Shadows on the Wall Chapter 118

CHAPTER 118:  Backward, Turn Backward

 By Nicky

Voiceover by Lara Parker:  “Barnabas and Julia have, against all odds, transcended time once again.  And while they face the dangers of the past, Angelique seeks to join them there, in the year 1840.  But, unbeknownst to her, it may already be too late to make any difference.”

1

The Old House, January 1, 1969

             Angelique stood by herself in the center of the drawing room of the Old House and repressed the screams that wanted to force themselves from her lips, but she failed, and so the shrieks came, and came, and came, and even as she pulled at her long blonde hair and forced her fists against her eyes, the screams – and the memories – continue to come, pouring into her brain like saltwater.

            Because Barnabas and Julia were in the past, and they had changed it already.

            And now they would all pay the price. 

“This is a body nothing more, nothing less.  When you released my spirit from the wall where you imprisoned me so long ago, it merged seamlessly with poor, sweet, simple Valerie Collins.  She’s gone, Barnabas.” 

Her own words, words she had never spoken, and yet … yet, she had.  She was speaking them right this moment, somehow, a hundred and thirty years in the past.  Her own voice, hissing at her through corridors of time, the memories there, as if they’d always been there.

“And I am here again,  here to reclaim my role as Mrs. Barnabas Collins.  And after dear Daniel dies once and for all, you will be mine again, forever.  As it was meant to be.”

            “No,” Angelique whispered, and realized that she had collapsed to the floor at some point.  This was the reason we were supposed to be forbidden to cross the boundaries that separate moments, the reason we were not allowed ever again to meddle in what is past. 

            I feel as if I’m losing my mind.

            The past was being rewritten even as she kneeled there like a weak, foolish human on the drawing room floor.  She was Angelique; even if she had been stricken, somehow, of her powers, she was still better than this. 

            She rose to her feet; trembling, she placed a hand against the mantle.  She forced her breath to slow, her heart rate to slow, the sweat soaking her brow with icy beadlets to fade away.  A smile, that old familiar smile, the one that always made her feel her most powerful, stretched across her lips.  She was Angelique.  She had survived death more times than anyone, mortal or immortal.  They were old friends.  Very old friends.

 

            The I Ching wands sat where she had placed them on the table, before the memories swept over her and forced her to her knees.  These will work, she thought, gritting her teeth, and lifted the wands.

           

            “I would stay away from such trifles if I were you,” a familiar, hated voice said from behind her.  “They don’t become you anymore, it seems.”

            She ground her teeth together, then spun around.  “You don’t scare me, Roxanne Drew,” Angelique said, and lifted her chin.  “I have faced vampires before, and they are dust, while –”

            “While you go on, yes, I’m sure,” Roxanne said, bored already, from the corner across the room where she materialized seconds before.  “The immortal Angelique Collins.  Or shall I call you ‘Valerie’?  That’s your newest alias, if these newly minted memories tramping around in my brain mean what I think they do.”

            “You were there, of course,” Angelique breathed.  And now she knew it:  she could recall Roxanne, a vampire already, and they were facing off, much as they were now, and it was here, in this very room, but they weren’t alone, were they, and there was another essential difference, and this difference was …

            “The difference,” Roxanne said, “is that you were in full possession of all your faculties back then … and your powers.  You bested me then, my dear, but I fear you won’t fare quite as well … this time.”

            Angelique’s eyes widened.  The vampire woman lifted her lip and revealed her fangs, like a serpent’s, longer and curved than any Angelique had ever encountered, including her own.

 

            Grinning, Roxanne advanced.  “You have the Amulet of Caldys,” she said, panting like a dog, “and I want it … for myself.  And you’re going to give it to me …”

            “Stay back!” Angelique screamed.  Panic rose up and flowed over her in a stinging, humiliating tide; she remembered the last time she had become the victim of a vampire, as Charity Trask and Tim Shaw made her their plaything, raped her over and over …  “Stay away from me!”

            “I have no intention of staying away from you,” Roxanne said.  She was close now … very close.  Her voice was soft, caressing.  Angelique could smell her:  the familiar charnel smell, the scent of rotten meat, the essence of tombs.  “Not until you give me what I need … what’s mine …”

            Angelique closed her eyes.

