The Wiccan Diaries

Chapter 9 – Halsey




Dear Diary,

Slept in late. Think I will do nothing today. Ballard gave me his telephone number; he wants me to call him. He looked horrible last night. I hope he’s okay. Sometimes head and neck trauma may result hours or even days later. We spoke briefly. We had a moment while Lia and Gaven slurped on each other’s faces. He has some interesting ideas, Ballard. He wants to introduce me around. Of course, the secret reason is that Ballard and I both want to find out certain things. He wants to find out how his uncle knew about magic––and what it portends. I want to find out what happened to my parents. Having the Codex will help. After all, it is a forbidden magical text. I’m sure it will open doors.

Lia and Gaven, and some others, escorted me home last night. I heard them talking about things as we cruised through the city. Rome can get very quiet. Everyone is very deferential towards Gaven; he seems to be a leader of some sort. I get the idea that they do more than just hang out, though what, I’m not exactly sure.

I left them at the park. “It’s just a block,” I lied. They waved good-bye and left me. When I got home––thankful to be past my ever vigilant, annoying landlady––I thought I would do some light reading; I unzipped my pack and was just going to take my book out, when he appeared. I hastily returned The Magus Codex to my pack. He was on my balcony, of all places––standing there, looking at me, in the dark....

He had the sexiest damn silhouette I’ve ever seen. It was all hair and rakish angles. I could see his eyes clearly; that same to-die-for shade of lavender. They drew in the light, making him look dangerous. I froze.

“L-Lennox?” I said.

He nodded; or at least, I saw his hair move. He didn’t speak. He was playing mute. I felt it again. That same irresistible pull. Unknowingly, my arms reached out to him. I mastered myself and dropped them to my sides; still, my fingers grasped at the pair of sweats I had changed into. I bunched the cloth in my fingertips, I wanted him so badly. What was this feeling?

“I had to see you,” he said. “I wanted to give you... something.”

I saw him hold it up. I stepped closer, without realizing what I was doing. Inside my bedroom the light seemed to die at the balcony. He was out there, waiting for me. “You can come in,” I said, at the same time wondering how he had managed to climb all the way up without hurting himself.

It was far to fall.

“No,” he said.

“No? What do you mean?”

“I mean, ‘No. I cannot come in.’”

“Why not?” I asked.

I came to the French doors. I put my hands on them; otherwise, I didn’t think I could hold myself up. He was right there. He was so diffident, aloof. Something borne on the wind.

I wondered at him: so alone and so beautiful. His eyes had a desperate, searching quality. They were predatory and alive with some inner turmoil. It was torture trying to withstand them. I broke from his gaze.

He was holding a silver necklace. “I went back to look for it,” he said.

“I... thank you...” I said.

I held out my hand.

“You should not have invited me in,” he said. He deposited it in my hand. The pendant touching my palm, pierced me. “I can’t...”

“What...?” I asked.

He coiled it into my hand, and then with his hand, covered over my own.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

He pulled me into the night. Smooth but firm. I was helpless to resist. Touching him was like touching electricity. It surprised me and caught me off guard. I was suddenly, overwhelmingly incapacitated by him.

I licked my lips. “I... I feel it...” I said. I watched his mouth, waiting for the words to form––for him to say my name.

“Halsey,” he said. Two simple syllables, I was ready to do anything––be anyone. Two syllables. There was nothing I would deny him. No service I would not perform, if he would just let me.

“I...”

I found myself in his arms. “You’re hurt,” I said.

I saw him wince. “It’s nothing.”

His hands were at my waist. They grasped me, firmly. I felt the heat of him through the flimsy fabric. It sent pulse waves of pleasure down my spine. I felt myself perceptibly warm to him.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. “Do you do this to all the girls you meet?”

Some kind of hypnotic power bound me to him. I thought of pleasures we could do together, now that we were alone. That lock of my hair that always fell in my face, did it again. I looked cockeyed at it. And screwed my face up.

He moaned. I had just blown the strand of hair out of the way. But he looked like he wanted to take me and ravage me right there. I felt him tense. He tightened his grip on me. “I should go,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Please,” he said.

“Face it. We’re part of each other’s lives.”

“You don’t even...” He sounded exasperated: “know me. For the love of God.”


“I don’t care,” I said.

“Well, you should.” Then he laughed. I felt his breath wash over me. I hastened to take a deeper breath. It was some kind of supercharged euphoria. I felt myself immediately engulfed by it. By him. He devastated me. That’s what he did.

