Shadows on the Wall Chapter 101

CHAPTER 101:  Lonely Hearts

by Nicky

Voiceover by Christopher Pennock:  “The residents of Collinsport are not immune to tragedy.  And even as the dark forces that threaten everyone unfortunate enough to fall under their shadow continue to rise, there are those who remain preoccupied by the loneliness that comes with human feeling … even if those who feel that loneliness are technically human or not.”

1

 

            It was absolutely astonishing, Sebastian thought as he planted his hands on his hips and gazed around the bar.  What he had come to think of as “my Collinsport” was identical in every aspect (as far as he could see) to the one where he now stood; only, once in awhile, there were certain jarring changes … like this one.  He had stood outside and marveled at it for nearly five minutes before actually daring to set foot inside, but, no, the interior of the Blue Whale looked just the same as the Eagle at home (must, he thought absently, stop calling it that).  Even the tables were configured exactly as they were in the Eagle, and the man standing behind the bar with the stogie planted firmly between his teeth was the twin of the Eagle’s bartender.

            I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, Sebastian told himself as he selected a seat (feeling, as he did, a pang; the last time he sat in this seat, Christopher Collins had been sitting across the table from him).  After all, Roxanne had explained to him in exhausting detail the ramifications of the ceremony that created the division that lay between these two worlds.  Each world affected the other, even though the one Sebastian inhabited now came into existence first.  None of that really mattered, though, since the one he had since abdicated was, according to Roxanne, dying.

            But then again, according to Professor Stokes and Dr. Julia Hoffman, this world wasn’t in much better shape.

            They had pressured him jointly about the evil that seemed to have a vested interest in Sebastian’s world as well.  Roxanne had spoken of an “Enemy,” Sebastian thought, though racking his brain did no good.  He simply couldn’t recall any knowledge she might have possessed, and anyway, as he told Stokes and Dr. Hoffman, he was fairly certain she had mentioned this “Enemy” only in passing.  “And it’s equally possible she was referring to Angelique Collins,” he had added glumly, to Stokes’ vexation.

            Sebastian was a Collinsport native, and since the Collinsport of his world was as at home with the occult as was this Collinsport, it wasn’t terrifically surprising that his mother was a psychic and amateur sorceress.  From the time Sebastian was a child, he had worked in his mother’s shop.  No father to speak of; ran off with a waitress from the coffee shop in the Collinsport Hotel when Sebastian was seven, so after that it was just the two of them.  Didn’t matter; he enjoyed being the only man in his mother’s life.  He liked the little trinkets the shop sold, a fixture for the summer people, which allowed them to eat throughout the winter;  he liked the scrying crystals and the herbs his mother carefully ground to make into sachets and magical hands; he liked being useful.  And when he turned into a werewolf for the first time at the tender age of eighteen, his mother had already prepared him for the transformation.

            He missed her with a sudden pang.  He would never see her again.

            Never see any of it ever again.

            Loneliness smote him unexpectedly, and he missed Christopher with such intensity that he found it impossible to breathe.  His eyes burned.

            What am I going to do now? Sebastian wondered.  Mrs. Stoddard set him up nicely with what she called a “carriage house” on the Collinwood estate, but he couldn’t stay there forever.  And he didn’t want to be a groundskeeper or whatever else she had suggested.  What he wanted, suddenly, was his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s very strong arms around him. 

            What, he wondered, pulling at his shaggy blonde hair, what what what am I going to do?

            A friendly face, some reminder of home …

            A shadow fell over him, and he looked up, his usual sunny smile beaming up at whoever it was, fake as that felt.

            “Buffie!” he exclaimed before he could stop himself.

 

            Buffie Harrington glared down at him with slitted eyes, now even more slitted with suspicion.  “How did you know my name?” she demanded, her tone icy, her eyes flinty.  Her hair was a deep auburn and piled high on top of her head, and she wore the same green miniskirt she’d been wearing the last time he had seen her.  Just before she was murdered.

            This was not the Buffie of his world.  Of course.

            Keep it together.

            His smile wanted to falter, but he wouldn’t allow it.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m new in town.  A friend of the Collins family.  I’m sure Quentin must have mentioned you.”  Was there a Quentin Collins in this world?  Sebastian was fairly certain Barnabas mentioned him.  He hoped.

            That was a mistake, obviously, dropping the Collins name.  Buffie’s mouth grew smaller, her gaze harsher.  “I don’t have anything to do with Quentin Collins,” she said, “or anyone else up in that house.  Who are you?  What are you doing here?”

