The Blood: A Denouement

That night, as they made love hungrily in the bed, and the heat and sweat joined their bodies, he could not tell if he was Jason McCord or Hagano, if the beautiful dark haired woman in his arms, whom he took to himself, whose eyes he bore into while he filled her, was Mechtild the Burgund, or her very distant descendant Marabeth Strauss. In the night, their bodies came together, curled, uncurled and shifted into sigils of desire, and the more she came the more he came. When he thought they were done and exhausted, they continued it again, and it was only in the morning, as the sun rose, and the air conditioning soughed gently, bringing coolness to the hot room, that Jason blinked into consciousness, feeling wholly himself again. Knowing he was at the house called Long Lees, his limbs splayed with those of Marabeth Strauss.

Still, in this modern morning, he could hear the words of long ago, a day in winter nearly a year after Hagano had come to the great house of the lady Mechtild.

“A daughter? They will call her bastard.”

Again, as Marabeth ran a hand over his shoulder, down the small of his back, that drunken psalm from the night before…

The danger of death was all around me;

the waves of destruction rolled over me.

The danger of death was around me,

and the grave set its trap for me.

In my trouble I called to the Lord;

I called to my God for help.

In his temple he heard my voice;

he listened to my cry for help.

“It is a new world and a Christian world, but it is not that new and it is not that Christian. You need not fear, and you need not remain as my husband. I see the look in your eyes. You are wolf as I am wolf now. One day I will send her to you, though.”

“What will you call her?”

“Leinghelde.”

Jim enjoyed watching him, and in these last few days, Jim had gone from enjoying watching Seth, to needing to watch him. He’d known him as a man and as a beast and he knew him in spirit, so as he lay on his side, watching the other young man with the fringe of dark beard all along his jaw twitch, he wondered, “What are you thinking, Seth Moore? Seth More, come back to me.”

It was almost as if wishing woke him. Maybe it did. Seth’s eyes fluttered and his body lifted up a little.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired of dreaming,” Seth said.

And then he said, “No, no that isn’t true. And I would share dreams with you gladly. But it isn’t that, not those dreams. It is the other dreams. It is the waking dreams.”

“It’s the ghost,” Jim said, matter of factly.

“Yes.”

“Funny,” Jim noted. “That would have never come out of my mouth a few days ago, and yet, it’s not that the world is stranger now. The world was always strange and trying to explain it away made me feel sick and strange. Looking at what it is—”

“The sickness disappears.”

“Yes,” Jim said.

He sat up and pulled on his linen trousers without putting on underwear. Shirtless, he began brushing the curling waves of his golden hair. In the middle of it, he handed Seth his own trousers.

“We have to talk to Augustus,” Jim said. “Whatever you are feeling, he must know all about.”

Despite his fearful dreams, Seth gulped. The only thing he dreaded more than ghosts was the uncle of his uncle.

They were all in the great parlor, Augustus included, when Jim and Seth came down. Seth could never tell how old Augustus looked. Today, in his wing back chair, he looked of an age with Lewis, almost identical to him, but there was a mocking smile on his face that Lewis never had, and he cocked his head.

“Yes?” Seth said, trying to place in his voice a nonchalance he did not feel.

“It is only,” Augustus began, “and you will be thinking I am mocking you because mocking seems to always be in me, but this is true, the two of you are handsome together. Appropriate.”

Augustus dropped his eyes and returned to his book adding, “It’s so rare that one sees two evenly matched lovers these days.”

When Seth and Jim continued to stand instead of sitting, Augustus said, “Is there something you need? Kris is here, Mara is here, the other Chris is here. You’re still standing so I assume it’s something you need?”

“The ghosts,” Seth said, because he saw the words forming on Jim’s lips and needed to do the speaking for himself.

“I need to know why I am seeing the ghosts. What happened here?”

“The ghosts,” Augustus murmured, but not as if he did not know them. It was more, Jim thought, as if someone had referenced the mice or cockroach problem you thought had been taken care of.

“Well, that is a story.”

“And one that probably ought to be told,” Lewis, who had been looking over a large old tome said, shutting it firmly.

“You would say that,” Augustus looked annoyed.

“I did say it.”

“Well,” Augustus murmured. He looked around the room. Marabeth and Loreal had ceased their conversation. Kris Strauss had stopped pretending to read. Chris Ashby sat looking in that alarmingly still way his kind did, and Seth and Jim were still standing.

“Someone,” Augustus said, “should write this down once and for all, for the family histories, for I will never tell it again. You might want to get Owen and Drusilla, though I am sure they know and would prefer to sleep. There is no conviction for crimes three hundred years past, and no belief that anyone who performed them is alive to be punished. Have a seat, James Strauss. Sit down, Nephew.”

It was Lewis who took out pen and paper, but whose face bore no expression.

“Hear now the story of Long Lees and the Dunharrow family,” Augustus said, looking at Seth.

“Though I doubt it will ease your mind.”