Shadows on the Wall Chapter 88

CHAPTER 88:  Doorways

by Nicky

Voiceover by Lara Parker:  “Darkness falls on the great estate of Collinwood, in this world and in the disturbing world of Parallel Time.  In one room on both estates, small dramas play out, for there has been death and destruction at this Collinwood and in that other disturbing time.  And on this night, two women will attempt to uncover the door to another world … a door that, once opened, may lead to their destruction.”

1

 

            Angelique did not smile, and Julia was grateful for small favors.  The witch’s lips were as black as the twin holes that passed for her eyes.  She moved forward deliberately; she did not blink; the only sound as she came was the whisper of the leather that lovingly encased her body.

            “Angelique –” Julia choked.

            She did not pause.  Julia smelled ozone and heard a steady crackling sound.  It came, she saw with wide eyes, from the black skeins of energy that writhed constantly between the witch’s outstretched fingers.

            “You summoned me,” Angelique whispered.  “How dare you.”

            “I … I need your help,” Julia stammered, but wouldn’t allow herself to feint or dodge or make any kind of movement at all.  Her brow creased instead, her lower lip trembled furiously, and she drew herself up to her full height.  “Desperately,” she added in her most commanding, most whiskey-voiced tone.

            Angelique paused.  For a moment Julia thought she almost smiled.  But the electricity that danced at her fingertips continued to crackle and blaze.  “Do you honestly think that is what I want to hear?” she said.  “Julia, you are not a fool.  Don’t behave like one, even now.”

            “I am not a fool,” Julia agreed.  “Do you think that I didn’t weigh my options, consider the peril, the danger that you could place me in simply by being in the same room with me?”

            “I should destroy you,” Angelique said.

            “Or you can help me,” Julia barked.

            The witch did not hesitate. “Why should I?”

 

            “Because you don’t want Barnabas to die.”  It was a gamble.  Julia really didn’t know if Angelique cared one way or another if Barnabas lived or died.  Once upon time that might have been true, but the witch was different now … very different.  After she had placed the poisoned Mask of Ba’al over her face and allowed its dark energy to infuse her, body and soul, Julia had no idea what remnants of her former personality dwelt inside her, if any.

           

            Angelique said nothing for a moment.

            Julia’s breath caught in her throat.

            Then the other woman dropped her head, and for a moment – and Julia had to squint and blink and then shake her head to clear it – but for a moment it was as if the air before Angelique shimmered somehow, and Julia caught a glimpse at the Angelique she had come to know and, yes, even like over the past few months. 

            When she looked up, her eyes were blue, but her face held that death-like pallor, and the hair that tumbled over her shoulders was still midnight-black.  “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps I do care about Barnabas.  What do you suppose that means?”

            Julia allowed herself to relax, fragment by fragment.  She remembered how she had been treated when Angelique posed as Cassandra – good god, could that have been only a year ago?  didn’t seem possible – how the witch-turned-vampire had abused her with such willing cruelty, both physically and mentally.  But that isn’t the same Angelique, Julia reminded herself … or was it?  “I don’t know,” she admitted. 

            Angelique took a breath.  “I don’t either,” she said at last.  She turned away and examined the room.  “This place … it doesn’t feel … right.”

            “It isn’t right,” Julia said.  She remained cautious.  She wouldn’t even allow the little flower of hope she could feel struggling inside her chest to bloom.  “Something happened in this room, Angelique, something you should know about.”

            Angelique glanced over her shoulder and raised one black eyebrow.  “Oh?” she said.  Julia couldn’t tell if there was any real interest in her tones or not.  “Why don’t you tell me all about it, Julia.  And don’t leave anything out.  I’ll know if you do.”

            Julia sucked in a sharp breath, allowed her gaze to dart up to the portrait above the non-existent mantle, and began.  “It started with Barnabas,” she said, “and the way that the curse returned to him, and coming up to this room, where he saw something … something none of us could explain … except for Eliot Stokes …”

2

             “I don’t understand,” little Amy Collins piped in the voice she hated – hated – the one that she thought made her sound like Minnie Mouse, but she was only ten and thus, she reasoned, there was nothing to be done.  Not until she grew up.  But now, glancing around Angelique’s room where the blood that had spurted from Maggie Collins’ chest had yet to be cleaned, she wondered if the fabled land of grown up was a place she would ever live to reach. 

