Shadows on the Wall Chapter 109

CHAPTER 109:  My Hero

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Grayson Hall:  “On this night, Barnabas Collins finds himself in the gravest danger he has ever faced in all his long two hundred years.  For Roxanne Drew, herself a powerful vampire, has taken him to her lair in the House by the Sea, and in that terrible, haunted place she has used the Dagger of Ereshkigal to torture him … and, as the women who love him will soon discover, the wounds Roxanne has inflicted refuse to heal …”

1

             She was very near a breakthrough, as she would tell Julia later, when the pain exploded in her right eye, as if she were being gouged, stabbed, dismembered, and so Cassandra flew backward with a wail of agony, clutching her eye so that the Amulet of Caldys fell from her fingers and clattered against the stone altar over which she had been chanting for the past three days and nights without cease. 

            She was sobbing and she couldn’t quite help herself; the pain had been so sudden, so shocking, and even as it faded away to nothing but a dull throb, the memory of it was enough to cause her to pull in her breaths in ragged gasps. 

            Cassandra had gone far away from Collinsport, far away from Maine, from the United States, even, to the jungles on the island of Martinique and a secret altar her mother’s mother created, and that she herself hadn’t used in nearly two centuries.  To be honest, she had forgotten all about it; not even Nicholas had known of its existence, and he might have been deeply, darkly interested in the power it held if he had known; but she never bothered to tell him, as she had told him so little else about her life.  It had seemed at the time, and it seemed now, as if that had been a very wise decision indeed.

            The altar held ancient power, knew the taste of blood, animal and human, was a place of sacrifice and darkness, and so, Cassandra thought, seemed like a natural place to attempt to unlock the secrets of the Amulet, which might hold the key to saving them all.

            Somewhere, within the night-heart of the jungle, throbbing around her with sultry heat, an animal – a bird?  a bat? – began to shriek.

            What happened? Cassandra wondered, absently picking up the Amulet of Caldys.  Why the pain?  What did it mean?

            I don’t know!

            She smiled suddenly.  She wasn’t exactly helpless, was she.  She was no mere mortal; no Maggie, no Carolyn, no Victoria; she was not required to wait around and wonder.

 

            She held out her hands, outstretched before her, and said, “Ostende mihi.”

            Emerald light flickered and then flared up between her fingers.

            Her eyes widened, her mouth gaped. 

            “Barnabas,” she whispered, then snapped her fingers.

            A breath later, and the little clearing was deserted.  The altar sat alone.

2

            “Th-th-this is n-not exac-c-ctly d-discreet,” Julia said through chattering teeth.

            Audrey only laughed.  Enormous black wings sprouted from her back, and she held Julia by the shoulders with talons that had grown uncomfortably sharp.  The vampire’s wings, as they flapped through the air, reminded Julia of the sound her mother would make during Julia’s girlhood as she hung up the dirty carpets and beat them into cleanliness. 

            Don’t look down, Julia told herself, don’t look down, don’t …

            But of course she did.

            “Oh,” she whimpered.

            “You shouldn’t look down,” Audrey advised her cheerfully. 

           

            “T-tell me that we’re near,” Julia said, wishing madly for a warmer coat.  Stupid almost-winter in Maine, she thought darkly.  The little lights of Collinsport far, far below her sparkled prettily, as if mocking her.

            “We’re near,” Audrey said immediately.  “I can feel him.”

            “That’s comforting,” Julia grumbled.  A thought occurred to her.  “Have you always been able to sense him?”

            “Most of the time,” Audrey said.  “Not always.  We have a connection, I guess you’d say.  I can’t read his mind or anything, but when he’s nearby … I can feel him.”

            Julia pondered this for a moment, closing her eyes tightly.  As her stomach continued to gallop around wildly inside her, she found that focusing on the problem at hand helped it to settle.  Audrey would be able to find Barnabas, wherever he was.  And Barnabas would be able to provide a distraction that would, hopefully, allow them to stop Gerard from helping the Enemy manifest as a corporeal being.  But this newest bit of information Audrey provided her was fascinating.  Vampires felt a connection to their maker, the vampire who created them?  So a psychic link of some kind exists, Julia thought.  If it works both ways, she realized with a spark of excitement that nullified, for the moment, the intense nausea she felt as they flew over the countryside surrounding Collinsport, then Barnabas will be able to find Tom Jennings!

