CHAPTER 17: The Trade-Off
By Nicky
(Voiceover by Lara Parker) “On this night in the great house a
frightening spell has been cast ... one woman who has returned from a
terrifying journey into the past is about to have her life torn away from
her by a new bride ... for the bride is a witch centuries old and
responsible for the curse that haunts the Collins family.”
1
Cassandra Collins peered gleefully from the hazel eyes that had
belonged to Julia Hoffman up until a few moments ago. She used them
to trace the bovine visage of her most hated enemy captured forever in
the portrait that dominated her bedroom. Once she had expended
enough energy to successfully convey the hatred she felt, she critically
examined one hand bent and shaped by constant years of study and
practice, and then she grimaced. Well, she reasoned, there would have
to be SOME kind of trade-off if one expected to exchange one’s body
for another. And her trade-off was the body itself, the castoff of an old
maid who should have been put down for her own good years ago.
Cassandra snickered. For the woman who was attempting to undo the
curse Angelique had given her life for, nothing else could be more
fitting.
The unexpected arrival of Nicholas Blair had proven more of a boon to
her than she had first anticipated. While he strolled the grounds with
Elizabeth Stoddard — cultivating an interest in the dignified matriarch
was something Cassandra simply could not understand — Cassandra
had eagerly pawed through the belongings that mystically appeared a
few hours after his arrival at the great house. And her search had not
been fruitless. Handwritten spellbooks were a requirement for all
followers of Diabolos, one of the Lords of Darkness to whom both
Cassandra and Nicholas were indebted for their powers and their
extended lifetimes, and Nicholas’ had not been difficult to locate. She
had discovered it on the top shelf of his wardrobe, hidden beneath one
of his many teal ascots.
I know there has to be something suitable here, Cassandra had thought
as she feverishly flipped through the thick, vellum pages, squinting and
furrowing her brow as she tried to decipher Nicholas’ spidery
handwriting. At last her eye had been drawn to a particular title, and
she devoured the spell eagerly, committing to memory the correct hand
gestures, sigils, and Enochian chants it demanded. By the time Nicholas
returned Cassandra was comfortably ensconced in the drawing room
behind locked doors, perched before the fireplace and staring
hypnotically into the flickering tongues of red and yellow flames.
“Prince of Fire,” she pronounced carefully. She was about to call forth
an intense and dangerous stream of power, and she needed all her
faculties concentrated here and now to summon and control it. Any
distraction would be enough to turn the stream of power back on her,
and she could very well face annihilation. She was unaware that her
hands were clenched so tightly that the neatly trimmed and blue-painted
fingernails were digging callously into the tender meat of her palms.
Blood ran in tiny crimson streams down her arms and pattered onto the
stone hearth. “I call upon the flame to summon you,” she continued,
and licked her lips. “I call out all the dark creatures of nature to
summon you here to me. I call on the Raven ... the Viper ... and the
Bat ... I call upon the writhing flame to draw you like a black tide from
the netherworld. Prince of Fire, I evoke you. I command you to find a
woman lost to this world but available to your awesome abilities ... find
Julia Hoffman, O Dark One, and return her to this world ...
return her to this time, for I am lost unless you do!”
Thunder cracked in the distance, and Cassandra’s crystalline blue eyes
widened and her cheeks glowed with ruddy fire. He’s found her, she
thought, and basked in the power that thrummed up and down her arms
and glowed in the pit of her stomach, making her feel almost sluggish
and lazy with heat. “Avagdu,” Cassandra called, and arched her fingers
into the particular contortions Nicholas’ book had
demanded. “Avagdu Stracht, Nyarlhotep! Ia ia, retaxa n’gaya!” Red
sparks began to crackle and explode in the wake of the frantic hand
sigils Cassandra worked, and she knew that her eyes had darkened to a
hellish obsidian. “By Satanas, by Barabbas, by the Devil cursed be.
Julia Hoffman, by the Queen of Sard, body and soul are bound to me.”
A tremor ran through Cassandra’s body, and she cried out in exquisite
pain as the air around her began to pulse a livid emerald green. “Body
and soul!” she chanted, each word charged with POWER, “Body and
soul! Corshath and Gilaeil, open the gate at my command! Now ... now
... NOW!”
The world gave a tremendous heave as a thunderbolt rent the air
outside, and the fireplace slammed upwards to meet her startled eyes,
and she slumped over, lost in a swimming darkness. When she opened
her eyes she found herself at the Old House ... in the body of Julia
Hoffman. And now she stood before the portrait of Josette, her face
perfect with contempt. “And here you are,” she spat with the husky
tones of the gutsy physician who commanded science the way
Cassandra herself commanded the elements. “You with your innocent
eyes that were always so startled when they looked on evil. Here it is
again, my dear. Here I am again. I destroyed you in the past because
Barnabas loved you ... and I will never allow Barnabas to have the
woman he loves.”
She was unaware that a shadowy figure lurked outside the window,
peering in at her with cupped hands and a pale, wretched face. Tom
Jennings watched with growing concern and mounting suspicion as the
woman he thought to be Julia Hoffman, smirking still, turned and made
her way to the basement door. Without a pause she closed the door
behind her and vanished into the darkness of Barnabas Collins’ cellar.
What is Julia doing here? he wondered, and worried his bottom lip.
Mrs. Stoddard said something about some kind of condition Barnabas
has — something to do with his eyes? — but Willie Loomis said
Barnabas was out of town. So what is Julia doing here?
