The Blood: A Denouement

When Jim and Seth sat before Lewis, telling him this, and now and again Lewis looked to Chris, and sometimes he looked to Levy, it was Chris who said, “Then Jim didn’t just dream that you were there?’”

“No,” Seth said. “No, I was with him. We were together. I thought we were dreaming apart, but soon I realized we were dreaming the same dream.”

“And the sorcerer?” Lewis said, “Did you see him?”

“No,” Seth and Jim said together.

They were in a great, high ceilinged bedroom where air conditioning negated the effects of the sun shining through white curtains, and Lewis said, “You should talk to your cousin. To Marabeth.”

“Is this anywhere in her book?” Jim asked.

“No,” Lewis said. “But Marabeth has had… dreams as well. She has dreamed of Hagano and the sorcerer that first made him, but she did her dreaming with… Jason.”

“Detective McCord,” Jim said. “I knew they were sort of seeing each other, but…”

“Apparently he has some kind of connection to Hagano,” Lewis said discreetly, though he and Marabeth had talked very frankly about what had happened.

Levy had whispered to Lewis that he should leave when Seth and Jim came in to see him, but Lewis had touched the boy on his hand and said, “Better to learn than leave. Now sit and listen,” and the boy had made himself discreet, pretending to sketch on a notepad in a chair by the great bed.

“But since she’s been here and with us, she obviously hasn’t seen Jason, so,” Lewis shrugged, “she’s probably had no dreams.”

Jim nodded and said, “I wonder if Kris has.”

“I doubt that,” Lewis said. “You could ask, but I would doubt it.”

When the two young men left, Chris, who was sitting in the windowseat, asked, “What do you think that was all about?”

“What exactly?”

“Seth and Jim have the same dreams.”

“Seth is a dreamer,” it was Levy who spoke.

“He can go into dreams and he can also speak to animals and Jim is… Jim can warg. If he knows how.”

Lewis smiled. “You were about to say Jim is an animal.”

Levy shrugged. “Maybe I was.”

“We’re all animals,” Lewis said, “and in the end we all have to learn how to get back to our nature.”

“But who is this Hagano person?” Levy said.

“He is the first of them.”

“Then he should be dead,” Chris said. “Especially if he was a real person. That Pamela’s not still running around haunting people or… didn’t Marabeth say he could even take from? Now that’s even beyond my knowing, and my knowing goes back over three hundred years.”

“Yes,” Lewis said. “That is strange.”

“Strange!” Levy barked a laugh.

“But,” Lewis continued, turning the boy a sidelong smile, “maybe in some way Hagano is their nature, and like with all of us, our nature calls to us. If Hagano knew a sorcerer, then there is witchcraft even at the back of this business, and I would love to find out exactly what the hell that witchcraft is, or even if it has anything to do with us.”

“Ah,” Chris lifted a finger, pushing his long tall body out of the windowseat.

“Yes?”

“Kruinh has sent Tanitha and Dan to England. Laurie is going with them and apparently Myron Keller is going too.”

“Okay?”

“They are going to see Rosamunde, my sister’s maker, who also made Dan and Sunny. She apparently knows something about all this.”

“She lives near your old home, am I right?”

“She lives on the estate of the lord who was there when I was a boy,” Chris said. “It seems she became his lover before draining the lifeblood from him and all of his family, and taking the estate over. So even Rosamunde gets it right sometimes. Some said she now and again feasted on tenants, but now all that estate is either park land or part of the city. There’s nothing left of what I knew.”

Lewis only nodded and looked at Chris who turned to look out the window on Long Lees. He shared a glance with Levy where both of them realized Chris Ashby had answered in one moment every question they might ask about his feelings and said in so many words what Lewis had long suspected, that his lover had no desire to ever lay eyes on his old home again.

“No,” Marabeth said, shaking her head.

“The pelts. The… but then the story of Sigmund and Signy is… the story of Hagano and his sister.

“A nicer version,” Loreal said.

“Well not that much nicer,” Marabeth said, “but yes.”

Kris, Jim and Seth said nothing and Marabeth said, “Maybe I should chance it again, calling on Hagano, seeing more of the story.”

“I don’t like that idea,” Kris said.

“There’s only so much we can look up,” Marabeth differed. “After that we have to dream. We have to go searching. We gotta go to the horse’s mouth.”

“The wolf’s mouth,” Jim said.

Kris opened his mouth, but Seth said, “You don’t have to go searching alone though. Maybe Jim could look because of being a wolf. And maybe you could too for the same reason. But had you thought it was because of the witch blood? If it is, then you need a trained witch and you certainly have a house full of them.”

“I wonder,”, Kris said, his blue eyes paler than usual, “if the sorcerer… wow, we’re talking about sorcerers now! I wonder if he was one of Frau Inga’s family?”

“If he’s related to us too?” Marabeth said.

“What if they always were?” Jim said.

“But he was from… well I guess Byzantium,” Kris said. “Or further south.”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have stayed,” Loreal said. “Or have had a child among Hagano’s people.”

“True,” Kris agreed, looking at Loreal.

“But,” the young witch continued, “ff that is so, what I really want to know is where do witches fit in with your story?”

