Shadows on the Wall Chapter 90

CHAPTER 90:  Where the Wild Things Are

by Nicky

Voiceover by Christopher Pennock:  “Collinsport, in the dreadful and mysterious world of Parallel Time … a world that Barnabas, Julia, and Angelique have been able to enter via a warp in a room in the East Wing at Collinwood.  Now Angelique has lost her powers, and as she and Julia attempt to locate Barnabas, they find that this world is crawling with all manner of beasts … and that their lives are in gravest peril.”

1

 

            It was showing its teeth.  Angelique took a step back, assuming a fighting stance with her hands thrust out, her fingers crooked into the proper configurations, an incantation at her lips …

            Then she remembered.

            “Damn,” she said. 

            The creature looked like a werewolf.  It was hard to tell; sometimes demons resembled animals, but this thing, with its long snout and ivory-white teeth that were slick with slaver and amber eyes that glowed hot, could definitely be a werewolf, though she had never seen one with snowy white hair before.

            “Get back!” Julia screamed from behind her.  Angelique glanced over her shoulder and gaped.  Julia had wrenched a tree branch from one of the oaks that limned the edge of the woods and was brandishing it at the creature, her legs planted firmly, the branch cutting the air with a hiss.  “Come on,” Julia said to the thing that continued to bare it teeth.  A guttural growl rumbled in its throat and chest.  “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

 

            Go Julia, Angelique thought with growing admiration for her once-upon-a-time rival.

            Then the thing cocked its head and stood up to its full height, which was, Angelique estimated, at least seven feet tall.  “You aren’t Julia Hoffman,” the thing said in a guttural but perfectly understandable voice.  Its urine-yellow eyes flicked to Angelique and then narrowed.  “And you aren’t Angelique Collins.  Who are you?”

            “We will tell you nothing,” Angelique spat.  “Let us pass, beast.”

            “Angelique,” Julia said softly, and set the branch gently on the ground.  “He isn’t going to hurt us.  Are you,” she said to the monster.  It wasn’t a question.

            “That depends,” it said.  “I could tear you to pieces, the both of you.  Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.  And why you look like –” and he raised a wolfish eyebrow –“that.”

            “Tell us who you are,” Angelique said, running smoothly over whatever Julia was about to say, “and what you are.”

            It grinned its lupine grin.  “I suppose that depends.  You aren’t from here, are you?  If I had to guess …”  And it laid its furry hand-paws on its furry hips and watched them appraisingly.  “I’d have to say you’re from another world, aren’t you.  A parallel dimension, something like that.  Our Angelique would never be caught dead in leather pants.  Plus she’s dead.”

            “How –” Julia began, but Angelique held up one perfectly manicured hand.

            “Be quiet, Julia,” Angelique snapped, ignoring the way Julia’s mouth narrowed and her eyebrows shot sky high.  But she shut up.  “I am a powerful witch,” Angelique said.  “It will be easy to destroy you, my friend.”  She held up her hands.  Her blue eyes flared.  “Very easy.”

            “You’re bluffing,” the creature said.  “I can smell magic, my dear.  Whatever magic you once possessed – and I sense that you did, once – is long gone.  So who –”  and its teeth now seemed very long and very, very sharp – “is going to destroy whom?”

            “We don’t have any choice,” Julia said.  She was studying the creature curiously.  Angelique rolled her eyes.  If only we had stayed in our own world, Angelique thought, then frowned.  A world where Sky is still dead, where no amount of magic can ever bring him back.

            Perhaps there is a Schuylar Rumson in this world … one I can find and love as I loved my own …

            But that was folly, as Barnabas was due to find out, she knew.  Parallel worlds, from what she understood, usually held occupants who resembled their counterparts in other places and times, but their personalities were nothing like them at all.  Sky would still be a warlock, Angelique sensed that, but he would be unremittingly evil.

            Like me, she thought, and closed her eyes for a moment.

            When she opened them, she saw that the sun had finally dropped behind the horizon.  Barnabas is waking up now, she thought, wherever he is.

            “You’re right, Julia,” she said at last, and looked at the monster in its terrible, intelligent eyes.  “You win, animal.  What do you want?”

            Its laughter was disturbingly like a howl.

2

             “Hoffman?” Barnabas whispered.  The sun was gone, and the shadows had fallen gracefully around the tombstones and mausoleums that dotted Eagle Hill like delicate lace; Barnabas had been relieved to discover that there was still a secret room in the Collins family mausoleum, and he had passed the day there.  But Hoffman was nowhere to be found.

            Guilt stabbed at him.  She didn’t deserve what he had done to her, even if she had survived the day.  He thought of Carolyn back in his own time, of his Julia, how he had tormented her, hurt her, hurt them both, deliberately.  And Vicki, he thought – if it hadn’t been for me, if I hadn’t encouraged her, she wouldn’t have used those powers, allowed them to consume her, destroy her –

            “Hoffman?” he called again.  He stepped out of the tomb and into the night.  It was warm, unusual for Collinsport, even in June, and little tatters of ground-mist swirled about his feet.  He sighed; though he wore his Inverness cloak, he cast no bat’s winged shadow on the ground.  I am not human, he thought, I should just stop fooling myself.  I will never be free of the curse.  Never.

            He would return to Collinwood and see Vicki … Victoria.  She seemed so different in this time, but perhaps he could help her.  Perhaps he could steer her away from the darkness, succeeding where he had failed in his own time.

            And there was the murderer to consider, and the vampire who had attacked Daniel and Amy.  There is no man named Damion Edwards in my own time, Barnabas thought, no one to base any assumptions on or any guesses or hypotheses.  Nevertheless, I will find him and destroy him.  The family must be kept safe at all costs.

            He paused. 