2

1840

            Barnabas fell backward – a coward, he thought, over and over, I’m a coward, a coward, I’m always a coward – and though he could suddenly move of his own free will, he still couldn’t speak.  And even if I could, he thought, crawling on his hands and knees away from the witch behind him, I wouldn’t call for Julia.  Angelique – Valerie, whatever she was – mustn’t learn that Julia was a ghost, a spirit only, because even now, still a hundred years from achieving her full potential, Angelique from 1796 was still a talented enough witch that she could banish Julia with very little effort.

            And what would happen to the future then? 

            “Poor Barnabas,” Valerie simpered behind him.  He cast a terrified glance over his shoulder.  She hadn’t moved, was merely watching him, amusement in those cool blue eyes.  Her arms were crossed over the beautiful blue gown she wore.  She was enjoying this, watching him suffer.  How could I have ever thought I loved her? Barnabas thought, despairing.

            Because she changed.  Like you changed.

            Now, in this moment, he doubted it.

 

            “You are exactly where I have always wanted you, my love,” Valerie said, and took her first step forward.  “Crawling before me.”  She extended one booted toe.  “You should kiss my foot.”

            He began to crawl once more, and now, instead of calling out his own cowardice, he thought, Not again, not again, not again, not again –

            “You haven’t truly answered for your sins,” Valerie said, and took another step.  “After your father chained you in that box, you were fated to lie there for the rest of eternity, just as I lay in darkness.  Oh, once I was freed – and I knew it would happen eventually – I planned to visit you.  Just to see if you’d learned your lesson.”  Her expression darkened.  “But forty years for people like us is nothing, Barnabas.  You haven’t even begun to suffer.”

            He wanted to beg, to plead; he tried to rise to his feet, but with one flick of her wrist, one extended finger, he was forced back to his knees by an enormous, invisible bar of iron that pressed against his lower back.  He opened his mouth to cry out, but he could make no sound.  Save me, he wanted to cry, surely someone … someone will come … in time …

            “Buried alive,” Valerie said, musing.  “Not my original intention, of course, but after a few days I began to appreciate the irony of our twin situations.  It would have been very easy to free you, I thought.  Ben Stokes was my slave once; I might have invoked our invisible bonds, tenuous as they were, to send him to the tomb to free you.”  She sighed.  “But I couldn’t even use him to save myself.  I discovered that soon after you … you entombed me.  And so I writhed in anger.”  Her face smoothed out, and that devious little smile he knew all too well resurfaced.  “For a little while, that is.  Then I realized how delicious was your punishment, and how nice and safe you’d keep there in your lonely tomb until such time as I was ready to release you.  My terms.”  She tutted, sighed.  “And however it is that you’ve become freed, these are not my terms.  Your humanity is not on my terms.  Whoever this woman is, this ‘Julia Collins,’ her existence here as my dear sister-in-law is not on my terms.  So …”  And she shrugged prettily.  “After I’ve dealt with you, my unfaithful husband, and have reclaimed my rightful spot as Mrs. Barnabas Collins, I will deal with her accordingly.”

            She was beside him in a flash; he hadn’t even seen her take another step.  She smiled at him, reached out to stroke his hair with her long, white fingers.  “My darling, my darling, you mustn’t fear.”  Her laughter was soft, musical.  “When everything is over, you’ll love me, just as you did those nights in Martinique.”

 

            She rose to her full height and held out her arms.  “Let the spirit of Dark Night take possession of this room,” and the room was plunged into an icy shadow.  His tortured breath emerged from his mouth in white clouds, and he tried to close his eyes, but they refused to obey him.  He had to watch; he had to know.

            But he already knew.  No one was coming to save him.

            “I call upon the Powers of Darkness to help me once again,” Valerie intoned, weaving her hands through the air.  They left emerald streaks in their wake as witch patterns flared up and died away:  strange, curving symbols, runes he almost recognized, and then, finally, horribly, the shape of the bat.

