The Old

Family and other evils

Conclusion

“Asshole! Asshole! Asshole…..”

On TV, the reporter announced, “A body found in an alleyway near Lunt Avenue has turned out to be twenty-three year old Max Shelter, a young student at Roosevelt College. But as pictures of him surface, many claim that he was also the Peekaboo Striker, a name given to the young man who made his reputation by asking other men for help and then, once they had assisted him, violently striking them. A metal bar was found near him with Shelter’s own fingertips, and some suspect that he may have attempted to assault the wrong person. There are signs of strangulation along his throat…”

The door flew open and Lewis jumped from his seat while Laurie strode in announcing, “I had the most amazing day!”

“No, don’t knock, just walk in,” Lewis said.

“Oh, sorry about that.”

And then, looking down at the bed where Chris was looking up, half awake and pulling a bed sheet over his naked body, Laurie said, “I wasn’t thinking.”

“If you keep not thinking I’ll resend my invitation.”

Lewis had learned that some vampire myths were true, some not, and some half true. A blood drinker could come through any door, but a door sealed by a witch or a shaman was a door sealed indeed.

“Don’t be harsh, Lewis,” Laurie swooped down and kissed him on the cheek. “You know I’ve nothing but love for you. Look what I brought my best friend’s best guy.”

Laurie handed him something between a bouquet and sachet of “Lemongrass? Sage. Well, thank you for this.”

“And wine and chocolate for your drink tooth and your sweet tooth, and a pack of Winston’s. A witch cannot live by ritual alone.”

“Amen to that,” Lewis murmured heading into the kitchen to drop them on the counter.

“I’ll put coffee on,” he called while Chris got up from the bed and pulled on underwear. When Lewis came out he realized that in their long centuries together they must have seen each other naked and this was the reason Chris felt no compunction in combing his hair or putting on more than the white Jockeys he was wearing.

“I was in church and I met this girl—woman—and her name was Lynn and we had a really nice talk and I’m sure I’ll see her again. I really hope I do. There was just something so… familiar about her. Like when you are looking for a sort of person and then you meet that sort of person and it’s just like you’ve always known them.”

“And,” Chris said, taking the cigarette Lawrence handed him and inhaling, “you feel like that with her?”

“A little bit. Just, I’m tired of meeting the women I meet. Women have changed.”

“Everybody’s changed,” Chris said, exhaling smoke as he stood up and then pulled on trousers and reached for his shirt.

“Yeah, but I’m not trying to date everyone. And I must admit I liked some of the changes. But… I would like to meet a woman who… doesn’t do what the last one did,” Laurie said in a lower voice at Lewis re entered the room.

“I never figured you were a church person,” Lewis said.

“Well, I go there to clear out my head, to remember the past,” Laurie said. “There’s power in it. The building. I don’t know about the religion though.”

“There may very well be power in it,” Lewis said. “All the prayers of all of those people through so many years.”

“I’ve lived too long in a Christian world and seen too much of what Christians do in the name of their god to be one,” Chris said.

“When I was a boy we were as heathen as we were Christian. The state made sure people in town went to the church and you were fined if you didn’t, but in the north, where I lived, there were many who were still secretly Catholic, and on the walls of the church and on its buttresses, and in the grave yards as well, there were signs and images from older religion. We had three village witches, and in the nights there were people devoted to the old ways who went about their business. It wasn’t until I came to America that I saw Indians murdered, black people enslaved, the poor put down, all in the name of Jesus, and I don’t really have much time for him.”

“I’m not as old as you,” Laurie said, “I’m just an Irish lad. So I don’t really feel quite that way, and there is a power in it. For me. I know that Christians have done bad things, but so have I. Nothing that exists for a long time can do so without harm.”

“Yes,” Chris said. “But the difference between us and the churches is we know we are monsters and we don’t claim to save anyone by what we do.”

“What about you?” Laurie looked to Lewis.

“Oh, I am of a mind with Chris and of a mind with you. Few witches are raised as witches. My family is Catholic, if not Roman. This is how Owen was brought up too. It was only years later that I was done with church and initiated into the Old Way. But every witch worth their salt has a religion that is at least, on the surface, influenced by the churches. What we do is the wisdom of the western world, and that was the western world. It still is. Even a Voudon from Haiti keeps crucifixes and saints in his peristyle, though those symbols may mean something completely different there then in a church. And so it is with us. We do not deny Christianity, but we do not take it on its surface, and I know I don’t have time for its priests and ministers.”

“Like the English people of my day,” Chris put out his cigarette.

“Or, honestly,” Laurie said, “the Irish and Italians in mine.”

“But the old churches do have power,” Lewis said. “They are temples, many of them built on spots sacred to gods older than Rome and Jerusalem, build on lines of power like what the Indians in South America called tikal.”

“Like a lee line,” Chris said.

“Wait,” Laurie said, “I don’t know what any of that is. I came to talk about a girl at church and now we’re…. what’s a lee line?”