            His smile remained steady.  Inside him, however, the Animal had begun to growl; he felt his eyes wanting to shift to gold, and he bit the inside of his lower lip until the urge subsided.  “My name is Sebastian Shaw,” he said pleasantly.  “Why so unfriendly?  I haven’t done anything, have I?”

            “I don’t know,” she said.  “Have you?”  Her gaze never wavered from his.

            But he didn’t drop his eyes either.

            “Is this an example of Collinsport hospitality?”

            “We don’t care much for strangers.  Not anymore.”

            “Small town America.”

            “No,” she said immediately.  “Self-preservation.  We had a disappearance here over a week or so ago.  Another one.  First one was a stranger in town, like you.  But this other girl … just last night …”  Buffie was trembling.  “I knew her, Mr. Shaw.  We look after our own in this town.”

            This was news.  “Who was the first one to disappear?  The stranger?”

            “A girl,” Buffie said, too dismissively for his taste.  “But that isn’t all.  We’ve had a string of deaths in town, pretty steady now, for over a year.  Ever since that Barnabas Collins came to town.”  Her lips were nonexistent now.  “Girls being attacked.  People disappearing.”  She began ticking names off on one tapered finger.  “Sabrina Stuart, Letty Pettibone, Sam Evans, Amy Jennings …”

            Amy Jennings.  Sebastian sat up.  That rang a bell.  Christopher’s little sister was named Amy.  And their last name was Collins … only because their mother insisted.  Wasn’t Chris’s dad’s last name Jennings?

            “So you can see,” Buffie was saying in that icy, bitchy tone that he was growing less and less patient with every second that she used it, “we’re just the tiniest bit suspicious these days.  Which is why I’m not going to ask what you’d like to drink.  Because I won’t bring it to you anyway.”

            “Really,” Sebastian purred.  He steepled his fingers, flattened them on the table, steepled them …

           

            Buffie watched.  Then her eyes widened.

            With every motion, the stranger’s fingers grew longer and longer, the nails blackened, and stretched into claws –

             He was still smiling up at her.  But his smile was sharp somehow.  And his eyes golden.  A beautiful, shifting hue, the color of coins.  They shone up at her with their own, interior light.

            “I think you’ll bring me a drink, Buffie,” Sebastian said, still pleasant, still polite.  And Buffie knew that she was not conversing with a human being.  “Whiskey.  Straight, no ice.” 

            She took a step away.  “Y-yes,” she managed to stammer, “yes, s-sir.”

            “And Buffie?”

            She glanced over her shoulder, terrified to look at him.

            He was grinning at her wolfishly with a mouth full of very sharp teeth.  “Make it a double.”

            She didn’t reply.  But she did run.

 

            Sebastian settled back into his chair.  The lonely feeling was still there, and the pain of Christopher’s loss.  But it hurt a little bit less.  He felt better – not good, but better – and the fact that this good feeling came at the expense of terrifying a bar matron should have made him feel at least a little badly, but it didn’t.  Not really.

            What would Christopher say?

            His good humor began to fade.  “Oh, Christopher,” he whispered.

            The door to the Blue Whale opened.  Quentin Collins stepped through it.  And someone behind him followed him inside.

            All the air went out of the room.  Sebastian tried to breathe, and couldn’t, and couldn’t.

            Because Christopher stood behind Quentin, looking around the bar doubtfully.

            His eyes found Sebastian’s immediately.  He froze.  Quentin was saying something to him, but he wasn’t listening.

            His eyes widened.

             It was Christopher, Sebastian knew.  And he recognizes me.  He does.

            He knows I’m a werewolf.

            Because, Sebastian suddenly understood, this Christopher was a werewolf too.

2

            David nervously flicked the lighter he held, then flicked it again, then again.  He enjoyed the spark of light in all the damned darkness, and was there a darker place on this earth here, at the edge of Widow’s Hill?  So what if he stole the lighter from Quentin’s dresser drawer; it wasn’t like he was around very much to use it, even if he had come back, out of the blue, a few days ago.  He doesn’t notice me, David thought darkly, and flicked and flicked at the lighter; no one notices me, no one cares.

            He reached into his pants pocket suddenly and removed a crumpled back of smokes.  These he had stolen from Dr. Hoffman’s room, as he had done before.  She wouldn’t notice – she had lots.  He pulled a cigarette from the pack, examined it critically to see if it had broken when he crammed the pack unceremoniously into his jeans, ascertained that it was whole and thus smokeable, and balanced it on his lower lip.