“Do you think you have something to do with it?” Marabeth asked. “Your family?”

“At first no,” Loreal said. “I mean, I was going to say our family would have been in Africa doing all sorts of things, but what those things are I don’t know and… think about this, how many times your family name has changed, how many different families you are descended from, what came together to make not just you, but the people you consider to be yours.”

“Kellers and Schillers, Dashbachs, Von Bülows,” Kris listed the names.

“And that’s just the German part,” Marabeth said.

“There are many witches,” Loreal said, “so this could have nothing to do with us, per se. But it could have a great deal to do with what we do. I sure would like to know.”

“Marabeth.”

She had re entered the great house, and was surprised, because she had not thought the old sorcerer even knew her name. But then, he had known Jim on sight.

Augustus Dunharrow’s hand had been perched on an enormous globe, and now, as he approached her, it turned a little.

“Are you finding your stay restful?”

He seemed older now, but that was only, she was sure, because she knew he was older. His voice was settled, but he still looked the same age as Loreal, and Marabeth said, “Yes. Quite.”

“Your aunt loved this house,” he said, gesturing for Marabeth to walk with him. They came through the great room he had first received them in, and all around it were portraits of men and women with his face, but also, curiously, white people as well, most in powdered wigs, long dead, she supposed.

“It was after your aunt stayed here the first time that she wanted a painting of her made. She had a beautiful green gown on in it, her hair was still golden, and her blue eyes were so very fierce, so beautiful.”

“That painting is in our library. There was one of my grandfather too.”

“That one I knew nothing about,” Augustus said. “But hers was made by the artist Gerard Guyome.”

“I know that name.’

“The name Guyome… Or Guillaume, probably,” Augustus said. “His brother was the architect who built a church in your neighborhood.”

“Saint Agatha.”

“Yes.” Augustus nodded.

“”They say he jumped off of a building and killed himself.”

“The line between genius and madness is, alas…” but Augustus simply left his sentence hanging.

“Is it true?” Marabeth said, “that you build that church to be a witch’s temple?”

“If you have that question in your mind, then you already know the answer.”

“Loreal thought you would tell her where the Cup is. The Chalice. It’s a sign of your house.”

“Yes, I know what it is. It was supposed to have been kept by Onnalee, but what she has is only part of it, the Crater, but what is that to you? Is that the reason you’ve come here, for Loreal?’

“I came here for answers.”

“But your answers. Right, mon petit?”

When Marabeth said nothing, Augustus said, “Come. Follow me.”

“My aunt Pamela said she had spoken to Hagano, and… well, Hagano is—“

“I know who Hagano is,” Augustus said.

“She said he explained things, but she did not explain it in her journal.”

“No, no,” Augustus, said, pushing a door open and entering into a cool room with muted light coming through white curtains. It was much larger than the Strauss library, and lined with more books than she had ever seen. As he crossed the deep red rugs over the old floor, Augustus seemed to know exactly where he was going.

“She wrote that journal late in life,” Augustus said. “She sent me a letter before she died. About you. Pamela said she saw a great power in you. In your cousin Deborah as well, But the Hagano journal,” Augustus grunted as he stood on the tips of his toes and pulled down an old pale green folio, “that was much older.”

He handed it to her, and when she looked at him, he said, “Go ahead. Open it.”

She did and the first thing she saw was a list of names.

“Nathan Friederich James Strauss, January 18th, 1956, James Nicholas Friederich Strauss, September 25th, 1928. Friederich Wilhelm Strauss, June 19th,1880, Studlitz Bavaria, the product of Romula Steinmeir and Nicholas Wilhelm Strauss. Nicholas Wilhelm…”

Marabeth stopped talking and looked down the list of names.

“It is your family tree,” Augustus said, “as dictated by Hagano.”

“Till when?”

“Why ask me? See for yourself.”

Marabeth’s eyes went down the thick old page, dense with names and dense with their centuries and turned one and then the other it until her eyes went up to the first name.

“Leinghelde the Skinfast, Easter Friday in Springtime, Anno Domini…”

“Yes.”

“It says the year 496.”

“Yes,” Augustus answered.

“Shit.”

And Marabeth read on, “Daughter of Mechtild the Burgund and the Saxon Berserker Stedefeld, commonly called…. Hagano.

“Well,” Marabeth shrugged, “This tells everything.”

“It does not tell everything,” Augustus said, and his face seemed almost sad. He handed her another sheaf of letters not nearly as organized.

“I do not know if he meant to take these and left them, or if he wanted them to stay here, but I kept them. Even though I sent Eve with the first journal, I kept these for the day you would come.”

They were not labeled, and so Marabeth had to read what looked like an attempt at a journal.

“Today I’m fourteen and… no, let’s start out with, My name is Nathan B Strauss, and this is the year 1970…”

She stopped, her voice cracking.

“You have to understand,” Augustus said, “It was some time before I assumed he had died.”

The restraint she’d held onto snapped. The dryness in her eyes melted. Her eyes were so wet she could barely see, and Augustus said, “That is not all that I have for you. There is one more thing, but this seems to be enough for now. I will leave you to yourself.”

As Marabeth rapidly nodded, she saw, hazily, Augustus nod and leave the room, closing the doors firmly behind him.