The answer was obvious, and painfully so, and for once Tom couldn’t
ignore the spear of jealousy that lanced through his stomach in a
tangible cramp so real that he clutched at his abdomen and groaned.
“Julia,” he whispered huskily, “oh, Julia, no. No!”
I should go, he thought miserably. His cheeks flushed with
embarrassment when he felt the first scalding river of tears as it
trickled down his cheek, followed by another flood, and another. I
should just leave her. Obviously she wants to be with Barnabas Collins more than she wants
to be with me. And why shouldn’t she? He’s rich; he’s handsome; he’s
cultured. What am I? I’m nothing but a handyman, a poor excuse for a
handyman, and Julia’s always known that I’m nowhere near her level
intellectually. Why shouldn’t she prefer a Collins to me?
No, he thought, surprised at the bile that rose in his throat at the same
moment an iron resolve clenched his hands into fists and froze him in
his tracks before the front door of the Old House. I’m not going to lose
her that easily. I won’t let Barnabas Collins have her. Not now, not
ever. I may be just a handyman, but I’m not going to let her go without
a fight. I’m going to have this out with Julia right now, and nothing is
going to stop me.
As the sun trembled on the verge of the horizon and the shadows
lengthened outside, Tom disappeared into the depths of the Old House,
and a moment later began his descent into the chilling pit of the
basement.
2
“She’s hysterical, Nicholas. She hasn’t said a word of sense since I
found her here. I’ve wracked my brain, but I can’t come up with a
single solution, and no one knows where Julia is. I thought that you
could help her come around.”
A man’s voice, Julia thought sluggishly, and tried to open her eyes, but
every time her eyelashes fluttered a bolt of pain split her head, and she
fell back limply. It sounds like Joshua, she thought, and then paused. He
said my name, she realized; he said “Julia”, and he’s talking to
“Nicholas”. With dawning excitement Julia realized that the owner of
the voice could only be Roger Collins, and that the other man was
Nicholas Blair. Julia would have grimaced if she’d had the strength.
Nicholas was Cassandra’s brother, and only belatedly did Julia realize
that Nicholas was probably a creature of darkness just as his sister
was; Julia hadn’t liked him from the moment they’d met.
“Let me talk to her, Roger.” Nicholas’ voice, smooth as silk, oily, truly
unctuous. He was a ferrety looking man with tiny eyes and a wide grin
full of sharp teeth and a twitchy mustache. “Cassandra and I have
always been very close. She’ll listen to me. Just leave us alone for a
few moments and I’ll see what I can do.”
Is he talking about me? Julia thought as she heard the drawing room
doors shutting. But I’m not ... I mean, I’m Julia Hoffman ... aren’t I?”
“You can stop playing the possum, my dear.” Nicholas again, but the
urbanity had faded from his voice, leaving it cold yet amused, but hard
as stone. “I don’t know what kind of game you think is afoot, what little
scene you’re enacting, but I advise you to stop it, and stop it this
minute.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, and she moaned as she sat up ... and froze.
My arm, she thought dimly, and felt waves of faintness passing over
her again. Long and white and slender, with long tapered fingers that
ended in sharp blue points. Not my arm at all, Julia thought, and the
world began to slip away from her again. Not my arm ... but who’s?
NO, she thought, and gritted her teeth. I can’t faint again. I don’t know
who or what Nicholas really is, but this may be my chance to find out.
Whatever’s happened, he doesn’t know about it. He may destroy me if
he thinks anything is wrong.
She forced herself to rise to her feet, and placed a trembling hand on
the arm of the couch to keep her balance. She wore an elegant black
robe lined with foamy white lace, and she recognized it instantly.
Cassandra’s robe. Cassandra’s arm. Cassandra’s hand. And the tiny
reflection she caught a glimpse of, shimmering up at her from the
polished surface of the lamp next to the couch — a haggard face, white
as porcelain, full red lips, rounded cheeks, a mass of black curls ... and
the eyes, the blue chips of ice that were the eyes. Cassandra’s hands,
Cassandra’s arms — and Cassandra’s face.
Cassandra’s body.
I’m in Cassandra’s body, Julia thought, and a wave of nausea almost
sent her back to the couch. I’m so dizzy, she thought dimly; or maybe
it’s Cassandra who’s dizzy. How am I to know?
“I am not amused, my dear,” Nicholas said, and Julia looked up at him.
Dear god, she thought despairingly, will I ever get my real body back?
His arms were folded and he was staring at her with eyes as warm and
pliable as granite. “What do you mean by this tantrum? Your husband
— need I remind you about him, my dear? — your husband is in quite a
state, thanks to you, although the rest of the household hardly seems
concerned. Why do you suppose that is, dear sister?”
Don’t call me that, Julia moaned inwardly, but forced herself to say, “I
... I don’t know.” If there was any doubt remaining, it had been blown
away completely. Cassandra’s voice too, Julia thought, and forced back
a retch. We’ve switched bodies somehow. Which means that she’s
probably got mine. But why? What does she hope to gain?
“That answer is hardly sufficient, Cassandra,” Nicholas said. “Will I be
forced to remind you of our little agreement?” Julia stared at him
blankly, and he sighed, his exasperation obvious. “I can destroy you so
easily, Cassandra. I would’ve done it as soon as I had arrived if your
little game with Barnabas Collins hadn’t proved such an amusing
distraction.”
