The Wiccan Diaries

by T. D. McMichael

  Halsey to Lia: “Bitch.”

  Lia to Halsey: “Bring it.”

  “It’s been brought!” I slap her face off. Pow wow.

  The scenario played through my mind as we waited. Gaven whispered to his men. It looked like hard work. He motioned.

  “Gee,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. I couldn’t help it. Lia had upset me really a lot. Ballard finally let me go. He whispered something into Gaven’s ear.

  Gaven looked at me stonily. Ordinarily, it would have been the last straw. But then he got this look of concern on his face. “Are you sure?” he said.

  Ballard nodded.

  “Halsey, I need you and Ballard to stay at the bar,” he said. “It’s the safest place.” Then he whistled loudly, using two of his fingers. The bar got quiet immediately. Ballard was dragging me over to the bar, but I found my footing, and shook him off.

  “What? Is there something out there?” I said, when he wouldn’t let me go. “Something’s out there?” My tone got all different. “What is it?”

  “Never mind, just come on,” he said.

  What did Ballard know about Somethings Out There?

  Gaven, meanwhile, seemed to be rounding up the troops. They listened deferentially to him, Lia among them. She was zipping up her jacket. Serious business. I lost her in the press of bodies, heading for the door.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered. “Ballard?”

  But he was gritting his teeth. “Like I’m not old enough,” he said. “I’ll show ’em.”

  He grabbed two Succo del Gatti from underneath the bar, popping them open, barehanded.

  “Wouldn’t even know about it, if it weren’t for me.”

  “Know about what?” I said.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re doing it again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Keeping secrets. Not letting me in on things.”

  “You want to know? I got a feeling. All right? Sounds weird, I know,” he said. I heard the engines kick into life. “In case you missed it, Lia threw that little jab at me about Risky.”

  “I didn’t miss it, Ballard... I just thought, I shouldn’t bring it up, if maybe you had.”

  I smiled. He did not.

  “I miss absolutely nothing. Ever. I’m perfect in every way,” he said. And then did the Ballard laugh.

  “So what if you like to make plans and stuff. You’re helping me, aren’t you?” I said. “I wouldn’t be half as far, if, well, you know, you hadn’t been helping me.”

  “Yeah, but what have we done? What have we found out? Nothing,” he said. “Last night I got all up in Lia’s business. I told her I wasn’t some kid anymore and she should stop trying to treat me like I’m her little brother, or something. I’m fifteen,” he said like it was the oldest thing in the world. “‘I’m old enough; I want in,’ I told her, trying to make her tell me what she and them got up to. It’s a little bit more than just having a fancy for macho penis implants on wheels. ‘I know you’re up to something,’ I said, parroting her favorite line. ‘Tell me, is all.’”

  “And did she?” I asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Do you know who Emmanuela Skarborough is? Of course not. Why would you?” He got off his stool. I watched as the bartender cleaned something filthy out with a rag.

  With the bartender’s permission, Ballard went behind the bar. I saw him dig around. Then he produced newspaper after newspaper. Some of them were so beer stained and cobwebby it was disgusting.

  Why did I have déjà vu suddenly? He was plopping them down in front of me. Then I realized: it was exactly like the minicab ride, my first day here. Right down to the Succo del Gatti.

  “She’s a reporter. It pays to have a pair of eyes on the inside. I’ll tell you what I mean,” he said.

  The headlines were all in Italian, but there was no missing those words again: omicidio, occulto, misterioso. My breathing picked up despite the fact we were in a well-lit place with lots of muscly guys to protect me, Ballard among them. He wiped his hair back from his forehead and admired his handiwork.

  “Lia finally told me what I Gatti has been doing,” he said. “Are you ready for this? They drive around all night, finger quote, ‘protecting the city.’ Crazy, huh?”

  “What do all of these say?” I asked. I wanted details. Who knows? Maybe this has something to do with that thing that attacked me, I thought.