            Valerie grinned.  Her eyes were solid black, obsidian.  “I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins,” she whispered, “and you will live with it for all eternity … all eternity … all eternity, Barnabas …”

            He lifted his eyes, and there it was, in the far corner of the room, swathed by shadows.  It was enormous, nearly six feet tall, more hideous than he remembered it; it had been ages, it seemed, since last their paths crossed.  Its awful toes, each tipped with a curving yellow talon, held fast to nothing; it lifted its giant head and bared fangs that were nearly a foot in length, butcher knives lining its mouth.  It opened its mouth and shrieked, a terrible sound, the rending of metal.

 

            Valerie was laughing, and her laughter threatened to drown out the terrible and somehow eager cries of the bat as it launched itself at him, its wings shredding the air; he tried to fall backward, but it was no use, and the bat was on him, its teeth were in him, it was happening again; the bat opened him, tore him open from chin to crotch, gutted him, and then it nestled deep down inside him; now he could scream, now he could make sound, but his screams were inhuman, and as his skin folded back up, encasing the horror within, knitted itself into wholeness, he knew exactly whose screams they were, falling from his mouth.

            The metallic, animal shrieks of the bat.

3

1969

            Angelique tried to cover her throat, but Roxanne seized her shoulders with her talons and forced her head back, exposing the long, slender line of her throat, the vein pulsing there.  She wanted to scream, but she could make no sound, so powerful was the vampire’s thrall, and she had never wanted to scream so badly in her life as the moment when Roxanne’s mouth stretched into a vicious leer, then stretched more, beyond the endurance of mortal flesh and bone; the teeth jostled and grew longer and then longer still, until there was nothing human left in the vampire’s face. 

            Perhaps it won’t hurt, Angelique thought as she closed her eyes; perhaps she’ll let me live; perhaps she’ll turn me, and with my new powers I can find Barnabas and Julia … maybe I’ll stay me … it’s possible …

           

            She knew it wasn’t.

            She waited.

            The teeth did not penetrate her skin.  They did not tear at her jugular, or lap the blood that would then spurt out in red-black ropes.

            And then Roxanne loosened her iron grip on Angelique’s shoulders, and she fell backward, unceremoniously, to her knees on the drawing room floor.

            She looked up.

            Victoria Winters stood over her, Victoria goddamn Winters was her savior, and now Angelique shrieked, but this was a scream of pure fury.

             But Victoria Winters seemed not to hear her, had only eyes for the vampire writhing on the floor, a bolt of wood emerging from her back; her eyes bulged, her tongue, long and serpentine, flopped around like a snake lapping at the floor.  “Vicious bitch,” Victoria Winters said.

            Don’t be an idiot.  That isn’t Victoria Winters.  Victoria Winters is dead.

           

            You should know.

            You killed her.

            “Of course,” Angelique breathed.  “Alexandra March.  Her sister.  Petofi’s other daughter.”

            “Thank me later,” Alex said off-handedly, then kicked out at the hissing, snarling vampire on the floor.  The toe of her boot caught Roxanne in the gut, and launched her across the drawing room. 

            Don’t count on it, Angelique thought sourly, and dragged herself to her feet. 

            But the battle wasn’t over.

            Roxanne had also made her way to her feet, and with one extended arm, trailing the beginning of a membrane that, given time, would become a wing, easily found the wooden stake Alex used to impale her and plucked it as if it were a mere splinter, then ground it into actual splinters with her terrible monster’s hand.  “Miss March,” the creature managed to grate as Roxanne’s face attempted to reconfigure itself into something more closely related to a semblance of humanity.  “I can’t say it’s a pleasure.”

            “Get out of here,” Alex said.  She lifted her hands and a crimson energy danced there.  Roxanne, grinning, took a step forward, then winced and held her hands up, warding the other woman off. 

            “Get away,” Roxanne whimpered.  “It burns … it burns!”

 

            “Of course it burns,” Alex said, disgusted.  “It holds the essence of the sun.”  And nearly impossible to conjure, Angelique thought wisely.  If I had my full powers it would be no problem, but for her … even with all of the strength Petofi granted her, however unwittingly, it’s still an effort to summon the strength of the sun … and then to maintain it.  And yet, she’s doing it.  She really is.  “And it will burn you to a crisp if you take another step.”

            “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Roxanne wailed.  “I’m trying to help; can’t any of you idiots see that?”

