Shadows on the Wall Chapter 127

CHAPTER 127:  Infection

by Nicky

Voiceover by Don Briscoe:  “Collinwood in the year 1969 … where the first peaceful months of that year are about to be shattered … for many enemies have risen up against the Collins family, who, on this night, are preparing to fight back …”

1

            Julia finished wiping her mouth with the cloth napkins she and Vicki had discovered in one of the attic rooms shortly after Barnabas’ release from the coffin in 1967 and admired it for a moment before setting it delicately beside her empty plate.  A beautiful indigo, the napkins were probably two hundred years old and remarkably well preserved.  Antiques, she thought with a twinge of guilt, that probably belong more properly in a museum, but Barnabas insisted on their use.  She tried to recall from her time peering through the eyes of Natalie DuPres in 1795 if the napkins were part of Josette’s trousseau.

            “Exquisite,” Julia said as Willie came by to remove her plate.  “You really outdid yourself, Willie.”

            “Yes,” Angelique chimed in, and Julia resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  She had come to like Angelique – grudgingly, and this was after much soul-searching and self-lectures about the power of forgiveness and analysis of the metaphysical nature of the soul, since, allegedly, Angelique had somehow lost hers at one point and then regained it, a story Julia had never really bought into – but the former witch was getting on Julia’s very and truly for reals-this-time last nerve.  Why did I decide to quit smoking now? Julia wailed to herself, but forced a demure smile onto her mouth.  Angelique batted her long black eyelashes; the green mascara she wore turned her eyes turquoise.  Julia wished for a moment she had a torch and some gasoline.  “Really and truly outdid yourself.”

 

            “Aww,” Willie said, blushing.  As he passed by Audrey, who had been offered a plate that remained, as did Barnabas’, empty throughout the dinner, the beautiful vampire squeezed his arm and offered him one of her dazzling smiles.  She was proud of Willie, as were they all.  Originally a rough and tumble con artist and drifter when he released Barnabas from his chained coffin, Willie had somehow transformed himself into a combination housekeeper, repairman, carpenter, decorator, and master chef.  The dinner of duck a l’orange was one of the best Julia had ever enjoyed.  “It wasn’t nothing, really.”

            “You’re too modest, Willie,” Barnabas said lightly from his place at the head of the table.  He rested both of his hands on the top of his wolf’s head cane and watched his servant with admiration.  Julia thought Barnabas looked remarkably well for a man coping with the reinstatement of the vampire curse, this time apparently more primal and ferocious than any of the other variations he had endured over the centuries.  She hadn’t exactly been privy to all the details, and neither Barnabas nor Angelique had offered up any more details than were necessary.  Still, Julia had managed to glean that this newest iteration of the curse involved an actual demon bat that had, somehow … invaded?  Infested?  … become a very literal part of Barnabas.

            Magic, she thought now, and wanted to roll her eyes.  Once upon a time my life was normal.

            Was that ever true?  Really?

            This dinner party, suggested by Willie and seconded by Audrey, was intended to be a respite from the insanity that had plagued all their lives well before Barnabas, Julia, and Angelique jaunted off to Parallel Time; ever since, as Julia now considered, Victoria Winters’ descent into darkness that ended with her death, as well as the death of Elizabeth’s brother Roger and Chris Jennings’ sister Amy.  Yes, Julia thought, we are all exhausted.  We could use just one night where nothing terrible happens.

            Which was when, of course, the picture window beside the front doors exploded and Tom Jennings leaped into the room.

 

            He stared as he crouched for a moment before them, red eyes bulging like a hideous rat, fangs bared.

            Then Barnabas erupted from his chair, silver cane raised, and roared, “JENNINGS!”

            Julia felt her stomach flip.  Tom had been her lover once upon a time, in a saner life, before Barnabas and Vicki’s twin arrivals brought so much darkness and terror into all their lives.  Then he had discovered Barnabas’ dark secret and Barnabas had been forced to feed off him.  But it was Angelique, then in her guise as Cassandra Collins, who had opened the wounds on Tom’s neck, murdering him and condemning him to life as a vampire.  Tom had immediately tried to turn Julia into his vampire bride, and she had only been saved when Barnabas’ quick thinking turned silver shards of a broken mirror into a weapon that pierced the vampire’s heart.

