Chapter 66: In the Blood
by Nicky
(Voiceover by Humbert Allen Astredo): “This is a
troubled time in the great
house of Collinwood.
For one woman has returned from a terrifying and
frightening journey to the past, back to the year
1897, and though things have
changed in the big house, even more things remain the
same. Something is
rising, something ferocious and old, and Victoria
Winters may prove the key to
its banishment — or to the destruction of everything
she holds dear.”
1
"Snakes,” David said, and yawned. “Big deal.”
Amy’s face reddened, and she cursed the fact that she
wasn’t tall enough to
even look Mr.
High and Mighty David Collins in the eye. Perhaps, she thought
ruefully, perhaps a smart kick to the shin might help
me feel better. But then
she figured he’d only kick her back, or twist her arm
behind her back, or
something else spectacularly awful, yet completely
keeping in character,
because the littlest Collins was a monster.
But he was also Amy’s only friend.
“It’s more than a nightmare, David,” she said, and
hated how her voice
squeaked. He
raised a bored eyebrow, and she thought furiously, I’m going to
be a woman someday, and then my voice won’t squeak,
and you’ll want me so bad
it hurts.
Probably. “It is!” she said,
indignant.
“Amy,” David said, in his most patronizing,
aren’t-we-great-pals? voice, “I
think we’re both a little too old for these silly
children’s games. Don’t
you?”
“This is not a game, David,” Amy said through gritted
teeth. “I heard Chris
telling Dr.
Hoffman that he was having snake dreams, and so was she, and after
I woke up the other night I saw one in my room.” The
eyebrow went up another
notch. Despair
filled her like icy water. “David, I’m
telling you the truth!”
“Big deal if you are,” David said. “What do I care about your dreams for
anyway?”
“Because something is happening here!” Amy cried. “Something bad.” Her lower
lip began to tremble despite herself. “I think someone might get hurt.”
“You know this because of your stupid dreams about
snakes?” David sniggered.
“Wow, you’ve got some imagination for a girl.”
“I’m not just a girl,” she growled dangerously.
“Keep telling yourself that,” David said, and jumped
off the edge of the bed he
had perched on.
“Now get out of my room. I got
stuff to do. Important stuff.
No girls allowed.”
She felt tears well up in her eyes, and stifled a
sob. But David had already
turned away, and began to fuss with something that
looked like a disassembled
model airplane.
She wanted to tell him how there was a room in her dream, and
she knew that it was a real room, in a real place, but
she didn’t knew how she
knew. There was
a voice, and it explained things to her, but it spoke in a
language she couldn’t understand. She was supposed to find this place — they
both were, she and David Collins — but she couldn’t do
it without him. Except
she couldn’t tell him any of this because he refused
to listen to her, because
he was a big dumb boy.
Amy stomped her foot furiously, then ran from the room
and slammed the door behind her.
The minute she was gone, David dropped the plastic
pieces back onto his desk,
then walked calmly to the door and locked it. A smile, long and poisonous,
grew like a blade across his face, and his teeth
gleamed white.
2
Maggie frowned at her reflection in the rear-view
mirror of the sporty little
red convertible Nicholas had provided her (a Solstice
present, he assured her),
and adjusted her bangs. Her hair was still coal-black, and that was
fine with
her. Better
than that mousy red-brown color she’d inherited from her mother,
whoever the hell she was, because Maggie couldn’t
remember her. Pop only kept
one picture of her, framed beside his bed. A saintly woman, or so Maggie had
always been told.
So boring.
She was only a little disturbed at the changes about
herself she noticed
infrequently, the ones connected, she was certain,
with the magic she was
experimenting with.
The black eyes bothered her most of all — there was
something supremely creepy about them when they were
like that, as if all the
light were sucked out of her, leaving her dark and
cold — but the hair was
kinda neat. And
it hadn’t come out of a box either. It
just sort of ...
happened. Just
like her amazing array of powers had just happened.
“Looking for flaws, my dear?” Nicholas purred beside
her.
“Checking my mascara,” she answered. She wiped at the corner of her eye, and
only succeeded in smearing it. “Damn,” she hissed.
“You’re beautiful.” His sharp white teeth grazed her
earlobe, and she shivered
with pleasure.
“Stop that,” she said, and giggled a little. “You’ll make it worse.”
“You look radiant,” he said. “My own black goddess.”
“Thank you.” She beamed at him, pleased. “Don’t be long. It’s snowing again.”
“Make it stop.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Not into upsetting the balance of the weather today.
Sorry, Charlie.
If you want a hurricane or a tsunami or fire to rain from the
heavens, then you do it.”
He kissed her, and she felt his tongue squirming in
her mouth. “That’s my
girl,” he said when he released her, and slid like an
eel out of the car.