            “We’re here,” Audrey said, and with no warning, they dived, and Julia would have screamed if her breath hadn’t been snatched away by a sudden gust of icy cold wind.  Audrey released her inches above the ground and she tumbled, couldn’t help herself, and rolled over several times, the wind knocked out of her.

 

            She sat up, gasping, glaring.  “That was completely unnecessary,” she snarled between gasps.

            Audrey watched her passively.  “Sorry,” she said, and Julia wondered again at the mind of a vampire, which seemed so like and, yet, so very unlike that of a human being, especially the human being they had once been.  “I’m still pretty new at this.”

            “Where are we?”  Julia stood, brushing herself off, but the moment the words emerged from her lips, she knew.  She recognized the house because it had been one of the focal points of the supernatural nonsense that plagued Collinwood last winter around this time:  the so-called House by the Sea, or Seaview, a mansion built by Gregory Collins in the 19^th century and occupied by Nicholas Blair and Maggie Evans until recently.  Since Maggie had turned her back on her darker nature, she had abandoned her evil castle and returned to her father’s cottage, and since then the house had sat empty.  All by itself.

            A line from Shirley Jackson suddenly occurred to her:  “Whatever walked there, walked alone.”

            Julia shivered.

            Audrey was glaring at the house, and her eyes, as Julia watched, grew a darker and darker crimson until they were nearly black.  “He’s in there,” she growled.  “With her.  He’s hurt.  She hurt him.”  Those terrible eyes flickered to Julia’s.  “And he’s afraid.”

3

             Roxanne nonchalantly wiped the goo off the dagger on the leg of her long cotton hippie skirt and beamed down into the tortured, ruined face below her.  “Poor Barnabas,” she simpered.  “I suppose you needed that eye.  Ah, well.  I’d love to tell you that it will regenerate, but as you’ve probably noticed that under my attentions –” and she examined the Dagger of Ereshkigal “— your wounds haven’t exactly been responsive to your healing powers, have they.”

            Barnabas could make no sound, so great was the pain.  He could barely think.  My eye, he thought when he could, my eye my eye my god my eye …

            Roxanne leaned down close to him, inches away from his face, and she was no longer beaming.  “The time has come, Mr. Collins,” she whispered.  Her breath was the stench of rotten meat, of graves exploded outward.  “For you to tell me everything.”

            He wanted to tell her to perform on herself some colorful action to which Willie had once referred under his breath, but he couldn’t make the necessary operations required for the release from his mouth of logical speech.

           

            “Julia Hoffman,” Roxanne said clearly.  “She travelled to 2014.  She met your family there.  She nearly died.  She was supposed to die, Mr. Collins.  If she had, she would have remained trapped in a loop, a vicious circle that would, somehow, maintain the status quo.  Because of this loop, because of its great miscalculation in killing her in order to fulfill its own purpose, the Enemy would fail, the world would be safe.  You would die, unfortunately, and so would all your friends and family, but the world, Mr. Collins … the world would be safe.  Do you understand?”

            He tried to nod.  Misery settled over him, more penetrating than the pain blazing away in the gory socket where his eye used to lie. 

            “So you have to tell me,” Roxanne whispered.  “Something happened in 2014 to save Dr. Hoffman’s hide, and you know what it is.  Or who it is.  And you’re going to tell me.  And then I’m going to kill you.”  Her lips brushed against his earlobe.  “I’ll make it quick, I promise you.”

            “Why don’t you ask me yourself.”

            Her voice, Barnabas thought, and panic fluttered inside him.  No, he thought, no, she can’t be here, she shouldn’t be here now, no, no, no, no …

            “Julia,” he croaked.

            Because it was.  He could see through his one good eye that Julia was in the room somehow, and she wasn’t alone.  Audrey stood beside her, enormous black wings unfolded from her back, her hands planted firmly, heroically, on her hips. 

            He wanted to cry out a warning to them, if only he could.  He wanted to warn them.

            They were both doomed.

4

 

            “Oh, Barnabas,” Julia whispered when she saw him, really saw him, as she and Audrey descended into that pit of hell beneath the main floor of Seaview.  His eye, Julia thought, pain gouging her at the sight of his face, his poor dear face; what has that bitch done to his eye?

            “Dr. Hoffman,” Roxanne Drew said mockingly, rising and bowing a little, “just in the nick of time.  However did you manage it, my dear?”  She laughed, and Julia could see how her face was growing more monstrous with every moment, rippling, shifting into something grotesque.  And she was holding something – a knife, a dagger perhaps, curved, and red with Barnabas’ blood.

