Shadows on the Wall Chapter 124

(To catch up on previous chapters of our ongoing serial, Shadows on the Wall, please click on the label to the right.  More chapters coming this summer!  Enjoy!)

CHAPTER 124:  The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Nicky

Voiceover by David Selby:  “There is a man at Collinwood, a man who has lived many lives. And on this night, the memories of those lives and the loves he has endured may drag Quentin Collins into a void from which he may never emerge.”

1

August 4, 1881

 

            Sister Judith was in bed (crying again, Quentin thought with a barely repressed eye roll; why was she always always crying?); Edward and Carl had both departed that afternoon for their conspicuously separate boarding schools to which father Caleb, at Grandmama’s insistence, consigned them yearly; and who knew about Father himself? probably, Quentin thought wisely, drunk in his study, and if Grandmama found out … well, best that Grandmama never found out.  Though there seemed so very little that she didn’t know.

            She certainly doesn’t know about this, Quentin thought, and grinned, unable to help himself.  The girl at his side made a tiny sighing sound as he snaked his arm around her and nuzzled her ear.  “Mr. Collins,” she said, “Quentin – you really mustn’t.  Please.  Someone might see us.”

            The moonlight above them was bright and dazzled both their eyes when they looked up into it.  The garden was full of the heavy smells of summer, the heliotrope slow and dizzying; purple blossoms now black and silver on the trees threw out their perfume, and Quentin filled his lungs with it.  A peacock, somewhere in the dark, called menacingly and the girl shivered despite herself.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “No one will come if I don’t want them to.”

            “You sound so sure of yourself.”

            “I always do.”

            “That,” she declared, “is a character fault as I see it.”

            He was surprised for a moment into silence, then chuckled.  “You see very little of the real me,” he said, inspired.

            She turned to look at him.  She raised one pretty eyebrow in disbelief.  “Indeed?” she said.

            “Absolutely.  No one really sees the real me.  I am confident because I must be; I am the youngest of the Collins siblings, you know, and I must constantly battle my brothers and my sister, or I will be lost.  They’ll see to it.”

            “That makes very little sense.”

           

            “Ah, but you are not a Collins.  We are really a very vicious, backbiting lot, as it turns out.  We have a fortune which is never quite big enough.  Grandmama has amassed it, of course, and in time she will dole it out to whomever she deems worthy enough, but for now we must be content to wait.  Only I,” and he grinned wolfishly at her, “I am never content to wait.”

            She pushed him away.  “Sir, please!” she exclaimed.  He watched her silently for a moment until she reclined against the bench.  Behind them, the fountain gurgled somnolently.  A light breeze rose up, washing them over again in the thick, sweet smell of the heliotrope, shifting the trees so their shadows swayed and danced at their feet.  She laughed then, at last.  “You are a boy,” she said.

            Stung, he said, “It is my birthday.”

            “I know.”

            “My fourteenth birthday.  I am a man today, my dear.”

            “You are a boy,” she said again.  “Oh Quentin, I see through you.  I have always seen through you.  I always will.  I very nearly forgot your invitation to meet you this evening, deliberately, I mean.  Because I knew what you had in mind, when really, all I want is to talk with you.”

            He blinked.  “Talk?  About what?”

           

            Now her sigh was one of irritation.  “Oh, anything,” she said.  “Your thoughts on the state of the union.  Or about the  re-election of Mayor Hanley.  Or about poetry, or love, or … oh Quentin, why do you always laugh at me?”

            “Because you are a funny little creature.”

            “That isn’t very nice.”

            He touched her chin, her lovely pointed chin.  “But it’s true.  I mean it, most sincerely.  You are funny, and you frequently forget how very funny you are.”

            “I think,” she said stiffly, and made as if to rise, “that I shall leave you now.”

            He forced her down with one of the brutal displays of strength his siblings knew well, particularly Carl, whom Quentin had ducked in the pool one night last summer until he was very nearly drowned, until Edward and three of the servants were forced to intervene and pry them apart.  It took Carl two days to awaken, and Quentin was soundly thrashed.

            She cried out indignantly, but he put his hand over her mouth until all he could see were her terrified eyes staring at him.  “Be quiet,” he said sternly.  She made another sound and he pressed harder.  “I said, be quiet.  And don’t even think about biting my hand.  I’ll strangle you if you do.”  He smiled at her, his best, his most charming smile.  “I only want to enjoy the moonlight.  With you.  I thought it would please you.  May I remove my hand now?”

            She glared at him, then nodded, slowly.  He took his hand away.  There were tears in her eyes, which was disappointing and thrilling at the same time.  “Whenever people are scared,” Quentin had once attempted to explain to a disapproving Judith, “I always want to scare them more.  Can’t you understand that?” but it seemed that she could not.  Her loss.  “Well,” he said now, “are you going to scream?”