“I’ll see what the illustrious Dr. Hoffman requires of me, and when I return,
we can ...” He wagged his eyebrows at her
suggestively, and then made his way
to the front door of Collinwood, whistling as he
went.
The smile faded from Maggie’s face. Yes, she thought coldly, there are many
changes at work in me.
A new road unfolding before me, and I have to follow
it.
And maybe I’ll follow it alone.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
3
“You wanted to see me, Dr. Hoffman?” Nicholas removed his jaunty teal
bowler
and held it sedately with both hands. He stood politely before the sofa in the
drawing room, where Julia reclined with one arm
stretched across its back. The
doors were locked, and a fire crackled merrily in the
fireplace.
“I did,” she said, maintaining a careful neutrality in
her voice. “Would you
care for a drink, Mr.
Blair?”
“I don’t have little vices, Dr. Hoffman,” he said cheerfully. “And why don’t
you call me ‘Nicholas’? We’re neighbors, after all. I really think we should
become better acquainted.”
“I’m certain we will,” Julia said. “Mr.
Blair.”
“Dr. Hoffman?”
“Why don’t we cut the crap, if you’ll pardon the
expression.” Julia’s eyes
smoldered, and her mouth was drawn up tight, and
Nicholas realized belatedly
that the woman was furious. Her long white fingers drummed a heated
tattoo
against the back of the ugly green sofa.
“I’m not certain what you mean,” Nicholas said. I’m so intrigued, he thought;
who knew that Julia Hoffman was so interesting? Such a spitfire! My kind of
woman.
“I know what you are.” Julia’s voice was low and
acidic, and rumbled, like the
warning growl of a lioness.
“I’ve been described as a great many things by many
people. I’d be most
interested in hearing your description. Most interested indeed.”
Julia rose and poured herself another brandy. Her cheeks flowered with color,
and when she turned around to face him, her eyes threw
out emerald sparks.
“You’re not human.”
Nicholas clutched at his chest. “Dr.
Hoffman, you cut me to the quick!”
“You needn’t play games with me. Cassandra Collins was a witch.”
Nicholas arched an eyebrow. “And I’m her brother, therefore I’m a ...” He
cocked his head and tilted his eyes heavenward, as if
searching for the proper
noun. “... warlock?”
“I knew Cassandra in the past,” Julia said, and her
lip curled back. “I knew
her when she was a simple serving girl named
Angelique, when she blackmailed
Barnabas Collins into marrying her. I was there the night she was stabbed, and
I saw what her curse did to Barnabas.” Julia strode up
and glared up into
Nicholas’ face.
“I know you’re responsible for what’s happened to him somehow,
Mr. Blair, and
you’re going to tell me all about it, because I won’t let you
hurt him, I won’t!”
Nicholas’ eyes glared at her for a moment — the
audacity! he thought — then
the wrinkles in his brow smoothed out, and he smiled
beatifically at her. “My
dear, dear, dear Dr.
Hoffman. Your imagination is
boundless, I am certain,
and I must admit, I am vastly amused by these ... ahem ...
accusations. I
hesitate to call them flights of fancy, since you seem
to believe in them
whole-heartedly, but honestly ...” He squinted down at
her. “You don’t really
believe any of that, do you?”
“Barnabas Collins has disappeared,” Julia hissed. “I know you’re responsible.”
“Why would I want Barnabas Collins to disappear?”
“For the same reason you wanted Eliot Stokes out of
the picture. I know you
had a hand in that too, Mr. Blair.
Eliot was on to something about you, and I
only wish I knew what it was. But I think he had figured out a way to
destroy
you once and for all, and you ... you did something to him, and now you’ve
done something to Barnabas.”
“Dr. Hoffman,”
Nicholas said quietly, “if I were ...
er, what you say I am
... why would I
stand here, quietly accepting these verbal blows you insist on
volleying towards me?
If I had these great powers you ascribe me, wouldn’t I
simply wave my hands and make you disappear?”
Julia’s chin jutted out defiantly. “You know you’d never get away with it,”
she said. “You
know that I’d be missed in this house, and that suspicion would
come around to you eventually.”
“I know no such thing.”
“You should.
Unless you’re a greater fool than I originally figured.”
Anger flared for a moment in the icy wasteland of his
chest, and he was
startled to find that she had, indeed, touched a nerve
inside of him. She’s
threatening me, he thought, aghast, and said quietly,
“I should be very
cautious if I were you, Dr. Hoffman.”
“I wasn’t afraid to summon you here.”
“My curiosity, and my curiosity alone brought me
here. You are either
inhumanely brave, or a complete fool, if I am what you
assume.”