  “Did you hear me? They’re, like, I dunno, vigilantes, or something.” He got all excited.

  I couldn’t help smiling. I remembered how ineffectual the carabinieri (the police) had been.

  “We have something called the vigili urbani, city policeman, who patrol––it’s not unlike the night watch. But Lia says they aren’t enough to stop what’s coming. She was all Nostradamus. Anyway,” he said. “I spent today reading these articles. Lia told me Emma was working on it too; she works with the local paper. She’s our cousin.”

  He pointed to the picture of a woman: Emmanuela Skarborough.

  A reporter.

  “Is she I Gatti?” I asked, interested.

  “She must be. It’s like the family business. Except I don’t get to play. Except wait. That’s not true. I do get to play. I get to work in the grease shop. The other, not so important, family business,” he said, dissatisfied. The smolder came back into his eyes. “Only, get this. I’m not so dumb, right?”

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  “It’s just a matter of connecting the dots,” he said.

  We stopped for a moment, giving I Gatti the chance to blast past the entrance to La Luna Blu. They would be racing around like maniacs all night on their motorcycles. Vigilantes. It explained a lot.

  “Is that why Lia is all pissed off at me?” I asked, suddenly cognizant of what was going on. “She thinks I’m a bad influence on you, doesn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Please, Ballard. She hates me.”

  He shook his head. “Things have been weird for a while. This was like, I dunno, Vesuvius, or something. It was only a matter of time before Lia blew her top.”

  I didn’t like the analogy. “And I can’t read this,” I said. “You’re going to have to translate it for me.” I turned the paper around so he could read it.

  “All it says is––well, not all–– What it says, is there is someone creeping around, killing a bunch of people. That’s why Gaven always insists you ride home with someone, when it gets late at night.”

  I remembered this kindness and it stultified some of my paranoia.

  Maybe I was being catty.

  “Anything else?”

  “Just the interesting parts,” he said annoyingly.

  “And those are?”

  “You have beautiful eyes,” he said. It was only a statement. At least, I hoped it was.

  “Ballard...”

  “Well, she’s kind of well-read, is my cous. Kind of a ruckmaker.”

  “I think you mean, muckraker,” I said.

  “Right. Where was I? So anyway, she’s a writer. You kinda hafta sift through her professional b.s. she uses, to get at what she’s really trying to say. If you know what I mean.”

  “No doubt, homie. What up?”

  “Word. So this article is the newest one. She calls him ‘the Exsanguinator.’”

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s like this thing. It’s like, a medical term or something. It means all the blood’s been drained. An exsanguinator would be someone who drains blood. He’s simply been doing it while they’re still alive. You can see the problem?

  “Now, she makes a couple of interesting leaps...” he went on.

  “Her artistic license?”

  “That. The first is–– Here, I’ll read it–– ‘...dumping the bodies, as opposed to randomly killing them.’ What she means is he, this asino Exsanguinator, is bleeding them so dry, the Questura doesn’t find any si
gns of violence around the so-called scene of the crime. No blood. My cousin thinks he’s killing them elsewhere. But does she?”

  “You’re very interesting. Please continue.”

  “Because, if he was killing them there, at the crime scene, there would be a struggle.”

  “One would think,” I said.

  “In which the blood––well, you know.”

  “It would go all over the place,” I said.

  “Exactly. So no blood means he’s killing them somewhere else and then when playtime is over he chucks them out the back of a moving van. Whatever.”

  “Point number two?” I asked, taking a sip of aperitif.

  “What does he do with the blood?” said Ballard.

  “What does he do with the blood?” I asked.

  “He’s not leaving any of it to be found. The blood must be the thing. The blood is the thing. It’s the reason. So we know that about him. He likes the blood. What else?”

  He scanned the article. It was a pleasure watching him work. “Ah. The well-read bit.”

  “Explain it to me,” I said.