“Game?” She swallowed, trying to choose each word she uttered with
great precision, but the sound of that hateful voice emerging from a
voicebox that was supposed to be her own and not that of some hateful
hell harpy was just too disconcerting.
“Don’t be so incompetent, Cassandra,” Nicholas said. “I ordered you to
stop the admirable Dr. Hoffman from completing whatever
experiments she and Barnabas have been attempting. If she is
successful in driving your curse out of Barnabas’ system, then she will
prove to our Master once and for all what an absolute failure you are.
That kind of thing cannot be tolerated, you know.”
“My curse,” Julia mumbled, trying to buy time.
“What a fool you are, Angelique,” Nicholas said, deliberately accenting
the final word, and Julia stared at
him, blinking with surprise. So I was right, she thought triumphantly.
Angelique is Cassandra after all ... so what does that make Nicholas?
“You allow yourself to be killed in a past incarnation and walled up so
that your spirit cannot return to the Underworld, only to escape time
and again just so you can be walled up again! These little games you
play with the Collins family are beginning to wear thin, my dear,
whether it’s Quentin or Barnabas Collins you play them with. You are
here to see that Barnabas remains a vampire, and if you can’t even do
that, well ...” He shrugged, and smiled that same wicked smile. His
eyes twinkled merrily. “I’m afraid we’ll have to dispense with your
services.”
“Uh,” Julia said, “uh ... no. You ... uh ... you can’t do. That.” She
licked her lips, and tried for sincerity. I should allow him to blast her all
the way back to the Netherworld, she thought bitterly, if I didn’t know
for sure that it’d be my soul that followed her body. But when I get my
own body back — “when” and not “if” —
Nicholas snorted with disgust. “All right, Cassandra, all right,” he said,
“but only because your foibles prove highly entertaining to me, and
because I may be able to make use of you yet.” He raised one finger.
“But remember: if you don’t find out where Julia Hoffman disappeared
to and bring her back immediately — if you don’t see that Barnabas
remains a vampire — then I will destroy you. Quickly and efficiently.”
He lifted her chin gently and smiled at her, and then, whistling, threw
open the doors of the drawing room and began to trot up the stairs.
Julia watched him go, then sank into the depths of the sofa with a sigh
of relief.
When did my life become so insane? Julia wondered almost idly as she
brushed her fingers gingerly through Cassandra’s raven curls. The hair
itself was stiff and unyielding, and Julia decided she really didn’t want
to know how many bottles of hairspray the witch used to keep her
helmet of hair in line. When did I start to experience things like time
travel and vampires and witches and body-switching?
Of course the answer was simple. The moment I moved to Collinwood
my fate was sealed, she decided, and rose to her feet to pace across
the drawing room. I have to find a way to warn Barnabas about
Angelique, Julia thought. She was responsible for every pain he feels,
she knew, and recalled her last few moments in 1795 ... how Josette
had flung herself from Widow’s Hill, and how Angelique had been
responsible. She turned him into a vampire when he spurned her, Julia
thought angrily, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she killed the only
woman he ever loved. She’s at the Old House right now, and Nicholas
has ordered her to stop the experiment. She’s going to destroy all my
equipment, Julia realized dismally. If only I knew the first thing about
her powers I could use them to stop her.
Julia’s eyes widened. Her powers ... MY powers. She shrugged. Well,
why the hell not? It was worth a try, wasn’t it? Would failure mean a
worse predicament than she was already in?
She settled onto the stones of the hearth and cleared her throat. Were
there special magic words? Mystical hand passes? Rabbits out of hats?
Did she need a black cat and a magic wand? “Don’t be a fool, Julia,”
she said in Cassandra’s voice. “Just concentrate on what you want, and
maybe you’ll get it.”
The flames crackled enticingly. Julia focused her new witch’s eyes on
them until she was concentrating fully. “Whoever is out there,” she
began in a tentative voice, “I ask that you hear me. This is not my body,
and I don’t want it. I want my own body back ... I want to be Julia
Hoffman again. If anyone is listening, please help me. Please undo the
wrong that has been done to me. Give me back my body! If anyone
can hear me, I ask that you please, please help me!”
Fortunately for Julia Hoffman, someone was listening, and they were
going to help her very, very soon.
3
“This ... this cannot be!” Tom Jennings backed away from the coffin
that lay before him like an enormous spider, his hands splayed out
before him in horror. His face contorted with fear. “Why is this coffin
here?” he groaned. The lid stood open, and Tom could see the sallow,
expressionless face of Barnabas Collins, sleeping blissfully. His chest
did not rise, his eyelids did not twitch; he was dead, but Tom had a
feeling that he really wasn’t dead at all. What kind of man was dead in
a coffin by day and alive at night? This was no “eye condition”; this
was something unspeakable, something monstrous —
Tom felt all the strength run out of his legs as Barnabas Collins’ eyes
flew open and focused on him with a malevolent vitality. He sank to the
floor, moaning weakly, and tried to scrabble away, but he found he
couldn’t move. He was rooted to the floor, and he couldn’t even force
his hands to pull him toward the stairs. Where was Julia? he wondered
as the man leapt nimbly from the coffin and loomed over him.
“Jennings,” Barnabas rumbled, his voice a deep and sinister baritone.
His face glowed green, and his eyes were an animal’s. “You have
made a grave mistake by coming here, Jennings.”
“I ... I won’t tell what I’ve seen,” he cried. His hair hung limply in his
face, and ice-cold rivers of sweat streamed down his forehead and
stung his eyes with their bitter salt. “I swear it!”