“I care only about Barnabas’ safety. You are dispensable, Mr. Blair.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea of Barnabas Collins’
whereabouts,” Nicholas
said, and the fury in him boiled out in his voice,
“and I wouldn’t tell you now
even if I did.” He slammed the hat down on his
head. “Good day, Doctor.”
“Step carefully, Mr.
Blair,” Julia called, and he froze with one hand on the
doorknob.
“Eliot Stokes figured out how to defeat you, and I will too.”
Nicholas bared his teeth in a silent snarl, then tore
open the drawing room
doors and slammed them behind him.
Maggie appraised him with wide-eyes a few seconds
later. “Didn’t go as well as
you’d hoped, huh,” she said. He merely glared at her, but she shrugged it
off.
“What did the old bitch want?”
Nicholas drummed his gloved fingers furiously against
the dash of the car.
“She thinks she can threaten me,” he said, and his
sharp teeth ground together,
and Maggie quailed for a moment as the pupils of his
eyes began to grow, to
blacken, and his voice dropped until it because a
deep, inhuman bass, like the
grinding of the earth’s plates. “She thinks she can talk to me that way —
thinks she can make a fool of me, order me about —”
The air began to darken
about them, and it felt heavy and oppressive, and
Maggie began to smell the
distinct odor of ozone. Thunder rumbled somewhere far away.
“Nicholas —” Maggie said, her voice not quite a
whimper.
When he looked back at her, he was smiling again, and
his eyes and teeth were
normal. Or, she
amended, as normal as they ever were.
“I’m sorry, my dear,”
he said, charming as ever. “I was just thinking out loud.”
“Julia threatened you?”
“She tried,” Nicholas said. “The poor dear is concerned about Barnabas
Collins, and apparently is as in the dark as we are
concerning his whereabouts.
However, she did make some interesting points
regarding my future, not only at
Collinwood, but on this planet.”
Maggie sighed.
“She did threaten you. Honestly,
Nicholas, you are so
sensitive sometimes —”
He ignored her.
“I think the time has come to deal with Dr. Hoffman.
Yes, I
think that time is long overdue.”
“Deal with her?
What are you going to do?”
Nicholas chuckled.
“Oh, not me, my dear. Oh no. Too suspicious, as she
pointed out.” His eyes looked through the windshield
and out to the sea that
sprawled, black and choppy, before them. “I think I’ll call in a favor from an
old friend of mine.
I think a favor is just the sort of thing I need ...”
4
The snow had turned to rain by dusk, and Chris
Jennings watched it fall in a
gray curtain from the leaden sky that grew darker and
darker with every passing
minute. So am
I, he thought mournfully, and turned away from the window with a
scowl marring his face. He gritted his teeth together. The moon was racing
towards full, and in a little over a week it would
ride through the sky,
bloated and a cold, winter white, and it didn’t matter
if the clouds hid its
deathly face or not.
The moon would find him. And
change him.
Not if Julia’s injections start having an effect.
And when would that be? Chris sighed heavily, and shook his
head. He wanted
to run away — that hadn’t changed — but where would he
go? Besides, he told
himself, I can’t let Quentin down. He’s here for me even if no one else is.
He poured himself a cup of coffee in the caretaker’s
cottage’s little kitchen,
and added a dash of cream and two scoops of
sugar. He sipped it, and grimaced
a little as the bitter heat scalded his tongue. He set it on the table, and
sank into one of the wooden chairs that had come with
the place.
Julia had stopped by to administer another injection
about an hour before, and
also to fill him in on her plans for the evening. She and Victoria Winters
were going to visit Eliot Stokes in his hospital room
and try an experiment of
sorts. Julia
had explained that Vicki was exhibiting a phenomenal array of
healing powers, and Julia hoped that Vicki could use
them to wake Stokes from
his coma. “I
had myself a little showdown with Nicholas Blair at Collinwood
this afternoon,” she told him after the needle was
removed from his arm and a
hazy wreath of cigarette smoke encircled her
head. “I think I laid things out
for him pretty plain, but he claims that he doesn’t
know anything about
Barnabas’ disappearance.”
Chris had raised an eyebrow. “So you think ...”
Julia returned the expression. “I’m not completely sure,” she said, “but I
had
the most disturbing feeling that he was being
completely sincere.”
“Julia,” Chris said, grinning a little, “the man’s an
emissary of the devil.
One of the bad guys, I believe. Why would you trust him?”
“I don’t. It’s
just a feeling I have. I think Nicholas,
for once, is as
clueless as we are.
Which bothers me more than it should.” She began to tug
restlessly on the sleeve of her blouse. “I was hoping that he would know
something, be smug, or threaten to withhold
information. Something to go on.
But he didn’t.
And if he’s not responsible ...” Her voice trailed off, and she
took another drag off her cigarette.
“Are you sure that confronting him was such a good
idea?”