  “Well, first there is the whole issue of the Questura, which is the police, who seem to think something is going on regarding the occult. When they see something they interpret as blood worship I’m sure they freak out and regard it as devil practices, especially here. We’re in Catholic City.

  “Where my cousin veers off though, is perhaps realizing you can have the, uh, supernatural, without involving the angels against Him. There is evil in our hearts without having to look for the Devil.”

  Blood... blood, I thought...

  “She uses the story of Elizabeth Báthory to prove the point. There was a woman who believed in blood. By coating herself in the blood of her victims, the good Countess hoped to exsanguinate herself all the way to Immortality. She thought their blood would keep her young and beautiful forever. So she bathed in it.”

  “I take it she was a real person, because a lot of this sounds far-fetched?” I said.

  “Whatever’s out there killing doesn’t seem to think so,” said Ballard. “And, yes, she was. The next point... is how do you draw blood?”

  Chapter 12 – Halsey

  Ballard and I sat up talking late into the night. For once, it felt like we were getting to the bottom of things. We made plans to meet again soon.

  With I Gatti zooming around, safety was not an issue. So I headed back home, unattended to my apartment a little after one a.m. My landlady was not pleased.

  I got to my journal ASAP. This was what I needed.

  I ran a bath and crawled into the tub, taking the journal with me. Quickly, I turned to a new page. “It’s me, Halsey,” I wrote. I drew a big symbol of a triangle with a circle and dot, followed by a heptagram.

  “Ballard withholds. Edits. I can feel him wanting to tell me things, then he only goes halfway.”

  I thought about that, then dunked my head underwater.

  I made sure to bring back the Codex from Trastevere; I no longer wanted it out of my possession. Since scratching my name in it, the Codex felt like mine to guard.

  Besides, I really would be a bad influence, if I continued to allow Ballard unsupervised access to something neither one of us fully understood. I might not have been a witch but I knew they existed.

  The truth was, I needed him. I was alone in Rome. Practically.

  Lennox came and went. I hadn’t seen him in twenty-four hours. Before that, his absences had grown even longer. It was a long time without a steady dose of those lavender eyes.

  I soaked and wrote, and wrote and soaked.

  “The first one intrigues me. Sun. Change. I don’t know. It could be an All-Seeing Eye. Or a pyramid. There are a lot of pyramids in Rome. I forgot the most intriguing aspect, Diary. Ballard said the circle used to be a symbol for death. Like a skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison.”

  I got out and traipsed nakily through the old joint, to fetch out my copy of the Codex, and then got back in the tub. If Lennox had bothered to show, he would have caught a glimpse. I flipped it open to the dog-eared section on symbols.

  It was no good. I was going to need the Internet for this.

  There was more than just these two symbols; all of them were hand drawn, but there were no annotations––no little notes what the symbols could mean. Another one looked like the international radioactivity symbol, except the circle was broken into four blades, not three.

  I was tired. I drew it in the journal––or Diary––anyway.

  Obviously, I needed to know what these symbols meant.

  It was the same old conundrum: How to get information?

  I closed the journal and tossed it safely away from the tub. My ablutions done, I got out and dried myself off. I wrapped the warm, plush towel around myself, and followed my wet footprints down the hall, to my laptop. I fetched out my hair dryer.

  Ballard’s remarks had been so cryptic, especially with regards to his cousin, the reporter, Emmanuela Skarborough. There was so much double-talk and obfuscation. Was he being deliberately thickheaded or was he trying to hide something? Our conversation had been fruitful but hardly coherent.

  Delta, I typed.

  Delta gave me something other than what I was looking for.

  I went back and typed delta symbol into the search engine. Everything was in Italian so I figured how to translate it and searched like I would in the U.S.

  Delta symbol returned the Greek symbol for change. .

  I opened a new tab, and searched theta.

  It gave me this: . The Greek symbol for the eighth letter of their alphabet.

  That wasn’t quite the same as a dot in the center, though.