Why must they?  They aren’t really my family … are they?

            “I don’t know,” Barnabas growled, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

            “Don’t you?”

            He froze mid-step.  That voice, he thought … my god, that voice –

            She stepped out of the shadows then, this new woman he knew but didn’t know, and he stared at her as if he had never seen her before.

            “Hello, Barnabas,” and the light of the rising moon glinted off her elegant fangs.

3

            “Hold the stake steady,” Victoria commanded, and Tom flinched a little.  “Don’t look at me that way.  Do it!”

            Damion Edwards lay in the coffin where she had discovered him this afternoon in a room deep underneath Collinwood that not even she had known existed; it had taken a great amount of her mystical powers to locate him at all, and by the time she had, it was almost too late.

            But the cross she had placed on his chest had immobilized him long enough for her to wait for Tom to awaken … and to find the stake and hammer.

            The former was positioned over the heart of the vampire in the coffin.  The latter was held by the vampire standing outside the coffin.

            Damion’s eyes blazed up at them, crimson with hate, and he bared his fangs.

            “Why is he like that?” Tom said.  “He can’t even talk.”

            “He is an animal,” Victoria said.  “I don’t know why.  He is vicious and inhuman.  Even more,” she said with an unusual flash of humor, “than us.”

            “I don’t wanna do this,” Tom whined.  He thrust the stake and hammer at her.  “You do it.”

            “You pansy,” Victoria hissed, and yanked them out of his hand.  He looked at her, abashed, like a bad puppy who had piddled on the floor.  “Honestly,” she said through clenched teeth, “you just can’t get good help these days.”

             “Grrrrr,” Damion Edwards said.

            “I remember you as much more eloquent,” Victoria told him.

            “How is he a vampire?” Tom said.  “Did you do it?  ‘Cause I didn’t do it.”

            “Of course I didn’t do it,” Victoria snapped.  She placed the tip of the stake over the vampire’s chest.  It glared up at her, the expression on its face black and murderous.  Its head began to lash back and forth on the pillow beneath its head.  “But,” she said suddenly, “we should find out who did.”

            “How?”  He looked at Damion doubtfully.  “I don’t know if it can talk.”

            “Hsssss,” Damion said. 

            “Listen to me,” Victoria said to the monster below them.  Its head ceased its lashing, and its lips closed over its fangs.  “Good.  You will tell me who made you what you are and you will tell me this moment.  Do you understand?”

            “Arrrrrrr,” Damion Edwards said.  His head began to lash again, back and forth, back and forth.

            Tom sighed.  “Useless.  You know, I think he’d kill us if he could.”

            “So do I,” Victoria said pensively.

            She raised the hammer.

            Damion shrieked as she used it to drive the stake deep into his heart.  The cords on his neck stood out; his eyes bulged and turned black; his head turned to the left and froze there, and blood ran out of its mouth in a thick mulch. 

            The mortification was nearly instantaneous.

 

            “Gross out,” Tom said, and turned away.

            Victoria couldn’t stop looking.  It was fascinating in some horrible way, as death always seemed to be.  He hadn’t been dead for too long, she thought; he hadn’t turned to dust.  Mostly he was just kinda … wet.

            Tom was right.  It was gross.

            “We’ll find out who did this to him,” Victoria said coldly.  “And then we’ll destroy him as well.”

            Together, they peered solemnly into the coffin.

           

            “Let’s get out of here,” Tom said after a moment.  “I’m hungry.”

4

            “Oh, Julia,” Barnabas said sadly, and shook his head.  “I never wanted this for you.”

             “I am not the woman you knew, Barnabas Collins,” Hoffman said.  Her voice echoed strangely now, holding within its tones the sweet sound of a crystal goblet lightly struck.  Her cheekbones stood out even more sharply than before; her hair blazed around her head in a wild crimson corona; her eyes threw forth sparks.  And her teeth …

            “No,” he said, then looked away.  “I suppose you are not.”

            She walked forward seductively, her hips swaying to a languorous beat.  “I am so much more,” she purred.  “I am the night now, Barnabas.  I am the darkness.”  She roared suddenly, a shattering sound like a lion.  The roar became low and throaty laughter.  She began to grin; now she was very close to him.  Her lips grazed his ear.  “I am going to eat everyone.”

            “Get away from me!” he cried.  He pushed her away and she took to the air, soared up into the sky, hung there, laughing still, the thin lavender gown she wore hanging before her like a cloud. 

           

            “Don’t cry, don’t cry, Barnabas!” Hoffman screamed.  Her mouth expanded and the fangs, thin and long like fish bones, protruded and slid over her lips.  “You mustn’t!  I’m not dead, I’ll never be dead!  When you’re bitten by a vampire you never die, Barnabas … you never ever die!”

            “Stop it, stop it!” he screamed … and then recoiled as something hissed by his ear, streaked through the sky, blazing like a comet, and tore through Hoffman’s dress.  She howled like a wildcat and began to beat at the flames that devoured the thin material hungrily.  As she began to blaze she dropped from the sky, howling still, until she struck the ground, and only then did the mad bestial sounds that erupted from her throat finally stop.  She rolled around frantically until the flames were extinguished, then resumed hissing.  “That,” she snarled, “was completely uncalled for.”

            A woman stepped from the shadows.  Her face was hidden by a cowl, but she did nothing to conceal the crossbow that she clutched with long white fingers. 

            Hoffman’s lips drew back in a cheated snarl.

            In her free hand, the other woman held an ax.  The moonlight glinted off it, sending silver spears to dazzle Barnabas’ eyes.

 

            “You –” Hoffman began.

            The mystery woman said nothing.  She threw the ax instead.

            Barnabas closed his eyes, but not soon enough.  Hoffman’s head tumbled from her shoulders and struck the ground with a dull thud like the sound of a watermelon.  Her body followed suit a moment later.