“No. But I was
fresh out of ideas, and I was enjoying an adrenaline high at
the time. I may
have ... said some things that ... perhaps ...
I shouldn’t
have.”
“Uh oh. Such
as?”
“I may have threatened to have him destroyed.”
“Oh, Julia.”
“Which is why getting Eliot up and out of that
hospital bed and back into the
real world is so important. If anyone will know how to combat Nicholas
Blair,
it’ll be him.”
She was pretty confident, Chris thought, sipping his
coffee, and he smiled. He
had grown quite fond of Julia Hoffman over the past
few months.
“You have such a beautiful smile, baby. I don’t know why you hide it so much.”
The smile froze on his lips, then curdled. Chris dropped his head in despair.
It had been almost a week since Quentin had chased Joe
away, and yet here he
was, popping in out of the blue with his faux witty
remarks and his bad little
boy smile. When
he came around the table and sat down directly across from
him, Chris could see that the smile was very much in
place.
“Miss me?”
“Like the plague,” Chris growled. “What the hell do you want?”
Joe blinked his large blue eyes. “Do you even need to ask that? I want you,
baby. Only
you.”
“I don’t think we have anything left to say to each
other. I think we’re
done.” Chris’ voice was cold, but his insides were
alive and trembling. He
felt like he wanted to vomit. Why does he still make me feel this way? Chris
thought, despairing, and unbidden, his eyes left Joe’s
face and wandered over
his body, drinking in the way the tight blue teeshirt he
wore clung so lovingly
to every curve of his muscular —
No!
He dragged his eyes away with an effort, aware that
Joe knew what he was
thinking, and hated him for it.
“Done?” Joe sounded shocked. “Because of one little scuffle? One little
fight?
Christopher, you need to develop a thicker skin than that.”
“I want you to leave,” Chris said carefully, looking
deeply into the black
depths of his coffee.
“Now.”
“Doesn’t matter what you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chris stood up.
At just over six feet, he was three or four inches taller than
Joe Haskell.
“Then I’ll have to throw you out.”
Joe smiled up at him.
“Is that what you really want?”
“Yes,” Chris said instantly.
Joe stood up.
“Fine,” he said, and thumped Chris companionably on the back.
“I’d hate to move you to violence. An outburst like that just might make you
turn into a werewolf right here, and who wants that?”
He snickered a little at
the look of shock that had rolled across Chris’ face
like a thunderclap. Joe
put a finger in his mouth and stared skyward. “Or is it only sex that makes
that happen? Or
the full moon? I wasn’t quite clear on
that.”
Color filled Chris’ cheeks like red bricks. “You ...
you can’t know any of
that — how do you ...?”
“Of course,” Joe continued as if he hadn’t heard,
“we’ve been pretty hot and
heavy for the past three months, and my face is still
intact, so it can’t be
sex. And the
moon won’t be full for another week or so.
So maybe the violence
is it. If
that’s the case, I’ll just show myself out.” He paused, and looked
deeply into Chris’ wide eyes. “If you’re sure that’s what you really want.”
“How can you know any of that?” Chris’ voice was
hushed, strangled.
“You should really tell your friend Dr. Hoffman not to leave her toys lying
about. Anyone
might just happen along and push play on her little tape
recorder and learn all kinds of things about their
friends and neighbors.
Werewolves, vampires, time travel ... anywhere else in the world it would be
unbelievable. But
we both know it’s very believable, don’t we, Christopher.”
He came closer, and Chris could smell the sharp tang
of Joe’s cologne. He
shivered involuntarily. “We both know what you are. What you’ve done. What
you’ll do again.”
“Shut up,” Chris said miserably.
“You’re a murderer, Christopher,” Joe purred in his
ear. “You kill people.
You eat them.
And it doesn’t matter what Julia Hoffman is doing with these
stupid experiments, because you know they’ll
fail. Science isn’t magic. You
know that too.
How can science combat something out of legend? Your body
changes into an animal’s, and you murder and you shred
and you rip people to
pieces, and there’s not a damn thing Julia Hoffman can
do about it.
“She’s going to fail.
“There’s not going to be any cure.
“And you know it.”
“Shut up!” Chris roared, and lashed out. His hand, curled into a tight fist,
struck Joe above the right eye, and knocked him to the
ground. Chris stood
over him, fists clenched, panting.
Joe smiled up at him angelically. “I think you’re beginning to see how this
game is played.
It’s all about power, my friend.
Tit for tat. Quid pro quo.
You scratch my back and ...” He raised his eyebrows
suggestively. “... I’ll
scratch yours.”
“Get out of here.”
“Not gonna happen.
I’m in your blood, Christopher.
I’m here for good.
There’s no way to get rid of me. Because you want me. You like it.