            “You underestimate me,” Julia said.  “You want to know how I escaped from the Enemy in the future?  He underestimated me too.”

            “A singularly unfortunate thing to do, apparently,” Roxanne said.  “No matter.  I suppose I could’ve just kidnapped you instead of your poor, dear Barnabas, but this …” She plunged the knife into Barnabas’ chest again, then drew the knife out immediately.  Julia cried out and moved forward, but Audrey held her back.  “… this was just too much fun to resist.”

            “I’m going to kill you,” Julia said in a thick, guttural voice.

            “You should really consider your options,” Roxanne said, then casually licked the blood from the blade.  “I’m here to help, dearie, which Barnabas could probably explain to you if he were in any condition to say anything.”

           

            “And you know I truly doubt it,” Julia said.

            “Doesn’t matter what you doubt or don’t doubt.  My friends and I are here to save the world.  With or without you.”  And, grinning, Roxanne held out her arm, and they came forward:  Petofi in the lead, and Julia blanched; then, capering, his fangs wet with drool, came Tom Jennings; arm in arm, two women Julia recognized from her research in the past few days, Edith Collins and Danielle Roget; and finally, sullen, bruised, the man Julia had known as Joe Haskell, who, she knew now, could only be Nathan Forbes.  “I’m sure you recognize some of them,” Roxanne said, smiling darkly, “others you have never met in the flesh.  You would undoubtedly prefer not to meet any of them, I know.  But be assured, dear doctor, they are more than thrilled to be meeting you.”

            “Let me kill her,” Danielle Roget growled.  “Time has been rolled and unrolled, ripped and sewn back together again in patterns that I do not like at all.  Let me kill her with that blade.  I want to taste her blood.”

            “Danielle,” Edith said quietly, and Danielle whirled away furiously, her arms folded over her breasts.

            “Don’t worry, Julia,” Audrey said, and stepped forward, “I’m not going to let any of these honky bastards lay even a finger on you.”

            “A lovely, if not misguided, sentiment, my dear,” Count Petofi   “You don’t seem to understand your place on the chessboard, I’m afraid.  You aren’t even a pawn.”  And he thrust out his disgusting hand, and a red bolt of energy flew from his squat, fat fingers and knocked Audrey across the room.  Julia cried out.  The little vampire rolled over once and then lay where she fell, her eyes closed.

said in his rasping, bubbling voice.

            “You killed her,” Julia said accusingly.

 

            Petofi puffed out his chest, looked affronted.  “I did no such thing,” he said, pooching out his enormous, livery lower lip.  “I just took her off the board … for the moment.”  He looked her up and down , his eyes magnified to ridiculous proportions behind the lenses of his glasses.  “My dear Dr. Hoffman,” he said.  She could smell him, somehow fishy and dirty and … and unwashed, despite his fancy clothes and well-groomed curly mass of hair.  Her stomach turned over again.  “So we meet at last.  Or, should I say, again?”

            “I have never met you,” she said, biting down on the vomit that wanted to rise up and out of her in a tide.

            “Time,” Danielle grunted unhappily.

            “My associate, Mademoiselle Roget, makes a valuable point,” Petofi said, grinning.  “Because, the fact remains, Doctor, that we have met before.  In other timelines that, unfortunately, no longer exist.  In one of them, as you know, I killed you.  And your ghost appeared to prevent me from destroying your friend the vampire.  And,” and he cast a dark glare in the direction of Danielle Roget, “after that, I was quickly dispatched by my associate.”  Danielle looked away, rolling her eyes in exasperation.  “But this is neither the time nor the place to discuss recriminations.  No, my dear Dr. Hoffman.  We are interested in this power of yours.”

           

            She thrust out her chin and it trembled even as she scowled at him, made her most ferocious face.  “I have no power,” she said.

 

            “Perhaps not while you live,” Petofi chortled.  “But your ghost, now.  Your very persistent spirit has proven, in several instances, to possess an incredibly potent power:  that of time travel.  You traveled to 1795, your ghost traveled to 1897, and, before the future was changed, your ghost again traveled from the year 2014 back to this present time.

            “And we,” Petofi grinned, leaning in so that he was mere inches from Julia’s furious countenance, “we want to know how you have accomplished this final feat.  That is, how did you break free of the time loop and return to 1968 as a living woman and not a spirit?”