           

            Yet, here he was, back from the dead.

            He was quick.  One moment he was still crouched in the direct center of the room; the next he stood behind Willie, one hand twisting the other man’s arm up and behind his back so that Willie grimaced with pain; the other bared Willie’s throat.  Jennings lowered his mouth so that his needle fangs were bare centimeters above the spot where Willie’s jugular vein pulsed delicately.  “No one move,” Tom purred, “or I will slit his jugular and carotid before he even takes another breath.”

             “What do you want, Jennings?” Barnabas growled. 

            “The Amulet of Caldys,” Tom said instantly, and his red-blood eyes flickered to Angelique.  “Get it.  This moment.  Or he dies.”

            Angelique hesitated.  Droplets of sweat stood out on her forehead.  “But I –” she began.

            Audrey was in her face with the same demonic speed that Tom exhibited.  Her own fangs protruded, long and slender, like a cobra’s.  “Get … the damned … amulet,” she growled.

            Angelique, glaring alternately at Tom and Audrey, ran up the stairs to the Old House’s second floor and her bedroom.

            “What does Roxanne want with it?” Barnabas said.

            “Roxanne wants nothing,” Tom snickered.  “Who cares for Roxanne?  There’s a new power in town, man.”

            Barnabas narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

            “Look, I don’t know anything about this Enemy you all have been worrying about.  And I don’t care.  Eventually –”  And he looked to Julia and grinned his bone-white, nightmare grimace, “— eventually I’ll claim Julia for my bride.”

 

            “I’m going to give you peace, Tom,” Julia said calmly.  She was a hurricane inside.  Her mouth, however, was thin and did not tremble; her chin was thrust forward, a warrior’s.  “I swear it.”

            “I don’t want peace,” Tom spat, and playfully licked Willie’s throat.  But his eyes were only for Julia.  “I want you.  And I’m going to have you.”

            “Here,” Angelique said from the bottom of the stairs.  Her face was white and her eyes were wet with the tears she’d shed, but she strode forward nevertheless and thrust out the little metal charm.  Tom plucked it from her grasp; a bare moment later and he was gone.

            Audrey was at Willie’s side in an instant, and helped him as he stumbled on liquid legs to the seat she had vacated.  She stroked his hair and kissed his forehead and cooed, “It’s okay, baby, it’s all right, I promise, everything is okay now.”

 

            “We will regret this,” Angelique said stonily; her eyes ranged over the other four, who could only return her gaze helplessly.  “All of us.  I promise you that.”

2

Gerard flexed his fingers at the same moment he opened his eyes as widely as he could, and relief flooded through him.  He was able to see his fingers, firstly, and secondly, he had fingers to flex and a body that could feel relief. 

At first, there had been nothing.  A void.  He could still feel, however; whatever the witch-bitch had done to him, it still allowed him to feel the blistering Arctic cold of that place.  He hated to think of it.  It was worse than whatever Leticia Faye had done to him in 1840; it made his body clench and spasm just to think of it.

And it had been eternal.

 

            The Candle of the Seven Secrets, of course, and he had been a fool to forget about it.  But she couldn’t have used it! he had wailed to himself when enough of his personality, his mind, his essence, had drawn together and begun to coalesce; she has no power!

            Obviously she had enough.

            He shivered.  He wasn’t alone.

            He concentrated; concentrated; listened.

            A sound.  Some sound.

            Stiles was lying on the altar where he had sacrificed so many in the name of his Master; the stone was cold (but not the icy cold of the void) beneath him, and uncomfortable.  I’m naked, of course, he thought, and was able to grin his fiend’s grin for a moment; that bitch couldn’t even leave me my clothes.

            What was that sound?

            Sobbing.  It was the sound of someone – man? woman? – in pain, in agony.

            “Hello?” Gerard croaked.

            Stilessssss…

            The Master’s voice.

            You fool.

             Stiles dragged himself from the altar, grimacing, and padded about the room.  He was in Rose Cottage again, he saw; where was the Master?  A shard of guilt slashed at him.  Not strong enough to materialize, he thought, and a small sob escaped his mouth.  Because of me.  Because of my failure.

            Yes, Stiles.  Your eternal failure.