            “Of course you don’t,” Daniel Collins said solemnly.  “There’s nothing to understand.  Maggie is dead, that’s all.”

            “She isn’t just dead, Daniel Collins,” Amy snapped.  “She was … she was m-murdered.”

            “I know,” he said, and his voice was quiet.  “I know what it is to be murdered.”

            “You don’t either.”

            “All right,” he said, and glared at her.  “Then I know what it is to feel loss.”

            She hadn’t considered that.  She looked up at the portrait of Angelique and shivered.  Amy had often felt like the only person in the house who didn’t care for the mistress of Collinwood, not really, not like the legions of men who mooned over her, like Uncle Will or Mr. Edwards.  Speaking of him, she couldn’t recall the last time she had seen him.  She was used to his dropping by at all hours, whenever he felt like it.  She knew that Tom didn’t like him, but Tom didn’t talk to her so much anymore.  She felt depressed suddenly, and looked away from the portrait.  “I’m sorry,” she said in a tinier voice than usual.  “I wasn’t thinking.”

            “It’s okay,” Daniel said, and waved a dismissive hand at her.  She frowned.  “I didn’t like Maggie very much anyway.”

            “You didn’t really get to know her.”

            “That too.”

            The children gazed at each other, and for a moment Amy wondered if Daniel was about to cry.  Then she could comfort him.  She thought she might like that.

 

            Then he looked away and pulled out a small box from his front trouser pocket.  Her eyes widened.  It was a pack of cigarettes that had suffered, she saw, some damage, for it was all smashed and wrinkled.  But the cigarette Daniel pulled from the pack with practiced nonchalance seemed to be in fine shape.  As she watched, Daniel produced a lighter from his other pocket, crammed the cigarette in his lip, and flicked the lighter nimbly until a tiny tongue of flame appeared and licked at the tip of the cigarette.  After a moment it glowed a hot and hostile red, and Daniel sucked in, then blew a white stream from his mouth. 

            “Why, Daniel Collins!” she exclaimed.

            He looked at her with eyes like rocks.  “What?” he said.  “You gonna tell on me?”

           

            She didn’t answer.  Her hands clenched into fists and she felt blood flooding her face.  He was always so mean to her, and honestly, she only meant the best! 

            She thought if she said anything she would squeak, so instead she tossed her auburn hair and held out her hand.

            His eyebrows jumped up.  “What?” he said.  “What do you want?”

            “Give me one,” she said, and her voice did not squeak.  “That’s what I want.”

            He continued to stare at her, then a small smile quirked the corner of his mouth.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Okay.”

            She took the cigarette with great dignity, and allowed him to light the tip.  She sucked in, but carefully, and though the smoke burned her lungs she refused to cough, and so held it for a moment under what she thought must be his admiring gaze, then released the white stream of smoke as she had seen him do.

            They said nothing; together they smoked.

            Then:  “Holy crap,” Daniel said.

            Amy whirled around.  She felt her skin crawl, and of course it was then that she coughed.  “Mr. Edwards!” she cried.  “What are you doing here?”

 

            Damion Edwards stood poised in the doorway to Angelique’s room.  His face was pale, much paler than Amy remembered; his hair stood up in tangles and jags like the spikes of a jackdaw’s nest, and his eyes were wide and somehow vacant.  He stood without moving.  Amy’s nose wrinkled.  She could smell him, and it wasn’t terribly pleasant either.  The bright Easter-blue and yellow suit he wore was stained with something that had dried to brown. 

            “Mr. Edwards?” Daniel said.  His voice cracked.  Amy wanted to smile.  “You won’t tell on us, will you?  That you saw us smoking up here?  Promise you won’t.”

            Damion Edwards took a step into the room.

            Amy felt a sudden stab of fright.  “M-Mr. Edwards?” she quavered.

            That was when his mouth split open and revealed the long, rotten fangs; his eyes bulged; his hands reached out, pale, gnarled claws; and he began to scream and scream and scream like a wildcat as he ran at them, and it was his terrible screams that drowned out Daniel’s and those of Amy, who no longer sounded like Minnie Mouse at all.