You like
all the nasty things we do together because you know
you deserve them. Because
you’re bad.” Joe grinned at him savagely.
Chris snarled like an animal.
“That’s it baby,” Joe purred, and beckoned him. “Give us a kiss.”
Chris threw himself at Joe, and rained blow after blow
on him. Joe laughed,
and forced Chris beneath him, and struck him across
the face, still grinning
ferociously.
Chris was panting, his nose was bloodied, but his eyes were on
fire ... and
they had begun to blaze a ferocious emerald green. He threw his
head back and howled, then grabbed Joe by the
shoulders and threw him off of
him and across the room. Joe struck the wall and slid down it, then
lay there,
blinking dazedly.
Chris was on him in a flash. Their mouths met, and their tongues dueled
ferociously, and Chris was tearing at Joe’s clothes,
shredding them, pulling
them off, and their kiss in all its ferocity never
broke, even when they were
both naked, and Chris turned Joe over and forced
himself inside him, for the
first time, the very first time, and it was hot, and
it was good, god so good —
— but deep inside, the human part of Chris Jennings
covered his face and wept.
5
“Julia, I’m terrified.” Vicki’s face was pale, and she
was trembling.
Julia stood by her side just outside Eliot’s
room. Visiting hours were almost
over, but Julia was recognized at the Collinsport Hospital
as the respected Dr.
Hoffman, taking a sabbatical from her own practice at
Windcliff (or Wyndcliff;
Julia’s own understanding of the spelling of her own
hospital was precarious at
best) asylum, and was granted a little more leeway at
the hospital than other
visitors.
The rain had begun to freeze as they left Collinwood,
and made their drive into
town almost unbearably slow, especially since Vicki’s
nerves were beginning to
frighten her, and the resulting twitchiness made Julia
equally twitchy.
“It’s all right, Vicki,” Julia assured her. “You’ve used these powers before,
and look at the good you’ve wrought. Roger and I owe our lives to you.”
“I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes were huge and hollow and very dark,
more
than doe-like.
“I can’t help it. These powers
come from Petofi, and when I
used them in the past ...” She shuddered. “It was like a gate opened up inside
me, and there was a darkness there that I never knew
existed. All these
feelings, these terrible, dark feelings ... more than just anger, Julia.
Something worse than hate. A blackness that ...” She broke off, and held
herself as she shivered.
Julia took her by the shoulders and stared into the
young woman’s frightened
face, sternly, but not without compassion. “I think we have to risk it,
Vicki,” Julia said.
“You may be Eliot’s last hope.” A little melodramatic,
Julia thought, but it sounded convincing, and she
needed Vicki on board.
Because, she realized with a pang of fear, Victoria
Winters — or, more likely,
the powers within Victoria Winters — were truly Eliot
Stokes’ last hope. She
would risk anything at this point. “I’ll be right here with you, Vicki, in
case anything goes wrong.”
“I don’t know what will happen,” Vicki said
lowly. “But I’m just so afraid.”
She took a deep breath, and put her hand on the
doorknob to Stokes’ room. “All
right,” she said bravely. “Let’s do it.”
The two women stepped into Eliot’s room, and Julia
felt tears burn her eyes
instantly.
Eliot looked so small and wasted in the huge white hospital bed.
The machine beside him monitoring his vital signs
beeped every few seconds
blandly. His
face seemed dreadfully lined, dreadfully old.
Julia stood beside
him and took one of his hands. “I don’t know if you can hear me or not,
Eliot,” she said, “but I’ve brought someone to help
you.”
“Hello, Professor,” Vicki said shyly. She glanced at Julia, who merely
shrugged. “I
... um.
I came back from the past. From
1897. I saved the
Collins family by defeating Count Petofi, and I
learned ... um ... I learned
that I’m capable of ... of ...” She broke off and put a hand over her
face.
“It’s all right, Vicki,” Julia said, and put a hand on
the young woman’s
shoulder, and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Just do whatever you can.”
“Right,” Vicki whispered. “Do whatever I can.” She took a deep
breath. It’s
not like I haven’t done this before, she told herself;
come on, Vicki, grow a
pair. You know
you can do it. So do it.
So Vicki closed her eyes and reached for the blackness
she could sense lurking
inside herself.
Julia watched her expectantly, and longed for a
cigarette.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the machine next to the bed shuddered of its own
accord. Julia’s eyes
widened. The
atmosphere of the room had changed, and she thought she could
smell something like ozone in the air. The beeps from the machine came faster
and faster now, and the green spikes that delineating
Eliot’s heart rate began
to leap. Julia
felt a spear of terror press into her heart, and wondered if
this wasn’t an enormous mistake.
She wondered the same thing a moment later when the
ground began to tremble
beneath their feet.