            This, followed by another sob. 

            Stiles frowned.  So it was the Master who was sobbing?  Was that even possible?

            “Master?” Stiles whispered.  “Are you …”  He licked his lips at the absurdity of what he was about to say.  “…okay?”

            A blast of force lashed out at him and knocked him across the room.  He slammed into the far wall and slid, dazed, to the floor.  Once upon a time it had been carpeted; now, only remnants remained, spotted, stained black and rust.  “Master,” he croaked, “please … forgive me …”

            Another groan of anguish.

            Something flickered into being before him.

            A woman.  Long dark hair, agonized eyes.

             NO!

            She winked out like a candle flame.

            “Master?” Stiles tried again.  “Please?”

            Several faces appeared before him at once, glowing brightly for a second or two, then fading away, only to be replaced by another:  Joshua Collins, glaring sternly; Millicent Collins, vapid and insane; Harriet Collins, seaweed caught in the shag of her hair; Jeremiah Collins, eyeball protruding; Josette, same; Abigail Collins; Naomi Collins; Judith Collins; Charity Trask; Roger Collins; and finally, her hair a white hag’s bloom and her hands twisted claws, came Victoria Winters, who glared at Stiles with shark-black eyes.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

            It was this incarnation that remained, that walked toward him confidently.

            Stiles cringed backward as it advanced, and tried to sink into the wall.  He squeezed his eyes tightly and prepared for the pain.

            When it didn’t come, he opened his eyes half-way.

            Victoria Winters, human, restored to her former youth and beauty, was kneeling beside him.  She stroked his face, and his flesh hummed at her touch.  “You left me,” she said without guile or recrimination. 

            He flushed and bowed his head.  “I didn’t mean to.”

            “I know,” the thing that looked like Vicki said.  “You were trying to help … me.”  A large crystalline tear gathered in the corner of one of her eyes and shimmered down her cheek.

            Stiles watched this all in amazement.  It couldn’t be real.  The Master had never exhibited such emotion in the past.  Emotion was weakness; Stiles knew that.  To feel … to care …

 

            “But I do,” Vicki whispered.  “Feel … and care.  Don’t you understand, you stupid man?  That’s why I’m doing this.  It isn’t to rule over a shattered world, a ruined void.  Nothing as mortal as that particular ambition.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “Of course you don’t.  You sold your humanity a long time ago.  I never had any to begin with.”  It laughed then, a jagged, unhealthy sound.  “To begin with.  Now I am infected with it.”

            “Master,” Stiles whispered, and dared to touch the face of the woman before him.  She was so beautiful, so innocent looking.  Stiles wished he could have known her in life.  The woman at Collinwood right now, that Alexandra, was only a shadow compared to Victoria Winters.

            “Please,” it said, and took his hand.  It burned with icy cold.  The Master’s touch was leech-like; it stole warmth and vitality from all around it. That was the Master’s nature; it had no form of its own, so it could only take.  “I don’t want to be like this anymore,” it sobbed.

            “You don’t mean that.”

            “I do!”  Its head flashed up, and fire blazed for a moment in its eyes.  “Oh, but I do!  These feelings, these thoughts – they aren’t mine!”

            “The people,” Stiles guessed, “the people whose form you take …”

 

            The Vicki-thing nodded her/its head.  “Them,” it said, “but more than that.”

            “The girl.”  Stiles ground his teeth together.

            “The girl,” sighed the Vicki-thing.  “She haunts me.”

           

            “I’m here to help you, Master,” Stiles said eagerly.  “Please.  Let me.”

            “Help me do what?”  The voice was Vicki’s, but the emotion was real, Stiles could tell.  Its eyes were full of agony, large dark pools of pain.  It laughed its jagged, infected laugh again.  “All I can do is destroy.  I have hunkered here all these months, and I have thought.”  It sighed.  “I thought about this world, all the worlds that are out there, and they are infinite, you know –” Stiles nodded like a good boy; he hadn’t known “— and I thought about how I want to end them.  Just end all of them.  Forever.  All dark.  All, all, all darkness.”

            “Yes,” Stiles said, clapping, relieved that the Master was sticking to the original plan.  “Yes, let’s do that.”