3

 

            “It’s all so terrible,” Carolyn moaned, and placed a hand to her forehead.

            Alexis nodded solemnly.  “I know,” she said, and her voice was soft and kind.  “Dreadful.  I’m sorry you had to see that.”

            “I’m tired of finding the bodies,” Carolyn said with a trace of the petulance she had always exhibited, even as the poor little girl to poor Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, abandoned by her fey-husband when he ran off with Matthew Morgan and took all her money and her jewels. 

            “I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life,” Alexis said.  Her face was paler than usual, and her hair needed washing.  Carolyn thought about this for a moment, then decided to forget it.  She liked Alexis, and she didn’t want to point out that her friend could use a long shower and, perhaps, a new kind of deodorant.  The smell that wafted from Alexis’ thinning body undisguised by the shapeless blue dress she wore was a dark smell, and reminded Carolyn of mold and rotten tomatoes.  “Her heart … Maggie’s heart –”

            “First Buffie, now Maggie,” Carolyn said.  “And in this house.  None of us is safe!”

            “Quentin went with the police,” Alexis said.  “They’ll be back soon to search the house.  Until then, I’m going to stay with you.  Your mother is with Roger.  Trask is standing guard outside the house.  He has a little pistol.”

            “What about cousin Barnabas?”

            A delicate shadow of a frown flitted across the other woman’s face.  “I don’t know where he is,” she admitted.  “Gone with Quentin, I think.”

            “He should stay here,” Carolyn pouted.  “He could protect us.”

            “I can protect us,” Alexis murmured.

 

            Carolyn let it go.  Alexis, she thought, though of course she would never ever say something so wicked and cruel out loud, but Alexis could be broken like a twig. 

            Something struck the window outside.

            Alexis was at it in a flash.  Carolyn tried to sit up in bed, but she was struck by a sudden wave of dizziness, and fell back onto the bed. 

            Alexis recoiled, and her face tightened and twisted.  “My god!” she cried.  “It’s a bat!”  She cried out again as it thumped its wings against the window-glass.  “It looks like it wants to get in!”

            “Alexis,” Carolyn said, her voice fluttering.  “Will you make me a cup of tea?  Chamomile, please?  It will help my nerves.”

            “Carolyn – Carolyn the bat –”

            “It’s gone now,” she said.  It was.  She knew it was.

            Alexis backed away from the window.  “You’re … you’re right,” she said, and placed a hand above her heart.  She grimaced.  Carolyn watched this with some interest. “Excuse me, Carolyn.  I’ll … I’ll get the tea.”  She paused in the doorway.  “You won’t be afraid to be alone?”

            Carolyn smiled.  “Not at all, dear.  Thank you.”

            Alexis nodded, then opened her mouth as if she were about to say something else … then smiled, slid out the door, and closed it in her wake.

            Carolyn drew a breath, then clambered out of the bed.  The long pink nightgown she wore fell about her feet like foam.  Her breasts heaved; her breath came in short pants.  She was terrified, as she was always terrified these days, but there was a warmth growing in her center and it had already begun to spread.  She found that she was smiling.  “Come in,” she whispered.

            “Carolyn,” came the voice, his voice, as it would always come, she prayed, even if she would hate herself tomorrow.

            “I was so afraid before,” she said.  Her own voice was husky, limpid with desire.  She burned.  Her knees began to tremble.  She licked her lips, and found they were dry.  “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

            “You don’t need to be afraid,” the man in the darkest corner of the room told her.  His eyes burned at her like a wolf’s, like sullen embers glowing in the fireplace downstairs.  “You never have to be afraid with me.”

            She stepped forward and he caught her and held her and pulled her tightly against him.  He was cold – he was always so cold – but he was alive somehow, and he made her feel alive.

            Did he do it? she wondered as he revealed his teeth, the shiny, silvery fangs; did he kill Maggie?  Did he tear her heart from her chest?

            Then she found she didn’t care any longer, and succumbed to the embrace, to the kiss her cousin Tom offered her as he crushed her to him again with the strength that came naturally to a vampire. 