            “Oh my god,” a woman said behind him with a very familiar voice.

           

            “No,” Barnabas whispered.

            Julia Hoffman put her hands to her face; her eyes were wide and bulged in their sockets.  Behind her, Angelique watched with wide, inscrutable eyes.  At her side, a hulking, shaggy man-beast stared at Hoffman’s body; it said nothing, it made no sound, but its black lips peeled back and revealed its enormous teeth the size of piano keys.

            “Barnabas,” Julia screamed, “Barnabas, what have you done?”

            “Yes, Barnabas,” said the woman in the cowl.  She dropped it back onto her shoulders and revealed a face the color of porcelain framed by delicate drifts of curling red hair like feathers.  She smiled.  “That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”

5

             Julia wanted to die.  She had wanted to die before; when Cassandra fed on her, when Tom tried to make her his vampire bride:  those times had driven her to the brink of her sanity, but she hadn’t died.  She tried to hold onto that thought now as she watched the head of a woman who looked just like her – careful!  sanity! – topple from her shoulders and thud to the ground where it continued to stare, its mouth gaping, revealing needle sharp fangs.

            Barnabas … Barnabas did that to her.

            To me.

            Her eyes flicked up to the face of the man she loved … and held there.  He was stricken with horror, she could tell.

            And something else.

            Julia followed his gaze.  She was ice inside; she was torrents of lava.  Her eyes went where his did.

            The woman.  In the cape.  With the short – careful, Julia! – red hair and the proud, flashing eyes.  The woman who, even now, was pulling another wooden arrow from a belt around her waist. 

           

            She felt something twist inside her, dangerously close to breaking.  Not another one, she found herself thinking, oh please, god god, please, if you’re really there, and I’m sorry I never believed in you, but if you’re there … please don’t let him fall in love with this girl.  Please let him change.  Please.

            “It’s awful,” Angelique said quietly from behind her, “isn’t it.”

            Julia couldn’t bear to look at her.

            “Who are you?” Barnabas snarled to the stranger with the wooden arrows.

            The woman held herself up proudly.  “My name is Roxanne Drew,” she said.   “You are Barnabas Collins.  And you are a vampire.”

 

            “You don’t know me,” Barnabas said, and dropped his fearsome gaze.

            “I know enough,” said Roxanne Drew.  “I know that you turned Julia Hoffman into a vampire like yourself.  I know that she is dead this moment because of you.”

            “True,” he whispered.

            “And I know …”  She faltered for a moment, then tossed her head.  “I know that you couldn’t help it.”

            Barnabas looked up, speechless.

            Roxanne Drew continued to smile.  “That doesn’t absolve you of all guilt though, does it, Mr. Collins.”

            “No,” he said.  “No, it never does.”

            “Who are you, Roxanne Drew?”  Angelique’s voice rang across the cemetery.  “What have you to do with the people at Collinwood?”

            “I have a great deal to do with them,” Roxanne said with the barest trace of bitterness stinging her words.  “But you already know that, don’t you.”

            “I am not who you think I am,” Angelique said carefully.

            “I know exactly who you are,” Roxanne said.  Her eyes moved away from the witch to the creature at her side.  “Sebastian,” she called playfully, and the beast growled, a delicate purring sound like the tearing of cloth.  “You have done well.”

            “I brought them to you,” the were-creature said, “as you requested.”

            Julia heard these words dimly, as if her ears had been stopped full with earth.  I want to die, she thought; another woman, another me, what he did, what he did to me …

            “Why have you brought us here?” Angelique demanded.  “And who are you?  Answer me at once!”

            “You are in no position to be demanding answers from anyone,” Roxanne said.  “I brought you here to offer you a warning.  Leave this place.  Return to your own world, to your own time.  I am giving you a free pass, all of you.  You will not receive another.”

            “You dare,” Angelique said furiously, “you dare to tell me what to do –!”

            “How like her you are,” Roxanne mused.  “Wouldn’t you agree, Sebastian?”

            “I don’t want to play these games anymore, Roxanne,” the creature said.  “I want to find Chris.  I want to make sure he’s safe.”

 

            “He’s safe,” Roxanne said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  “And he’ll stay safe … as long as you continue to hold up your end of our little bargain.”

            “How do you know we come from another world?” Julia asked with a curious cock of her head.  The fog that had gathered around her was beginning to fade.  That wasn’t me, she thought, and willed the tears that burned behind her almond-shaped eyes to evaporate.  That was just another victim of the curse.  Not me … not me at all.

            “I know many things, Doctor Hoffman,” Roxanne said with a smile.  “I know that you came to this time through a warp in a room in the East Wing at Collinwood.  I know that your time is troubled as ours is.  I also know why the warp exists.”

            Angelique’s eyebrows shot up.  “You do?” she said, and took a step toward the titian-haired warrior.  “You must tell us!”

            “This world shouldn’t exist at all,” Roxanne said, and something sad came into her voice when she said it, something that tinged her words with melancholy.  “I shouldn’t exist at all.”

            “Then why do you?” Julia asked.

            “Roxanne,” Sebastian growled.

            Roxanne opened her mouth, then, considering, closed it again immediately.  “Leave,” she said instead.  “Now.  Immediately.  Go back to Collinwood and wait for the room to change.  That is your only hope.”

            “What if never does?” Julia cried.

            “Then you will die,” Roxanne said simply.

            And then she was gone.

            They blinked, the three of them, Barnabas, Angelique, and Julia; she did not fade or dematerialize, they would all agree on that later.  One moment Roxanne Drew had stood before them and the next minute she did not. 

            “What is she?” Angelique snarled, wheeling, and turned on the creature Roxanne had referred to as “Sebastian.” 