 

            His fingers flicked nervously at the lighter … and allowed it to stay alight this time.  His eyes settled on the flame and stared at it, unblinking.

            Beautiful, isn’t it.

            A woman’s voice, soft, cajoling.  He knew who it was supposed to sound like, and that was impossible.

            She’s gone.  She’s gone forever.

            He didn’t believe that.  He dreamed about her every night now, but it wasn’t until last night that he awoke with a certainty that there was more to her visitations, that they were more than just dreams, and when he felt the hard bump underneath his pillow, he was certain.

            It was in his other pocket, the one that didn’t hold the cigarettes:  the talisman his mother left behind, the thing that proved beyond any doubt that she was real.

            Alive.  Still alive.

            He brought it out now.  Held it up.  The starlight sparkled off its opalescent, ebony surface.

            It was a scarab.  Or the representation of one, at any rate.  David wasn’t at all aware how he knew what it was, but that didn’t matter either.  Mother knew.

            “Throw it into the sea.”

            He stiffened.

            His father stood before him.

            Roger Collins wasn’t a ghost; David understood that immediately.  He knew ghosts, had encountered his fair share of them.  His favorite was Josette, of course, but there were others.  And they were all the same:  semi-solid, translucent, usually flickering as if they held their own light, rarely speaking.

 

          

            “Father?”  David whispered.  He felt as if a knife were cutting into his chest and his throat.  It hurt to swallow.  But he wasn’t afraid.  He felt grief and a great bubble of sorrow was even now expanding inside him, but he wasn’t afraid.

            “Hello, David,” Roger said, beaming.  “It’s good to see you, son.”

            “How are you here?” David said.  “You aren’t a ghost.”

            “I’m not a ghost,” Roger said.  “Exactly.”

            “Then what?”

            “I watch over you, David,” Roger said.  “I try to protect you.  My love for you has allowed me to come back to you … but only for a moment.  Just long enough to tell you what you must do.”  A shadow passed over his aristocratic face.  “With that.”

            David held up the scarab; it flashed again under the starlight, and David was surprised to see his father flinch away from it, like a vampire before a cross in the movies David used to watch covertly until Vicki would come in and snap off the television.  “This is from my mother,” David said.  “She’s coming back!”

            “She mustn’t do that,” Roger said, “and you must not help her.”

            David frowned.  His lower lip trembled.  “You never loved her,” he said.  “When we lived in England, I heard you tell her that you wished she was dead.  I heard you say that!”

            “We say lots of things in anger, David.  We don’t always mean them.”

            “You meant it,” he said bitterly.  “You got your wish.  She’s dead, isn’t she!”

            “Your mother can never really die,” Roger said.  “You know that by now.”

            David nodded, but hesitatingly, unsure.

            “She wants to hurt you.  If she comes back, she will.”

            “That’s not true!”

            “It is.  She tried before.  Don’t you remember?  One night you burned with fever.  We nearly lost you.  That was your mother’s doing, David.”

            “You’re lying!  She wants to take me away with her!”

            But Roger was relentless.  “She wants to take you into the fire.  She’s a fool.  She thinks you’ll go with her to Paradise, but it’s all a lie.  Your lifeforce sustains her.  She’s failed twice now, and her master is angry … and she is desperate.  If you give into her, David, you’ll doom yourself.”

            David’s face was streaked with tears he wasn’t aware he cried.  “You’re just like the rest of them.  Dr. Hoffman and Carolyn and Aunt Elizabeth … you hate her!  You’ve always hated her!  It’s just because … because …”  He hesitated again, then the words burst out with sudden comprehension:  “You just don’t understand her!  No one does!”

            Roger smiled at him sadly.  “You’re wrong, son.  I understand her only too well.”

            David glared at him.  “You aren’t my father.  My father is dead.”

            “Believe me, David –”

            “You thought you could trick me,” and suddenly David’s face swam, and the thing that looked like Roger Collins recoiled again, because his face shifted and changed, and for a moment his eyes glared with an icy blue fire, and Laura Collins’ voice issued from the mouth of her son, and she said, “Begone, foul and reprehensible spirit, deceiver … you have no power here!  Begone!”

            David sagged; he was quite alone on the cliff, and he wasn’t exactly certain what had just occurred.  His father had been there … hadn’t he?  Or not … someone … something that just looked his father …

            If you give into her, David, you’ll doom yourself.

