The Old

“Is this cheesecake?” Dan asked.

“Uh… yeah.” Laurie said.

“Do you mind if…?”

“Daniel,” Kruinh said, sharply.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “Just…”

“Help yourself,” Laurie said.

Dan nodded, and headed back to the kitchen.

“I was… I was distracted,” Laurie said. “And angry. I reacted in fear.”

“You ripped off a man’s head then pulled his heart out of his chest,” Kruinh said.

“I… I realize I brought attention to us.”

“Attention?” Kruinh raised an eyebrow. “Attention? Do you think we’re some silly monsters out of a Harry Potter novel or something on an episode of Bewitched, hiding out from the mortals? Attention has nothing to do with it. Every single day what passes for common humanity has the wondrous flung in their faces, and they are too dull and stupid to see it. Nevertheless, your mess has already been cleaned up, and the body done away with. No one will ever know what happened in that office save Evangeline and this witch she has made friends with. Attention is not the point. Code broken, our laws dishonored. That is the point. The only time this clan is allowed to kill is for protection, protection of ourselves or others. Killers can be killed. You know this.’

“I did it to protect Lynn.”

“Do not twist my words.”

“That was not always the way of this clan,” Laurie said.

“But it has been as long as you have been in it, and now you have stooped to a murderous rage to simply assert your strength.”

“Would you have done it differently?” Laurie demanded on the other side of the room. “Would the great Kruinh have let such an insult slide? I doubt it. But here I am, to turn the other cheek as this son of a bitch smiles in my face and tells me he ruined my life. Well, fine, then Kruinh, lecture me and dress me down and then maybe you can throw me out of the clan the way you threw out Evangeline. Maybe the two of us can join forces and—”

With a snarl, Kruinh crossed the room his dark brown hand shocking Laurie, lifting the taller man against the wall. His eyes had not changed, but Laurie turned from them.

“Slay me, my Lord. My life is your hands.”

At once Kruinh released him, and Laurie stumbled against the wall, slumped over and weeping. Kruinh took him into his arms stroking the back of the younger man.

“I know I shouldn’t have done it. I know that,” Laurie wept while Kruinh held him. “I know it was my pride and… I know that if we all did that there would be no laws, no rules. I understand that, but… Everything is gone, everything. My life is in your hands, Lord. My life is in your hands.”

Kruinh drew himself from Laurie.

“Let’s not go talking about lives in hands. There’s been a bit too much of that already. Only… let’s not talk about Evangeline either. She was sent away for more than breaking rules. She was sent away because she did not care about breaking them, and did not love her clan. It was different.”

Laurie sniffled like a child while Kruinh held him. He had not been a child for nearly one hundred seventy years, and now all of his worry, all of his terror and sadness poured out of him.

“He ruined everything,” Laurie wept. “And Evangeline ruined everything, and I can’t fix it. No one can fix it.”

“There, there,” Kruinh said, looking very much like a distracted father.

All this time the vampires, Anne, Sonny and Dan had kept discreetly silent, and now Kruinh looked to them.

Dan said to Laurie, “Brother, don’t you worry about Evangeline. You’ve exacted your revenge and it’s lying in a leather bag in one of your closets. Very soon, Kruinh and I will exact ours.”

“But why is he here?” Lewis whispered to his uncle.

Owen looked back into the living room where Kris was laughing at something Uriah said.

“Because your uncle Uri says that he should be here. Says that he is one of us.”

Lewis eyed the young man with the unshaven cheeks and icy blue eyes.

“He’s very good looking, and not a little bit odd, but he’s certainly no witch. I can tell that.”

“He’s something else,” Seth said, looking down at the table.

“What?”

“The moment he came in, I was excited, and then I realized it wasn’t me. Nathan was excited.”

“Your Nathan? Dead Nathan?”

“Yes,” Seth said. “So I know this guy is supposed to be here.”

“And,” Owen added, “there are other things beside witches in this world, as you well know.”

As if to prove this there was a knock at the door and Owen murmured, “Really?”

“I’ll get it,” Seth called, and Owen asked, “Where is Loreal?”

“She’s at Saint Jerome’s already. Listening to Lessons and Carols.”

As Seth moved through the dining room to the great room, giving a sidelong glace to Kristian Strauss, he silently asked, “What is he? What is he to you?”

But Nathan said nothing, had seemed to flee altogether.

Seth opened the door, and admitted Laurie and two others flanking him.

Laurie spoke.

“Good evening, Owen. Seth had invited us into your house, but you may resend the invitation. This is Dan Rawlinson, Lieutenant of the House of Kertesz, my House. And this is—”

“Kruinh!” Chris cried.