            “I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew the answer,” Julia snarled, and cried out when Petofi backhanded her.  She touched her cheek where it stung and, thinking of Angelique, snarled, “You’ll be sorry you did that!”

            “Will I?” Petofi mused, then chuckled his dark amusement.  “Somehow I don’t feel that I will.”

            “Enough,” Roxanne said, clapping her hands briskly.  “Keep your paws off her, Petofi.  We need her on our side.”

            “That will never happen,” Julia said icily.

            “You’d be surprised,” Roxanne purred.  “During times of war, the strangest of allegiances are formed.”

            “You want to fight the Enemy,” Julia said as sudden understanding washed over her.  “You … you aren’t on his side!”

            “He isn’t a he at all,” Roxanne said, shaking her head.  “And yes, we seek to destroy the Enemy, just as you do.”

            “You aren’t anything like us,” Julia growled.  “You will do whatever it takes, won’t you.  Even kill if you have to.  Innocent people will die.”

            “You don’t understand the stakes in this game.  It’s not only this world, but all the worlds.  The Enemy is just that powerful, and I’m sorry, Dr. Hoffman, but one particular branch of the Collins family and their friends seem like a worthy sacrifice when one considers everyone else in existence.”  She snickered.  “And since when are they – or any of you – innocent?”

            Julia hesitated, then turned away.  Her face worked miserably.  “Let Barnabas go.  Let us go.”

            “The Enemy needs him,” Roxanne said immediately.  “So you’ll forgive me if I say, ‘No way in hell.’”

            “Then you’ll forgive me,” Julia said, grinning, “if I promise you that I will destroy you.”

            Roxanne stepped forward, her eyes glowing crimson, her jaw stretching, fangs bristling, her tongue flopping out, pointed and searching through the air.  She reached for Julia then, and her hands became enormous claws.  “We’ll see,” the thing chortled, “we’ll sssssssee who destroyssssss who …”

 

            Julia blanched then, and thought clearly, Goddamnit, I’m going to die … again; when the room was filled with a flood of sudden darkness and icy, icy coldness, and the darkness threw Petofi and the others in Roxanne’s army back against all the walls in the basement room; Roxanne herself was thrown to the ground, and lay in a heap beside Audrey, who was only now beginning to groan and pick herself back up again.

            Julia blinked; the darkness withdrew; Cassandra was in the room.  Her eyes were black oil slicks; her hair floated around her head like inky serpents; black lightning crackled around her in jagged shards.  “GET AWAY FROM THEM,” she commanded, and her voice rolled over them all like thunder.

            “Mrs. Collins,” Roxanne said, sitting up, blood from both nostrils twining together and smearing her grin an unpleasant crimson, “how nice to see you this evening.  I was hoping you would make an appearance, I sincerely was.”

           

            Cassandra said nothing, merely cast Roxanne a dark glance, then turned her attention to Barnabas.  She made no gestures, but the invisible ropes that bound him flared up with green energy and dissolved; then Barnabas himself rose into the air, his head lolling, blood running in a ceaseless tide from his ruined face, and Cassandra turned accusingly back to Roxanne.  “The Dagger of Ereshkigal,” she said, and Roxanne nodded, pleased.  “You stupid bitch,” Cassandra sighed, and sketched her fingers rapidly through the air.  Eldritch energy crackled Barnabas, surrounded him in a cocoon, and within seconds he was utterly lost from sight.

            “Even your powers can’t cure him completely,” Roxanne jeered.

            “He will heal quickly enough,” Cassandra said.  “I suppose I don’t need to ask where on this earth – or elsewhere – you acquired the Dagger.”  Her eyes flickered to Edith, and she smiled a little, unpleasantly.  “Was it you, my dear?  My, but you’re pretty once again.  Time has been kind to you since I dispatched you, and with such ease.  Edith Collins, one of the legendary beauties of the Collins family.  So sad how quickly that beauty faded in the end.”

            “Miranda,” Edith said tightly.

 

            Cassandra cackled.  “Is that all you have to say to me?  My dear, how you disappoint me.  I bested you by barely raising a finger in 1897.  And without the help of Roxanne and Count Petofi, I have no doubt bested you would have remained.”

            “As I did best you, Miranda,” Petofi growled.  Cassandra’s smile faded, and she bared her teeth.  “So don’t gloat, witch.  Your time will come.”  His enormous lips split into a devilish grin.  “Sooner than you anticipate, perhaps.”