“I know you won’t,” Barnabas said, and took a deliberate step towards
him. “Because you’re not going to be able to tell anyone what you’ve
seen.”
“Please don’t hurt me!” Terror prickled his scalp, and he knew that his
hair was standing on end. His flesh was curled into hard little knots, and
the flesh of his testicles crawled.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Jennings,” Barnabas said, and his voice was
almost gentle. He held out one hand imperiously, and Tom found that he
was unable to stop himself from taking it, and then Barnabas was
pulling him to his feet with one ice-cold hand. He wore a dark gray
Inverness cape over his suit, and it fell about him like the wings of a
bat. Tom’s terrified mind finally offered up the word, the terrible,
disgusting word for the man — the Thing — that stood before him.
Vampire, he thought, and a swarm of dark spots floated in front of his
eyes. Vampire!
“What are you going to do with me?” he whispered. His throat felt full
of glass shards, and a whisper was all he could force out of his dried
lips.
“I can’t let you leave this house, Jennings,” Barnabas whispered back.
His eyes were locked on Tom’s — dark hazel eyes, but they were
sunken and rimmed with red — and Tom felt his fear draining away.
His resistance and his will followed. He found that he didn’t miss them.
Nothing else was important now, nothing but Barnabas. His head
leaned forward, his mouth reaching ... reaching ... and within that
mouth, that sly red mouth, were the teeth — so sharp ...
“Barnabas,” Tom whispered, but then that cold mouth settled on his
throat and paused. Tom closed his eyes and waited.
When the teeth sank into the skin and pierced the jugular vein, Tom
stiffened and moaned, and wrapped his arms around Barnabas as the
vampire pulled him tighter into his embrace. The blood flowed hot and
sweet into Barnabas’ mouth, and they rocked in time to the rhythm of
the terrible sucking. Tom’s eyes rolled back in his head and his groans
became louder. Abruptly Barnabas released him, and he sank
bonelessly to the floor where he began to shiver uncontrollably. Blood
and foul spittle trickled from the two gaping wounds in his throat.
Stricken and horrified with himself, Barnabas stood over him, glaring
helplessly.
“What have I done?” he growled. “What have I done?”
4
Cassandra grinned sadistically and rubbed her — rather, Julia’s —
palms together. The dry, whickering sound was music to her ears.
Finally, she thought, full access to her lab and to all her secrets. At last
the ability to destroy Barnabas Collins is at my fingertips. I will send
him back to eternal darkness and Julia Hoffman will follow when I
regain my rightful body. And what could be a more fitting punishment
for the woman who thinks she can love a vampire?
The lab equipment sprawled before her, strung out across a plain
wooden table and across the tiny basement room below the room
where Barnabas kept his coffin. I had no idea this was here, Cassandra
marveled. And Nicholas calls me a fool, yet he has helped me, and he’ll
never know. I’ll never tell him how I deciphered Julia’s secrets and
sent Barnabas back to the darkness again. But I’ll do it ... oh yes, I’ll
do it.
She raised the ax she’d discovered in a forgotten corner draped with
cobwebs and held it aloft. “Soon Barnabas will lose the daylight,”
Cassandra whispered in the tones of Julia Hoffman, “and his world will
be as black as that dark night he is forced to —”
“JULIA!”
She paused, the ax hefted in mid-air, stunned surprise spooling across
her face. She whirled around to face an enraged Barnabas, his lips
smeared black with blood, his face twisted into a monstrous grimace,
and even as he rushed at her the ax fell from her numb fingers, for
somewhere someone was chanting forbidden words, and thunder was
crashing, and the world was shrieking around her, and emerald patterns
like cat’s eyes glowed before her —
Barnabas paused with his hands extended into claws, his craggy
eyebrows drawn up in surprise as Julia’s eyes rolled up in her head and
she collapsed to the floor. “Julia?” he whispered as he knelt beside her,
absently wiping the blood off his lips. She moaned as he lifted her into
his arms. Guttural words, nonsensical, fell from her lips, and he strained,
trying with all his might to understand them.
“ — Sard,” she whispered, and her head lashed back and forth as her
body spasmed uncontrollably in his arms. “ — ia ia shuggeth ... by
Satanas and —”
“Julia,” Barnabas whispered, alarm and a kind of tenderness blending in
his speech. “Oh Julia, what’s she done to you?”
“ — Barabbas and the Devil cursed be —” Her eyes opened suddenly
and the spasms ceased, and she blinked. Confusion clouded her hazel
eyes, but recognition filled them, and she whispered, “Barnabas?
Barnabas, is that you?”
“Yes, Julia,” Barnabas said. She moaned deep in her throat as he
helped her up.
“You ... you know who I am,” she murmured, and then coughed,
waving her hand at him apologetically. “You recognize me, I mean.”
“Of course I do,” Barnabas said, unable to prevent impatience from
creeping into his tone. “You’re Julia Hoffman.”
“Oh, thank god,” she said, and began to pat her pockets. “Damn.
Where are my cigarettes?”
“Julia, what happened?” Barnabas demanded, leading her over to a
chair. She sank into it gratefully and looked up at him. “I found you only
a moment ago with an ax.” His tone was accusatory now, and Julia
didn’t like it one bit. “You looked as though you were about to destroy
the equipment.”
“But you stopped me in time?” Julia asked, but then answered her own
question as her eyes swept over the lab equipment, unharmed, still
spread out over the table. “She almost succeeded in ruining the entire
experiment,” Julia breathed, sighing with relief, “but she failed. Thank
god for small favors.”