            “No,” David whispered.  “No, no, no!”  He recognized what he felt now as loneliness.  Too many people he loved had been taken from him in such a short span of time:  his father, Vicki, even Amy Jennings.

            But there was something in those words that felt like … truth.

            He looked at the scarab as if hypnotized.

            Fire … fever … burned to death …

            His fingers tightened around it.  It felt smooth in his hand, and hot.  It blazed with a sudden heat, and the heat burned his fingers, but he didn’t let go.  He lifted his arm instead, cocked it, the way the football players he idolized on TV did with their balls.

           

            He closed his eyes tightly.

 

            My mother loves me.  She’s the only one left who does.

            His eyes flew open.

            “No,” he whispered, and lowered his arm.  Was he really about to do something so immeasurably stupid, so permanent as to throw his mother’s gift into the sea?  “No,” he said again, and clutched the scarab tightly.  It flared again with that private heat, but it felt good, and David began to grin.  No, he wasn’t that stupid.  Not that stupid at all.

            He lifted it aloft, held it in the palm of his hand, closed his eyes, and called, “Mother?  Mother, can you hear me?  Come back to me, Mother, come back to me – hear me and come back home!”

            And somewhere, out over the sea, distant thunder rumbled.

3

            The coffin was too small, she said.

           

            Willie’s eyes, which had remained perpetually large, like a terrified animal’s, for the past week or so, widened another inch at this declaration, a feat Julia would have thought frankly impossible. 

           

            Death had made the beautiful young woman Barnabas brought back to the Old House in his arms only more beautiful, causing her cheekbones to look higher, her eyes to flash more brightly, and her skin to glow with a golden sheen that was in sharp contrast to the deathly gray it had been the night he kicked open the door, revealing to Julia and Willie what he carried in his arms.

            What, not who.

            But the corpse Barnabas carried from the Collinsport wharf revived moments after Julia examined her, heard with her stethoscope the emptiness inside her, and declared her dead.  Even as she spoke the words, the young woman’s eyes flashed open, pulsing red orbs like globules of blood, and her mouth gaped to reveal shockingly jagged fangs. 

            Barnabas wanted her staked; Willie wanted her staked; but Julia had, for whatever reason, denied them that option, a route that was, she explained, surprising even herself, too easy.  “We don’t have to destroy her,” Julia said.  “She hasn’t harmed anyone, and she won’t … if we can keep her safe.  If we can control her.  I can begin the injections, Barnabas.  They were successful with Carolyn –”

 

            “Carolyn did not die,” Barnabas said.  “And the injections have yet to prove successful with me.”  He saw the look on her face, and backtracked.  “I’m sorry, Julia.  You know how grateful I am to you.  But I don’t want to endanger anyone else.”

            “And we won’t.”  Julia wore her determination face:  chin jutted forward, lower lip extended, trembling slightly, eyes slitted.  Barnabas recognized it; he had seen it before; and with a sigh, he conceded.

            And so it had been up to Willie to make the coffin.

            Which, according to its prospective occupant, was too small.

            The girl – Audrey, Julia thought; she has a name; Audrey – folded her arms across her breasts.  “I won’t use it.  I won’t.  You can’t make me.”

            Julia resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  This, she thought, was one of many – many – reasons I never wanted children.

            “You wouldn’t let me measure you,” Willie said sullenly, but carefully too, for the girl’s eyes flashed that sunken, wolfen red, and he shuffled a few steps away from her.

            Barnabas moved quickly, sliding his arm over the girl’s shoulders, and drawing her close to him.  Julia felt that familiar hot pang of jealousy and dropped her eyes.  “You must try it, my dear,” he said.  “When the sun rises, you will need a place to rest.  I have told you this.”

            “I don’t want it,” she whined.  “I want to sleep with you.”

            “You know we can’t continue that way.”

            “Why not?”

 

            Barnabas’ eyes darted away from her, found Julia, darted away from her, and settled on Willie, who could only shrug. 

            “I’m lonely,” the girl insisted.  “I don’t want to be by myself.”

            “You have Dr. Hoffman –”

           

            Audrey made a disgusted “pffftt!” sound that Julia had already heard several times over the past two weeks, and of which she was growing decreasingly fond. 

            “I want to hunt,” she said.  “I want to kill.  I want to find that Gerard Stiles and tear his windpipe out.”