            “You know I’m not,” she whispered, and touched her mouth lightly.  There was a drop of blood at the corner of her right lip.  He wanted to kiss it away.  “You fiend,” she hissed, and turned away so he couldn’t see her face.  “Rake.  Animal.”

            “I am all those things,” he said, and turned her to look at him gently, “but I am also more.  So much, much more.”

            “Indeed you are,” she said scornfully.  “I can see it now.  You are nothing but a slave.”

            “I am?” he said, genuinely surprised.

            “To your passions,” she spat, “to your feelings.  You let them guide you instead of guiding yourself.  You aren’t a man.  You are a boy, a child.  You,” she said after a moment, and quite decisively, “are nothing but a beast.”

            “I have been called a beast before,” he said, and his temper slipped a notch, “by other girls at other times.”

            “You haven’t known other girls.”

            Another notch.  “Haven’t I?” he said, his voice deceptively mild.  He examined his perfectly manicured fingernails.  “My dear, you don’t know me at all.  And I want you to know me, you see.  That’s the real reason I brought you out here tonight.  I want someone to know me.”

            “There isn’t a real you,” the girl said.  He realized suddenly that she was on the verge of tears, and he squinted at her in the darkness, amazed.  “Oh, don’t look at me.  It won’t help.  It won’t give you depth, or a soul.  You are a mirror, Quentin Collins, reflecting back only the faces of those who look into you, but there is nothing at all behind the mirror.”

            “That isn’t true,” he growled.

            “Of course it is.  You know I don’t want you to kiss me, or maybe I do, but we can’t, and you won’t listen to me anyway, or care about what I say or what I think –”

            “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, bored.

            “— because there is nothing underneath the façade of Quentin Collins but a … a blank canvas.”  She rose again and drew away from him quickly.  “You are a slave to your passions, only because you have no true character to allow you mastery of them.  Goodnight,” she said, nodding furiously, “Mr. Collins.”

            He seized her wrist, and she gasped, a delightful sound, even as he delighted in the grinding of the delicate bones together beneath his powerful fingers.  “You aren’t going anywhere,” he growled again, and pulled her back to him, and forced his mouth onto hers, smothering her cries, then, grinning, he said, “No one will hear you, no one will help you,” and kissed her again.  His hands found her breasts, small, like little apples, and squeezed them, rubbing at the nipples with the balls of  his thumb until she gasped, then she sank her teeth into his lower lip, bit it and bit it hard, and he cursed, but she had escaped him and was already disappearing into the darkness.

            He rose, grinning his hot grin.  It was his birthday, dammit, and he was a Collins, and he could do whatever he wanted.  It was his goddamn birthright.

            “The hunt,” he whispered, and his long legs scissored through the darkness after her.  She wouldn’t get far.

2

Five days ago.

 

            “No, Quentin,” Maggie said, and with a flick of her wrist the door of the cottage slammed closed before him.  A neat trick, he thought, grimacing, for someone of her talents; now she doesn’t even have to leave the sofa to slam the door in my face.  “Go away,” he heard her say from behind the door.

            He looked up at the sky.  It was thick and heavy with iron clouds, occasional rumbles of thunder, frequent bouts of rain, nothing unusual for a light in late March.  Barnabas, Julia, and Angelique had been gone for almost three months, disappeared somewhere into the past, and maybe it would be better for everyone if they just stayed there.  A disloyal thought to be true, but Quentin was tired, Jesus, so tired;  Eliot’s death, trying to train Christopher to control the wolf, and wondering when the Enemy or Super Angelique or Laura was going to show up and disembowel them all:  these kept his thoughts occupied, and they were, Christ, exhausting.  So forgive me, he thought frequently and bitterly, if I just wish for tranquility.  And wherever Barnabas and Julia went, tranquility was nowhere to be found.

            It began to rain as he looked up, and he closed his eyes.  It was a chill, early spring rain that threatened to become a deluge.  He didn’t want to beg.  He should just return to the Jag and drive back to Collinwood and return to his room and bottle of brandy and stare morosely into the flames and wait for whatever was to come.

            When did I become so damned passive?

            He wasn’t a passive person, and that was the trouble; Quentin Collins had always been a man of action, pursuing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, which had, let’s face it, driven him to some tricky places (and dark places, and wretched places); but after a century of wandering the world, he had his impulse control issues well in hand.

            Usually.  Nights like tonight, however, were exceptions.

            “I can hear you out there, Quentin,” Maggie called.  “I can hear you breathing.”