“Vicki?” she whispered, and Victoria Winters opened
her eyes.
Julia thought, She’s not Vicki at all. Not at all.
Oh god, what have I done?
Vicki’s eyes were black, polished and black, and
... and they glowed. Her
face had become chalky white, and her ordinarily
auburn hair tumbled down her
shoulders in a cascade of ebony. Her mouth split open into a devil’s smile,
and Julia could see that her teeth had become
needle-sharp fangs, like the
teeth of a piranha.
The air around her began to crackle, and Julia could see
black veins of electricity jump and snap.
Vicki’s grin grew, and she hissed, “Power.” The word
fell from her lips like a
burning coal.
Oh dear god, Julia thought, paralyzed with fear, oh
dear god, oh dear god —
Vicki’s hair had begun to whip around her head in a
scorching breeze that had
sprung up from nowhere; the water in a paper cup
beside Eliot’s bed began to
bubble and churn; the window across the room coughed
its glass onto the floor
with an unbearable shattering sound. Vicki threw back her head and bellowed
with triumph, and lifted her hands into the air. They crackled with black
energy.
No, Julia thought, but it was too late.
Vicki dropped her hands onto Stokes’ chest.
The wasted man in the bed convulsed, and his eyes flew
open. Julia was
horrified to see they crackled with the same black
energy that glowed in
Vicki’s eyes.
His mouth opened, and a torrent of words poured out, but they
were in a language Julia couldn’t understand, and it
wasn’t Eliot’s voice at
all.
“Ia ia Shub-Niggurath,” the voice growled from Eliot’s
throat, “hastur tuatha
gub-na shan!
Urdulak hastur danu, en cantua shub-yog ia ia cantu shub-rogth!”
Then the black fire of Vicki’s power exploded upwards
into a pillar of
darkness, and within its swirling confines, and for
just a moment, Julia saw
something that froze her heart.
Huge, eyes like fire, something inhuman, a monster, a
demon, and my god it’s so
close, so close and so HUGE —
Then it was gone, and the dark power dissipated, and
Stokes was sitting up and
blinking, and looking around confused, but his cheeks
bloomed with health and
he no longer appeared to be a dying old man. In fact, Julia thought, he looks
as if he just woke up from a spectacularly reviving
nap.
His eyes lit on Julia, and he began to beam.
“Julia!” he exclaimed.
“My goodness, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”
“Eliot?” Julia whispered, then looked to Vicki.
The other woman leaned against the wall, gasping for
breath. At first Julia
thought she was exhausted with the effort of the power
she had channeled
through herself, then she realized that Vicki wasn’t
drained. She was
exhilarated.
The experience had put color into her cheeks as well, and her
eyes sparkled with vitality.
“Miss Winters,” Stokes said, but he sounded less
pleased to see her. He sounds
as disquieted as I feel, Julia thought.
Don’t be stupid, Julia, she chided herself. This was your idea, after all, and
Vicki is fine.
She wasn’t harmed at all, and Eliot is awake. Everything is
going to be all right.
But deep down inside, she wondered.
“Professor Stokes,” Vicki breathed. Her voice was low and husky, not like her
normal voice at all, but she looked like herself; the
black eyes and matching
hair had completely disappeared. “I was so afraid it wouldn’t work. I —” She
bowed her head, and smiled shyly, the same old Vicki
smile. “I was afraid that
I’d killed you.”
Eliot turned to Julia, his eyebrows arched, and Julia
explained everything that
had occurred while he languished in the coma. When she finished, Stokes looked
back at Vicki with awe in his eyes ... and something like fear. “That was an
enormous thing you just did, Miss Winters,” he told
her, “and please don’t
think I’m being ungrateful, because I assure you I’m
not, and I realize I owe
you my life.
But you took a great risk invoking those powers. A great risk
indeed.”
“I know,” Vicki said.
“But Julia thought it was the only way.
And I did too,
Professor. When
I touched you just now — I felt you. I
felt inside of you.
And you were dying.
Terrible things have been happening at Collinwood, and you
were a part of fighting them, whether you know it or
not. You sent yourself —
your astral self — to help Barnabas, before all of
this was changed. You
helped to send him into the past, and by doing that,
you left yourself drained.
Weakened. You
were dying, Professor Stokes. And Julia
was right. It was the
only way.”
Stokes opened his mouth, but before he could rebut,
Julia, inspired, said,
“Eliot — what happened to you? Who attacked you while you were still in your
coma? Do you
remember?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Oh yes, Julia,” he said. “I
remember most clearly. And
before we attend to Mr. Nicholas Blair, the man responsible for
putting me
here in the first place, I’m afraid we have a much
more pressing problem. The
woman who attacked me — the murderess responsible for
the deaths of Tony Trask
and Mr. Wells,
and god knows how many others — is still here.” Julia and
Vicki’s mouths had become gaping o’s. “Right under our noses. At Collinwood,
at Collinwood all the time.”