The older blood drinker, distinguished and not unlike Owen, but darker and without glasses bowed regally with a small smile.

“Well,” Owen said, “It appears we’re all here.”

“We are?” Dan said. “Were we expected?”

“Let us say you were not unexpected,” Lewis said.

“We should go now,” Owen said. “There isn’t much time.”

“Who’s driving?” Laurie asked, “and… what’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” Owen said, “will soon be explained.”

He touched the now banked fireplace on one side, and Uri touched it on the other, and then Lewis came and bent, touching a stone by the fender. As he moved away, the hearth began to turn with a great scraping and it opened, moving away to reveal a stair way descending into darkness.

“No one’s driving,” Owen said. “We’ll be walking.”

As they continued down the long walk under the earth, their feet making a hollow sound while some walked with flashlights and the vampires followed last, careless of the dark, Lewis said, “You are wondering why you came here? Or wondering if all of this is a joke.”

“I am wondering why I haven’t shit myself,” Kris Strauss said, “and if there’s a bathroom on the way in case I have to.”

“Fair,” Lewis said. “Fair.”

“Are you…?” Kris began, “are you telling me those are vampires?”

“I’m not telling you anything, and up until a few months ago they were certainly news to me too.”

“And you…” Kris said, “you’re a…”

“Witch. That’s really the best word for it. Not immortal and not always reliably magical, but yes.”

“Goddamn,”

“Goddamn indeed.”

“Why am I here?” Kris wondered.

“Why are they here?” Lewis jerked his thumb back. “It’s hard to say. It just seems like on this particular night we are all called together.”

“Do you see a light?” Kris pointed ahead and his tower of hair almost bobbed before him.

“No,” Lewis said, looking at him strangely as his pale blue eyes shone in the night, “I didn’t. But… now I do. It’s nothing. My vision isn’t very good.”

“Sometimes I think mine is better at night,” Kris said.

But he was right, and soon they came out into a chamber which was lit and round and large and of warm limestone, and the floor was carved with: “Is that a pentagram?”

“It’s a pentacle,” Lewis said. “And it’s only upside down because we came at it from this direction.”

There were three other tunnels so that there was one for each direction and Lewis realized they had come from the south. At the mouths of the north tunnel were Eve Moreland and her brother Ethan.

“You missed your grandmother’s funeral,” Owen said.

“So did she,” Ethan returned.

“Ignore him,” Lewis said.

“Friends, my cousins Eve and Ethan, also known as Loreal’s older siblings.”

“Where is she?” Ethan demanded. He was green eyed and fair like Loreal, and Laurie wondered how someone he was so repulsed by could look so similar to and be the brother of someone he had to admit he loved.

“Up in the church,” Uriah said.

“Uriah,” Ethan smiled, “It’s been so long.”

“Why isn’t your grandfather here?”

“He had business elsewhere.”

“I’ll have my business with him soon enough,” Lewis said.

“Oh, how you preen,” Eve said, coming forward. “Oh, you’ve already made yourself a lord. Well, cousin, it takes more than a ceremony to make you a great enough witch to think about summoning Augustus. By the way,” Eve turned to Kris Strauss. “This is for you. Or rather, for your sister.”

She laid it in his large hand and he read:

To Marabeth Strauss,
The Queen of the Pack
When she is ready.

- A. Dunharrrow

“What the fuck?” Kris snarled.

“Just remember,” Eve said.

Lewis’s eyes scanned the envelope and then turned away, while Laurie came forward with the large bowling bag Dan Rawlinson had handed him and said, “And if you are Eve Moreland, then this is for you.”

She looked at him strangely, her beautiful face so like and yet so unlike Loreal’s, and then she took the bag and retreated to the circumference of the chamber. She calmly opened it, looked in, then threw it down screaming, as the open mouthed, open eyed head of Theodore Coach thudded on the floor and stared up at her.

But just as she recovered herself enough to snarl, in through the last door, in black robes with pale gold white hair, came three women, and the first of them wore a black gown open so low it nearly revealed her nipples, yet her grey eyes were serene, and she was grand, and carried a great golden dish, and the other women had jars of wine and stacks of herbs.

Owen bowed fully to her, going to his knees, and planting his sword before him. Lewis knelt as well, bowing, and the women bowed low, and then the first woman raised the bowl.

“Behold, I am she whose name is hidden,” the woman called, “the Light on Waters, Babalon the Great. I am she who is called the Maid.”

“And now,” Owen murmured, while Kris looked on, his eyes darting from the discarded head these women were unbothered by, to the jangled Eve Moreland, and back to the three women, “let the ritual begin.”