  A little digging, however, and I learned that it was called a circumpunct. When I looked up what circumpunct meant, I got Dan Brown, and also there it was, the sun.

  I made an entry in my journal, adding it all up:

  “The theta, which does have a connotation of death, is actually a circumpunct, which usually refers to the sun; when it’s put inside a triangle, you get something remarkably similar to the trefoil used internationally to denote a radioactive hazard. In other words, a warning.”

  Was that what this was? Was the book warning me? If so, against what?

  I zonked out.

  I felt like Alice in Wonderland, moving across the chessboard, except instead of squares, I was stepping across triangles, and they all had pointy teeth, like they wanted to eat me.

  In my dreams, I was surrounded by figures; they were shadowy, on the periphery. I was turning round and round. Surrounded.

  Instead of attacking me, however, they continued to motion indistinctly, as my head went blurry. Suddenly, it felt like they wanted to kill me. I screamed for Lennox, but he was no longer there. Instead I was in the arms of a man, a stranger. I had never seen him before. His arms were the only things keeping me sane.

  The will of the circle was upon me. I was beset on all sides, with one thought above the rest: that someone out there did not like me.

  It was like I could read their thoughts. And they meant me harm.

  The dream ended. I was out.

  Lennox

  Lennox,

  Next time come for a more protracted stay, huh? I enjoy what it does to Camille. I don’t think she has ever forgiven you for that fiasco in the fifties. I would say she needs to get a life, but I gave her this one, and it’s till the end of All Time. So, what are you going to do?

  Seriously, I’m looking into blood curses for you. This girl you told me about is American, which will help. In the Old World, I would have told you to watch your back. They are not like us. Our two ‘species,’ for lack of a better word, were not meant to mix. Be careful, is all. She may not be fledged, but she is a witch. The Lenoir are picky about such things.

  If you care about that.

  It is coming on time for you. I am forbidden, of course, to inform you of certain aspects of the trials. But you should not be thinking of
anything else. Or anyone.

  I do not mean to get heavy, but there it is. This coven will never be whole, until you are part of it, in every way.

  If you die, I really will kill you.

  Dallace.

  P.S. Somebody stopped by, the day after you left. ‘You cannot go to Paris without going to Rome,’ as the saying is; ‘and Venice is the go-between.’ His name is Marek. He says you two know each other? I suppose vampires are the Monaco or Vatican City of all the races, mortal and immortal alike. We cannot help but prune our numbers, so keep our membership small.

  Still, I never heard of this vampire before. He is coming for you. And I think you know who sent him. Be sure you don’t get clipped, my friend, huh?

  Your friend.

  P.P.S. Vampires travel faster than the postal system.

  * * *

  There was also a letter from John Occam. Unlike civilized people, he didn’t seem to care how I was, or what I was up to, beyond trying to identify and do something about ‘this vamper contagion,’ as he called it.

  * * *

  Massimo, he wrote, is like a crystal ball or a ouija board; he makes big prophecies of hot air easily debunked, and then tells me I’m doing it wrong.

  Prague is a deeply disturbing place, still off-limits to your kind. I think if I could take Prague I could take Paris. Instead I will go sniveling back to them.

  I have been searching, searching, searching for a cure. That fool doesn’t read his mail, and when he does, he doesn’t understand it. Which is why I’m getting to you so late.

  I spend my days in the library, pouring over old manuscripts, and my nights avoiding what I call the Human Revenants: the evil Hunters and others of their ilk. I swear, they think it is like scoring a buck, taking down an Immortal.

  I would like to see them contend with the oldest dead. And watch them fail.

  This preponderance of dead flesh is not unlike other urban myths of viruses engineered to eliminate so-called cultural undesirables. I think if it is meant to wipe out any population, it is the vampires; and so originated with vampires. At least, that is the theory I am working on.

  People only work hard to kill other people they know. And vampires used to be people.