“They exist in England, or at least are talked about in England. Great Britain. They are networks… spiritual highways linking to each other like spider webs and joining at certain places of power. They send power all through the land, and power is strengthened on these lines. Many of them are now highways or sacred places. And the same thing occurs here, in America, only the South American Indians called them tikal. The places of offering or sacrifice. The places of prayer and power. From there, power was taken and power is sent back and moves through those passages all around the land.”

“Astounding,” Lawrence said

There was a knock at the door.

“Well, enough esoteric conversation for today.”

“I wonder who it is,” Chris said.

“Well, at least we know it’s not a vampire,” Lewis said. He got up from the kitchen table where he’d left Lawrence and Chris, and opening the door was shocked to see Seth and, leaning on his shoulder:

“Eve!”

“Help me!” Eve’s strangled voice demanded, saliva falling from her mouth.

“She burned her hands.”

They were bound in a towel, and when Lewis unwrapped them, there was a wet cloth between them and Lewis, taking her hands from the red stained wet cloth, saw the bloody and blistered hands.

“God! Seth, go get all the ordinary stuff. Peroxide and witch hazel. And then I need you go get thyme and basil and the moon weeds., and could you also get the salve? Eve, sit on the bed.”

Eve, still grunting with pain, nodded and sat down. When Chris came out, she looked up and said, “Is this the vampire?”

“Tread carefully,” Lewis said. Then he nodded to Chris as well as Laurie who was coming out.

“Chris, Eve. Laurie, Eve.”

The vampires nodded and murmured courtesies, and Eve, still eyeing the tall men said, “Likewise,” and didn’t stop looking at them with what Lewis considered discourtesy.

Seth came back down the hall with the bottles and pots, and Lewis, taking up the peroxide said, “What happened?”

“Things happened,” Eve said.

“She tried to steal Azul.”

“Owen’s sword?”

Seth nodded.

“The Clan Sword?” Lewis said, his voice changing.

“Yeah,” Seth said.

“My inheritance?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Lewis switching from the soothing peroxide, to isopropyl alcohol, and Eve screamed when he squirted it into her palms.

“Disinfection my dear, disinfection,” Lewis said while Laurie looked at Chris and Chris tried to stop himself from laughing.

“I told you he wasn’t innocent,” Laurie murmured.

“If you’re going to murmur and snigger you can leave,” Lewis said curtly, and Chris and Laurie were silent after that. Lewis applied the cream savagely to Eve who took it as best she could.

“Doubtless your grandfather wanted it,” he said. “Well then the old bastard should have come and gotten it himself.”

“As you said,” Eve said proudly, “he is old.”

“He is not!” Lewis nearly snapped. “He’s full of evil and he’ll outlive us all.”

As Lewis began to bind her hands, roughly while his cousin moaned, he continued, “and now you know what happens to thieves, Cousin, and your branch of the family was always thieving.”

“Ouch!” she cried as he slapped down tape on her palms.

“And wicked!”

“Ouch!”

“And conniving”

“Damnit, Lewis.”

“And now,” Lewis stood up, “your hands are bound and done, and you may leave.”

“She was going to stay for dinner,” Seth said.

“Really, Seth?” Lewis scowled at him. “Eve, you should leave right now and save yourself the embarrassment of seeing Owen again.”

“The Sword was only going to be taken for a time.”

“It shouldn’t have been taken at all,” Lewis said. “As you now know. And what was he going to use it for anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Lewis snapped. “You were going to steal a magic sword from the Master of a Witch Clan and you don’t fucking know what your Grandfather was going to do with it?”

Eve opened her mouth

“Get out,” Lewis said. “And don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Seth, you could stay, but someone’s got to get her to the train station.”

“How soon should my hands heal?” Eve asked, trying to summon her dignity as she scooted her purse over her shoulder.

“If my will had been in it, probably tomorrow, but it isn’t so who the hell knows? Quicker than if you’d gone to a doctor. Now, about that whole get out thing—”

“Why don’t you guys come to dinner tonight?” Seth said as Eve went out the door.

“Chris has to go to work.”

“I don’t,” Laurie said.

“Really?” Chris raised an eyebrow.

“Sure come, along,” Lewis said tiredly. “Lately I like you more than most people.”

“You guys are funny,” Seth said, heading out the door.

“They’ll still rip your throat out and drink your blood,” Eve said from down the hall, and Lewis firmly shut the door.

He took a deep breath and said, “So… family.”

Lewis went back to the bed, taking up the pots, and the vials, and Chris took up the bottles.

“So… your cousin?”

“A distant one. There are a lot them. That is a different branch of the Dunharrows.”

“And their Grandfather.”

“You heard us talk about him before. Augustus.”

“Oh.”

As Lewis and Chris put things away and came back into the living room, Laurie said, “So you all are like the good branch and they are the bad branch.”

“Good and bad are for children’s novels and superhero movies,” Lewis said, “And you should know by now no one ever called themselves a villain. For now, let it suffice that we have things that belong to us and we plan to keep them. Putting good and bad into the equation will only make things hypocritical when we do everything we can to see that we keep what and who belongs to us.”