            Willie gulped. 

            “Audrey does have a point,” Julia said, “gruesome though it may be.  Gerard tried to kill me in the future, Barnabas.  Obviously he’s dangerous.”

            “And in league with the Enemy,” Barnabas said wearily.  “Yes, Julia, I know.”

            “So then you must know how urgent it is that we find him.”

            “And kill him,” Audrey interjected helpfully.

            “I think we’re all a little late for that,” Julia said.  “I believe he’s already dead.  Has been for at least a hundred years.”

            “I shoulda moved to Bridgeport,” Audrey said mournfully.  She glanced down at the coffin and squinted.  “I suppose,” she said after a moment, “I suppose it could work.  You know, temporarily.”

            “Hopefully,” Julia said, and raised the needle she had prepared, “that’s all it will need to be.”

            Audrey watched her doubtfully, but Julia was gentle, and the needle pierced her skin with nary a whimper from the brand new vampire.  “I need to eat something,” Audrey said, and glanced again at Willie.

 

            “I got chores to do,” he said, “upstairs,” and bounded like a young deer up the stairs to the first floor of the Old House.

            “Willie will get you a blood bag,” Julia said, and frowned, irritated.  “Or I will.  I doubt we’ll be seeing Willie again for a few hours.”

            Barnabas took Audrey’s hand and patted it gently.  “You just rest, my dear,” he said. 

            “It’s only midnight.”

            “You must learn to adjust to a human schedule again,” Julia said.

“Before you know it,” Barnabas smiled at her, “you’ll be human again.”

            “I don’t know if I want to be human at all,” Audrey grumbled.

            “You will,” Barnabas said, though he didn’t sound at all as confident as Julia would have liked.  “Once you have taken a human life, there is no coming back.  You live with the guilt for ... for eternity.”

            Audrey pondered this as she sank into her new coffin, wiggling, adjusting, until she laid her head back on the crimson pillow Willie had procured for her.  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, sighing.  “I suppose I won’t know until I’ve done it, will I.”

            “You won’t have a chance,” Julia said swiftly.  “We will continue to administer the injections until you’re fully cured.”

            “What if I’m never cured?” she asked.

            Barnabas and Julia exchanged swift glances.

            “We’ll … we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Julia said unhappily, then began to close the lid of Audrey’s coffin.

            The vampire inside stared at her balefully.

            “Good night, my dear Audrey,” Barnabas whispered softly.

 

            Moments later, they stood on the portico, just they two.  Julia puffed agitatedly on her cigarette.  “I’m afraid Audrey may have a point,” she said at last.

            “About the injections?”

            “And her own needs.  She isn’t just lonely; she’s a vampire, Barnabas, technically a monster.  Killing is what comes naturally to her, as you well know.”  The flash of pain that crossed his face wounded her instantly as well.  “I’m sorry,” she said, controlling her tone, softening it, “but you know what I’m saying is true.  Tom … Tom Jennings was the same way.  So was Sabrina Stuart.”

            “And Charity Trask,” Barnabas said gloomily.  “I know.  I am an anomaly among the living dead, it seems.”

            “I will succeed,” Julia said, her voice steely, “you have my word, Barnabas.”

            “I believe you,” he said, and touched her shoulder.

            They looked at each for a moment, each silver-faced under the moon.

            Barnabas broke away first.  “I must go,” he said.

            Julia’s eyebrows leapt.  “Where?” she asked.  “It’s after midnight.”

            “I … have an appointment.”

            “Oh.”  She wouldn’t allow herself to ask with whom.  Just as she wouldn’t allow herself to ask if the word he was really searching for was not “appointment,” but “date.”

            “I can’t miss it.”  His face was apologetic, but distant too.  He was eager to go, she knew.  She recognized that look.

            He’s going to her.

            “You go,” she said, exhaling, then crushing the butt of the cigarette under her heel.  “I have more research to do into the Collins family of the 1840s.  Based on the information Carolyn learned during the séance she conducted with Eliot, I’ve been trying to research Leticia Faye, a psychic who lived here around that time.  I think she may prove useful to us yet.”

            Barnabas took her hand and kissed it gently with his icy lips.  “Dear Julia,” he said, and his eyes burned into hers.  “My dearest, my truest friend.”  He bowed lightly, then turned away, his wolf’s head cane clutched tightly in his be-ringed hand.  “Good night,” he called over one shoulder, then disappeared into the darkness.