“’She’?” Barnabas asked, and then his shoulders slumped. “Of
course,” he said. “I don’t even have to ask. You’re referring, of course,
to Cassandra Collins.”
“She switched our bodies, Barnabas,” Julia said with a tired sigh,
watching him ruefully as his mouth opened and then closed again with a
snap. “I don’t know how she did it or how she brought me back, but
Cassandra must be responsible.”
“Then you know all about her,” Barnabas said, his voice papery and
thin, like the sighing of the wind. “What she is ... her powers —” He
lifted his head and stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘how she brought
you back’?”
“You should sit down too, Barnabas,” Julia said with a wan smile. “This
may take awhile.” Barnabas’ face was positively twitching with
nervousness, Julia suddenly noted, and whatever exuberance she felt at
returning to her own time and her own body began to fade when she
noticed the dark stains that still remained at the corners of his mouth.
“Barnabas,” she began slowly, “what ... what’s happened?”
“We don’t have much time, Julia,” Barnabas said. His voice was thick
with shame, and he refused to meet her eyes. “You’ll have to tell me
later, but right now someone in this house needs your help. I think — I
think he may even be dying.”
Alarm made her voice shrill. “Who are you talking about, Barnabas?”
His eyes were on the floor, and his voice was almost too low to hear,
but she caught the name, and her gut wrenched and dark, cold water
filled her mouth. “Tom Jennings,” Barnabas said, and she nearly
fainted.
“Why?” she screamed, and flew at him, pounding her fists savagely
against his chest, his face, raining blow after blow on the demon before
her. “Bastard, you bastard,” she screamed. She sagged against him,
struggling feebly, and her face was pressed against his chest, wetting it
with her tears. I can’t take this, she thought, and looked up at him with
puffy red eyes and a face made a mask of tragedy with despair.
“Why?” she whispered as he held her up. “Why?”
“I couldn’t help myself,” he groaned, and Julia could hear the shame
that clotted his voice. She took a deep breath and held it, closing her
eyes and waiting for him to continue. “He found my coffin, Julia. He
must have followed you — Angelique — down here just before the sun
set. He was standing over me when I woke up.” His face trembled,
and Julia realized that he was holding back tears. He’s in such pain, she
thought, and none of it — NONE OF IT — is his fault. “You know
what this curse has made me,” he continued in a low, pain-filled voice.
“You know what I’ve become ... what the animal in me ... makes me
do. I’ve been running and hiding for so long that I didn’t know what
else to do.” He paused again, then continued in a small voice that was
almost boyish with shame. “I didn’t take very much, Julia, but I want
you to look at him. He was ... so pale —”
“Get my medical bag,” Julia said, relieved at the calm authority that
came so easily to her. She wiped the tears away from her face with the
back of her hand and stepped briskly out of his arms. “If there’s any
chance of saving him, this may be it.”
He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“When I disappeared, Barnabas,” Julia said, “there were only a few
treatments left to administer. I think we may be able to save Tom’s life
— and yours — tonight. Right now.” Hope in rosy rays dawned on
Barnabas’ face as Julia said, “One last treatment should cure you,
Barnabas. Permanently.”
5
When the all-encompassing roar of the wind faded at last from her ears
and the dizziness subsided, Cassandra opened her eyes and blinked.
She moaned and placed a trembling hand to her forehead and another
groped out for anything that would steady her. What happened? she
wondered, and blinked her eyes rapidly. Where’s my ax? Did Barnabas
stop me? Then she glanced around at her surroundings and felt her
heart stop.
The hideous green couch. The flames flickering merrily in the fireplace.
The grim portrait of Thaddeus Collins glaring at her from the mantle.
The drawing room, she thought sinkingly, I’m back in the drawing
room. She raised her hand and frowned. It was pale and flowed
smoothly from the black velvet sleeve that encased it. And back in my
own body it seems, she thought. But how —?
“You needn’t look so surprised, my dear,” Nicholas said, and
Cassandra cried out as he materialized before her, his hands behind his
back and his chest puffed out quite proudly. “Of course you’ve
returned to your own body. Did you honestly think I’d let you remain
anywhere else?”
“Nicholas,” Cassandra began haltingly, “I ... I can explain —”
“That won’t be necessary,” Nicholas said dismissively. His voice was
deceptively calm, but Cassandra knew that he was angry — maybe
even furious — with her, and that she had to tread very carefully from
now on. “I know everything.”
Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” she said carefully. “Do you?”
“Of course!” he chuckled. “I know how you pawed so eagerly through
my spellbook, and how you found the body-switching spell, and I know
who you used it on.”
“I found out what I wanted to know,” Cassandra said daringly. “What
you ordered me to find out.” She forced herself to maintain her own
calmness. He won’t destroy me, she thought to herself; he NEEDS me
here. They won’t let him stay if I ... if I became —
But she cut that thought off quickly enough.
“Did you?” he asked.
“I was so close to destroying the experiment,” she said eagerly. “I had
the ax in my hand when ...” Her voice trailed off and fury reared its
ugly head, making her voice sharp as realization struck like a stinging
slap. “You!” she cried. “You switched us back, didn’t you!”
“I had to,” Nicholas said. “You’ve always been a bungler, Cassandra,
and you bungled this quite efficiently as well.”
“What are you talking about?” she screamed, her fists clenched with
rage.