“Who, Eliot?” Julia breathed. “Tell us who.”
“She looks like Carolyn Stoddard,” Stokes said firmly,
“but I don’t think
that’s who she really is at all.”
6
“This has to happen,” Amy told David in her sternest,
most severe schoolmarm
voice. “This is
the way it always happens. It’s because
of who we are, you
and I.” He was looking at her meekly, and that was
just the way she liked it.
She was filled with purpose, with a knowledge far
beyond any she had ever
possessed, far beyond any anyone in this miserable
house possessed. She had a
dream, and this time it told her everything. She was quiet, calm, filled with
joy. And
purpose. She knew what she had to
do.
And David knew it too.
“This is the way it has always been,” she
continued. They could both hear the
water from the sea not far away; the room she had led
them to was only a stop
on the tunnel’s meandering way, and she knew
instinctively that it also led to
the Old House before it branched again and led to the
angry Atlantic. Pirates
hid here, she thought dreamily, and men and women in
hoods and cowls crept
along this stone path with their guttering candles and
their daggers drawn.
She sighed.
“How did you know to bring us here?” David’s voice was
small without his
ordinary pomposity.
He’s going to be just like his father someday, Amy thought
wisely, unless someone knocks that out of him before
it’s too late.
“Because of my dreams,” she told him airily. “I told you they meant
something.” Her voice sharpened. “You had one too. Tell me about it.”
“I’m afraid —”
She slapped him, lightly, but enough that the cracking
sound reverberated
through the room and echoed down the path of the
cave. He cried out and
clutched his cheek, and stared at her, trembling. Her eyes blazed. “I said,
tell me,” she breathed.
“All right.” He rubbed his cheek. “All right.
There are torches. Men and
women, and they’re wearing these robes, and I can’t
see their eyes, and only a
little of their faces, but they’re white, white as
salt. They’re chanting, or
singing.
Incanting, maybe. Calling on
something. We’re in the forest, and
there’s this ...
this thing, this great monument-thing, all made of stone, and
it’s huge. It
towers above them, bigger than any building.
There are carvings
all over it, and they’re all snakes. It’s horrible. And then the air starts
to hiss, and the ground is shaking, and the ... the cairn starts to glow. It
glows with this awful, sick green light, and it spills
over everyone, and makes
them green too.
They keep chanting, and it isn’t in any language I know, but I
can understand it anyway, and they’re saying ... th-they’re saying —”
“From the sea,” Amy said calmly. “It will come to us from the sea.”
“Y-yeah. The
cairn glowed brighter, and they all threw their hoods back, and
... and one of
them was me. And that’s when I woke up.”
“And you knew what you had to do.”
“I knew. I’m
sorry, Amy. I’ll help you — you know
I’ll help you — but why?
Why is this happening to us?”
“Because it has to,” Amy said. “I told you that. It’s about blood, David, and
power, because there is power inside us. Both of us.
Something inside us
makes us special, and they know it. They’ve been calling to both of us. They
need us. Their
time is coming.”
“Amy,” David whispered, “who are they?”
Amy Jennings could only smile. She turned away from him — boys, she told
herself, can be so dense sometimes — and picked up
something from the floor.
When she turned back to him, David saw that she held a
book in her hand, a slim
volume with a broken spine that had certainly seen
better days. It was bound
in green cloth, and David saw the image of a serpent
emblazoned on the cover,
but no ordinary serpent. It glared at him with two heads, and two
tongues
flickered in the air.
“This is their book,” she told him.
“It’s important.
It has been badly treated, just like them, but its
time has come. Just like
them. We have
to keep this, David, and hide it, and make sure it stays a
secret. Until
the time is right. Until he comes for
it.”
“Who?”
“We’ll know him, just as he’ll know us. He’s coming.
I can feel it, David,
and so can you.
He’s coming, and he’ll be here soon.
“All we have to do is wait.”
7
Julia was tired of waiting. Quentin was supposed to have met her at the
Old
House half an hour ago, but there had been no sign of
him. She had smoked
another pack of cigarettes since leaving Vicki at
Collinwood, and she had just
torn open the top of another. Three of them spilled out and pattered gently
to
the floor.
“Damn,” she hissed, and scooped them up.
Two were unharmed, but
one hung broken in her hand. She exhaled noisily and stuffed the broken
cigarette into her purse. One of them she lit, and waved it about
distractedly
as she paced up and down the drawing room of the Old
House.