            “You’re helping yourself,” Angelique spat.  “To me, and I don’t much like it, thank you.”

            “The Amulet is useless to you now,” Roxanne said.  “Give it to me!  I can make it work, I swear, and then I can end all this madness!  I can destroy the Enemy!”

            “You can do no such thing,” Angelique said.  “It would destroy a vampire; it would –”  And she threw her head back and shrieked, clutching at her skull and pulling at her long blonde hair.

            Roxanne and Alex exchanged mutual looks of confusion.  Roxanne shook her head.  “Not guilty,” she said.

            Angelique wouldn’t allow herself to sink back onto the floor of the Old House, but she did allow the tears to begin again, the first she had wept since the night she had become human again.  Oh Barnabas, she thought mournfully, oh my poor Barnabas … my poor, poor Barnabas …

            I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins, and you will live with it for all eternity …

            It had happened.

            She was too late.

            “I’ll have the Amulet of Caldys,” Roxanne was saying, or something similarly inane, and through her tears, Angelique saw that she was pulling her old familiar vanishing act; within the moment it took her to draw a breath, Roxanne was gone.

            And Alexandra March was there, extending Angelique a hand.

            Angelique drew another breath.  Pride, she thought, my insufferable, eternal pride, second in its ability to cause destruction only to my envy and rage.

            The other woman didn’t look kind.  Merely grimly determined.

            Angelique took her hand and allowed herself to be helped to her feet.

            They looked at each other.

 

            “You killed my sister,” Alex said after awhile.

            Angelique considered this, surprised at her own ability to be surprised after all this time.  Of course she is Vicki’s sister; of course Petofi had two identical daughters.  “I did,” she finally said.

            Alex chewed her lower lip and said nothing for nearly a minute.  Angelique watched her patiently.  “I should destroy you,” she said.

            “You’ve had multiple opportunities.”

            Alex shook her head of dark hair.  “That’s not what I mean,” she said.  “You obviously know who my father was.”  Angelique nodded impatiently.  “Then you probably guessed that I inherited some of his powers, just as Victoria did.  I’ve been raised by a man – well, he isn’t a man so much as an … an entity, I suppose you could call him – and this man has instructed me my entire life to fight back the forces of darkness.”  Her lips twitched into a smile.  “It sounds so silly, doesn’t it?  Very dramatic.  But once upon a time those terms made sense to me.  Until I came to this town.”

            “We’re complicated here in Collinsport,” Angelique sighed.  “Scratch anyone on this estate and you’ll probably find a murderer of some kind, a monster at the very least.”

            “That’s exactly right.  But being a monster doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people.  Some have changed.  Or are trying to change.  You.”

            “I’d like to think I have.”

            “So,” Alex said, “I decided not to destroy you.  Just as I’ve decided not to destroy Sebastian Shaw or Chris Jennings or Barnabas Collins.”

 

            That’s very big of you, Angelique wanted to say in her snidest voice, but she reminded herself that this woman had just risked her life to save Angelique’s.  Plus, she was in possession of some extraordinarily potent magicks, if that trick with the sun’s energy was any indication.  “Thank you,” she said instead.  “I think we can use as many allies as will help us.”

            “The Enemy,” Alex said.

            “Not only the Enemy,” Angelique said.  “There’s also Laura Collins.  Also me, or the magical version of me.”  Alex opened her mouth, and Angelique allowed herself a rueful laugh.  “It’s a long story,” she said, then froze as an idea occurred to her.  “You do have powers, don’t you.”

            Alex squinted.  “Yes,” she said suspiciously, “I suppose I do …”

            “Then maybe all isn’t lost,” Angelique said, smiling, “after all.”

4

1840

            The ceremony was happening, and Julia, or the ghost of Julia, thanks to the I Ching in full possession of her living body’s faculties back in 1969, was watching, and paralyzed with indecision.  I should stop it, she told herself, niggling at the ectoplasm that made up her lower lip.  I could do it; fly upon Gerard, try to possess him, maybe scare him enough that he puts off the ceremony …

            And then what, Julia? she snarled at herself.  You change the future in some unfathomable way, and you don’t dare do that.  You’ve changed it enough already!