 

            She sagged then, and clutched onto one of the giant white pillars that encircled the portico.  There were tears – dammit, there were always tears – but she didn’t want to cry them.

            Let him go, a voice – her own, she thought – suggested in her mind.  Just do it.  You’ve followed him through how many times and eras and worlds?  And does he ever notice how you feel … really notice?

            “No,” she sighed.  “I suppose not.”

            Then do it.  Just let him go.

            If only it were that easy, she thought, and tapped another cigarette out of the carton in the pocket of her sweater.

            If only it were that easy, indeed.

4

            He wanted to leave, to get the hell out of there – it was crushing, claustrophobic – and so, ashamed of himself even as he went, Sebastian slammed out the door of the Blue Whale and into the chilly autumnal evening. 

            He stood for a moment, panting, outside the door, then began to walk.  He wouldn’t quite allow himself to run.  Thank god, he thought as he went, that my legs are so long. 

            He wasn’t at all sure of where he was headed, exactly; just away from the Blue Whale and its two newest occupants.

            Why are you running?  Why don’t you go back?  He saw you!  He knows what you are!

            That isn’t my Christopher, Sebastian thought grimly, even if his eyes were the same, big and brown and shocked, even if his hair, his hands, his body –

            Go back.  Talk to him.  You don’t know that he’s so different; you can’t –

            He wouldn’t go back.  It’s safer not to know, he reasoned, safer not to meet him and get to know him; stupid of me not to ask Julia if there was a Chris Collins in this time as well, stupid, stupid, stupid –

            Then you’ll be alone.  And you’ll always be alone.

            He froze.  His head dropped, his hands clenched into fist, his teeth gnashed together.  They threatened, for a moment, to become fangs.

            The urge to wolf out, as Christopher used to call it, passed.  Sebastian relaxed.  He even smiled a little.  It won’t be so hard, he thought; I just have to stay away from him, that’s all.  He isn’t my Christopher, not really, so there’s no reason to think –

 

            He didn’t finish the thought.  He couldn’t.  The searing pain that lanced across his back sent him to his knees, his hands splayed flat against the cobblestone street, and when he looked up, snarling like an animal, the boot his attacker wore kicked him squarely in the chin.  That pain made thinking impossible as well.

            He rose to his feet, roaring.

5

            She was back in the graveyard, but this time, Cassandra assured herself, she would meet no one else.  It was past midnight; Eagle Hill Cemetery would be deserted.

            She walked carefully among the tombstones, looking, looking, looking.  Stumbling across Roxanne Drew the last time she was in this place, nearly two weeks ago now, had proved beneficial, even if she hadn’t succeeded in her mission.  Discovering the gravestone of Gerard Stiles gave Julia Hoffman a lead in her research, so it hadn’t been all for nothing.

            However, the gravestone of Gerard Stiles was not what the witch sought, then or now.

            It has to be here somewhere, Cassandra thought, and froze, thinking that, for a moment, she had heard a footstep behind her.  She turned, eyes flaring, hand raised to fire a bolt of energy if she had to.

            No one was there.

            She lowered her hand and breathed a sigh of relief.  No one:  not Roxanne Drew, not the Enemy in one of its myriad guises.  Just the silver, autumn moonlight falling gently around her, the branches of the trees nearly naked, bony and clutching at the sky without their coat of summer leaves, and the earth soft beneath the expensive pumps she had special ordered from New York the other day.

           

            She was alone.

            Alone.

            Her eyes stung as she was, overcome with such an intense rush of loneliness that it was paralyzing. 

             Ridiculous, she thought, but she didn’t – couldn’t – move.  And it wasn’t a spell or a curse.  It was simple, stupid human feeling:  emotion, which a witch was never supposed to feel.

           

            She heaved for breath, and it came at last, but it was an effort.  She felt strangled, weighed down, as if a yoke had been thrown over her head.  Why now? she thought, and forced her head to crane around the graveyard:  empty, shadowed … haunted, if not by literal ghosts, then at the very least by the memories of people Cassandra had known in her various incarnations and tenures at Collinwood.  Over there was the grave of Judith Collins, murdered by vampires in 1897; over to her right was Tom Jennings, the vampire who had nearly destroyed Cassandra at the command of Nicholas Blair; behind his stone was Millicent Collins with Daniel Collins at her side; at her back lay the Collins mausoleum, containing the bodies of Joshua, Naomi, and Sarah, and though she would never (NEVER) weep any tears for that bastard Joshua, she had known and liked Naomi.  It was such a shame that she fell victim to the curse.