 

4

            “Yes,” Angelique said, and closed her eyes.  Julia watched her with interest.  She always had been interested, in a clinical sort of way, in Angelique’s magic.  Where did that power come from?  Angelique had told her once, as they sat together and waited for Sky and Barnabas to return from researching the best way to destroy Jeb Hawkes, that she used to think the power came from the devil, or “the Dark Spirit,” as she called him.  But, she had confessed over her tea with tears in her big blue eyes, she wasn’t so sure anymore.  “When I was a girl,” she had said, “even before Nicholas found me on the island and taught me more about … about the Art, even before all that … I always thought that the power came from me.” 

 

Julia wondered.  Now, she supposed, it came from that damned Mask of Ba’al.  Well, she thought, and wished madly for a cigarette, if it could get Barnabas back from whatever danger he’d gotten himself into now, it couldn’t be all bad.  “Yes,” Angelique said again.  “You’re right.  This room … it’s a gateway.”

            “I know,” Julia said tightly.  Her patience was beginning to fray.  If Angelique wasn’t going to destroy her, she should at least get her ass in gear.

            Angelique cracked one eye.  “I can hear you, Julia,” she said with a trace of that old petulance, and Julia smiled.  “Besides, I’m done.”

            With what? Julia wondered, but didn’t ask aloud. 

            “Dear Professor Stokes is right.  There are multiple levels of existence.  This room leads to one of them.  And somehow Barnabas has managed to blunder into it.”

                       

            “I know,” Julia said through clenched teeth.  “Can you get him back?”

            “I don’t know,” Angelique said, and laughed at Julia’s gasp of surprise.  “Don’t look so shocked, Julia.  I’m not omnipotent, you know.”

            “But … but the Mask …”

            “The Mask has increased my powers, it’s true.  But the fabric between worlds is usually unbreachable, just as the doors to times past has been barred against us all forever.  We … we can no longer change the present to suit ourselves.”  And a tiny shadow passed over her face.  “There are powers greater than me.”  She smiled then, and the shadow disappeared.  “For now.”

            Julia thought of Sky, as Angelique must undoubtedly be thinking of him now, and felt another pang of sympathy for the other woman, but it would have to wait.  Barnabas could be on the other end of a wooden stake right now … if he wasn’t dead already.  “Wait a moment,” she said suddenly, and Angelique looked at her with one raised eyebrow and her lips pursed in a moue.  “Didn’t you say that the fabric between worlds is usually unbreachable?”

            “Yes,” Angelique said.  “But what does that –”

            “Don’t you see?”  Excitement had risen into her chest and began to glow rosy in her cheeks.  “It isn’t impossible inside this room!  The fabric between worlds is thin here.  You felt it yourself.  Angelique … Angelique, don’t you think that possibly, with your powers –”

 

            “I could make a tiny tear,” she said thoughtfully.  “Or widen the tear that already exists.”  She began to smile.  “It may be possible, my dear Julia.  It may very well be possible indeed.”  She closed her eyes again, and Julia shivered as the temperature of the room plummeted.  Angelique held out her arms; black fire began to crackle between her fingertips and then glowed a sinister green.  “Spirits of time and space,” Angelique called, “hear me!  Filiolus!  Patefacio ianua! Impedimentum distraho! Tribuo nos viscus!”

            The floor trembled beneath their feet.  Julia gasped and reached out for something – anything – to steady her.  But there was nothing.

            Angelique was staring at her, and her eyes were black holes.  She began to grin.

5

             Amy covered her face, but she was too late to see the creature – whatever it was that had taken possession of Mr. Edwards’ body – seize Daniel by the shoulders and hurl him across the room.  He struck the wall with a bone-shuddering crash, and, eyes half-lidded and glazed, he slid down to the floor.  Amy screamed at the long, maroon streak that he left in his wake as he went. 

            Mr. Edwards was gibbering and snarling.  Drool ran in an endless tide from the gaping hole of his mouth.  His eyes were red and empty, and he lifted Daniel again and held him high in the air.  The boy’s head lolled bonelessly.  “Mine, mine mine,” Damion chortled, “mine and … and hers …”

            Amy screamed again as he revealed his saber-fangs and began to lower them towards Daniel’s throat.

            “Put the boy down!”

