The Blood: A Denouement

But later that evening, Peter went into the library and read everything he hadn’t gone through before. He was the first after Marabeth to read Nathan’s journal, and at some places he stopped with a gasp, and at some points he put it down and then came out to smoke a cigarette with Joyce. He and Joyce went back to the library when it was near one in the morning, and a little later, as he reached the end of Nathan’s journals, he let out something like a shriek and when Marabeth and Loreal ran to the library, they found the door half open and Kris and Jim standing uncertainly at it. Marabeth looked in and saw Peter, shaking with sobs, held by Joyce as he wept. She wasn’t entirely sure what to say, but suddenly Loreal reached up and smacked Jim and Kris in the backs of their heads.

“He’s your family. He’s always been there for you. Be there for him, you assholes.”

At that the newly found brothers went to the library and closed the door behind them. A moment, later Joyce came out, shaken.

“What the hell is in that book?” she wondered

“Lots of things,” Marabeth said, “but I imagine now Peter just found out that Uncle Grange didn’t die in a car crash.”

“Oh, God,” Joyce said. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” Marabeth said, “but you will.”

On the other side of the door, they could still hear Peter Keller weeping.

“I wonder,” Loreal began, crossing her arms over her chest, “if we all had a Pamela and a Nathan to write down our history, how many of us would not be in tears?”

It was about two in the morning, certainly late enough for Chris Ashby to be up beside Lewis,and in the large kitchen they all sat drinking coffee. Peter looked red eyed and rumpled and unshaven, and Marabeth thought, somehow better than he ever had before, and he said, “If it’s true, if you all have had dreams, and if Kris has this gift, this torque, then we should use it. We should use it to find out as much as we can. If we all have this witch blood, and if we are accompanied by such great witches as the Dunharrows, then the reason we are at Long Lees is to learn what has haunted us for so long.”

Peter sounded noble, but his voice was hoarse, and his face was tear stained.

“This has hurt our family so much. Hurt us, screwed us up. God, what are we gonna tell Myron? If we can end it, we end it, but—” he said, looking at Chris Ashby levelly, because he had heard what the blood drinker had said to his cousin, “it is not my goal to end it. I… love the Wolf. The same way my father did. The same way Nathan did too. But I cannot let it destroy me. Not anymore than it has.”

“We will construct the Circle,” Lewis said. “We will do it together, even with Augustus. I’m sure he will consent to join.”

“I’m glad Owen and Uri are here,” Seth murmured.

“I’m definitely glad Uriah is here,” Kris agreed.

“We have literally become the Magic Negro,” Loreal said.

“What?” Kris barked out a nervous laugh.

“The Magic Negro,” Lewis said. “The trope that a beneficent and strangely powered Black person or persons shows up to help white people in trouble, and yes, Loreal, I can’t help thinking there is some truth to what you’ve said.”

“Well, I hate to make you a trope,” Peter said, “but we need you all to help us very badly.”

“And we will, Lewis said. “Only, while television shows and bad books rely on tropes, nature and the Craft rarely do, which means that you must be here for us as well. There is something you know that we must know. Some help we need, something we have lost, that only you can bring us. What that is, I cannot say.”

“Well,” Jason Mc.Cord said, “let’s hope there’s a little bit of magic in a white man too.”

Lewis looked at him.

“I’ve been having dreams,” he said.

“Yes,” Lewis said. “Mara told me something about that.”

Jason nodded, wondering how much Marabeth had told this man who seemed to keep his own council and be incapable of surprise.

“Well, tonight I will try and speak with him again,” Jason said. “I could not do it away from Marabeth, but now that I am here…”

The tall detective of sloping shoulders with the marmalade colored hair shrugged.

“Yes,” Lewis said, and appreciated Jason’s humility while hoping he would, in fact, be able to contact the man who was a ghost and not quite a ghost. Somehow, some way, this had to do with him. Lewis was not simply helping white people out and forwarding their plot. There was no plot. Was there ever? Only connections and as yet, he could not tell fully what those connections were.

Loreal, who was still thinking of her maps of the four castles and the four treasures, who wished to know of the Grail or the Cup or the Chalice, whatever it was called, had not given up her quest either, werewolves and vampires not withstanding.

Help me to understand.

Give yourself to me, and you will.

Jason closed his eyes and still he felt that part of him was fighting to stay awake or stay himself. When he had not known he was being taken over it hardly mattered, and when he was in the midst of lust it was easy to slip into Hagano. But now, at the spirit’s invitation, the trip was harder.

Ease yourself. He heard.

He did not reapond that he was trying, that this was like willing himself to drown. But in the end, much as in drowning, one could not hold off forver. In drowning, one was compelled to open his mouth, to open his nostrils and breathe and now this was something ismliar. He sank down and down and down and….