            “The curse,” Cassandra whispered, and snuffled a little as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes.  Not just the curse, of course, she thought; it’s my curse.  I am responsible.  I am responsible for so much grief.

            Dwelling on the past wouldn’t bring the dead back, she knew that, and it wasn’t for them that her eyes burned with tears.  She thought of Sky for the first time in weeks, gone forever, and of Barnabas, the first man she had ever loved and who would never love her back, not the way she wanted to be loved.  Even Quentin, who caused her to quicken in a way that could be most inconvenient, looked at her as a supernatural means to an end.

            No one will ever love you.

            And that was the naked truth, wasn’t it.  She held the powers of the Mask of Ba’al, effectively making her the most magically proficient woman in the known universe, but none of it meant anything because of that one fact:  no one would ever love her. 

            She was alone.  This thought had been skulking around the back of her mind since they returned from Parallel Time, but she had assumed, wrongfully it seemed, that by focusing on a mission she could quiet it.

            But there it was:  she was alone.

            The loneliness was crippling.  There had to be something to do about it.

            There can be …

            Was that Nicholas?  Nicholas was dead, or destroyed, or consigned to hell, or something.  Cassandra hadn’t made much of an effort to keep tabs on him.  That little voice tickling at the back of her mind sounded like him, though:  ratlike and snide.

            She knew it was her own voice.

            Because now she remembered a spell, except “remembered” wasn’t the proper word.  It was the Mask’s doing, or the power of the Mask, that unlocked every possible spell and laid them out before her, and told her she could do almost anything.  Some things – like the ritual she contemplated now, the one that brought her back to Eagle Hill time and again – took more time.

            But not this one.  This would be easy: a spell to help her shed all human feeling, every emotion, every shard of pain.  All of it.  Gone forever.  It would be easy.

            She closed her eyes.

            Easy.

            The power was there.  The spell was there.  All she had to do was tap into it …

            So easy …

 

            Her eyes flew open.  “No,” she whispered.  Because it was too easy.  She had come so far – too far – to step backward into the darkness now.  She felt its pull – she had always felt its pull – and it was tempting, true, but she wouldn’t let it claim her.  Not again.

            I am Angelique, she thought, and drew herself up; her lips dimpled into a small smile of triumph.  I am Angelique, and I am strong, and that is enough. 

All I need is me.

            She had a job to do.  Somewhere within this cemetery the Amulet of Caldys was waiting for her to discover it … and use it for what she had to do.

            The future had to be changed.  And if that change was actually going to come, she had to get her ass in gear:  she couldn’t just stand around weeping and sniffling in cemeteries like a mopey human because she felt lonely.

            Cassandra – Angelique Collins, the most powerful witch in the world, for better or for worse – strode forward through the gravestones, continuing on her quest.

6

            He couldn’t see his attacker’s face, but he could smell her, which was how he knew she was a woman.  And her scent was … familiar.  So they’d met before.  But Sebastian still couldn’t place her.

            His mouth felt too full of jostling fangs.  He grinned, enjoying the cracking sound of muscles tearing, bones breaking, as his body obligingly tore itself apart to accommodate the transformation from man to monster.  He hoped she was freaked out, whoever she was.

            “Shit!” he cried out.  The air beside him was rent by something incredibly sharp, something that nicked his now pointy white ear and then burned with a fierce pain he had never encountered before.  He fell backward, howling, and saw that the woman, her face disguised by a cloak that hid her features in a thick, swarming darkness, held a curved blade, a scimitar-looking thing, above her head.  It was three feet long, Sebastian saw, and made of silver.

            Which explained the pain in his ear that seared more than any nick had a right to do.

 

            He rolled away just in time to avoid losing his head, as the woman’s blade descended, cutting the air with a hiss.  He was on his feet again in a moment, now fully wolfen, and settled into a fighting stance.  “Who are you?” he snarled, hoping that hearing a talking werewolf would startle his attacker into making some kind of mistake.

            He was wrong.  She said nothing; merely leaped forward with a speed that was scary, like, snake-striking scary, and her blade slashed the air again.  Only his lycanthropic agility saved him; if he hadn’t leaped backward in time, his guts would have spilled out onto the dock.  “Listen, lady,” he growled, and held up his paws, “I haven’t done anything to you, so why don’t we just call it a –”

           

            The blade slashed out at him again.  This time it really cut him, slicing across his right arm and sending a sheet of what felt like fire, ants biting, searing sensation upward from the wound.  He screamed then, a sound which ended in a howl.  He was weak now, and he knew it must be the silver, otherwise his wounds would heal themselves as quickly as they came.

