The Blood: A Denouement

The conclusion of the Blood Saga begun in The Old. At Long Lees we will meet the mysterious Augustus Dunharrow while back in Chicago, Uncle Owen reveals deeper history still, and while Marabeth's knowledge increases, she begins the journal of her father, Nathan, with information that will nearly blow off the top of her head. Meanwhile Kris and Seth connect to the very beginning of werewolves, and in sorting through his own past, Dan Rawlinson will learn the link between the werewolves, the vampires and the witches, which all have longed to know.....

There are great puddles of blood on the world
where is it all going? all this spilled blood?
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk?
funny kind of drunkography then,
so wise,
so monotonous,
no,
the earth doesn’t get drunk
the earth doesn’t turn askew
it pushes its little car regularly, it’s four seasons,
rain, snow, hail, fair weather,
never is it drunk
it’s with difficulty it permits itself from time to time
an unhappy little volcano
it turns,
the earth,
it turns with its trees, its gardens, its houses
it turns with its great pools of blood
and all living things turn with it and bleed

it doesn’t give a damn the earth
it turns
and all living things set up a howl,
it doesn’t give a damn,
it turns
it doesn’t stop turning
and the blood doesn’t stop running

where’s is it going
all this spilled blood?
murder’s blood, war’s blood,
misery’s blood, and the blood of men tortured in prisons,
and the blood of children calmly tortured by their papa and their mama
and the blood of men whose heads bleed in padded cells
and the roofers blood if the roofer slips and falls from the roof
and the blood that comes and flows and gushes with the newborn

the mother cries,
the baby cries,
the blood flows
the earth turns
the earth doesn’t stop turning,
the blood doesn’t stop flowing
where’s it going all this spilled blood?
blood of the blackjacked,
of the humiliated,
of the suicides
of firing squad victims
of the condemned
and the blood of those that die
just like that
by accident

in the street a living being goes by with all his blood inside
suddenly there he is,
dead
and all his blood outside
and other living beings make the blood disappear
they carry the body away
but it’s stubborn blood
and there where the dead one was, much later
all black
a little blood still stretches
coagulated blood, life’s rust, body’s rust
blood curdled like milk, like milk when it turns, when it turns like the earth like the earth
it turns with its milk, with its cows,
with its living, with its dead,
the earth that turns with its trees, with it’s living beings, with its houses
the earth that turns with marriages, burials,
shells, regiments, the earth that turns and turns and turns
with its great streams of blood.

-Jacques Prevert, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Blood

A Denouement

One

Loyalties

All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked. But thou hast all in the clear light, and some, though not all, in the dark.

-The Book of the Law

There is the tale of the slave ship that cruel white men bore from the coast of Igboland to Georgia. The white men knew nothing of magic, for magic was gone from them. They say magic flees at the touch of iron, and they had ruined the world with their iron for three hundred years.

They also say the Igbo could fly, that long ago in Gine, which white men call Africa, some of the people knew all manner of magic. Some would walk up on the air the way you climb up a ladder and fly like ravens over the fields.

Such were the Igbo captured on this ship. The ones that could fly shed their wings. They couldn't take their wings across the water on the slave ships. Full of misery, they were, and they were sick up and down on the sea. Imprisoned, they forgot about flying when they could no longer breathe the sweet scent of Gine.

But the flying folk kept their power, although they shed their wings. All the time they were on that ship, They heard the sting of the overseer's words. They all felt the snarl of the driver's whip around their legs. They all felt their clothes being torn to rags and their legs bleeding onto the earth, and they all felt the ship jar as it met the land and arrived in the land of the white men. In the marshlands it sat, and in the marshlands the cruel captors of the Igbo kept it, until they could move the ship upriver to sell the Igbo.

That very day, the King of the Igbo declared, "the time is come." He raised his arms out to the others. And he sighed the ancient words that were a dark promise. He said them all around to the others in the field under the whip, "...kum yali... kum tambe...." He raised his hands and sang to Ala and Amadioha and especially Idemmili. Lady of the waters and of all protective magics.

There was a great outcry. The Igbo straightened their bent backs and stood like spears. Old and young who were called slaves and could fly joined hands. Chains falling from their wrists, they rose on the air. They flew in a flock that was black against the heavenly blue. Black crows or black shadows, they went so high. Way above the rapacious white men, way over the slavery land. It is said they flew away to Freedom.

This was the hottest water Laurie had ever been under. Daniel continued to lather soap onto the sponge and wash Laurie’s body. Often they stopped under the water and just held each other. It was a long time before they came out and toweled each other, saying nothing. And then Laurie took him by the hand and they went to bed. They stretched out side by side. This high up in a place this expensive there was very little noise to hear. The sky coming through the curtains was blue, and the furnace made a gentle whir.

“What time is it?” Laurie asked.

“I don’t think it’s even ten o’clock,” Dan told him. But he didn’t turn to look. He just pulled Laurie to him.

Laurie yawned. Dan chuckled a little. They drifted into a half sleep.

They heard a noise. Together they both said, “Someone is here.”

They weren’t afraid. They were vampires, and Laurie could smell human life.

“Dress,” he told Dan, and climbed out of he bed, pulling on trousers and then reaching into his closet to pull on a grey silk shirt.

Barefoot he came into his living room.

“Lynn,” he said.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Lynn Draper said. She was standing in the middle of the living room in a big, heavy coat.

“I know,” Laurie said. “We didn’t part on good terms. And some things have come up. Some terrible things.”

“And you’re a vampire.”

Dan, Dan, please don’t come out. Stay in the room.

Laurie was not sure if he was wishing, or speaking, but a moment later, in his mind he heard: Duh.

They had become empathic.

“Yes,” Laurie said.