The world was green. In old movies the world was black and white. In Technicolor the world was much too colored, saturared with a rich artificiality, but here, this world was the fullness of color, as if he had not seen blue sky or yellow sun or green hills stretching, and he rode on the horse, his body matching its gait, and then he was moving away from the horse. He was Hagano at the same time he was watching the tall handsome man, part Roman, part barbarian, sandy hair cut in a military style, his straight nose and chiseled cheeks reddenbed by the sun, the cloak, a fur cloak, wolf headed and no Roman one, thrown over his shoulder. An old gladius hung at his hip and he rode toward a richly dressed woman, a Roman woman? No. But yes. A different type of Roman. She was robed in burgundy and a sword swung from her side. She wore a great furlined cloak and there was a metal tiara on her head, over her twisted, elaborate dark braids.

“I have come, Mechtild,” Hagano said.

The woman nodded her beautiful head gravely, her deep red lips making only the hint of a smile.

“You have.”

They feasted at a table that was Roman but not Roman, full of men who were aristocrats and barbarians, a great fire blazed beyond in the night, outside past the porch of the villa. But this was not like in the old tales of the barbarians who had taken over an old Roman house. The tessellated image of Dionysus on the floor was new. This house was not ancient. These Germans were…. Romans.

In the distance, singing, not in holiness, but a little drunkenly, a man chanted:

“Quam te amo, Domine!

Tu es protector meus.

Dominus protector meus;

qui accingit me fortitudine.

Tutela mei, Deus meus,

et ego salvum illum.

Suscepit me clypeus

salvum me et tuetur me, et custodit.

Voco ad Dominum,

et salvet se de inimicis meis iracundis.

Laudate Dominum!”

Jason, whose Latin was rudimentary, understood what was being sung.

How I love you, Lord!

You are my defender.

The Lord is my protector;

he is my strong fortress.

My God is my protection,

and with him I am safe.

He protects me like a shield;

he defends me and keeps me safe.

I call to the Lord,

and he saves me from my enemies.

Praise the Lord!

He wondered, even as Hagano said it:

“Are the Burgunds Christians now?”

Mechtild tilted her hand.

“Christian enough. Sometimes. You know how it is.”

“In a few years the whole world will be Christian,” Hagano said. And then he amended, smiling, “Christian enough.”

“Exactly,” the lady nodded.

“How did you gain the wolf gift?” she asked.

“From a southern sorcerer. Or rather he helped me to gain it.”

“They say your sister Sygny—”

“She gained it from her treacherous husband. But she would not have been able to possess it if it were not in our past.”

“Then it can be restored.”

“Yes.”

“I wish,” Mechtild said, gazing around the room, “it could be given to every man here, a whole tribe of wolves. You are Burgund, like me. You did it to defend your tribe against the Franks, and what did that do?”

“Nothing,” Hagano was honest. “I was too late.”

“When I have the gift, I so close to the royal line, it will do something. Already, my cousin, that stupid bitch, has married Clovis. Her father thought being partnered to the Frank we would be free. He never saw his greed.”

“My lady,” Hagano said, “if you would take on this gift, do it for yourself, not for your people. One wolf or even a hundred will not stop the change that is about to come. You look for the old world of gods and berserkers, but this is the new world of one God and his priests…. Look around you,” Hagano’s eyes swept the great room. “The Christ came to this land fifty years ago and took over.”

“Because Christ is stronger?”

“Because he is easier,” Hagano said, “and the people prefer the world they can easily see to all the worlds and spirits and gods they cannot. And Mechtild, you cannot return to the old world.”

She nodded. She said, “I have heard that if one is bitten by the wolf he will receive the Gift. I have also heard if one puts on the pelt.”

“One is too simple,” Hagano said, running his finger over the rim of a bronze goblet as the firelight shown on it. “The other is too dangerous.”

“They are both dangerous, Friend Hagano, if you ask me.”

“Wolf calls to wolf,” Hagano said. “Perhaps if a wolf were to be in his right mind when he bit a man then one could survive, but usually the gift moves wolf to wolf, one who has already had the gift in the blood.”

“I had heard…” Mechtild’s voice became lower, “that one need not be in the form of the wolf to give the bite and to place the cloak over another.”

“This is so.”

Beyond them the singing went on, and Jason could not tell if his penis was becoming stiff or if it was Hagano’s.

“In periculo mortis fuit mecum in circuitu:

et advolvit super me fluctus exitium.

In periculo mortis fuit circum me,

et sepulcrum eius profecti captionem mihi.

Dicitur Clamavi de tribulatione mea ad Dominum,

Vocavi Deo meo auxilium.

In his templo suo vocem meam;

audiebat meo et clamoribus.”

“It was my belief….” Mechtild continued, “that the gift could be given… in love?”

“It is the—”

But as Mechtild’s unslippered foot, under the table, rubbed itself between his thighs, Hagano’s throat cleared. He began again.

“It is the best way.”