 

            Which was the reason, she thought, that the doors to the past were supposed to have been barred to all of them.  Angelique, especially, could undo all the damage that Victoria Winters caused during her rampage, could save her husband Sky, could, perhaps, successfully stop once and for all Barnabas from falling in love with Josette DuPres.

           

            Gerard was chanting, Daphne Harridge and Roxanne Drew had both closed their eyes and had lifted their beatific faces up to the ceiling, while Leticia Faye merely looked terrified.  But she was glowing too, Julia observed, with a silver-white effervescence that illuminated the room.  Gerard saw it too, and though he continued his incantations, his mouth grew large in a reptilian smile.  This is what he wanted, Julia thought, this is why he needed her … and why she may be the key to destroying him in the future – our present.

            That thought decided her.  These events must unfold as they had originally.  Something had stopped Gerard Stiles once before.  Perhaps, Julia thought, perhaps that’s why we’ve been allowed back in this time:  to observe, then to return with the knowledge we need to stop the Enemy once and for all.

            Leticia was levitating.

            Julia’s spectral eyes widened.

            The pretty blonde woman was floating in the air now, had already risen nearly a foot above her seat.  Her eyes were wide and unfocused; she seemed utterly unaware of what was happening to her.

 

            “Gerard,” she whispered, but her voice was loud and clear and cut through the thick, dead air of the room like a deadly sharp icicle.  “Gerard Stiles.”

            “Who are you, spirit?” he demanded.  “Tell me your name, I command you!”

            “You will never know,” the being who spoke through Leticia said, and pursed its hosts lips into a wicked smile, “for such knowledge would grant you power over me, and this you will never have.”

            Gerard’s mouth writhed in fury.  “Then tell me what you seek, spirit!  I have no time to bother with your foolishness.”

            “You have time,” the spirit said.  “I’m going to destroy you, Gerard Stiles.  For daring to disturb me.  I will end you now for all time.”

            Gerard chuckled.  “You?” he said.  “A weak and puling ghost?  Don’t make me laugh at you again, spirit.”  He raised one hand, pinkie and ring finger extended, and began to incant, “I banish you, alien spirit, by the judge of the quick and the dead –”

            Leticia threw back her head and uttered a scream so impossibly loud and powerful that Daphne and Roxanne were thrown backward against the wall, while Gerard was caught in the grip of an invisible fury that raised him nearly six feet off the ground by the throat and held him there.

            Leticia’s eyes glowed as white as the rest of the energy surrounding her.  Her teeth were bared in a feral snarl.  “YOU DARE,” she boomed, “YOU DARE CHALLENGE ME, YOUR BETTER?  HEAR ME NOW, GERARD STILES, AND KNOW THAT I WILL OWN YOU, BODY AND SOUL, FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY.”

 

            Gerard tried to speak, but only a series of glottal sounds emerged from his puffy lips, which were beginning to turn blue.

            Leticia screamed a harpy’s laughter.  “You thought this ignorant cow would provide a conduit for you to access the power of Judah Zachery,” she chortled.  “You fool.  You have given me a voice, finally, after more than a hundred years in darkness, and eyes by which to see.  And now, I will –”  But the voice was cut off suddenly, Leticia’s face contorted as if two powerful personalities struggled for control of her motor functions, her muscles, her very skin, and then, after a long beat,  a woman’s spoke from Leticia’s mouth instead.  “No,” it said, this new voice, not like the grinding of stones Julia was reminded of when that the other, more demonic voice spoke, but strong with determination nonetheless.  “I will not allow you to be free.  Not now … not like this.  I will suppress thee, as I have suppressed thee lo these last hundred years.”

            Julia’s mind, racing, remembered something Carolyn had told her about her experience at the séance with Eliot a few months before, of encountering all the women who might have been her own past incarnations, including Leticia Faye, but also of her meeting with a strange, dark young woman, a Puritan, Carolyn explained, who was part of the Enemy, somehow.

Isaac was a fervent member of Judah’s coven.  He wanted power for himself, so he brought the girl for sacrificing.

            That was the explanation Gerard had offered Leticia moments before he began the ceremony.  Could that be the owner of the voice who was speaking now, this other from Leticia’s throat?  The girl who was supposed to be sacrificed by Judah Zachery in 1692?