Lynn nodded.

“There’s so much to explain, I know,” Laurie began.

“I’ve been pregnant for about two months,” Lynn said.

“Yes,” Laurie was rubbing his hands together and he licked his bottom lip, more nervous than any blood drinker should be.

“Then,” Lynn opened her coat, exposing a huge, rounded belly, “What is this?”

All through this a nagging feeling, like something pulling at the thread of a shirt had been going through Laurie, but at the sight of Lynn’s belly he awoke in bed beside Dan.

Dan was on his side looking at him.

“She’s dead,” Dan said before Laurie could speak.

“How did you…?”

“I was dreaming with you. Sort of. She’s gone, Laurie,” Dan said sadly, but firmly.

“I still don’t know how to feel.”

They had gone to her funeral. Sort of. They had been in the cemetery, behind a tree, invisible as blood drinkers could be, in black in the winter, shades over their eyes, black skull caps pulled over their heads, standing in this strange place of death. Both of them had been dead. Both of them had experienced dying. They had both come up from caskets, undead and neither of them, having experienced it once would ever experience again. Even if they were extinguished, drinkers went into dust and then into nothing. Dead, deadly and death dealing, neither one of the had anything to do with cemeteries, but here they were.

And what a strange thing a casket was. How cringe worthy this shiny long box for a woman in her twenties done in by vampires because, yes, she had come into Laurie’s life. If it had been more natural it would have been better. If this were a sacred burning on the River Ganges, a return of dust to dust, but this body, filled with things, locked in a box to be placed in another box and then put in the dirt was somehow unclean, unclean in its cleanness, the separation of the body from the cycle of life.

And then Dan looked about and saw, in the men of course, more than the women, in the little boy with the slightly monkey ears and big sad dark eyes, Laurie. Whatever their last names, here, over and over among these tall people in their dark coats and often uncovered heads were the progeny of his lover.

“I wonder which ones are her parents,” Laurie said, looking at the ground.

“They are the ones who—”

“I don’t want to know,” Laurie had said. “I don’t want to look.”

Dan took his hand and said with a firmness he’d never really used until then, “Come.”

Making love wasn’t always fucking. Back in the apartment, under the water Dan had held him, kissed him, washed him, soothed his pain from Lynn’s death and their separation from Loreal. They had run their hands over each other while the water ran over them, plastering their hair to their scalps.

“I was going to kill her,” Laurie said in a voice that was almost a sob.

“I know that now. I was going to kill her.”

He was quiet a while and then he said, “After I did it I would have been a monster. I would have lost my mind. Or I would have killed myself.”

Laurie had said that in their time in the shower, holding each other, Dan kissing him. Or was he saying it now? Time was so strange coming out of that dream.

Their comforting turned into kissing and hugging, fondling.

“Dan, I need you inside of me,” Laurie said.

“But you just…”

His hand traveled down Dan Rawlinson’s body.

“I want you to be in me, and I want you to come when you’re in me. Is that alright?”

Dan was already trembling. His penis was already firm. They linked limbs and hands and kissed. They made love and sucked each other. To Dan, there was something so intense about Lawrence Malone that sex with him aroused terror until Dan had found the same intensity in himself. While Dan lay on his back, Laurie sat down on him, drawing him inside, and they both made a startled noise. His buttocks were so firm and perfectly round, so very tight, and hot, the set of Laurie’s face so beautiful, his brown eyes black in the half light of this room. They opened and closed, like his mouth did.

Laurie whispered, “It’s so good. You’re so good. Don’t be gentle.”

“I want to be.”

“I want you to let go. I want you deep.”

They turned over. He wanted Dan’s body pressed to him as close as possible, their fingers linked, Dan’s mouth on his throat. He wanted to be drilled. He wanted his savior and his protector and his lover to lose control. And Dan did, and then they were both shouting and gasping and crying, and for once the orgasm took them at the same time, Daniel’s cock, sensitive and swollen, pressed deep inside of him, shooting semen in him, Laurie clamping tight on Dan’s penis, Dan’s teeth sinking into his throat, taking blood as he gave his seed and their toes curled and their limbs bunched and the world shook with them.

While the orgasm had rocketed out of Dan’s balls, he felt Laurie’s teeth clamp into his wrist, felt the blood ejaculating from him as well.. When the sex had passed over them,, they were still bunched together in the aftermath. Eventually they unfolded and lay in the state of after sex, passed into that particular peace, gasping, both still hard, shaking a little from the wonder, Laurie flexing his insides, feeling the memory of Dan inside of him though his lover lay on his back, beside him, eyes opening and closing.

“No wonder people are so afraid of love and sex,” Laurie said. “You don’t know if you’re coming or going.”

Dan’s stomach rose and fell, still exhausted. From the dark brown cloud of hair his penis, damp and red, stood still firm. Laurie moved so that their bodies were pressed together and they were kissing and hugging and holding, and making love all over again. When it was over again, a gentler explosion, Dan said, “You’re right. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I feel…”

It had been this way with Chris, Laurie remembered. He had gone to a place where he didn’t know how he’d felt. It was past regret or fear or happiness. Or even joy. He was on the edge of something.

He stopped.

“What?”

Together they both said, “Someone is here.”

What in the world? The dream all over again?

“It’s not Lynn,” Dan said.

“Dress,” Laurie told Dan, and climbed out of the bed, pulling on trousers and then reaching into his closet to pull on a grey silk shirt.

Being a blood drinker meant never really being truly terrified, but he was still rattled after the dream and after Lynn’s funeral. He was more than happy to be accompanied by Dan, and it was with a great relief for both of them that when they opened the door they were met by Kruinh, Anne, Sunny Kominsky and Myron Keller.