            Miss Maggie Evans, the former light of Quentin’s life, until the neatly timed arrivals of Victoria Winters and Nicholas Blair, respectively, had helped them to spin away from each other.  Maggie, once an ordinary young woman, a waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn, born in Collinsport, quick with a joke, but a cynic deep-down.  She learned as she went along that relationships can and do change, that men are animals, that she could protect herself with a wisecrack and that big, warm smile, but deep down inside she was lonely.  And Quentin Collins had contributed to that loneliness. 

            But she has the magic now to comfort her, he thought, then remembered that she was, as she had told him, “trying to taper off,” like that suburban witch on that amusing television show Quentin caught sometimes when he was very drunk, when it amused him the most.  He wondered how successful her abstaining was proving, and thought about the last night they’d spent together in the fall, a cold night, much like this one, only the leaves had been dropping off the trees instead of budding and blooming.

            “I just want to talk,” he called, which was a lie, and they both knew it.  Her amused snort that was her only reply told him that.

            When did she discover my secret? he wondered now, idly shuffling the toe of his shoe against the warping boards of her porch.  Must’ve been after Nicholas; lord knows I wouldn’t trust her with it before then.  I didn’t even trust Vicki; she found out when she went back to fix this miserable present, and a fat lot of good it did her.  A fat lot of good it did for everyone.

            Ah yes, the secret of Quentin Collins:  the portrait, painted by the insane Charles Delaware Tate, that kept the werewolf curse in check and proffered Quentin perpetual youth, basic immortality.  I should have told her, he thought, idly examining the way the paint, a dull shade of blue-gray, was flaking off the porch’s floorboards; I should have let her in on my secret.  It could have saved us both a lot of pain.

            The door opened.  She stood there, framed by the soft, warm glow of the lamp light she used to read by.  He couldn’t see her features, only a the shadows of her silhouette. 

 

            They watched each other for a long moment, before she sighed irritably and said, “What do you want, Quentin?”

            “Just to talk.”

            She raised an eyebrow. 

            He smiled self-deprecatingly.  “No,” he said.  “Really.”

            She shook her head.  “You don’t want to talk,” she said.  “We both know it.”

            “Okay then,” he said, and sounded – he felt – angrier than he intended, “so maybe …”  He licked his lips.  “…maybe I’m lonely.”

            She laughed.  “Who isn’t?” she said.  “These days?”

            “The world may be about to end,” he said.  “I thought we could … you know … take comfort.  In each other.”

            “Again.”

            He shrugged, tried to grin.

            She shook her head.  “You are a child, Quentin.”

            He blinked, recoiled; those words, he thought, head swirling, I heard them … before.

           

            “Such a little boy.”

            Her screams as he pursued her through the darkness.  His howls, the ripping of her flesh, her eyes, wide and terrified, as he sank his fangs into her …

            He shook his head.  That wasn’t the way it happened.  I wasn’t a werewolf, he thought, then. 

            “It’s just like before,” Maggie was saying sadly.  “You want me when you want me, and when you don’t …”  She shrugged.  “Once upon a time I might have let you inside.  I suppose I did, just a few months ago.  Even I thought I might do it again.” 

            “Please, Maggie,” he said softly.

            “Physical comfort,” she said.  “Cold comfort.  It won’t do either of us any good in the long run.”

            “Maybe I’m not thinking about the long run.”

            “No, you think you’re thinking about the end of the world, and feeling, and one last time.  But really, you’re thinking about yourself.”

            “Oh god,” he whispered.

  

           “You haven’t changed,” she said.  “No matter how much you think you have.  That’s your true curse, Quentin.  The werewolf, the portrait; those are just shadows.  Not even your real face.  I …”  She chuckled.  “I don’t think you even have a real face.”

            He recoiled again.

            Her face was stone now.  “Shall I make you leave, Quentin?  Shall I use my powers again?  I could, very easily.”

            “You could.”

            “I don’t think I’ll have to,” Maggie said.  “I think you’ll leave on your own.  Mostly because, in addition to every other unpleasant aspect of what I laughingly call your ‘character,’ you are also a coward.  I have more power than you.  Women with power terrify you; they always have.  I could make you grovel if I wanted to.”

            “You,” he said again, “could.”

           

            “Good night, Quentin,” she said gently, and closed the door in his face once again.

            And he was alone.

3

August 4, 1895

            “It’s my birthday,” Quentin said wickedly, and Laura Collins giggled drunkenly.  “Pour me more champagne.”

            “Pour me more champagne,” Laura said, “please.  Remember, I am your sister-in-law.  Decorum.  Chivalry.  You must always be polite, brother mine.”

            “Some sister-in-law,” Quentin said.  “What would Edward say, do you suppose, if we told him?”

            Her face darkened.  “We won’t,” she said.  “You won’t.”