“While you were off traipsing about the Old House with your idiotic ax,
did it never occur to you where Julia Hoffman was?”
“She was in my body,” Cassandra said tiredly. “I know that, Nicholas,
but —”
“And,” he said, over-riding her easily, “did it never occur to you that
she had access to all your secrets?”
“That’s insane,” Cassandra declared. “She couldn’t possibly know how
to use my powers, and what would she do with them if she could?”
Nicholas’ voice was low and dangerous as he hissed, “I’m not talking
about your powers, you little fool. I’m talking about your secrets, and
I’m talking about accessing them through me.”
“Through ... through you?” Cassandra whispered. That possibility had
never occurred to her. Though she really didn’t know much about Julia
Hoffman, she had figured her to be a rather shallow ninny type who
would lose her head and descend gracefully into madness the moment
she realized she wasn’t in her own body anymore. Obviously she’s
more resourceful than I reckoned, Cassandra thought with grudging
admiration.
“If you had warned me, I may have allowed you to engineer this
sophomoric little scheme,” Nicholas growled, “but you didn’t warn me,
and in my own foolishness I allowed Julia Hoffman to learn almost
everything you plan to do. I even used your real name, Cassandra.” His
face darkened. “And she let me do it, too. She didn’t even try to
convince me of who she really was.”
“What are you going to do now?” Cassandra quavered.
“There is nothing I really can do, is there?” Nicholas snapped. “It’s too
late to erase her memories. That kind of thing can be done successfully
within a certain window of time, and by now she’s certainly related all
she knows to Barnabas Collins anyway. No, my dear, we’ll just have to
allow Julia Hoffman to know all about you.” His voice was slick and
purring now. “Besides, you really don’t have to worry, do you? I mean,
with all the powers at your disposal, certainly you can keep one mortal
woman at bay, can’t you?” His eyes glinted savagely. “Or perhaps
something else stands in your way. Are you really certain of your
feelings for your intended victim, my dear?” He stood very near to her,
and whispered into her ear, “Are you sure you hate Barnabas Collins?”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed. “How else could I possibly feel?”
“You loved him once,” he said silkily. “Are you sure that a speck of
that love doesn’t still remain?”
“I hate Barnabas Collins,” Cassandra said resolutely. “He has defied
me, and I cannot allow that to go unpunished. I will destroy Barnabas
Collins, Nicholas. You will see!” She thrust out her chin defiantly. “You
needn’t worry, Nicholas. I can handle Julia Hoffman.”
“With you, Cassandra,” Nicholas said almost wearily, “I must always
worry.” He faded away rapidly, leaving her alone to stew. Gnawing on
one knuckle, Cassandra sauntered over to the fireplace and sank to the
hearth. Why did Nicholas ask me that? she wondered. Of course I hate
Barnabas Collins. After everything he’s done to me, is there any other
way I could feel?
And, as she did so often these days since being reunited with Barnabas,
her mind drifted back to those long lost days of 1795, when she had
been only a servant girl, young, inexperienced, terrified and alone in a
cold winter country with no friends and no one to turn to. No one
except Barnabas, Cassandra thought bitterly; all the way from
Martinique I waited for him, to see him, longed for him to hold me in his
arms. Sometimes it was only the thought of him that kept me alive
through that awful three month voyage. And then to arrive in the middle
of a blinding snowstorm only to be turned away —
“Barnabas?” the serving girl who had been Angelique Bouchard
whispered at the door of the man she loved. It was late October in the
year 1795, and she and the Countess DuPres had arrived only an hour
or two ago. The carriage that had carried them from Collinsport had, as
the Countess predicted, stuck in the pig-sties that passed for roads, but
Angelique hadn’t cared. I am so near to him now, she had told herself;
excitement blazing in her breast threatened to become an inferno. She
had cast away her mud-spotted garments in favor of a soft blue dress,
empire-waisted, that had once belonged to Mademoiselle, and now
stood outside his door, trembling with anticipation.
“Angelique, you shouldn’t have come here.” It WAS Barnabas; the
same autumn-haunted eyes, the same twining dark hair, the same
hollow cheekbones and powerful hands, the same broad chest straining
beneath a green frilled vest. She frowned. If this was her Barnabas, the
man who had loved her so ardently those weeks in Martinique, then
why was he saying such things to her?
She slid into his room like a dark eddy of water, and closed the door
behind her. She decided to ignore the chill of doubt that his frown
elicited in her, and smiled lasciviously instead. “I waited for you, but you
did not come to me,” she purred. “So I decided to invite myself in.”
Barnabas shook his head and expelled all his breath in a single, tired
sigh. He walked slowly and with heavy footsteps back to his chair,
where the book he had been absorbed in lay open with its cover to the
sky. “I couldn’t come, Angelique,” he said. “I couldn’t continue to lead
you on.”
She froze, one hand on the doorknob and the other clenched into a fist
at her side. Her eyes were wide and sparkling blue with shock. “I don’t
understand,” she whispered, and dashed across the room until she
faced him. “You are so cold now, as cold as the wind outside this
house. Everything here is so cold and gray and dead, but you weren’t
always, not in Martinique. Here, you are different.” Her blue eyes
searched his face. “Why are you different now?”
He put both hands on her shoulders and held her away from himself, at
a safe distance, she thought, and felt the first shards of anger begin to
tear at her. “I am engaged to Josette,” Barnabas said carefully, as
though she were an ignorant child.