            Amy didn’t want to take her fingers away from her face, but there was so much command in that voice that she had to obey.  “Cousin Barnabas,” she whispered, and so it was.  He was such a strange man – his face sallow, his eyes hollow and somehow filled with pain that seemed to always gleam there like a handful of stars crushed to powder – and he stood now in the doorway to Angelique’s room, those pained eyes now flashing with fury. 

            Damion Edwards roared like an animal and cast Daniel aside like a handful of laundry.  He struck the floor without making a sound.  Amy screamed again.  He was dead, she knew it, he had to be, no one could live if their head had been crushed like that … like a bug …

            “Stop,” Barnabas thundered, and held up his cane, the one Amy had found so interesting when she had seen it earlier in the evening.  It was long and black and ended in the head of a snarling wolf with its fangs bared, cast all in silver.  The light from the chandelier over their heads flashed off that cane now, and Mr. Edwards cowered away from it as if it were the most deadly poison.

            Vampire, Amy’s trembling mind whispered, and she remembered something she had watched one night on the late, late show – Tom always let her watch old horror movies, even though Chris only ever said no, but Chris was gone, wasn’t he, even if he really lived in town; Chris was always gone now – some old vampire movie, where the doctor-man with the round glasses had said something about silver, how you could kill a vampire with silver …

 

            Mr. Edwards was rushing at Cousin Barnabas now, and Barnabas was swinging the cane, and it arced and seemed to flare with silver fire as it went, and Mr. Edwards drew back, screaming again, that dreadful wildcat sound, and then he was gone, and Barnabas was kneeling beside her, shushing her and petting her hair.  “He’s gone,” Barnabas was saying, “he’s gone, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

            But Amy could see Daniel over his shoulder, Daniel with his face the white of a skeleton’s bone, and she began to cry all over again, because she knew – after the dreadful events of this night, how she knew – that he was very wrong indeed. 

6

            “You’re going to kill me,” Carolyn croaked from the place where she lay on the bed.  She had barely the strength to lift her head, and she found now that she didn’t even care.  Let me die, she thought, let me be free of all these people, free of Will and the way my heart has shriveled for him but continues to whisper his name, just let me be free and let me die.

            But a part of her knew what would happen to her after death, after his kind of death, and she became afraid.

            Tom Collins loomed over her.  His face split, as it always did, into a razor grin lined with sharp, white teeth.  They had been inside her, those teeth, ever since the night he caught her spying on him as he burned the Old House – Loomis House, her house – burned it to the ground.  I should have been inside, she thought, but didn’t – couldn’t – say the words aloud.  He caught her watching and so he took her then, sinking into her, and she loved it, every time she loved it, even as she knew he was killing her.

            She wanted to rise from the bed and run.  She wanted to get away from him.  She could make it.  If she was quick.  If she was clever enough.

            But he knew.  He always knew what she was thinking.

 

            “I’m not going to kill you, dear Cousin Carolyn,” Tom said, and his grinning never ceased.  “Not just yet.  You always recover so nicely from each one of our little … sessions, and it is actually quite convenient to have a handy little bloodbag like you within easy reach.  Whenever I feel like it, actually.  Saves me quite a lot of trouble, you know.”  His face grew dark.  “I can’t get away with it every time, you know.”

            “That girl,” Carolyn whispered.  “The girl down by the docks.  That entire apartment house burned down.  Eight people died.”

            “Yes,” Tom said, bored.  “I expect they did.”

            “You’re a monster.”

            “Exactly,” he said, and smiled.  His eyes were polished stones, like the moon, like the ripples on the water.  She desired him and hated him at the same time.  Not for the first time, she wondered how he had become what he was.  She remembered him as a child; whatever had done this to him, it hadn’t been that long ago.  “We are a house full of monsters, Carolyn my dear, and don’t you ever forget that.  Angelique knew it.  I know it.  You know it.  We Collinses, monsters to the end.”

            “This … this house …”

            “This house indeed.  It makes monsters of us all.”

            “No.  We have a choice.  We must!”  She was beginning to whimper again.  Her head throbbed.  Blood was leaking from the wounds; she could feel it trickling and running down between her breasts.  He would lap at them sometimes until she cried out with the exquisite agony of it all.  She burned for his kiss and hated herself for the burning.