            “Doubtful.”  She closed her eyes and began to weave her hands through the air; in that moment, Julia saw what was about to happen and tried to cry out, but Danielle’s hands were somehow over her mouth, strangling her, keeping the words of warning inside.  

Cassandra’s spell sent giant cracks spiraling out across the floor, and the earth rumbled and began to shake; but Roxanne was quick, quick as death, and she ran forward with that twisted knife or whatever it was in her hand, and Edith Collins thrust out three fingers and screamed, “Cultrum, sectis!”; and Cassandra opened her eyes, too late, too late; and the knife in Roxanne’s hands sliced through the air beside her, and Julia blinked and shook her head to clear it, but it would not be cleared, because where Cassandra Collins stood there were now two women, and one of them, blonde, terrified, a young woman in an olive green maid’s gown with white ruffles on its apron, uttered a shrill, rabbit-like scream and then collapsed onto the floor, which was rapidly beginning to crumble and break into enormous stone chunks. 

 

            “Angelique!” Julia cried, began to run forward … then stopped.  Because there weren’t simply two women, there were two Angeliques:  the blonde maid-servant collapsed, sobbing, on the ground, and the other:  black hair, black eyes, skin white as salt, and those terrible magical symbols like black veins, moving, moving, always moving, marching up and down her skin.  This terrible creature wore no expression, but turned her monster’s eyes onto Julia, and in that awful moment time seemed to be moving backward to the night when Angelique destroyed Victoria Winters.

            Julia turned, terrified, exalted, furious, to face Roxanne, who stood over the quivering blonde woman with her dreadful dagger still raised.  “What have you done to her?” Julia cried.

            Roxanne smiled her terrible smile.  “I have given her what she has wished for all along,” Roxanne said.  “Freedom.”

            An explosion of mystical energy erupted from the still-dark haired version of Angelique, and Julia stuttered back down to her knees.  It was staring at her, Julia could ascertain that much, but it was bathed in a silver-white glow that made looking directing at it impossible.  “MORTAL WOMAN,” the thing that was not Angelique, was not Cassandra, wasn’t anything remotely human, thundered, “LEAVE THIS PLACE … WHILE I STILL ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE.”

            Roxanne took a step forward, but the moment the Angelique/Cassandra-thing turned her/its gaze upon the vampire, she flew backward and rebounded off the wall.  The dagger fell from her hand.  Julia cried out; in that moment she missed Audrey skittering after it, seize it, stuff it into the pocket of her jeans, then hoist herself back to her feet. 

            Julia crawled over to the sobbing blonde woman and turned her over.  She squinted, then recoiled.  It was Angelique, all right, but younger somehow, dewy, Julia supposed the word was, her hair a dark golden blonde, her eyes wide and greenish-blue and full of a terror Julia had never seen there before.  “H-help me,” Angelique whispered.

            “I’m going to try,” Julia said between gritted teeth.  She scooped one arm beneath the other woman’s back and pulled her up so that she stood, swaying in Julia’s arms.

            The air was full of smoke and the sounds of screams.  The Angelique/Cassandra thing had raised its arms, and the walls around them were tumbling.  The earth exploded upward in dark black, foul-smelling chunks; beneath lay darkness that glowed a sinister red.  The expression on the demon-woman’s face was almost serene, Julia thought.  Petofi lowered his head like a bull and ran at her, but he burst immediately into flames and sank to his knees, wailing.  To his right, Edith Collins stood chanting, her eyes closed.  When that same bank of flames rose up, Julia could tell that she had erected a force-field of some kind, like a plastic bubble that the flames could not penetrate.  Or could they?  As she watched, Julia saw that the bubble around Edith grew smaller and smaller.  Finally, with a shriek, she turned and ran, the flames exploding around her as she pelted away.  Danielle Roget seized her hand and they fled together, disappearing into the smoke.

 

            Julia turned, Angelique still at her shoulder, and Tom stood before her.  His face was so white it was nearly blue, and his eyes blazed like copper coins.  When he smiled she saw his fangs, beautiful, white like ivory.  “Juuuuuulia,” he crooned, and suddenly where he stood a bat hovered, beating the air with its wings.  It turned, its wings buffeting, and was gone.

            “Come on, Julia!” Audrey roared over the crackling of the fire and the destruction of Seaview that was happening around them.  Julia saw with relief that she had slung Barnabas, unmoving, unconscious or dead, Julia couldn’t tell, over her shoulder.  Some of Cassandra’s emerald magical energy still crackled in tiny lightning bolts all over him, but each one grew smaller, until it seemed as if all of it had dissipated.  “Come on,” Audrey roared again, and seized Julia by the arm, “shake your ass, girl!”