“I know,” she returned, and managed to control her temper. “But I also
know that you don’t love her. How could anyone love someone so
spoiled, so pampered? And I know YOU, mon cher. I know that the
same fire that burns within you burns just as hot in me. Our destines
are entwined, Barnabas. I thought you would never forget that.”
His face was pocked with guilt, and Angelique felt a heavy wave of
disgust fall over her like a shroud. “I ... haven’t forgotten, Angelique,”
he said. “But what we meant to each other in Martinique ...” He
gestured helplessly. “It’s impossible. It’s finished. It MUST be finished.
Forever.”
“Forever?” she said. “You don’t know what that means, Barnabas.”
"I do,” he said fervently, and his eyes became distant. “These feelings I
have for Josette are forever, and that is the fact of it. She and I will
marry after she arrives, and she will be the only woman I will ever
love.”
She stared at him, aghast, and cried out in a miserable, cheated voice,
“You can’t mean that!”
He returned her stare resolutely. “I’m afraid that I can.”
“What about all those sweet words you whispered to me in Martinique?
Did they mean nothing?”
“They meant something then,” Barnabas said, “but only then. I told you,
Angelique, that is all over now.”
“No!” she cried, and stumbled away from him. She felt numb, as
though she’d fallen through a thin, deceitful pane of ice and into a
freezing torrent. All my hopes, she thought as her head throbbed and
spun, all my plans ... all for nothing. For nothing! “No, I will not allow
this to be so!”
“There is nothing you can do,” Barnabas said softly. “I’m sorry,
Angelique. I never should have ...” His words trailed off, and he
shrugged. “But what’s done is done. What we had was beautiful, but it
was over. I tried to send you away —”
“I did not want to hear that,” Angelique said hotly.
“— but you wouldn’t listen to me,” Barnabas finished sadly. “I never
meant to hurt you, Angelique. Please believe that.”
“Barnabas,” Angelique said, and her voice was ice. So was her heart.
“You have deceived me, and I will never forgive you.”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you!” Barnabas cried, and she was glad to
see an emotion at last. I’ve touched him, she thought; there may be
hope after all.
“This will never be over,” Angelique said, and her voice smoldered.
“You will see, Barnabas. You will see.” Her own voice followed her
back through the corridors of time to where a woman named
Cassandra Collins sat, two hundred years later, on the same estate,
with the same feelings alternately freezing and scalding her heart. “You
will see, Barnabas,” Cassandra whispered. Her face was deadly pale,
and her lips trembled. Her eyes glowed in hollow sockets, and they
were frenetic, almost mad.
She rose from the hearth and stalked over to the French windows. The
night outside was as black as the thoughts buzzing within her skull and
she willed a storm to brew on the horizon. She had come so far from
the naive, trembling servant speckled with mud and sent back to her
room alone, and she would never return to that lowly state again . I am
mistress of this estate now, she thought; I am one of the mighty
Collinses again, as I was meant to be. I failed to keep my position in
1795, and again in 1897, but I will not fail again. And with Hecate as
my witness, I will drive Barnabas Collins to his knees.
6
“He’s sleeping,” Julia said hours later; without the ancient house where
they battled a war against the supernatural, the eastern sky was tinged
with pink. Barnabas watched her apprehensively as she moved past
him like a shadow and began to descend the staircase. They had
brought Tom to Josette’s room where Julia had watched him and given
him an injection of something (Barnabas couldn’t ascertain what)
before they had continued with the experiment. Now, several hours and
two injections later, they stood in the drawing room of the Old House.
“The sun will rise soon,” Barnabas said softly, and Julia nodded. Her
face was stone, almost impossible to read. Dammit, he thought angrily,
why do I allow her to make me feel like such a child? Why does she
have this power over me? “Julia, please,” he said urgently, and gently
touched her hand. “Please, talk to me.”
She turned to face him, and he was startled to see that tears trembled
in her eyes, catching the light like a thousand prisms. “I understand
everything, Barnabas, I told you that,” she said, and it was true. While
they waited for the first injection to course through his veins, she had
explained everything about her mysterious voyage to the past. “I realize
that none of this is your fault, that Angelique made you what you are.”
Her voice was breaking now, and her chest hitched with barely
contained sobs. “But ... but Barnabas, I don’t know if this is all worth it.
Tom —” She made a vague gesture towards the staircase, and then
doubled over. Barnabas caught her and held her up, and she batted him
away. She stood behind his chair and took several deep breaths before
she resumed. “What you did to Tom was horrible, Barnabas,” she said,
and he stared dully at the ground. “The wounds on his neck have
disappeared, and that is an excellent sign, but you might have killed
him.” She took another deep breath. “And if you had done that, I would
have stopped all the experiments. Immediately. And forever.” She
stared at him, suddenly furious. “Forever. I think you know what that
means.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Julia,” Barnabas said, and still he
refused to meet her eyes. “You have given me so much these past few
weeks. You’ve offered me hope for the future. You have given me
another chance at life. And I swear to you —” He looked up at her and
met her gaze, and she felt something within her trembled and then
break, and it was as if there was a singing in her, a blaze of light over a
vast glass-surface ocean, and she knew that she loved this man, and oh,
how it hurt her. How it killed her. “I swear to you that I will never harm
anyone again. I mean, it Julia.”
She crossed the room until she stood face to face with him, and took his
hand in hers without breaking eye contact. She squeezed it once and
said, “I believe you, Barnabas. I believe everything.”