            “You have no say,” the demonic voice croaked.  It was angry and powerful, certainly, Julia thought, but was it also … surprised?  Afraid, maybe?  She thought that was a good possibility.  “Begone!”

            “I will stay,” that soft female voice replied.  “I will help to undo your curse.  All your curses.”

            “THIS CANNOT BE!” the demonic voice roared, and one of Leticia’s hands, suddenly horrifically, monstrously long, impossibly long, shot out from across the table where she now hovered and attached itself to Gerard’s throat.  “YOU ARE MIIIIIIIIIIINE,” it gloated.  “FOR ALL ETERNITY, GERARD STILES.  MY SLAVE … MY DOG.  I WILL SUMMON YOU WHEN THE TIME COMES.”

            A beatific expression had fallen over Gerard’s face; incredibly, Julia saw that he was smiling.  “Yes, master,” he managed to say, choking.  “I … am yours.  For eternity.”

            “Good enough,” the demon’s voice said, and released him.

 

            But then, “No,” the woman’s voice said from Leticia’s lips, “it isn’t,” as a stream of white light, so blindingly furious, so pure in its intensity, poured from her eyes, her mouth, each of her fingertips, from her heart; and Julia winced, because the light burned, but it wasn’t aimed at her.  It struck Gerard Stiles, who howled the moment it enveloped him, but he was transfixed and could do nothing. 

            Daphne Harridge tried to rush to his side, but, grinning, revealing her ravenous fangs, Roxanne Drew held her back.  “No, no, dearie,” she hissed, “remember, god helps those who help themselves.”

            And still the light poured from Leticia.  “You are banished, fiend,” she said, and Julia’s eyes widened in amazement, because it wasn’t just the voice of the Puritan girl, if that’s indeed who had combatted the demon inside Leticia, but also Leticia herself, her voice combined with that other woman’s, and there was such power between them that Julia thought she understood now what they needed, what could save them all.  “Leave this place, claimed now for the Light!  Begone!”  And their combined voices rose to a fever pitch, and the windows of Rose Cottage exploded outward as that light blazed forth in such glory that Julia was unable to see anything now but a blinding sheet of white.  “BEGONE, I SAY!  I CAST THEE OUT!”

            Gerard’s final scream was last in the roaring of the light – or Light – and Julia found that her own ghost’s mouth was open and that she was screaming silently as well.

            Then it was over.  The Light had faded away utterly.

            Daphne and Roxanne leaned against the table.  Neither woman panted, for neither woman required breath, but they looked exhausted, their faces white as salt.  But they were alone.

            Gerard and Leticia were gone. 

5

1969

 

            “I don’t always have complete control over my powers,” Alex said apologetically.  “Just so you know.”

            Angelique resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  Even though she was powerful, perhaps even more so than her goddamned sister, Angelique found, to her absolute lack of surprise, that Alexandra March was just as whiney as Victoria Winters.  Maybe even more. 

            Instead of rolling her eyes, however, Angelique patted the other woman on the shoulder.  They sat at the little table in the drawing room of the Old House, directly across from each other.  The house was chilly despite the fire they had stoked together in the wake of Roxanne’s attack, but somehow the New England New Year winter had its icy claws dug deeply into the center of the house.  We have to try, Angelique told Alex, we have to keep the cold out somehow.  “It’ll be fine,” she said now.  “I have faith in you.”

           

            Alex blinked her big brown eyes, considered this, then smiled.  “Thanks,” she said, and her voice was shaky.  “I appreciate that.  Especially considering I have no idea what I’m doing, or about to do.”

            “We’re going to find them,” Angelique said with more confidence than she really felt.  “And we’re going to bring them back.”

            “But the I Ching didn’t work.”

            “Not for me,” she said.  “Julia is still in the trance.  Carolyn and Elizabeth and Willie are taking turns watching her.”

            “And … and Quentin?”

            Angelique repressed a tiny smile.  “Quentin is helping Sebastian and Chris.  When they aren’t researching the Collins family history to find something that might help us fight the Enemy, they’re practicing a meditation technique that Sebastian thinks will help Chris with his transformations.”