            And they ran, then.  Up the steps, which collapsed behind them as they went.  The kitchen, when they burst into it, was already a shambles:  broken crockery, shattered windows, cracks running zigzags up the walls, and fire, of course.  Fire everywhere.  Angelique was moaning beside her, but Julia couldn’t understand her, if indeed she was actually mouthing any words.  They ran, the four of them, through the parlor as the wallpaper crawled with deadly flames and lamps exploded, missiles around them, and the windows coughed their glass onto the lawn outside.  They fled, across the flaming carpet, hit the door, rebounded, Audrey kicked at it until it flew open, and then they were outside, inhaling the sweet night air whether they needed to or not, but only for a moment, because the house was exploding behind them, or imploding, collapsing:  destroyed, Julia thought.

            She paused in her flight, Angelique still sobbing at her side, and shielded her eyes with her free hand.  There were people inside after all, she saw, or thought she saw; children with white faces and holes where their eyes should be, and suddenly she remembered the horror stories of Seaview that Elizabeth had told her one night not too long after she first came to Collinwood to avoid the nervous breakdown she was certain was on its way.  “Oh, the packs of children,” Elizabeth had laughed, then her own laughter died away.  “I suppose it’s not so funny after all, if you think about it.  They were said to have killed him, you know, Gregory Collins, their own father.  They formed packs, rival factions.  Very Lord of the Flies.  Eventually they were … put down.”  Sip of tea, delicate, lady-like.  “So the legends say, of course.  But legends are just legends.  I’m certain there’s no truth to it.”

            Only there they were, the children of Seaview:  milky white, crying out, ghostly blood or ectoplasm running down their faces as the flames took their home.

            Whatever walked there…

            Julia shivered.

            The windows were empty.  There were no children.

            “Look,” Audrey said, and pointed.

 

            The Angelique/Cassandra thing, whatever it truly was, stood before them, but she wasn’t looking at them.  She watched the house instead.  Something exploded inside, but she didn’t react.  Julia wished she could see her face, then retracted her wish.  There was something deeply unnerving about whatever it was Roxanne had done to Cassandra in a way that Julia hadn’t experienced before, even after Angelique initially donned the Mask of Ba’al.  No, being around this … this other thing, she thought, was very much like stepping a toe beneath a stream of water in the bathtub on a cold morning in December to test its temperature, and finding it unchangingly, icily cold. 

            “She’s moving,” Audrey said.  Indeed, as she said the words, they watched as the Angelique/Cassandra thing lifted its arms and ascended, flying high above them, higher and higher, until she was a tiny speck in the night sky, and then she was utterly gone from their sight.

            “J-Julia?”

            It was Barnabas.  He twisted in Audrey’s grip, then, as Julia moved toward him, he turned his face so he could see her.  She stifled a moan as she saw the damage.  The wounds had healed, but they left scars, terrible scars.  And his right eye was worst of all:  a dark hole, completely empty, save for the thick pink scar tissue left in the wake of Cassandra’s healing spell.

            “Oh, Barnabas,” Julia whispered. 

            “We have to get away from this place,” Audrey hissed.  “Get back to the Old House, like, five minutes ago.”  She glanced around.  “I don’t know where Roxanne’s pity party took itself off to, and I don’t care.  Maybe they’re all dead.  But I sure as hell don’t want to stay around here and find out, so let’s shake a tailfeather!”

            “Leave me,” Angelique moaned.  “Leave me, leave me, let me die, let me die!”

            “Shut her up,” Audrey snarled.

            “Angelique,” Julia said with as much tenderness as she could muster.  “We’re not going to leave you.  I promise you.  We’re going to get you back to the Old House and assess the damage.  Then maybe you can use your powers to figure out –”

            “My powers?” Angelique said, then tittered obscenely.  “My powers?”  And she screamed insane laughter that de-evolved quickly enough into actual screams.  “My powers?  My powers?  My powers?”  She cackled, then the laughter died, and the screams, and she stared, a child barely out of her teens, into Julia’s face.  “I have no powers,” she said.  Her face was frozen, perfectly placid, and wet with tears.  Her eyes ate up her face.  She said, “I am a witch no longer.

            “I am human.”

TO BE CONTINUED ...