            He shrugged.  His shoulders were very pale amidst the dark blue comforter and sheets of this forgotten bedroom in the very end of the West Wing; his chest paler.  This last bout of lovemaking was the most ferocious yet, but Laura was, as always, fairly insatiable.  She and Edward should have been celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary, but Edward was out of town – “Business,” he said gruffly to Quentin, laying a hand on his shoulder, the most physical contact they had enjoyed since children, “Father’s estate is tangled, as you can well imagine, and I suppose I shall have to be gone for a week at least.  Carl is useless, and Judith is jealous; I am leaving it up to you, Quentin, to watch the children, to keep them safe.  And … and Laura.  She isn’t always well, and I think you know what I mean.  I am not a man given to confidences, even with you,” and Quentin had nodded fervently, “but Laura … she needs attention.  I trust you will help her when she needs help,” and Quentin, nodding again, nodding – and Edward was out of town, and here, Laura needed attention … at last.

 

            “Quentin, don’t joke.”  Her fingernails, sharp as a cat’s, dug into the soft meat of his upper arm, and he pulled it away.

            “That hurts.”

           

            “Then promise me.”

            He rolled his eyes, childishly, he knew, for a man newly twenty-seven, but he was spoiled, and he knew he was spoiled.  So what?

           

            Her eyes, sea-green, were now only inches from his.  “Promise me,” she said in a strange voice, and, suddenly chilled, he said, “I promise.  Jesus.”

            She relaxed and lay back against the pillows.  Her breasts were large and round and he loved them, loved to nip at the brown nipples; knowing that his beloved nephew and niece had pulled at them too did nothing to deter this pleasure; was it wicked of him that this knowledge only enhanced it?  Probably so.  Well, he said, then let me be wicked.  I am wicked.  He watched her as she flicked at her nipples lazily.  They hardened at her touch.  “You mustn’t ever tell Edward,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.  “You mustn’t ever.”

            “I suppose not,” he said.  “Does it mean that much to you?  Really?”

            “You know it does.”

            “Because of your marriage?”

            She rolled over to look at him.  “Because of the children,” she said.  “My children are everything to me.”

            He resisted the urge to roll his eyes again.  If that were true, he thought but did not say aloud, you wouldn’t be here now.  Whore.  Slut.

            I love you, Quentin.

            He wanted to hear her say those words.

            “We should go away.”

            He started.  “What?”

            “You heard me, Quentin.”  She was pouring more champagne after all.  She handed him the glass and he watched her over the rim as he sipped at it.  “This house … this town … so dreary … and your grandmother, watching all the time.”

            “But Jamison and Nora …?”

            Her eyes were filled with sudden terror.  “We must leave them too,” she said, and was out of the bed in an instant.  “Now.  Tonight.”

           

            “But you just said –”

           

            “I know what I said!”  She was sharp now, on the edge of hysteria.  “Please, Quentin, you mustn’t listen to the things I say –”

            “Done,” he said, and smirked.

            She glared at him.  “This isn’t funny.”

            “I don’t understand this change in you,” he said, and downed the glass of champagne, then dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor, “but frankly, it bores me.”

            She watched him for a moment. Then her hand lashed out and she slapped him.

            He seized her by the wrist.  “Don’t you ever do that again!” he snarled, then dropped her wrist with a cry.

            He looked up … into her eyes.  And cried out again.

            Tiny flames danced inside them, inside the pupil.  They were golden, those eyes, and leonine. 

 

            “Your wrist,” he whispered, rubbing his hand, ‘it’s hot.”

            “Indeed,” Laura purred.

            He backed away from her, but slowly, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from hers.  “You … you … what are you?”

            “I am Laura Collins,” the woman said in three voices at once.  “And more.”

            “I see that.”  He swallowed.  His throat was a desert.  The air crackled around them, stifling, and he realized that he was soaked with sweat.

           

            Those golden eyes blazed into his.  The flames there, centered, flickered with merriment.  “You are mine,” she said.  “I am yours.  We will never leave this place.  We will stay at Collinwood.  You will come with me when the time comes.  You … and the children.”

            “Laura,” he whispered, and tried to touch her face.  He made a yipping sound and pulled his hand back, burned again.  She was scorching; the sheets beneath her knees had begun to golden and smoke.  “Laura, what’s happening?”

            The thing on the bed gave his grin back to him.  “What must,” she said.  “You are well chosen.  You, with your delving into the black arts.  Don’t you know the glory that gazes into your eyes?  Don’t you know what I am?”  She closed her eyes.  “Amun Ra,” she said, “astua aa.”

            “My god,” Quentin whispered.

            Laura opened her golden eyes again.  “Indeed,” she said.

            “The Phoenix,” Quentin said, and swallowed his terror.  “The Phoenix of the Ages.”

