologically similar to a human being but not the same. Which was how we had arrived at the forty-eight hour incubation period.

As for the rabies similarity, we noticed early that the infected patients had begun to twitch and froth at their mouths a few hours after the delivery into the bloodstream of the contagion. This was put down to shock at first.

The body immediately began to die.

What we realized soon after was that it was neuroinvasive, that is, it attacked the central nervous system of the new carrier. They were being rewired.

Among their new attributes seemed to be an insatiable desire to cause maximal spread by attacking and killing uninfected individuals.

The infected rats would turn on their cagemates, killing them instantly. I wrote it all down.

“We believe this is to accelerate the turning process. The quicker they die, the sooner they can be resurrected. And kill.”

Occam didn’t like that. He wrote: “It all rests on this boker. If his intentions are genocidal, we must prepare for the Apocalypse. If, however, his intentions are tactical, like some smart bomb, and he has a specific target in mind, unintended fallout may result in the Apocalypse anyhow. At all costs we must find and destroy the boker. He is the brain, the head. If we kill him, it may not be too late to stop the spread of this sucking disease.”


It made thinking about some random murderer named Peter Panico almost pointless. I just wanted to make sure whoever was killing, the victims weren’t coming down with the Suck. I suspected Peter Panico to be a vampire, as I suspected the boker to potentially be a vampire––as the Suck was too similar to vampirism itself. What I feared was that there might be some connection between them, linking the two.

I took Infester’s guide, The 411, out of my jacket pocket, and laid it on top of the table next to the other documents. I had a lot of reading ahead of me, and I had to see about the morgue tonight, after hours, to check on the bodies. I just hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was.

I would be able to tell by the bite mark. Occam and I had developed a special kit that allowed field-testing for the Suck. If any of them were infected, cremation facilities were located on the premises. I could quickly get rid of the evidence.

I had made a habit out of going to the morgue. I went there every night. It was only murder victims that I checked. They went to the pathologist, who checked for unnatural death. The rest I could forget about.

It was still too early to enlist the help of others. There was no way that we were going to ask the Lenoir for help.

Something threatening vampires. A contagion specifically targeting blood drinkers. Their response would have been to quarantine the city and destroy all life, rather than risk it spreading.

Find the boker. Kill the boker. I picked up The 411. “Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse,” it said. I turned the page, and began to read. There was a note from the author.

“Vigilance is the difference from falling (being bitten) 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 combined. It is like Chernobyl and the Aswan Dam. Like the outbreak of some terrible new Plague and the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Only a coolheaded mind will prevail. It is important foremost to have no affection for those coming down with a case of the Suck––

“Kill them, cut their heads off, scorch their bodies. Otherwise, they will enlist you in their ranks. A zombie doesn’t care if it used to go to church with you. It doesn’t care if you used to call it ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ or ‘Cousin’ or ‘Brother,’ ‘Wife,’ ‘Sister,’ etc. It is a ravenous fast-moving death bringer. Crush its skull in with a vice. That is your first warning.

“Before you continue,” he wrote, “swear the following: I, insert your name, being of sound unsucked mind, uninfected by any Fast Walker, swear to battle the Armies of Hell, if such be unleashed, and will pass on my knowledge to any worthy, uninitiated, human member of the species. So help me, state your religious figure. Sign and date.”

I couldn’t reasonably sign it, as I was no longer human, but there was an asterisk, recommending all signees do so in their own blood. “For, as everyone knows, Zombie blood is always black.”

It was a way of telling who your friends were.

I wasn’t looking forward to dragging him out of the trunk of the car. Just how fast did they move, anyway?

The boker seemed to have a mind connection to his zombies. Hadn’t the last one veered off, when it was called; hissed at, rather? It was like Sid and his progeny. They had to do what Sid said. That was the only thing saving us from the Zombie Apocalypse. They were doing what the boker said. Which, for the moment, was not much.

If the boker died with his zombies still unaccounted for... It would be like a free-for-all... they would be let loose––free to go wherever they pleased and eat everybody.

This required some serious thinking on my part. I flipped through The 411. It was loaded. Weapons, tracking the king-sire....

King-sire....

I flipped to the glossary at the back.

King-sire [ki ing sīr] n: 1. the origin point, the Infector-In-Chief, the primary root of any infectious outbreak, the number one zombie; the only zombie with the power of thought; some king-sires may appear as outwardly human 2. The one responsible.

The boker.