            And suddenly he was human again, lying, nearly naked in the tatters of his clothes, against the cold stones that rubbed icy slime against his flesh and into the wound on his arm.

            She raised the sword again.

            “Christopher,” he tried to say, but his mouth wouldn’t work. 

            Then she was knocked aside by a flying missile – or, Sebastian saw through bleary eyes, a person.

            And it was Christopher.  Somehow, Christopher had come to save him.

            The sword skittered across the stones, and as the woman scrabbled to reach it, Quentin Collins suddenly loomed out of the fog and kicked it away.  It disappeared into the mist and was gone.

            She was on her feet with a speed that was eerie, and somehow her cloak continued to conceal her features.  Through his daze, Sebastian knew it must be enchanted somehow.  Like Batman, he thought blearily, amused, she has a secret identity to protect.

            “Who are you?” Quentin demanded, but the woman turned into the fog …

            … and was gone.  “She disappeared,” Sebastian heard Christopher tell his companion, and Quentin nodded bitterly.  “Like magic.”

            “Probably because it was magic,” Quentin said.  “How’s he?”

 

            Chris knelt beside him and reached out tenderly, then drew his hand away sharply.  “He’s hurt,” Chris sad.  “Pretty badly.”

            “That sword was silver.”

            “Yeah.  Which is why the wound isn’t healing.”

            “We have to get him to Julia.”

            “I don’t think Julia will be able to help him.”

            “Then we’ll have to find someone who can.”

            The world was fuzzing in and out.  Sebastian reached up and touched Chris’s face.  “Hi baby,” he said.  His voice sounded warped, scratched like a wounded record.  “It’s been awhile.  You look good.”

            Chris turned to Quentin.  “I think he’s delirious.”

            Quentin gazed down into his face.  “Do you know him?”

            Chris shook his head.  “Never set eyes on him before.”

            “Bet you say that to all the boys,” Sebastian croaked.  His throat hurt.  His tongue hurt.  Everything hurt.

            Suddenly he was held aloft, scooped, somehow, into the long arms of Quentin Collins.  “Come on,” he said.  “Let’s get him back to Collinwood.  We have to find Angelique.  If we don’t …”  He glanced down at the half-conscious man in his arms.  His face softened. 

            “I know,” Chris said softly.  “If we don’t get him help soon … he’ll die.”

            Sebastian fainted.

7

             She should go back inside the house, Julia knew.  Instead she slid another cigarette between her lips and ignited the tip.  It was chilly outside, there in the midnight darkness, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.  Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance, so she knew that a storm was coming, but wasn’t that always the case in Collinsport?  A storm front developed when the town was founded and just sort of stuck around.

            You’re just feeling sorry for yourself, she scolded, but it didn’t help.  She had more research she could be doing; she could be experimenting with the serum; she could be sleeping for Christ’s sakes, but instead, here she was.  Smoking and moping.  Outside a house that wasn’t even hers.

            “Hell,” she grumbled, and dropped the cigarette onto the floor of the portico.  It joined five others.  She smoked too much; she acknowledged that.  She fully intended to quit – had intended to quit for months now – but a new crisis reared its ugly head every time she vowed to really buckle down and give her precious ciggies up, and so here she was.

            She coughed delicately into her hand.

            There was a sound behind her.

            “Barnabas?” she said; habit, because she knew it wasn’t him.  He had his “appointment,” didn’t he.

            The door behind her creaked open.

            She spun around.  “Willie!” she cried.  “Oh, Willie, you scared me.  What are you –”

           

            The figure in the doorway groaned.  Julia could see him only in silhouette before he collapsed, stuttering down to his knees.  His head bowed.  Something spattered against the portico floor.

            Her eyes widened.

            Blood.  It’s blood.

            She rushed to his side.  “Willie!” she cried, sliding an arm around his shoulder.  “Willie, are you –”

            He looked up at her, his eyes half-lidded, his expression dazed.  “J-Julia?” he whimpered.  His mouth was slack and wet.

            The two wounds scarring his throat glared up at her, twin crimson eyes weeping steady tears of blood.

            “Julia,” he whispered, then his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.

            “Audrey,” she said.  “Oh Audrey, no!  No!”

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...