            “Coming into my own,” Laura said, “again.  This is a rare privilege for a mortal, you must understand.  But the human part of Laura Collins – this woman you think you know, this woman whom you so desperately want to lisp those ridiculous words, ‘I love you’ to you – the human part of Laura Collins finds you attractive.  And so do I.”

            “You … you are different than she?”

            “I am.  We are one and we are both; you do not understand; how could you?  But while she loves the human part of you, I … I am more interested in what is underneath.”

            “And what is that?”  He was alarmed to find that he was aroused again, that he was stirring.  Something about this creature … something …

            “You have such potential,” the Phoenix whispered, and Laura’s teeth grazed his earlobe.  He moaned a little, despite himself.  “Such deep wells.”

            “I’ve been told,” and he swallowed, “the opposite.”

            “Deep wells of power,” the Phoenix said.  “I can feel them, Quentin darling.  I covet them.  You will join me, when the time comes.”

            “Power?”

            “So much power,” and she kissed him.  “There are untold universes inside you.  We will discover them … together.”

            She was on top of him now, her eyes glowing, glowing.  He closed his eyes and allowed her her ministrations.  “Laura,” he moaned despite himself.  He never made sounds when he was with a woman; it was weakness, and Quentin never showed weakness before a woman.  Nevertheless, she had him, now this strange creature, more than he ever could have imagined, and so he moaned again, “Oh, Laura.”

4

Three days ago

 

            Something happened and he couldn’t remember what it was.

            Quentin sipped his brandy at a table at the Blue Whale.  By himself, of course.  It burned going down, which was the sensation he craved.  For a moment, as the insistence on finding the memory rose up inside him again, he wanted to ball up his fists and slam them on the table until the glass fell to the wood floor and shattered and then he would press those fists against his eyeballs until galaxies exploded behind them. 

            He did neither of those things.  I am frozen, he thought, and sipped; I am paralyzed.

            Something happened.

            He couldn’t remember what.

            Something after he left Maggie’s house, out there in the darkness.  There was a gap between his turning away from her door after she had closed it in her oh-so-imperious manner right in his face (again; don’t forget, that was twice in one night) and opening his eyes in his room back at Collinwood.  Yet, the next morning, there was the Jag, in the garage where he must have left it; he scanned the newspaper and there were no reports of attacks, vampire, werewolf, or other.

            And that was the key word, wasn’t it.  Werewolf.  Lycanthrope.  L’oup garou.  The wolf-who-walked-like-a-man.  That blackout was too close for comfort; too like the times seventy years ago, when the moon held a special significance for him.

            He missed Eliot suddenly, painfully.  Eliot would know what to do; if not, they would make a plan together.

            But Eliot was dead now.

            Something happened, and I can’t remember.

            So here he sat, alone at his table, and the Blue Whale was deserted.

            The door opened.  He didn’t see who entered.

            For a moment, as he searched for the memory, his fingers reached to the collar of the steel-gray turtleneck he had donned earlier that morning and then fished around beneath it.  No marks, he thought with a sigh of relief, no wounds.

            Why would there be wounds?

            Someone at the bar.  He didn’t bother to see who it was.

            He found himself thinking of Laura now, that first night they came together like droplets of water, the night of his birthday; which birthday now?  it was so hard to keep track anymore; the night of his birthday, when Laura revealed, intentionally or not (he thought not) her true heritage:  that of the Phoenix, the dark immortal, the fiend of the ages who, it was prophesied, would someday bring destruction to the world in one last fiery burst, an apocalypse.  If the creature was allowed to pursue its goals.

            At the time, foolishly, Quentin, quite for the first time, found himself enamored of a woman with power.  She was no Beth, who always put up a fight but inevitably caved to his whims, or Jenny his wife, who missed her life on the stage but wanted nothing more than to be Mrs. Quentin Collins, to give him children, to pet him and feed him and love him until he went mad with boredom.  But Laura – Laura, now … she could destroy the world someday, and Quentin didn’t care.  As she rode atop him, igniting feelings he didn’t know were possible, as fire coursed through very inch and atom of him, he thought, I could love this woman.  I could really and truly do it.

            He hadn’t, of course; he left her to burn there on the pyre in Alexandria.  She returned, though, and then she returned again, and again.  She was weak after all, Quentin thought, sipping his brandy, and decided that he would switch next to straight up whiskey; why am I doing this to myself, he wondered; why am I sitting here, thinking about all the women in my life?  My action; my own weaknesses; the glass was empty; why was the glass empty now?

            The chair beside him scraped against the floor, and someone set a glass of whiskey, full to the brim, before him, and then that same someone sat in the chair.

            “Read my mind,” Quentin said, took the glass, sipped it, grimaced, then looked up.