            “Perhaps.  But I think not.  This house is a door; you know that.  Someone in this family opened it long ago, called to the evil, and the evil responded.  Or perhaps it’s the other way around.  Perhaps the evil called to us, and we are all too weak to turn it back.  That feels right to me somehow.”

            “We aren’t …”  It was harder to breathe with every moment that passed.  “We are not monsters.”

            “Oh Carolyn,” Tom sighed and petted her hair lovingly.  His fangs glowed in the surreal half-light that fell from the lamp beside her bed.  “Of course we are.”

            She began to cry.

            “Carolyn?”

            Her head jerked up.  Tom was gone, and she cursed at the ache she felt at his loss.

 

            Alexis Stokes stood framed in the doorway.  “I’m sorry I was so long,” she said.  “But there was a … another disturbance.”

            “In Angelique’s room,” Carolyn whispered.

            Alexis frowned.  “Yes.  How did you know?”

            She didn’t respond.

            Alexis set the tea at Carolyn’s side.  The frown lines scarred deep on her forehead drew closer together.  “I’m not exactly sure what happened.  Mr. Collins – Barnabas, that is – found the children.”

            “Found them?”

            “They’re hurt.  Or Daniel is.  It was Damion Edwards.”

            “Damion Edwards is gone.”

            “He isn’t.”  Alexis’ blue eyes sparked with fright.  “He’s back.  He might even be in the house right now.  Carolyn, he’s become a vampire.”

            Carolyn said nothing.  She wasn’t afraid.  She was Tom’s; she belonged to Tom alone; he would protect her from any other creature that walked the night.

            “Did you hear what I said?” Alexis’ voice had grown shrill, as it always did when she neared hysteria.  Carolyn felt a headache coming on.  “There is another vampire at Collinwood!  You were right what you said before.  None of us is safe until it has been caught and destroyed!”

            “I’m in no condition for a vampire hunt,” Carolyn said.  “I’m very tired.”

            “You may never wake up,” Alexis said sternly, “if Damion Edwards comes to your room.”

            “I’ll be all right,” Carolyn said.  “I’ll lock the door.”

            “I want to leave this house,” Alexis whispered.

            “Why don’t you then?”

            She looked down at the other woman, perplexed.  “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, why don’t you leave?  If that’s what you want to do.  Why don’t you just do it?”  She was too exhausted for niceties, even if Alexis was her friend.  Sort of.

            “I can’t,” she said.  “Not until I find out.”

            “Find out what?”

            “The truth,” Alexis said.  “The truth about what happened to Angelique.”

            “A stroke,” Carolyn said.  “At the séance.  You were there.  You saw.”

            “I don’t believe she died of a simple stroke.”

            “She practiced black magic,” Carolyn said wanly.  “I understand that isn’t good for your blood pressure.”

            Alexis paced beside the bed, her face scrawled, her eyes fiery.  “You can make jokes,” she said.  “But I miss her.”

            “I don’t know why.  You two were never … close.”

            “But we were!  I swear we were!”  Her voice fell to a hush.  “Or we would have been.  She began to confide in me, those days before the séance.  She told me her thoughts … her plans.”

            “What plans?”

            Alexis didn’t answer her.  She stared silently out the window instead.  “The moon,” she said.  “It’s so bright.”

            “Alexis,” Carolyn called, “are you all right?”

            “I’m fine,” Alexis said, and bowed her head.  “I’m just … tired.”

            “You’re always tired.”

            “So are you.”  They stared at each other for a moment, then Alexis laughed.  It was nothing, Carolyn thought, like Angelique’s.  Not even close.  “Listen to us.  We’re like schoolgirls.  Your mother is going to spend the night with you.  Roger has gone into town, and Trask is going to stay outside Amy’s room.  I’ll be there with her.”

            “It must have been Damion,” Carolyn said.  She was teetering on the brink of sleep.  She felt a bit better – stronger – but she was so tired!  She seemed to hear a snatch of music, a little bit of a tune.  She began to hum it.

            “What did you say?”

            Alexis.  Like a tiny gnat.  Carolyn hummed her song.  “I wanna dance with you,” she whispered, “wanna dance my cares away …”

            “Carolyn!”