Now how to tell him?

But whatever had me in thrall, Machiavellian tricks were no longer a part of my arsenal. I found I wanted to speak my affection both loudly and with no obfuscation.

“I think––and I hope this doesn’t sound crazy,” I said; he just listened. “But I think we’re meant––”

I trailed off.

“What?” he said. His scent enveloped me once more. It overruled my every other thought. “What are we meant?” he said.

“To be together,” I said.

He shook me: “Never say that!” I felt him release me, and he fell back against the balcony, in anguish. His hair hid most of his face––it was thick and black, it went all over the place. One hand was at his forehead; he had it balled into a fist. I could see him shaking, overcome as he was. With what? Rage.

I didn’t think twice. I went to him. “Forgive me,” he said.

“Hey?” I reached out for his hand with both of mine. There was an unbelievable energy. Just being in his presence was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I took his hand in mine. “I want you to come inside,” I said. “I don’t know if you realize, but you look a mess. You haven’t been fighting, have you?” It didn’t matter that I didn’t know him. “Come on,” I said. “Then maybe you’ll tell me how you got up here.”

He looked up at me; there were tears in his eyes. My mind went blank. I was in total awe of him. His anguish sent daggers to my heart. I was impaled on the chance of him.

“No,” he said. He pulled me to him. I felt his arms around me. Then hesitation.

I finally resisted. “A ‘no’ is just a ‘yes’ that doesn’t know how to ask for what it wants,” I said. “Or something.” There; that put him right.

I lifted him. Though, I think to be fair, he let me. Pulled him into Chateau Halsey. He came, obediently. His one snarky protest was, “I thought girls always said yes, when they meant no.”

“And I thought all guys always thought no meant yes. I don’t think either one of us knows exactly what the other is all about.”

It gave me a thrill to talk to him this way. Bossing him was fun. I led him down the hall by the hand. Good boy. He sat on the edge of my clawfooted tub and fidgeted nervously. I couldn’t believe it.

His skin was so smooth. I couldn’t tell which was sculpted out of porcelain. Him or my bathtub?

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” I asked. His shirt was all torn.

I turned on the sink, waiting for the water to get hot.

It just flopped out dirt. I could hear the pipes rattle. I bit my lip.

“Come on, come on,” I said.

Grabbing a hand towel, I held it under the lukewarm water, covering it with water, and then wrung it out. I turned to him.

He had a look on his face. I suppose it’s the look angels have when they’re lost in themselves. He looked far off, distant. I tilted my head, trying to read his thoughts.

His lavender eyes, so beautiful, turned to me. I saw his lips part, as if he would speak. Instead, he sighed. “Just as long as you’re okay,” I said, and began to clean him off.

I sat on the edge of the tub myself. And rested my left hand on his shoulder. I felt how his muscles tied together. I tried not to probe his anatomy with my fingers too much. And set about washing him off. He had a cut at his chest. I saw it when I got rid of all the dirt.

I touched the blood with my fingers, rubbing it between them, then looked askance. His arms were back, on the far side of the tub. It produced a natural thrusting motion. I could see the definition in his torso. His eyes were closed. His hair falling back so that I could finally see his face.

He was more exquisite than I could ever have possibly imagined. I also noticed that he seemed to be my age. Or else a little older. But his face was so careworn, as though he carried a lot of burdens.

I was about to surreptitiously taste his blood, when he opened his eyes.

They lit with smoldering fire and then he comprehended what I was about to do. He reached forward and grabbed my hand before I could taste his blood. “Here,” he said, and he took us over to the sink. He rinsed my hands for me.

He held my fingers under the tap. “There.” He toweled me off.

I saw the last of the blood mix with the water and swirl down the drain. I turned around. He was staring, hungrily, into my eyes. “I think that is all for tonight,” he said.

I nodded, dumbly. I was still too caught up in the fact that here I was alone with him. Half-formed thoughts raced through my head, culminating in us waking up together. Tomorrow mornings. I still couldn’t form coherent thoughts.

“Wait!” I said. I followed him down the hall, when I saw he was leaving. He turned around. I think my heart stopped. But he was a complete and utter gentleman.

“May I say, Miss Rookmaaker, I love what you’ve done with the place. But I think I’ve dripped on your floor long enough,” he said. “I will call on you, if you will let me. Let us say the evening next?”

“I... okay.”

“It’s a date. Farewell until then.”

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 repulsed 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.