            Nathan Forbes smiled back at him.  “I know what men want is all,” he said.

 

            Quentin stared at him stonily for a moment, then put the glass back to his lips.  He swallowed, grinned, and shook his head.  “Should I have checked for poison?” he said.  “Arsenic?  Or something more archaic?”

            “Nope,” Nathan said, and sipped at his own drink.  “Just plain whiskey.  You look like a whiskey man to me.”

            “The last time we met,” Quentin said, “I thrashed you quite soundly, as I recall.”

            “You did.”  Nathan’s blue eyes flashed.  “I suppose I had it coming.”

            “You did.  You absolutely did.”

            They sat together for a moment in silence, nursing their drinks.

            “Cold night,” Nathan said at last. 

            “Yup,” Quentin said.

            “Been lots of those lately.”

            “The Old House isn’t well-insulated.”

            “Not when you’re alone.  Not when the embers die in the fireplace, but the heat never reaches my bed.  Not really.”

            “You’re lucky, you know.”  Quentin met his eyes.  “That Liz is allowing you to stay at the Old House.”

            Nathan made a flippant gesture with his hand.  “I stay out of everyone’s way,” he said.  “No one bothers me.  I’ve tried to avoid … Chris and Sebastian.”  He had trouble with Chris’ name, Quentin noticed, but that wasn’t surprising.  Nathan had convinced himself that Christopher was the reincarnation of his own lost love.  Quentin sneered suddenly, and slammed back the rest of the whiskey.  Lost love; love; any love; any love indeed.  Worthless.  Vicki was dead.  Maggie hated him.  Beth was dead, and Jenny.  Dead, dead, dead.

            “That’s the best answer,” Quentin said, unable to keep the desolation out of his voice.  “Avoid, avoid, avoid.”

            “You sound depressed.”

            “Quite observant, Mr. Forbes.”

            Nathan’s lips twitched into a smile.  “Lieutenant Forbes.  I was in the Navy.  A hundred years or so before you were born, as it turns out.”

            “I forgot.  You’re two hundred something, or almost.  Died and come back, died and come back.”

            “That’s me.  The proverbial bad penny.”

            Quentin regarded him through narrowed eyes.  “But you’re honest now.”

            Nathan shrugged.  “Oh, I don’t know.  I don’t really know what honest is anymore.  I don’t even know how to behave or what I really want; I come here some nights; I stole one of Roger’s cars and taught myself to drive, more or less, and some nights I take it out on the roads.  Get the hell out of Collinsport, at least for a little while.”

 

            “Honesty,” Quentin said, “is highly overrated.”

            “Yeah,” Nathan said amused, “but aren’t you supposed to be one of the good guys?”

            “No one at Collinwood shows their true face, you know.  Not even me.”  He sneered again.  “Although according to some people, there’s nothing underneath this face but more nothing.”

            “You’re immortal.”  It was an observation, not a question.

            “Have you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray?”  Nathan cocked his head.  “Oscar Wilde?” 

Nathan smiled, and shook his head.  “I’ve never been much of a reader,” he admitted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Quentin said.  “The story parallels my own life.  You know the details, or maybe you think you do.  The portrait keeps me young, keeps the werewolf at bay, but forever reflects all the ghastly choices I’ve made.”

            “And this … Dorian Gray, whatever?  That’s the same story?”

            Quentin nodded.  “Wouldn’t surprise me if Petofi knew the story, or was inspired by it when he gave Charles those ghastly powers.”  Nathan gestured helplessly, inquisitively.  “Oh, right.  Backstory.  Shit.  The power to bring into reality whatever he painted.  As a way of transferring my curse, if not lifting it outright.  Petofi might have known Wilde; wouldn’t surprise me a bit.  He was a social climber if nothing else.”

            “He’s dead now, anyway,” Nathan said casually.  Quentin raised an eyebrow.  “Petofi.  Probably for good.  Angelique destroyed him.”

Quentin shook his head as if to clear it, as if the entire subject of Petofi bored him silly.  “I met Oscar Wilde you know.  A year or so before he died.  After his trial.”

            “Trial?”

            Quentin smirked.  “He was a queer; did I forget to mention that?  Convicted for ‘gross indecency’ after the father of his boyfriend took him to court.”

            Nathan’s smile vanished.  His eyes grew wintery.  “And he went to jail?”

            “He did.  He died a few years after his release.  Very nice man.  Witty, as you’d already know if you’d ever read him or seen his work.”  Quentin shrugged.  “I told him all about myself.  Why not?  He was amused; actually laughed quite a lot.  I couldn’t prove my story, after all, but I think he believed me.  He told me, ‘I believe you lead a double life.  I believe there is more to you than meets the eye.’  I told him that I had done terrible things and no one knew, no one but the damned portrait, reporting every lie, every cheat, every sin.”  Suddenly Quentin began to grin.  “Then he said – and I swear this is true – he said, ‘Allow me to quote myself.  The only difference,’ he says, ‘the only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.’  And he smiles at me and he winks, and he says, ‘Ponder on that for awhile, Mr. Collins.’”