           

            Like a tunnel.  Alexis seemed further and further away.  Carolyn let her go.  Damion killed Buffie, Carolyn thought dreamily, and hummed and hummed, and that was the answer.  Of course he had.  And someone would kill Damion, and then they’d all be safe and there would be no more worries.

            There is no doorway at Collinwood, she thought before drifting asleep, unaware that the line in Alexis’ forehead had smoothed out at last.  There is, she thought, only us.  The Collinses.  And that’s enough.

7

            “Barnabas Collins knows about the vampire,” Victoria said.  “The other vampire, I mean.”

            “So what?” Tom said.  He ran a hand across his bare chest.  It was, he thought, like alabaster, like he was perfectly cast in marble.  His muscles were hard and sensitive beneath the skin, and they jumped at his touch.  I don’t know how I ever lived before, he thought, and made a little face.  Not as a human, anyway.  What a waste is man.  A pitiful waste.  He grinned.  Fit only for consumption.

            Victoria frowned.  “So he could be dangerous, that’s what.  He didn’t seem at all surprised to know we had a vampire.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Actually, he seemed more than not-surprised.  It was like … like he was familiar with them.”

            “Maybe Barnabas Collins is a vampire.”  He chuckled, and ran the tip of his finger over her bare nipple.  She drew in a sharp hiss.  The sex had been fast and brutal, the way they both liked it.  He was still flushed from the blood he had taken from Carolyn.  It made him feel hot … alive.  He wanted only to give that life to her, then.  Her service, only hers.  “Come on, Vic.  He’s another relative.  Just another relative.  A Collins, so he’s a weirdo.”

            “I think he’s more than that,” Victoria said.  “I think he could be an enemy.”

            “So I’ll kill him.”  Tom bared his fangs.  “I’ll drain him dry.”

            “Perhaps,” she replied.  He leaned over and put his mouth on her nipple.  A small sound came out of her then, and she lay back.

            After they were done – again – she put her head on his chest and listened to the nothing inside him.  It made her feel cold and, let’s face facts, rather frightened.

            “You shouldn’t be afraid of me.”  She jumped.  He couldn’t read thoughts – or said he couldn’t.  But what if he was lying?

            “I’m not.”

           

            “I can smell your fear.”  He tittered.  “Come on, baby doll.  You made me what I am.  You know about all my powers and stuff.”

            “Do I?”

            “Okay, so maybe you don’t.  But I don’t know about yours.  All your hoodoo and voodoo.”  He waggled his fingers and ooohed. 

            “It isn’t voodoo.”

            “Hoodoo then.”

            “It isn’t that either.  I don’t know what I am.”  She was depressed again.  Terribly depressed.  She’d been feeling this way more and more as of late, and nothing seemed to help. 

            “You’re powerful, baby, that’s what you are.”  He nuzzled her throat playfully.  “Full of dark juice.  I could just drink it up.”  He made a deep grumbling sound inside his throat, like a lion.

            She stared at him warily.  “You’d better not even think about it.”

            “I love you, Vic.  I told you that.  Wanna be with you forever.”

            “You will be.”

            More kissing.  She liked that better, better than talking.  Which they still had to do.

            She broke the kiss and stared at him.  “Have you talked to Chris?”  She hated to talk about herself … about her powers.  She didn’t understand them, didn’t know where they came from, or what they meant, or what their extent really was.  They frightened her sometimes.  And sometimes they didn’t.  Bringing up Tom’s brother, however, was more than just a distraction.  She needed him at Collinwood.  Angelique needed the same thing, Victoria thought darkly, but she’s dead, and so I’ll carry on her plan without her.

            The Collins family must dwell under this roof.  If the plan is to work, they must all be gathered.      

            “He doesn’t want to come back here.  Why do you want him to, anyway?”

            “I’ll tell you,” she said.  “All in good time.”

            “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

            “Would that bother you?”  Her eyes were flat.  The pupils had begun to expand … then contract.  Expand … then contract.

            Tom recoiled.  She knew it bothered him when that happened.  But her eyes reflected the power in her, and when it rose up like a beast, they turned black as the still heart of midnight. 

            “Nah,” he said too quickly.  “I don’t care one way or another about him. I’m just curious.”

            “Angelique had a theory,” Victoria said.  “Did I ever tell you what it was?”

            “Huh uh.”