           

            “I can tell you nothing,” Sebastian said tiredly.  “If she had wanted you to know, she would have told you herself.”

            “Is she a threat to us?”

            “You are a threat to yourselves,” Sebastian said.  “There is something wild about you, as there is a wildness in this place, in this town … but your wildness is different.  I can’t put my finger on it, but perhaps Roxanne can.  Perhaps that is why she is so adamant that you all leave this place.”

 

            “Barnabas,” Julia said softly.  He stood before her suddenly; Angelique and Sebastian, quarreling still, seemed not to notice.  His eyes were red-rimmed and full of sorrow and grief, and he raised on finger and laid it delicately against the curve of her cheekbone.  She shivered.  She had expected his touch to be icy, but she had forgotten how cold it felt. 

            “Julia,” he said.  “Oh Julia, I am so, so sorry.  For everything.”

            “We came to bring you back,” she whispered.  “Angelique lost her powers trying to get us here.  I’m afraid that we’re trapped, Barnabas … forever.”

            “We’ll work it out,” he said.  “We’ll figure a way.”

            “We always do.”

            They smiled at each other.

            This, she thought, is the sun.

            “— power does she hold over you?  Is it Chris Jennings?  He’s your lover, isn’t he?  Has she threatened to destroy him?”  Angelique’s voice had grown sharper and more waspish; her eyes held sparks like tiny bolts of lightning. 

            “Chris Jennings?”  The creature cocked its head.  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

            “Collins,” Barnabas said, and they both looked at him mid-snarl.  “In this time, he is Christopher Collins.”

            “As I told you,” the creature said.  “I can tell you nothing.  Return to Collinwood.  Leave this time.  It is an anomaly; it is an abomination.”

            “You can’t really believe that,” Angelique sneered.  “You couldn’t live if you believed that.”

            “You would be surprised what I can live with,” Sebastian said, and with that, he turned and bounded off into the deeper darkness that lay outside the graveyard.

            Angelique’s hands had curled into tight fists.  “These people,” she spat.  “Honestly.  And I thought the denizens of our Collinsport were weird.”

            “Angelique,” Barnabas said.  He was staring at her wide-eyed.  His lips had drawn together tightly until they had lost all color.  “Why are you here?”

 

            Angelique’s mouth opened and then closed.  She looked for a moment at Julia, who shrugged, and then she shook her head ruefully.  “I never learn with you, do I, Barnabas.”

            “What does that mean?”  There was an edge to his voice, and Julia didn’t like it.

            Neither did Angelique, apparently.  “It means that I could give up everything for you – everything – and it still wouldn’t be enough.  It will never be enough.”

            “You threatened to destroy me,” Barnabas said softly, “when last we met.”

            “Perhaps I should have,” she replied.

            They stared at each other.

            “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Julia snapped.  “I hate to ruin a beautiful moment, except in cases like this, when I don’t at all.  Doesn’t one of you have a cigarette?”

7

            And for Quentin Collins, hidden in the shadows, eyes wide, mouth a perfect O, the terror he felt abated as suddenly as it came, and his eyes began to gleam.  He turned away from the little trio gathered so tightly there by the gravestones and began to make his way back to Collinwood.

8

            Chris looked up from the notepad he was scribbling in furiously.  The shaggy white creature that stood before him, blocking the doorway, had been there for a long time, but he had been so engrossed in the notes he was making for the trial he had to attend on Monday morning that he hadn’t noticed his boyfriend’s reappearance.  He smiled crookedly.  I feel naked he thought, then realized – hilarious! – that he was.  “How long have you been standing there?” he said.

            The fur dissolved, the snout withdrew, the amber eyes became a gentle blue.  “Oh, awhile,” Sebastian said, and padded to the bed, then crawled in beside Christopher and snuggled up against him.  He peered up into his face and sighed.  “I love you,” he said gravely.  “I don’t think I tell you that very often.  But I do.  And I want you to know it.  You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

            Chris shook his head.  “You don’t get out much, huh.”

            “I’m not joking.”  And he wasn’t.  Chris had never seen Sebastian so serious before, not even the night he revealed his secret.  “You keep me tamed, baby.  That’s saying a lot.  Without you …”  He shook his shaggy head.  “I don’t even want to think about.”

 

            “So let’s not,” Chris said, and threw the notebook on the floor.  “Think about it, I mean.  Or anything.”  He took Sebastian’s chin in both his hands and guided their mouths together.  There was love then, and it was good.  It was the best.

            And afterwards, as they lay together, Chris dozing, Sebastian stared up into the darkness, and thought of Roxanne Drew, and hated her.

9

            “Get out,” Alexis said, and turned away from the front door of Collinwood.

            But the long white hand that shot out with serpent-like speed and clutched the door in an iron-grip stopped her in her tracks.

            “I don’t believe that I will,” Roxanne said, and smiled pleasantly.  “Miss Stokes.”

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Shadows on the Wall Chapter 89

CHAPTER 89:  Long Day

by Nicky

Voiceover by David Selby:  “There has been death at the Collinwood of Parallel Time and more may follow.  And while Barnabas Collins sleeps in his lonely tomb so far from his home, there is more intrigue developing that may spell destruction for someone else in the great house at the end of this, one of the longest days the family of this world has ever known …”

1

            The long night was over.

            Quentin Collins loved Collinwood, felt at home there, didn’t believe in curses.  He knew that Chris Collins, his cousin who was one of the most amazing lawyers on the east coast but refused to set foot in the great house, believed in the so-called “family curse,” but if there was such a thing – and Quentin always said he would deny it to the death – he had never seen any evidence of it.

           

            Until tonight.

            “Maggie is dead.”  He whispered the words as he crossed the threshold of the house and looked around.  He had yet to close the immense front doors, and early morning summer sunlight splashed over his feet and dappled the stone floor of the great hall.  He stared at it stupidly for a moment, then blinked wearily, closed the doors behind him, and leaned against the wall.  He ran a hand through his shaggy hair.  Maggie was dead, and Daniel was in intensive care.  Attacked in his mother’s room by – of all people – Damion Edwards.

            There are no such thing as curses.

            But Maggie was still dead.  And Daniel had looked so pale, so fragile, there in his hospital bed, the back of his head bandaged, and the doctor’s grim assessment – “He might never regain consciousness, Mr. Collins, honestly, and if he does … well …”  Grim coughing, grim shuffling of his scuffed black loafers, grim scratching on the clipboard he carried.  “… there’s no telling if he’ll be the boy you remember.”

            The boy you remember.

            My son.  My heir. 

            He can’t die.

 

            Of course he could.  Angelique had, hadn’t she?  And he had loved her more than anything in this world or any other.

            You loved her at first, you mean.

            Stupid, cynical voice.  Quentin tried to block it out, clasped his hands to his ears.  He wouldn’t hear it, not now.  He had loved Angelique, even if their marriage had begun to falter toward the end.  Maggie hadn’t believed him, he knew – she thought that he loved her still – but she was beginning to fade.  He never went into her room, wanted it closed forever, but Alexis insisted, and so did Hoffman, and what did it hurt?  There were no ghosts, no curses, no monsters. 

            But Maggie is dead.

            How was that possible?

            He knew how.  Someone had cut out her heart.  Just as someone had slashed Buffie Harrington to ribbons.

            And Angelique …?

            “Angelique died of a stroke,” Quentin whispered.  The doctor had confirmed it.  Damion Edwards swore that he would prove otherwise, but then he had disappeared …

            Until tonight.  Until he attacked my son.

            And Daniel was his son, no matter what Roger thought or what Angelique had said in her darker moments.  And Daniel himself, he must never know.

            “Oh Quentin.”  His head jerked up.  It was Victoria, dark, beautiful Victoria, Angelique’s nemesis and a woman he would never consider in a million years, never mind that she too was adopted and not really a Collins.  There was something in her eyes … something that had always made him shiver.

 

            But then again, Angelique’s eyes weren’t known for their gentle, human luster either.

            “I’m so, so sorry,” Victoria said, and began her descent.

            “Thank you,” he said.  He was exhausted, and the words buzzed like dying hornets against his lips and on the backsides of his teeth. 

            “If there’s anything I can do …”

            “Sleep,” Quentin muttered.  “I need …”

            She was looking at him, and he didn’t like that.  Something … something about her eyes.  He couldn’t look away.  He tried.  He wanted to blink, but they felt frozen, his eyelids, held open as if invisible fingers forced them back. 

            And her eyes …

            “Let me help you,” Victoria said.  “Let me get you to bed.” 

            “Bed,” he murmured.  He couldn’t look away.  Her pupils were growing and shrinking, and that wasn’t possible, but that’s what they were doing.  Growing … and shrinking.  Growing … and shrinking, until the black threatened to swallow the doe-like brown.

            “Yes,” Victoria said, and her hand caressed his cheek.  “Bed.”

            She was so close to him, and he could smell her – and he recoiled.  She smelled bad, a dark, sick smell that invaded his nostrils and churned his stomach.  Vomit filled his mouth, sickly-sweet and bitter, burning.

            But he couldn’t draw away from her.

            And her arms had snaked around him.

            “Quentin,” she whispered in his ear.

            His mouth brushed hers.

            “Oh my god,” he whispered.  His eyes had finally broken away from hers, and he pushed her back.  His forehead was wet with ice droplets.

            Impossible … I couldn’t have seen what I thought I saw …

            “Quentin?”  Victoria’s voice was sharp and buzzing, inhuman with fury.  “Quentin, what is the matter with you?”

            “Angelique,” he whispered, his eyes fixed to a place at the top of the stairs.  “I saw Angelique!”

2

            “You shouldn’t have gone out there!” hissed Julia Hoffman.

            Angelique closed the double doors to the room where the time warp had flared at her command and swept them off to … Collinwood?  Her face was pinched and terrified, but flushed at the same time, filled with high color in her cheeks.  Her blue eyes snapped with vitality.

           

            The hair that flowed down her back in a tide was icily, whitely blonde.

            After the world had tilted and twisted and Julia had felt as if she were in the grip of two enormous, crushing hands and then straightened again, and the howling of alien winds had ceased to wail in her ears, she had opened her eyes and found that she was standing in Angelique’s room as it existed in that other world, the world of what Eliot Stokes called “parallel time.”  The carpet was cream-colored and soft beneath her feet, and the curtains that lined the windows were a brilliant orange, like mangoes or tangerines. 

            And there was the portrait.  The chilling, smirking visage of Angelique Collins.

            And when Julia had turned to face her Angelique Collins – or, to be exact, Angelique Bouchard Collins Collins Rumson, at least in this incarnation – she had received a nasty shock.

 

            Color had filled the other woman’s cheeks, replacing the deathly pallor that Julia had observed in her face ever since she removed the Mask of Ba’al after she had pressed it to her face in that terrible moment at Stokes’ cottage.  Her eyes were wide and crystalline blue, and all the black had drained from her hair.  “Angelique!” Julia cried. 

            “We’re here, Julia,” Angelique panted.  The strange edge to her voice – an ethereal, echoic quality that it had held ever since she had consumed the dark power of the mask – was gone, and she sounded like the Angelique Julia had grown to like over the past few months.  “We made it … wherever ‘here’ is.”

            “It’s Collinwood,” Julia said.  Her breathing was ragged and came in stitches, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the other woman.  “But … but Angelique …”

            “We must find Barnabas and return to this room immediately,” the other woman said, “and then we will return to our own time.”

            “Angelique … your hair … your face …”

            Angelique frowned.  “Julia, this is no time for dramatics.  I …”  Her eyes went wide, and her fingers traced tiny circles around her eyes and cheeks.  

            “What happened?”  Julia approached her and reached for her face.  In her detached, clinical doctor’s voice, she said, “Something to do with the transcendence, I wonder, or did casting that spell drain all your powers …?”

            But Angelique recoiled and hissed, “Don’t touch me.”

            Julia pretended that the rebuff didn’t sting.  “But we have to know if there’s anything wrong … if something happened to you when we left our own world –”

            “You wait here,” Angelique commanded, and tossed her hair.  “I’m going to take a quick look around.”

            “Absolutely not,” Julia cried.  Her eyes narrowed and her lower lip trembled.  “You are not leaving me in this place by myself, I refuse –”

            But Angelique was already gone, out the double doors and into the hallway beyond.

            Julia glared after her, shook her head, then began to look around the room.  She was just beginning to fumble around the top of the dresser drawers in the corner of the room when the doors flew back open and then slammed shut.  Angelique had returned, her hair in her eyes, her color high.  “Quentin,” Angelique gasped, “Quentin saw me –”

            “Oh my god,” Julia moaned, and rolled her eyes.  “I warned you –”

            “It was only for a moment,” she hissed. 

 

            “But he recognized you.  My god, Angelique, look around this room – it’s practically a shrine to your doppelganger!” 

            “I’ll teleport us outside the house,” Angelique said reasonably, and Julia made a scoffing sound.  Angelique narrowed her eyes.  “Or perhaps I’ll simply teleport myself and leave you to fend for yourself.”

            Julia grumbled.  “Fine,” she said.

            Angelique closed her eyes and began to mutter under breath.  She wreathed her hands through the air, clutching and pulling at invisible forces Julia had never fully understood.  What were they?  Where did they come from?  And why could Angelique – as opposed to, say, Julia herself – manipulate them?

           

            Julia watched expectantly, keeping one eye on the doors to the bedroom.  She knew that they could burst open in any moment, and what could she possibly say?  Was there even a Julia Hoffman in this world that she could pretend to be?  And how would she ever explain Angelique?  If only she’d kept the dark hair, Julia thought grumpily, I could say she was a twin or something.  Seems to work well enough on all those silly TV shows lately.

            Angelique’s hands paused mid-air.  Her eyes flew open.  “What’s the matter?” Julia said.  “Why did you stop?”

            “I don’t understand,” Angelique said as if Julia hadn’t spoken.  “I don’t know what’s wrong!”

            “What’s wrong!”

 

            “My powers,” Angelique said, her voice choked, her eyes wide and blue and fixed on Julia’s.  “They’re … they’re gone!”

3

            “I don’t want to see you,” Timothy Stokes told his stepdaughter, and she turned away from him and her face grew ferocious, then thinned with her anger.  He turned away from her on his barstool at The Eagle tavern and threw back the rest of the Jamison in his tumbler, grimaced, then turned and exhaled the fumes into her face.  She didn’t recoil, wouldn’t allow herself to.  “I told you that before, when your sister died.  All the light went out of my world that night; you are a shadow, a pale imitation; you are nothing, girl, now leave me alone.”  Beside him, Will Loomis, the once-famous author, chuckled, and stirred his martini with a swizzle stick.

 

            “How can you say such things?” Alexis said.  Her voice was low and controlled; her hair, pulled back behind her head and twisted into a messy bun as had been her style for years, sought to escape its prison, and several strands like the serpents that crowned the gorgon head of Medusa coiled untidily in a frame about her face.  She pushed it away absently; a moment later and it had returned.  “You never saw me as your daughter; not like you saw her.”

            “You are quite correct in your assessment, my dear,” Stokes said.  “I often wonder what the world would have been like had Angelique never been born, had I been cursed with only you as a daughter, a millstone around my neck.”  He chuckled.  “Don’t my words wound you, Alexis?  Don’t they cut into your heart?”

            “You know that they do.”

            “Then go cry to someone else.  Go cry to Quentin.  I am sick of the sight of you.”

            “Quentin has been at the hospital all night,” Alexis said.  She had explained all this when she had entered the bar fifteen minutes ago.  It is just before noon, she thought furiously, and how many drinks has he consumed?  “Daniel was … was hurt last night.  Very badly.  They aren’t certain that he’ll make it.”

            Stokes sighed but said nothing.

            “There is a murderer at Collinwood, Father,” Alexis said.  “I should think that, despite your feelings for me, you would still be concerned enough to help me when I need you.”

            “I’m listening,” Stokes said at last.  Will tittered beside him.

            “Angelique,” Alexis said.  “She left many things behind.  Many obscure, shadowy things.”

            “That sounds about right.”

 

            “I have some questions.  I have something to show you, something you must see.  I … I can’t describe it to you, Father.  I can only say that it is mysterious and unfathomable.  I don’t understand it.  And I need your help if I ever will.”  She bowed her head; tears glistened in her crystalline eyes.

            Stokes drummed his fingers against the scarred surface of the bar.  “All right,” he said at last, and heaved himself off his bar stool.  Will gaped.  He scowled in his friend’s face, then turned to his stepdaughter.  “I will help you.  But I want you to make a bargain with me.”

            “What is it?” 

            “You sound defeated already, my girl.  You mustn’t.  I think it is a bargain you will be most pleased with, I promise you.”

            “Tell me, then we can leave this place and I will drive you to Collinwood.”

            “I prefer to drive myself, thank you.”