            With your beautiful blue eyes.

 

            Quentin faltered.  Wilde had said that too, yes, and touched his face, slowly, tenderly.  Quentin had allowed him to do it. 

            “Was he right?” Nathan asked.

            Jolted, Quentin said, “Hmm?  About what?”

            Nathan was leaning forward, chin resting in his hands.  He had been, Quentin suddenly realized, hanging on his every word.  “About the future.”

            Quentin scowled.  “I am tired of the future,” he said, “and the past.  It is now, and I am out of whiskey.”

            “Oh.  Me too.”

            “Fortunately for us,” Quentin said, rising and wrapping himself in his big blue peacoat, “I happen to have a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle secreted away at the Old House for just such a rainy day.  Or eve.”

            Nathan, fumbling with his coat, said, “There’s no one there tonight.  Audrey and Willie are out somewhere, on a date I suppose.  Stranger things have happened.”

            “Good,” Quentin said grimly, striding out the doors.  “Then we won’t be disturbed.”

            It wasn’t the first time he’d made love to a man, of course, but it had been a fair number of years, twenty or thirty, maybe forty.  He forgot.  He had also forgotten, apparently, the difference in sensations.  There was, he was now recalling, something different about being with a man, or maybe it was just Nathan, who moved in all the right ways and paid the right kind of attention and for the right amount of time, and who made sounds that Quentin found he liked, and who let Quentin lead, let him grip Nathan by the back of the neck and force him down into the mattress, Quentin’s teeth bared, his eyes aflame, riding, riding, riding until there was release. 

            After the first time, lying together with only the flickering light of the fire to provide illumination, neither men said a word.  Quentin could hear Nathan’s heavy breathing, and that was all. He thought, He won’t expect me to love him; is that the difference?  Is that the reason I led him back here tonight?  Or do I want him to, really?  He loves Christopher; he loved this Todd person in the dim, dead past; what’s to stop him from loving me?

            

            “You can stay here tonight,” Nathan said suddenly, as if he’d caught the barest flicker of Quentin’s thoughts.

            Quentin said nothing.  He stared at the ceiling.

            “Or not,” Nathan said.  “My feelings won’t be hurt.  It’s just … it’s late.  Very late.  And I think the rain turned to snow.”

            “Cold road ahead, is that what you’re saying?”

            “This bed is warm for the first time, that’s all I’m saying.”

            Quentin shifted, swung his long legs over the side of the bed, and pulled on his pants.  He could see Nathan watching him from the corner of his eye, his face expressionless.  “I’ve been out in the cold before,” Quentin grunted.

            “That’s fair.  Close the door behind you, please.”  Nathan rolled over on his side, away from Quentin.  He stood, hesitated in the door, turned back, but he couldn’t see the other man’s face.

            The stairs made no sound as he descended them.  The door closed quietly behind him.

            Then something happened.

5

August 4, 1955

            “This would have been our fortieth anniversary.”  He laid the rose on Jenny’s grave, then knelt there, looking at the bare stone.  JANNA ROMANO COLLINS, 1870-1897, it read, no epitaph; why would a foolish Gypsy woman, a woman foolish for her attempt to love a Collins, why should she deserve an epitaph?  Edward’s rationale, of course.  He touched the letters.  They were cold, despite the sultry heat of the night.

 

            Behind him, several yards away so as to ensure Quentin’s privacy, Eliot Stokes was examining in close detail other Collins gravestones.  He was looking for clues that might lead him in the direction of a cure for the lycanthropy that would descend upon Christopher Jennings, then only a boy of ten, but still, only eight years away, by Eliot’s calculations, from the curse’s awakening. 

            Quentin looked back at Jenny’s stone.  Had he really loved her?  Once, perhaps, though it had occurred to him time and time again to wonder if he truly understood what love was.  Nights like tonight, birthday and anniversary both, he thought:  no; no, I truly do not.

            Jenny, Laura, Beth, Victoria Winters (and was it tempting to try to find her, to remind her of their love? yes, oh god, yes, but of course, according to the ridiculous rules of time travel she wouldn’t recognize him because they hadn’t met yet; though, when she finally arrived at Collinwood in just under twelve years, he would know her and love her again) – this line of women, ruined by him.  I destroy, he thought, and remembered that long-forgotten girl from his fourteenth birthday; couldn’t remember her name or even  her face, but he remembered with incredible vividness the smells of the night, the sounds, the colors and the shadows as he pursued her through the darkness.  Did he catch her?  Probably.  He couldn’t remember clearly.