            “She was a half-cracked witch at best with no real power to speak of.  Certainly she couldn’t call herself back from the grave as she always said she would.  But she had this theory, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

            “What was it?”

            “That this house has some kind of power.  She never said what kind.  But it exerts this power over us – over all of us.  It called the Collins family to it, and we had to come.”

            “Stupid theory, then.  We built this house.”

            “Or maybe it made us build it.”

            “Mumbo jumbo bullshit.”

            “Maybe.  But I think she might have had something.  The more Collinses that live here, the more power there is.  And I’m interested in power.”

            He ran his fangs over her breasts lightly but didn’t break the flesh.  “You’re powerful,” he said.  “You’re amazing.”

            She smiled.  “Do you ever regret that I made you what you are?”

            “Never.  Not for one single moment.”

            “Good,” she said.  She wondered if she meant it.  “Kiss me,” she said, and he opened her wide once again.

8

            Barnabas remained in Angelique’s room after the paramedics had taken Daniel away.  Dr. Reeves had given Amy a sedative and she was sleeping in her room.  Alexis would join her there soon, she had assured him.  And everyone was given a cross.

 

            Except for me, Barnabas thought angrily, and glared up at the portrait of Angelique.  “I wish I could say that this was your fault,” he said.  “That you caused me this curse.  But even you are not responsible.  No, in this time, for once, it was not you.”  The anger dissolved as suddenly as it had come.  He couldn’t even blame the Angelique from his time.  Not anymore.  It had been selfish of him to ask her to lift the curse.  But dammit, why?  His eyes blazed crimson for a moment.  Why had it been selfish?  Someone had restored the curse to him in the present day, and he had yet to discover who.  It wasn’t Angelique, he thought.  She wanted to help me.  Before Sky, I mean.  Before Vicki destroyed her once chance at happiness … as she destroyed mine.

            And the wheel went round and round.  Who was responsible for what – the blame – it hurt too much to think of it.  He had killed Josette as surely as Angelique had.  And Vicki … hadn’t he encouraged her to open herself to the darkness inside her, for the sake of his family?

            But it was her family too, he reminded himself.  It was all for the greater good …

            My fault, he thought, and glanced down at the wolf’s head cane that he couldn’t even bring himself to touch.  It would sear my flesh as much as it would that sad, repulsive vampire I drove off from the children, he thought.  Because I am a foul thing.  An evil.  A danger to everyone around me.  And no matter what pretty lies I tell myself, Angelique isn’t to blame. 

            I am.

            Could he save the Collins family of this time?  Should he interfere at all?  Their secrets were not his, and yet … he felt drawn to them.  They weren’t his responsibility … and yet, somehow, madly, they were.

           

            Victoria.

            He closed his eyes and placed a hand to his forehead.  Unless I’m really thinking of her, he thought.  Unless she has blinded my reason.  Was that at all possible?

            He thought it might be.  Strong possibility. 

            She’s different, he reminded himself; if she possesses the powers that the Vicki of his time did, then surely she had already allowed them to consume her.  She was cold, calculating … and miserable, somehow.  He could see the misery in her eyes, sparkling up and out when she thought no one was looking.

            I could help her … I could free her from the darkness … another chance, god, please, just one more chance …

            And then she could rejoin me in my world, he thought, and looked around the room.

            If I can ever get back.

           

            Would the doorway ever open?  Was there a doorway to begin with?

            Perhaps it’s me, he thought with his usual touch of melancholy.  Perhaps I am the doorway … and all this evil flows from me.

            It was nearly dawn.  He had to check on Hoffman and then secure himself away.

            Perhaps forever.

            For a moment after Barnabas Collins had faded away utterly the room that had once belonged to Angelique Stokes Collins was silent, still and watchful.

            Then it shivered minutely.

            It trembled.

            It seemed to draw in a deep breath – reality fragmented and curled, turning in on itself – and then it exhaled with a mighty gasp.  The chandelier above swung and tinkled.  The portrait of Angelique rattled against the wall.

            The room was no longer empty, silent, or still.

            Two women stood, blinking at each other, their hair tousled, their eyes wide, their mouths agape.

            Neither one of them moved for a moment.

            Then they embraced.

            The doorway had opened.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...