            “You are in no condition to –”

            “Then we shall make no bargain,” Stokes said, and spun quickly back to his bar stool.

           

            “No!” Alexis cried.  “No, wait.  I will hear you out.”

            “Yes?”  His eyes glinted sharply, vulpine in the folds of fat that rolled along his face.  The mustache above his lip was damp and black.  “All right.  Here are my terms.  I will come to Collinwood with you.  On my own steam.  I will see what you want me to see.  Then I will leave that house and never see you again.  Do you understand me, Alexis?  I never want to see you again.”

            She stared at him, and her eyes widened.  Her hands knotted into helpless fists of rage.

            At last she relaxed.  She dropped her eyes.  “All right, Father,” she said, and she sounded only tired, as if all the fury had leaked out of her.  “I think that can be arranged.”

4

             “Angelique,” Victoria said for the hundredth time, “is dead.  People don’t return from the grave, Quentin.”  She sat on the bed beside him and stroked his hair tenderly.  It was damp with sweat and had begun to curl into wings.

            “Yes they do,” he replied, and his eyes rolled madly in their sockets.  “Oh, yes, yes, yes, they do, they do.  Damion Edwards did, didn’t he?  Isn’t that what happened to my son?  Wasn’t he nearly killed by a vampire … something that returned from the grave?”

            “Angelique is not a vampire,” Victoria said.  She forced her voice to remain level, forced the irritation that wanted to tremble and warp it away.  I can’t put up with this all day, she thought, and brushed her long dark hair over her shoulder.  “Vampires must sleep during the day in coffins lined with soil from their graves.”

            Quentin sat up on one elbow and glared at her.  “How do you know so much about vampires all of a sudden?”

            “I forced myself to learn,” she snapped back, “after the séance, and all the talk of curses and monsters, and Angelique’s death.  Timothy Stokes, as repulsive as he is, told me he was once greatly invested in the occult.  I suppose that’s where Angelique picked up her interest as well.  I asked him about vampires, if you want to know.”

 

            “I despise this house sometimes,” Quentin said darkly.  “It killed both my wives.  My Maggie …”  He slammed one fist against the bedspread. 

            “You aren’t alone, Quentin,” Victoria said.  She ran one fingertip lightly against his cheek.

            He flinched away from her.  “Don’t touch me,” he said.

            “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and moved away from him.  She stood up and moved toward the door.  “I’ll leave you alone.”

            “You do that,” he said, and stared at the wall.  The sunlight streaming through it made interesting patterns.  He thought that, if he stared at them long enough, he wouldn’t see anything else. 

            “I only want to help you, Quentin,” Victoria said.  “I wish you would see that.  Someday I hope you will.”  And she was gone.

            Quentin didn’t move for a long time. 

             At last he stirred.  “Angelique is dead,” he said experimentally.  “Angelique … is dead.”

            He sat up, then threw his long legs off the bed and onto the floor.  He stood shakily, but he stood.  He was strong.  He was the master of Collinwood.

            It was time to find Hoffman.  She had been Angelique’s most loyal servant.  He would find her and question her, force her to tell him what she knew about Angelique that he did not … including whatever powers she was thought to have possessed.

            Quentin grinned.  It was cold, hard, utterly unpleasant.  He was going to enjoy this.  Yes, he thought as he left the room he would never share with Maggie, he thought that perhaps this dreadful day wouldn’t be a total loss after all.

5

 

            Collinwood was far behind them, but it wasn’t far enough for Julia Hoffman, who trailed behind Angelique as they both trudged through the woods towards the Old House.  That was the most likely place to find Barnabas, they had both figured.  Julia was panting, and ducked just in time to avoid a tree branch from walloping her in the face.  I have had just about enough of this, she thought, especially since Angelique isn’t capable of destroying me with a glance anymore.

            Which was a disturbing thought she didn’t have time to ponder right now.  And Angelique certainly didn’t want to discuss the loss of her powers which, Julia had tried to remind her, were the only reason they had been able to break through the warp and come to this time.  Without her powers, and even if they did find Barnabas, how on earth were they going to return to their own world?

            “Can’t you keep up?” Angelique snarled, barely turning her head to glare behind her.  “I swear, Julia Hoffman, if you have a heart attack, I will leave you in this forest and not even bother burying you, and I guarantee that not even your pathetic ghost will be able to cross that damned time barrier!”

           

            “A pity,” Julia snarled back, “that you embraced the powers of darkness instead of moonlighting as a motivational speaker.”

            “Where is it?” Angelique cried, and stopped so suddenly that Julia nearly ran into her.  The witch – or former witch, or former-former witch – stood in an open field where the woods had ejected them with her hands on her hips.  “Collinwood is in exactly the same place where it is in our world.  So where is the Old House?”

            Julia opened her mouth, ready to sling the perfectly scathing retort, but then she closed it with a snap.  Angelique was right.  In their own world, the open space where they now stood, gaping together, held the Old House, soaring up to the sky, all white columns like bones. 

            Here, there was nothing.

 

            “This place,” Angelique hissed suddenly, and kicked at the ground.  Julia watched mutely as a tiny puff of dust rose into the air.  Earth, she thought, just like our own.  How different is this world, really?  How does it even exist?  “This damned place.”  She threw her head back and screamed.  Julia winced.  The sound was high and shockingly loud.  An explosion of crows burst from the treetops, echoing Angelique’s screams, and wheeled about in crazy circles in the flawless blue sky above their heads.  “Why?  Why?  Why?”  Each word was punctuated by a stamp of her foot. 

            “Angelique,” Julia said quietly.  She put a hand on Angelique’s shoulder.  The other woman stiffened, then relaxed almost immediately.  She turned and fell against Julia, who, shocked – at Angelique for displaying emotion, and at herself for allowing her to – put her arms around her and held her while she sobbed. 

            “It isn’t fair,” Angelique sniffled.  “I know how that sounds, Julia; I know I’m behaving like a child.  I just don’t … understand.  Why are we here?  Why is Barnabas here?”

            “Because he wanted to come to this place,” Julia said.  “He wanted to find –”

            “Vicki,” Angelique whispered.  “Oh, how I hate her.”

            Julia said nothing, but her mouth began to disappear.

            “Oh, stop it,” Angelique said.  “I know what you think of me.  You don’t have to tell me.  You think I shouldn’t have … have done what I did.  But I did, and it’s over, and it can’t be undone now.  Even if Barnabas finds a thousand Victoria Winters in a thousand parallel worlds, I will always have killed her while he watched, the woman he really loves.  And nothing can change that.”  The pain showed on her features again like knives that cut into her face, and she looked away.

            Neither woman said a word.  Above them, the birds continued to scream.

            “We have to find Barnabas,” Julia said at last.  Angelique looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away and wiped her face. 

           

            “Yes,” she said.

            “Will you help me?”

            “Yes,” but almost reluctantly.

            “We’ll find Eagle Hill,” Julia said.  “Surely the Collins family has to bury their dead somewhere.  Barnabas would seek that place out.”

            “I think you’re right,” Angelique said, and sniffled.  She held out one hand.

            Julia looked at with a raised eyebrow.

            Angelique didn’t blink, didn’t drag her gaze away.

            At last Julia took her hand and squeezed it.

            They stood that way for a moment.  Finally they released each other.

            Angelique took a deep breath.  “All right,” she said, “let’s go.”

            Which was when the snarling, white-haired, shaggy thing burst from the trees and landed on all fours, directly in their path.

6

 

            Alexis couldn’t stop crying.

            She laid a hand against Daniel’s forehead; a tear fell and struck her hand and burned there.

            “Please,” she whispered, “please wake up.  Please.  For the love of god …”

            But his eyes did not open; his chest rose and fell; his lips were half-opened; but his eyes did not open.

            “Angelique?” she said, and glanced over her shoulder.

            But there was no one in the door.  She was alone in the room with her nephew, who might not survive the day.

            Sobs wracked her again.  She felt so helpless.

            She didn’t move her hand until her eyes, brimming with tears as they were, focused on her fingernails.  She raised it and held it close to her face.  Her gorge rose in her throat.  She rushed to the sink and scrubbed at her nails for several long moments.  Why had she thought Angelique was in the room?  Angelique wasn’t here.  Her lip began to tremble.

            She returned to her nephew’s side and touched his cheek again.  “Daniel,” she said tenderly, and stroked his hair.  She closed her eyes.  She was so very tired, but she couldn’t sleep.  Not yet.  Not when there was so much to do.  And this day, she thought as she left Daniel’s room with a glance over her shoulder, is endless.

7

 

            “This is the end,” Roger said, and glared with one eye into the bottom of his glass.  It was empty, damnit.  He considered crushing it; considered hurling it against the wall, but he though the glass might shred the curtains, and he liked the curtains.  He had helped Angelique picked them out, after all.

            He glanced up at her portrait.  “Tangerine,” he said.  “You insisted that they be tangerine.”  He shook his head.  “Blue.  Like ice.  To complement your eyes.”  He sighed, but fondly.  “But you insisted on tangerine.”

            He glanced toward the door; had there been a sound in the hallway?  Surely not.  His eyes traveled to the windows again, where the orange curtains fluttered slightly in the breeze that whispered through, smelling of darkness approaching and rot.  Collinwood was rotting.  Was that a surprise?  It was dead, wasn’t it.  The sun had gone down on the house of a corpse, and they were the ghosts inside it.  Or the flies.  He sneered.  That was more fitting.  The flies on the corpse.

            “They think I killed you, you know,” he said, and looked up at her visage smiling down on him beatifically.  How he longed to see her again, his chum, his lover.  “They think that I strangled you or something ridiculous during all the chaos.  Elizabeth won’t tell me so, but I read her journal, and she detailed everything so nicely, oh, neat as you please.  All her suspicions that her brother Roger, the pouf, her brother Roger the fairy killed Angelique because he could never really have her.  Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in all your life?”  The sneer faded.  “Oh, but I loved you.  And you never knew.  You never … really knew.”

            He was glad that he hadn’t shattered his glass.  He wanted to refill it.

            He moved to the table where Angelique kept her liquors, and paused.

            The doors were open.

            His brow furrowed.

            Had the doors been open before?  No, he thought, they weren’t.  I just looked at them; I thought I heard a sound in the hall …

            Too late he remembered Maggie’s eyes, wide and glazed and dead; Buffie Harrington’s throat gaping like a mouth; and the blood, the blood, the endless blood …

            The sun was gone.  Shadows were falling all around him.

            One of them was darker and thicker near the bed.  Something white glistened there.  Something sparkled.

            “Oh no,” he said.

           

            Roger …

            Was it a real voice he heard, or did it echo only in his head?

            Roger …

            “Please,” he said.  His lips were numb; his teeth chattered.

            It came for him then; it broke from the shadows and shambled forward; it was breathing, he saw as horror bloomed inside him and burst all around like black flowers, its breast rose and fell; its eyes were wide and furious somehow, focused on him; it reached for him and its arms were white like cottage cheese, mottled with gray spots; it gasped and something dark came out of its mouth; Roger, it said, and its teeth …

            Something warm and red was running down his front; he stared at it with wide-eyed wonder as it stained his shirt and fouled his ascot.  My favorite, he thought.

            Then he died.

            It went on for a long time.

            Shadows fell languorously around they two. 

And the long day was over.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...