           

            La, Quentin.

           

            He stiffened, and then looked over his shoulder.  No one there, no one but Eliot, farther away now, out of earshot. 

            “Magda?” he whispered. 

            No one there. 

            They will always love you, Quentin.  Never forget that.

 

            Magda’s voice … and Jenny’s? 

            The wind touched his face, softly, gently.  Like the hand of a lover.  Was there perfume in the air?  Some scent?

            They will always love you.

            “But I’m not capable of loving them!” Quentin growled through gritted teeth.  His cheeks were wet with tears, and he had no idea when they had fallen.  His hands were clenched into fists so tight that droplets of blood pattered down onto Jenny’s grave.  “Don’t you see?  Don’t any of you understand?  I am not allowed to love anyone, not ever, not ever!  Now leave me alone!  Go away and leave me alone and don’t ever come back!”

            He was panting.  His hands hurt.  The perfume in the air was gone; the warm wind was gone; they were gone, or she, whoever it had been.  Gone, gone, gone.

            “It’s going to storm.”  Eliot, looking at him kindly.  Quentin stared furiously at the ground.  “Perhaps we should …?”

            “You’re right,” Quentin said.  His voice sounded gruff, taut, in his own ears.  “Let’s get out of here.”

            And he didn’t look back.

6

Now

            It had been Roxanne, of course, and though she hadn’t pierced his flesh with her fangs, she had somehow managed to insert her consciousness, her venomous will, into his own mind, and now he was hers. 

            He had returned to Nathan only this afternoon, convinced himself that he was on an aimless afternoon walk through the woods, but he ended up at the Old House, of course; cold comfort – well, grinning, thrusting into the other man, he thought, not exactly cold – better than no comfort at all.

            And then, afterward (three more times, then afterword), leaving Nathan smiling and sated, he found her on the porch again, as he had once before, and once at Maggie’s house before that.  “It is time,” she had said, her eyes sunken holes, her teeth fangs.  “Now.”

            The cemetery, the gravestone, the shovel, the digging.  Roxanne appearing above him, urging him on.  “She must be awakened,” Roxanne said, giggling, “the time has come.  The time has come at last.”

            VALERIE COLLINS, the stone read.  1810-1840.  GOD GRANT SHE LYE STILL.

            Why such a tombstone?

            His will was her will; his was not to ask questions.  His was to dig.

            So he dug.

            Uncovered the coffin in darkness. 

            Opened the coffin.

            The corpse inside was ancient, near dust, shrunken, a mummy.  The skull bare, the skeleton clothed in colorless rags.

           

            A wooden stake jutted out of its chest, caught in the ribcage.

            “You know what you must do,”  Roxanne said.  Her voice was imperious, her command not to be denied.  “So do it.”

            I don’t want to, he tried to say, but his lips were numb.  The words were trapped.  He couldn’t speak.  He reached out for the stake, tried to stop, tried to freeze the muscles of his arm.

            “Awaken her.  Do it.  Now.”

           

            Her command.  Could not be ignored.

            His fingers closed around the haft of the stake.

            And pulled it out.

            “Yessssss,” Roxanne said, and clapped her hands.

            For a long moment nothing happened, and they watched together. 

            Then the metamorphosis began.  The flesh collected, thickened, strengthened, over the skull and folded arms; the hair appeared in scant profusions, then grew into a long golden mane that curled into a froth of ringlets; even the skeleton’s costume shivered and trembled and re-knitted itself from nothing, now a gorgeous blue gown; an emerald stone burned with spectral phosphoresce above her breasts, which swelled and grew.  Despite himself, Quentin desired her, hungered for her.  She was, he thought, very like Angelique, that same beauty.  Her cheeks were ashen pale, and her eyelashes lay like soot against the pale cream of her skin. 

            They trembled, her eyelids, the eyes rolling behind them.

            “Now,” Roxanne said.

            The eyes opened, cold and blue.  Her lips curled into a smile, revealing the fang teeth Quentin expected.

            She sat up in her coffin and opened her arms.

            “Take him,” Roxanne said.

            Quentin closed his eyes.  This was inevitable, he thought; active?  Me?  The man who knows what he wants, who goes after it, who gets it?  The man with a goal, more than a portrait, more than evil frozen into a frame, a paralyzed form for all eternity?  He leaned his head back, exposing his throat.

            And when he felt the fangs as they slid into him, it was almost a relief, this subjugation of his will, of his desire, this insertion of another’s will into him, his mind, his life, which mattered very little, he thought, very little to anyone anymore.

            There is no future, he thought, sinking gratefully into darkness, no future at all anymore.

            Not for any of us.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...