He broke away from her abruptly and walked to the window. “The sun
is about to rise,” he said, his voice thick and choked. “We will know
soon what your cure really means.”
He can never love you, Julia, she told herself sternly, but stood next to
him nevertheless. “You should be alone,” she said softly, “to watch
your first sunrise.”
“No,” he said fiercely, and she faced him, shocked. “When I see my
first sunrise in two hundred years, I want to watch it with the woman
who made it all possible.”
They stood in silence for the next half hour as the blackness of night
faded as dawn’s rose petals blossomed across the sky. The shadows
crept farther and farther away until the sun glittered proudly, an
enormous, fiery jewel above them, casting both Julia and Barnabas in
its rays.
Julia eyes were wide with amazement. “Barnabas,” she whispered, and
he turned to face her, his face frozen with fear. “Barnabas, you’re all
right. You’re ... you’re cured!” Laughing and crying she flung herself
into his arms. “You’re cured, you’re cured, Barnabas! Barnabas,
you’re cured!”
“I owe it all to you, Julia,” he said tenderly. “And I’m going to do
everything in my power to repay you.”
Cassandra scowled at Collinwood, where she sat in her bedroom with a
large crystal for scrying in one hand. It had belonged to Miranda DuVal
in 1897, and before her death (at that time), she had hidden it in one of
the rooms in the West Wing, and as soon as she had returned as
Cassandra she had recovered it. She used it now to summon an image
of Barnabas and Julia. It wasn’t always successful, but her desperate
need had conjured a perfect image of the two of them — in each
other’s arms! — embracing as
the sun rose, harmlessly casting Barnabas in its rays.
He was cured. CURED. And there was nothing she could do about it.
The crystal thumped to the floor. She was suddenly cold all over. I’ve
failed, she thought, nauseated, I’ve failed; Barnabas is a human again,
and Nicholas will destroy me!
She rose hastily from the bureau and paced beside the bed, where her
fool of a husband slept, snoring slightly. She gnawed at her lower lip
furiously, and finally decided to slip noiselessly out of the room. She
made her way into the drawing room and shut and locked the doors,
then knelt beside the fireplace, thinking a million miles an hour. There
must be something I can do, she thought as panic clawed delicately at
her chest. Something I can do before Nicholas finds out!
Barnabas will come over, she knew it, sometime this afternoon to gloat
over her. He and Julia both, she thought, as soon as they take Tom
Jennings —
She paused. Tom Jennings, she thought. He slipped into the house just
after I went into the laboratory and found Barnabas’ coffin in the
basement, and then Barnabas attacked him. She knew because she had
listened via her crystal as Julia had explained her voyage into the past,
and how Tom would recover if Barnabas’ cure proved effectual. As it
obviously had, Cassandra though bitterly, because the wounds have
vanished from Tom’s throat.
But what if someone reopened them?
Cassandra’s eyes widened. Now, she thought, there’s an idea. A
brilliant idea, as a matter of fact. Perhaps Barnabas’ cure won’t prove
as permanent as the good doctor hoped.
She waved her hand in the air, and a moment later she held a small clay
doll in her hand. A fire blazed into life in the fireplace unaided, and
Cassandra smirked devilishly. “In the name of Cernunnos, the Horned
One, I name thee Tom Jennings,” she said to the doll, and in the other
hand a pin with two points materialized. “Through you I will reach out
to Barnabas Collins, and through you I will return the curse to him
again.”
She concentrated until an image of Tom appeared before her, reclining
on Josette’s bed. His shirt was open to the waist, and Cassandra could
see how pale he was, even if the marks had vanished from his neck.
His eyelids fluttered, and he moaned slightly. Perfect, she thought; the
spell can begin. “Agency of Ineffable Name and Vast Strength,” she
chanted, staring at the doll. “Ancient dark One, thou whose word is as
stone; Thou ancient and alone impenetrable One! Thou old and cunning,
supreme in artifice, bringer of ruin and despair, be present here and
lend thy aid! Be propitious to me in my undertaking and do my bidding
as I command!” She raised the pin, and grinned wickedly as a swirl of
red sparks, hot as hellfire, whirled around the point. Her grin widened
as she drove the pin into the neck of the doll, and across the estate,
knew the moment that Tom Jennings reared up with a piercing cry of
pain, then fell back, hand at his throat, as blood gushed in a crimson
freshet from the re-opened wounds on his throat.
Barnabas looked to Julia, the joy wiped from his face, and asked, “Did
you hear something?”
“Tom,” she whispered, and together they dashed up the stairs.
“I don’t understand,” Barnabas said as she fumbled with the doorknob.
“Why did he cry out? He shouldn’t remember anything, Julia. Once
free of my control all his memories should be erased!”
“We don’t know anything for sure, Barnabas,” Julia said grimly. “If
Tom is awake, he can tell us what the matter is.” They both drew in
their breath and held it as Julia flung open the door. And then Julia
screamed.
“My god,” Barnabas whispered as Julia rushed to the bedside and knelt
beside Tom, whose eyes stared upwards, fixed on a point on the ceiling
that he couldn’t see at all. His mouth hung slack. The wounds on his
throat glared at them like fiery eyes, and the sheets around him were
soaked crimson.
Julia clasped his wrist between her index and middle finger, then
pressed her ear against his mouth, then turned back to Barnabas, her
face pale and bleak. “Barnabas,” she whispered, “Barnabas ... Tom ...
Tom is — dead!”
TO BE CONTINUED...
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