She had lit the fire herself upon her return; Willie
Loomis was spending more
of his time in Portland, and she couldn’t blame
him. He and Barnabas had
developed a growing affection for each other after her
cure had taken hold, and
Barnabas couldn’t fault the young man his trips away
from Collinwood. He had
even set him up with an apartment there. Still, she mused, it would be nice to
have someone around who could chop wood and vacuum the
upstairs hall once in
awhile. Julia
tittered. She had forgotten that the Old
House was not equipped
for electricity.
Maybe, she thought, if I work on Barnabas really hard —
Her smile faded.
I can’t work on him for anything, she thought desolately; I
don’t know where he is.
There has to be something I can do, she thought. Some kind of spell or
something.
Angelique was a pain in the ass, but at least she had some power.
She could always find Barnabas with no problem.
Angelique ...
No, Julia decided.
Better not to have to deal with that blonde hell harpy
again. Besides,
she had no idea where she’d taken off to.
It had been months
since Julia had even thought of her, and more since
she’d disappeared into the
night, the Cassandra/vampire disguise broken, her
spells shattered, and she had
left this very house a mortal. No one spoke of Cassandra, especially not
Roger
or Elizabeth, who had apparently decided to uphold the
Collins tradition of
sweeping under the rug any unpleasantness no one
wanted to acknowledge.
The only link to Cassandra was Nicholas Blair, and
Julia found herself
wondering what kind of conversations he and Elizabeth
shared. They had become
extremely chummy recently, and that in itself was disquieting. He couldn’t
actually be planning to marry her, Julia wondered, and
had to chuckle again.
Well why not?
The laughter died in her throat. Elizabeth wasn’t blind. She wasn’t dumb.
She had to know, along with everyone else in
Collinsport, that Nicholas was
shacking up with Maggie Evans in Seaview, that
disreputable dump supposedly
haunted by the ghost of Gregory Collins and his
million feral brats. She had
to know. And
since she wasn’t the serial killing murderess she was before
Vicki’s trip to 1897, what was she planning to do
about it?
Julia felt cold all over. There was still one serial killing murderess
left at
Collinwood. She
was there right now, and Julia wondered what kind of madness
drove Carolyn Stoddard to kill. Eliot seemed to feel it was some kind of
possession. By
a French spirit, of all things. But it
hadn’t sounded crazy at
all when Eliot reminded her of the day when a spying
Carolyn had some sort of
fit at the Old House, the very day that Barnabas had
stopped Tom Jennings’
reign of terror with a silver-backed mirror shard
thrust through his heart.
That was the night Tony Trask disappeared, Julia
realized, and Stokes had
nodded his affirmative. “Indeed,” he had said dryly. “Julia, have you ever
heard of a French murderess by the name of Danielle
Roget?”
Now she was waiting for Quentin, who possessed more
arcane knowledge than
anything Julia had ever read or studied. I just know about vampires and
werewolves, she had told Stokes, and they had laughed
together. It didn’t seem
so funny now.
Where in the hell was Quentin?
Julia ground out her cigarette, threw its corpse into
the eager flames in the
fireplace, and nonchalantly lit another, and inhaled
its charred smoke
greedily.
“Quentin,” she growled, “Quentin —”
She was afraid.
Someone was in the room with her. She could sense an icy presence, and two
eyes stared at her back.
She whirled around.
There was no one there.
She exhaled a ring of blue smoke, and closed her
eyes. “Julia, you old fool,”
she whispered, then cried out as three steady knocks
sounded at the door.
“Quentin,” she breathed, and strode angrily towards
the door. She threw it
open, and snarled, “Honestly, this is the last time
you keep me —”
The words died in her throat.
Barnabas Collins stood before her, and his eyes glowed
from dark sockets,
red-rimmed, haunting, haunted. His face was like paper, and his bangs,
tossed
carelessly across his forehead, were like smudges of
ash. His mouth was drawn
and lined. And
he was cold. She could feel it from
where she stood, as if icy
fingers reached from him to grasp at her. Something is wrong, she thought
amidst the whirl and rush of every other thought
clamoring in her brain.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong with him.
“Julia,” Barnabas said. His voice was soft and frayed, like autumn
leaves,
like the winter wind.
“Oh, Julia. It’s been so long —”
She reached out to touch him, just to brush her
fingers against his face, and
he flinched away from her. Hurt bloomed inside her chest, and she
swallowed
rawly.
“Barnabas,” she said. It was the
only word she could think to say.
“Barnabas?”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, and the
pain carved in his face
made her forget her own, as she had always done, as
she would always do. His
pain was monumental beside hers, forever dwarfing her
own. She didn’t resent
it; she wanted only to hold him.
There was something on his face beside his pain, and
for a moment she didn’t
recognize it.
Then her eyes widened, and she began to understand.
“I’m so afraid,” he said. “Oh Julia, I’m so very, very afraid.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