            “I’m glad he stopped me,” Alex said in a low voice.

            Angelique raised an eyebrow.  “From doing what?”

            Alex looked up at the former witch, and her eyes were tortured.  “From killing them,” she said.  “I was going to.  I had a special sword and everything.  Oh Angelique, it was horrible – I was horrible!  I didn’t even think twice; I had the sword, I was out there, following them, and then I was … I would’ve …”  She trailed off as tears fell from her eyelashes.

            Angelique watched her stonily for a moment.  Once upon a time she would have slapped the other woman, or shaken her, or blasted her to a cinder.  Time was wasting.  People were in danger.  Barnabas was in danger.  And when it came to keeping Barnabas Collins safe, Angelique was fond of telling anyone within earshot that everybody else was expendable. 

            But not now.

 

            She reached out instead and put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder.  “But you didn’t,” she said kindly, and Alexandra looked up at her, startled. 

            Finally, she said, “No.  No, I guess I didn’t.”

            “We can change,” Angelique said quietly.  “Any of us.  And we do.  If we let ourselves, we can change.  We don’t have to hurt people.”

            “I just want to help,” Alex whispered.  “I just want to save people.”

            “You can.  And you will.”  Angelique found she was beaming.  I believe myself, she thought, marveling.  Will wonders never cease. 

            She took Alexandra March’s hand and held it tightly with both of hers.  Her eyes sparkled.  “Do it,” Angelique said.  “Do it.  Now.”

6

            There was a sound, a rushing sound in her ears, and a strange, eerie howling, like the wind, almost like the wind, but different; more like alien voices screeching, but the voices were tangible somehow, and they reached at her, clutched at her, tried to grab her and hold her, and she wasn’t a body, she was nothing, nothing, nothing …

            Maintain.  Maintain.  Maintain.

            Professor Stokes? she tried to whisper, but if it was him, he was gone, flashed out at her like a glowing light and then vanished back into the endless howling dark …

            You will find them.  You will find them.  You will find them.

            That was Alexandra.  How was she here, how had she followed Angelique to this place, wherever it was, this dreadful darkness in between every world, every moment of time once it had passed?

            It isn’t Alexandra.

            Angelique tasted sweet horror in a mouth that didn’t exist. 

 

            You will find them.  I will help you.

            Victoria Winters.  Victoria Winters was with her.

            Had she a body, Angelique would have recoiled, would have screamed out her hatred, would have attacked that most-reviled face with her fingernails; this is for Sky, she wanted to shriek; I loved him, I loved him, you don’t know how much I loved him …

            Yes.  I do.  Don’t you remember?  You made us all feel it.  You can love, Angelique.  And so can I.

            And you can forgive.

            No.  Never.  I will never forgive you –

            You can.  If you want to go back.  I can help you – I want to help you, just as my sister does – but first you must help yourself.

            I am so sorry. 

            Please.  Angelique.  Please forgive me.

            I love you, Barnabas.

           

I do this for you.

No.  That was selfish.  And if she wanted to save Barnabas and Julia and the world – all the worlds – by extension, then she couldn’t be selfish any longer.

Victoria Winters was watching her.  Waiting.  Patient.

            Oh Sky, Angelique wanted to whisper, but she didn’t.

            “I forgive you,” she said instead.

            Then opened her eyes.

            Angelique blinked in surprise.

            She had eyes to open, for one thing, but here she was, back in the Old House, just as she had left it.

            But … not quite.

           

            It wasn’t exactly a shambles, but it had obviously not been lived in for more than a few years.  The furniture was covered in dust, shredded in some places, but the windows were whole, the door hung properly so that it didn’t gape like an idiot’s mouth, and a fire crackled merrily in the fireplace.

            “Witch,” a man’s voice said from behind her, growled, an animal, and so familiar –

            Oh no, she wanted to say, but his hands were already around her throat.  He spun her around so that she could see his monster’s face, the eyes blazing red, the fang teeth reaching, reaching for her throat –

            “You’ve done this to me,” he hissed, his breath foul beyond measure, “done this to me again –”

            Barnabas, she tried to choke, Barnabas, it’s me!

            But his thumbs were already crushing her windpipe.

            “Die,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED ...