Shadows on the Wall Chapter 112

CHAPTER 112:  Set the World on Fire

 by Nicky

Voiceover by John Karlen:  “The inhabitants of the Collins estate, both those at the great house of Collinwood and its accompanying Old House, are accustomed to tragedy.  But on this beautiful morning, one of their enemies will show them how truly helpless they are, and how close to tragedy they will always be.”

1

 

            Nathan rolled from the bed as the werewolf, roaring, leaped forward, claws extended, tongue lolling.  He cried out miserably as he struck the hard-wood floor of Josette’s room, the wound he’d sustained at Seaview reopening upon impact.  Even though he’d lost a fairly significant amount of blood since his encounter with Tom Jennings, he could still feel a hot wetness seeping through the bandages Julia had reapplied. 

            “Nowhere to hide,” the white wolf said as it crouched on the bed and peered down at him with amber eyes.

            “Chris wouldn’t want you to do this!” Nathan cried.  Terror made his voice childlike and tremulous.  Not exactly convincing. 

            The wolf cocked its head.  “Oh?” it said.  It sounded almost friendly.  “Do you think that’s true?  Hasn’t he killed you himself at least once before?”

            “He didn’t mean to,” Nathan whined.  “It wasn’t Christopher, it was the animal!  You’re doing this deliberately!”

            “Indeed I am,” the white wolf said.  It seemed to be grinning at him, in that way that nearly all canines possess.  “To keep him safe.  Or am I really way off base, and you weren’t just admitting to Dr. Hoffman that you willfully tried to become a vampire so you could vampirize Chris too?”

            Nathan opened his mouth.  No words came out.  He closed it.

            “I thought as much,” the white wolf said.  Nathan could almost believe it was sad.  “If it’s any comfort to you,” it said, leaning down now, for the kill, Nathan supposed, “I don’t plan on enjoying this.  I’m not going to eat you, actually; my plan is to tear off your head and then bury it and the rest of you somewhere in the woods.  From what Mr. Collins tells me, you’ll have lots of company out there.”

            Nathan closed his eyes.

            And opened them a moment later.  If my eyes continue to open, he thought, that must mean my head is still attached.

            He felt at his neck with his fingertips.  They met unruptured flesh.  His head continued to sit in its accustomed spot atop his spine.

            Then:  he frowned.  He sniffed at the air, unaware that, above him, the werewolf was making the same movement, snuffling.  “Do you smell smoke?” Nathan said.

            The windows of Josette’s room blew inward, pushed and shattered by an enormous cloud of flame and thick black smoke that soon filled the room.

2

             “Barnabas, Barnabas!” Julia cried, but he was in the death-like coma that passed over him every morning; from the coffin where she hovered, she noted, once again, how pale and wax-like his sleeping visage was.  It was hard to believe he wasn’t dead.

            You’ll both be dead in a few minutes if you don’t do something!

           

            Smoke from the fire upstairs had already filled the drawing room, driving her down into the cellar.  There were secret chambers and passages farther below the house, she remembered Barnabas telling her about them, but, belatedly, she realized he hadn’t told her exactly how to access them.

            In the coffin beside him, Audrey likewise slumbered, her face glowing a dark, rich gold as it had every night since her transformation, far removed from the pale of the other vampires Julia had encountered. 

            And where was Willie?  If he were here, he could …

            He could what, Julia? she nattered at herself.  Help you drag the coffins up the stairs just in time for all four of you to fry to death?

            And how had the fire started exactly?

            Didn’t matter.  She had to act, and quickly.

            “Hey,” Audrey said, yawning, and Julia spun, wide-eyed, to find the baby vampire sitting up in her coffin, “did you know that this place is on fire?”

 

            Julia wanted to cry, How are you awake?  Barnabas told her that, come sunrise, he was as good as a corpse; unaware, so deeply asleep he appeared to be dead.  Also, he claimed, he was un-wakeable.  So why isn’t she sleeping? Julia nearly wondered aloud.  Instead, she decided not to waste time with stupid questions.  “We have to get Barnabas out of here!” she said firmly.

            “We can’t go outside,” Audrey said, already out of the coffin.  “The sun – we’ll both go up in flames.”

            “We don’t have a choice,” Julia snapped.  “We stay, and we’ll both die down here.”

            Upstairs, a woman began to scream.

3

             “Get out of here,” Angelique cried, her voice trembling.  She hated how she sounded now:  a human, mewling, mealy-mouthed, and, god, so young.  But I’m not, she thought despairingly, I’m hundreds – hundreds – of years old; I’m not that same dewy-eyed little girl who came to Collinwood with Ma’amselle that dreary day in 1795, so why do I look this way, why?

            The creature before her, she figured, could supply an answer.

            She didn’t want to hear it.

            The glowing, glistening woman standing before her looked just like her.  Her hair was silver now; her face like porcelain, and her skin sparkled with glowing spheres of white-like, like jewels made of stars.  That’s probably exactly what they are, Angelique thought; she’s made of liquid light, of energy, of magic.  She was living radiance.

            “I’m not going anywhere.”  The other Angelique’s voice echoed musically, as if a crystal goblet had been struck lightly, oh so lightly, with the edge of a spoon.  Her eyes flashed, blue-green-gray like the human before her, but more than that, a color so rich and so ethereal that it hurt to gaze upon them for too long.

            Smoke hung in the air; the rooms upstairs were burning, driving Angelique down from her bedroom, coughing, eyes burning, her screams garnering absolutely no response.  Of course, she had thought as she nearly tripped down the staircase, Julia went straight to Barnabas.  She tried to ignore the spear of jealousy this initiated.  She was successful only because her doppelganger stood before the front door, facing her, beautiful in a long white robe, her arms folded across her breasts.  The screams were out of her mouth before she could stop them; I’ll be embarrassed later, she thought, and took a step backward from her own image.

            Now the doppelganger touched her lips gently with the tip of one finger, smirking as she did, and silver sparks fell as she did it.  “You poor thing,” she simpered.  “You’ll burn to death if I allow it, won’t you.”

 

            Angelique bared her teeth and clenched her fists.  Which was, considering that was all that she could do for a retort, deeply unsatisfying.  “What do you want?” she said at last. 

            The other raised a silver eyebrow.  “To save you, of course!  Why else would I be here?”

            “I don’t know,” Angelique said bitterly.  “I don’t even know what you are, not really.”

            “Why, I am you!” the other said.  “We are the same, you and I.  I know you, just as you know me.  Intimately.”

            “You’re wrong.”  She shook her head and backed away from the … the thing.  “Why are you burning this house down?”

            “Foolish child,” the other Angelique said and shook her head.  “Why would I burn down the Old House?  I’m going to destroy everything; why would I take the worlds apart one house at a time?”

            Angelique’s eyes grew wider.  “The … the worlds?”

            The other grinned.  Her teeth were blindingly white.  Angelique was forced to shield her eyes.  “Of course.  I tire of mortals and all their tiny troubles.  I would be rid of them.  Until then, however …”  And she shrugged, and her face twisted up.  “Until then, it turns out I continue to have …”  And she shuddered.  “…feelings.  For Barnabas, particularly.  And for you, as it turns out.”  She beamed.  “Actually, you know what?  I’ll save him and I’ll save you.  If you’re nice to me.  I’ll consider it, anyway.”

            “Thanks,” Angelique said dryly, then added, “Wait.  If the Enemy wants to destroy all the worlds, and you want to destroy all the worlds … why doesn’t it just let you destroy all the worlds?”

            “The Enemy believes it will continue to exist after it has wrought all its destruction.  Whether this is true or not, I do not know.  At any rate, it doesn’t matter.  I’m going to destroy it.”

            “What about you?  Will you exist?”

 

            “I am the universe,” the other said, her face dimpling.  “I will always exist, whether useless matter does or not.”

            That can’t be true, Angelique thought; the other laughed.  “Of course,” she said, “think what you want.”  Then, briskly.  “Shall we save our friends, my dear?”

4

            Barnabas opened his eyes.  “This isn’t possible,” he croaked.  Smoke was filling the basement room, his eyes were bleary and red, but they were open, and Julia, her own eyes filling with tears of gratitude, seized his hand and pulled him from the coffin.

            “Possible is a meaningless term now, Barnabas,” she said, and, back muscles screaming, thought, I’ll be feeling that tomorrow … if there is a tomorrow.  “We have to get you out of here.”

            “But … the sun,” he said, and blinked … and suddenly they were standing in the drawing room.

            And one of the Angeliques was smiling.

            “Barnabas,” she purred, her voice echoing supernaturally, the dulcet tone of a crystal goblet lightly tapped, “darling.”  She was, Barnabas thought, gazing at her in awe, composed entirely of light, every molecule, light made flesh.

            The other Angelique, the mortal, murmured his name and rushed to him.  Her face was ashen with her panic.  “What are you doing out of the coffin?” she cried.  “Barnabas, the sun –”

            “The sun,” the other Angelique scoffed.  “As if I would allow our precious Barnabas to be harmed by something so minute, so insignificant as a simple star.”  Sparks fell from her eyes and sizzled balefully on the carpet.  “He is protected by my power, as even the most obdurate of you –“ and her eyes flickered to a hyperventilating Willie, and then to Audrey, who rolled her eyes and scowled, “ – can see.”

            A ray of sunlight fell through the drawing room window directly across Barnabas’ face.  He recoiled out of habit, opening his mouth to cry out, but there was no withering of flesh, no sizzle, no flash of fire.

            Then he blinked with his good eye, examined his hands, and blinked again.

            “What have you done?” he whispered.

 

            “Saved you,” the creature said, lips dimpled, then added wickedly, “for the time being.  Your house is burning away a mile a minute around you, and without me, you’d already be destroyed.”  Her nose wrinkled, and she glared at Audrey.  “You and your little friend.  I’m not exactly sure why I’m protecting her.  You’re welcome.”

            Flames belched from two of the bedroom doors upstairs; the carpet singed; the bannister glowed an unpleasant rose.

            “If,” Julia said with as much snarkiness as she could muster, “if you’re so powerful, super-goddess, then why don’t you put out the fire?”

            “Oh,” the uber-Angelique said, and nibbled at the end of one glowing fingertip.  “I suppose I could, couldn’t I.”

            And.

            There was no fire.

            The carpet was not singed.

            The bannister did not glow.

            The windows were whole, intact.

            They looked at each other.

            “Well,” Julia said after a moment, “um.  Yes.  Thank you.  I guess.”

 

            The uber-Angelique nodded its silvery head.  “Don’t mention it,” she purred.

            They looked at each other again.  “I don’t know what you are,” Angelique said, her teeth gritted with her fury, “but I want this undone.”

            “Angelique,” Julia growled and allowed her fingernails to dig into the soft meat of the other woman’s arm.

            Angelique ignored her and, instead, faced off against her doppelganger.  “Whatever that … that creature did to me,” Angelique snarled, “I want you to undo it.  I know you can do it.”  She took a deep breath; her eyes flashed green and gray and a bottomless blue and she said, “Put…us…back…together...again.  NOW.”

            “And why on this earth or any other would I want to do that?” the uber-Angelique said.  Her lips shimmered as they quirked into the devious smile everyone in the room recognized by now, including the human Angelique.  “I’m free, darling.  For the first time.  Unbound.  Unrestricted … by your curious morality, by the soul that continues to plague you, moral compass, skewed as it is – whatever you want to call it.  It’s gone now – I am free.”  She was, they realized, hovering nearly a foot above the now-unburned carpet.  She whirled around in increasingly dizzying circles until she stopped suddenly facing them, and her eyes were enormous spinning silver discs.  “Free.  And I like it.”

            Laughing her wild laugh, the creature rose to the ceiling in a shower of sparks, faded away, and was gone.

            “Oh god,” Barnabas whispered.  Smoke was beginning to rise from his hands, from his face, from his forehead.  His good eye darkened until it was a fiery, miserable crimson.

            Beside him, Audrey’s hair burst into flames.

            “WILLIE!” Julia screamed, and threw her coat over Audrey’s head while, at the same time, she shoved Barnabas in the direction of the cellar.  “HELP ME!”

 

            “I’m comin’, Barnabas!” Willie cried, pelting forward, as …

            … above them, Nathan Forbes, white-faced and running, appeared at the head of the stairs, and without pausing, bounded down them.  Behind him, an eight-foot tall wolf-thing covered in white hair bounded after him. 

            Nathan stopped in his tracks, directly in the center of the drawing room.  “Um,” he said, glanced over his shoulder, and then, pleading, back at his potential saviors, “please don’t let him eat me.”

5

 

            “Fine,” Sebastian said sulkily, hours later, arms folded over his chest.  He lowered his head until his chin rested on his chest, the part revealed from beneath one of Barnabas’ silver smoking jackets he wore like a robe.  “If you insist, Dr. Hoffman, I will refrain from eating the good Lieutenant here.”

            “Don’t do me no favors,” Nathan said under his breath. 

            “What was that?” Sebastian growled.

            Nathan, scowling, looked away.

            It was nearly dusk, and they sat in the drawing room, now curiously unscorched (as was the second story of the Old House, Nathan had pointed out helpfully soon after his rescue at the hands of his unwitting rescuers), and looked at each other:  Willie and Angelique and Julia and Sebastian and Nathan.  The absolute lack of a trace of the fire that exploded the windows (including the un-exploded windows themselves) wasn’t exceptionally mysterious; “She did it,” Angelique said with unusual moroseness after Barnabas and Audrey were ushered to their coffins and tucked in for the day.  “She fixed everything.  Like it never happened.”

           

            “The remaining mystery, of course,” Julia said suddenly, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “is who set the fire.”

            “Petofi,” Angelique said instantly.

            “Stiles,” said Audrey, following.

            “Act of God?” Willie asked, then retreated back into silence when they all turned to him, glaring. 

            “It could be any one of our enemies, Julia,” Angelique said after a moment.  “Roxanne is the most likely suspect, and with loaded guns like Petofi or Edith Collins at her disposal, I’ll bet she decided to destroy the Old House – and us – because of the destruction of Seaview.  Tit for tat.”

            “But Stiles could want us dead too,” Audrey said. 

            “It doesn’t scan,” Julia said with a shake of her titian head.  Her shaggy hair caught the breeze and tickled her eyebrows.  How she longed for an hour – a half hour! – with dear Pepe down at the Collinsport Clip ‘n Snip!  “Stiles needed Barnabas in the future because the Enemy needed him.”

            “Because he became the Enemy’s instrument,” Angelique said.

 

            Julia nodded.  “He created what Quentin referred to as ‘nightspawn.’  An army of werewolves and vampires and werewolf-vampire-hybrid …” She gestured furiously in the air.  “…things that served him.  And, by extension, the Enemy.  They kept Carolyn and Cassandra at bay and the rest of the town in a state of perpetual fear.”

            “But we don’t know if the Enemy has the same plans now,” Angelique said argumentatively.  Julia rolled her eyes.  Angelique frowned.  “Since you’ve returned, hasn’t it occurred to you that it may have revised whatever it has planned?”

            “I don’t think it can,” Julia said.  “It needs the Collins family.  It needs Barnabas.  Whether it needs him to transform into the … the creature I saw in the future, of that I’m not sure.  But I believe the rest of us are fairly expendable.  Which leads me to believe that it was not Gerard Stiles or the Enemy who caused today’s conflagration.”

            “You’re only guessing,” Angelique snapped.  “Does it matter if it was Roxanne or the Enemy?”

            “I think it does,” Julia said quietly.  “For one very good reason.”

            “And what’s that?”

            “Because,” Julia said, “I believe that neither Roxanne nor Petofi nor the Enemy nor any of the other colorful characters we’ve seen in the past few weeks is responsible.  And if I’m right, then the person – the thing – responsible may be more dangerous than I ever imagined.”

            “Then who is it?” Audrey asked.

            “Me,” a voice said from the doorway.

            They turned.

            Julia made a small sound in the back of her throat.

            David Collins was framed in the open doorway.  His hands were extended; at the tip of each finger, a tiny white flame glowed brightly.  His mouth was wreathed in an angelic smile.  And his eyes glowed with the same points of white fire.

            When he spoke, his voice was not that of a little boy.

            “Laura,” Julia moaned.

            “Indeed,” said the Phoenix.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...