            “You fool,” Vicki said sorrowfully.  “You will cease to exist when the worlds do.  And …”  Its face creased with pain again.  “And so will I.”

            Stiles cocked his head, dog-like.  “That’s impossible.”

            It said nothing.  Derision flashed in its eyes at his stupidity.  “When there is nothing, there is nothing.  I am at this moment; I exist.”  It smiled.  “I am human in that respect.  I seek to survive at all costs.  Such is the drive of the human race.  It’s why they’ve covered the planet in their filth.  It’s why demons hate them.  They supplanted us; they have form, they have life …”  Its face twisted in agony.  “And we envy that, of course.  We would have form, we would have life.”  Tears ran down its face again.  “But I want to destroy it all!  I am like a greedy child at a birthday party that isn’t mine; if I can’t have the cake, all cake, I don’t want anyone else to have it either.  I will ruin all the worlds because I don’t understand what – who – I really am.”

            Stiles said nothing. 

            At last the Vicki-thing sighed.  “It’s okay,” she/it said.  “I don’t fully understand either.  Am I infected by the girl’s feelings and thoughts, even now, three centuries later?  Or are they my thoughts and feelings?  Or does it matter?”  It wiped away the tears, which faded and disappeared into nothing before they struck the floor.  They weren’t real, Stiles thought, because this form wasn’t real.

            Vicki stood up, fading and shifting as she went.  Now she was Professor T. Eliot Stokes, grinning his rather jolly grin.  His shirt front was stiff and dark with dried blood.  “I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter,” it said.  “If I do destroy all the worlds, I stop feeling.  All of this goes away.  It’s so much easier that way.  I firmly believe this.”

 

            “Yes,” Stiles agreed, but cautiously.

            “I’m afraid of what will happen after,” Stokes said, considering.  “I’m afraid of the nothing.”

            “No more pain,” Stiles said.  “That’s what I keep thinking.  No more pain.  I … I hate pain.”

           

            “Ironic, since you bring so much of it to others.”

            Stiles nodded.  “For you,” he said.  “All for you.”

            The Stokes-thing was silent for a moment.  “You are a good servant,” it said.  “More than valuable.  You have proven your allegiance to me time and time again.  You want this oblivion as much as I do, don’t you.”  Stiles nodded fervently.  Stokes shivered, then shrugged, almost bewildered.  “So be it.”  He lifted his head and roared, “Do you hear me?  It’s coming!  The end!  For all of us!  FOR ALL OF US!” and for a moment he was that girl again, her eyes wet with tears, shaking, shaking, then nothing.

            You are a good servant, Stilesssssss.

            Gerard Stiles grinned.

            A tiny, dime-sized hole appeared in his forehead, just above his nose, between his eyes.  They lifted, as if surprised.

             Then he collapsed.

            “Now why,” Carolyn Stoddard said joyfully, the pistol still hot in her hand, “didn’t we think of that before?”

3

            Quentin moaned.  He couldn’t help himself.  He didn’t like making sounds when he was with a woman, but this just felt so … damned … GOOD!

            He had never been the victim of a vampire before.  He had often wondered, as he worked beside Barnabas, what it would feel like if he offered his throat to his cousin, just to see what sensation the vampire’s bite – hey, let’s call a spade a spade – what the vampire’s kiss would bring.  Did it hurt?  He sometimes thought that it had to hurt; those fangs were nothing to joke about; wouldn’t it feel like a dog sinking its sharp-sharp teeth into one of the more sensitive areas on the body?  But he had seen the bite in action; he watched those women as they writhed at his cousin’s touch.   He would get hard just thinking about it.

            

            He was hard now.  Valerie’s fangs were in his throat, back in the old familiar wounds, nuzzling, worrying them, and it didn’t hurt at all.  Well, maybe a little bit; a token sting, and then this … this bliss.  So much more intense than just simple sex, Quentin thought dreamily, and stroked her hair as she slurped his blood; this was true connection.  Valerie existed inside his mind now, black and exciting, an evil flower that bloomed within him with each sunset.  She wouldn’t allow him to make love to her in the human way, even when he told her she could bite him during the act itself; she was so old-fashioned about some things, Quentin thought mournfully, but then, when she entered him, none of it mattered.

            Drain me, he thought, exhilarated, drain me, kill me, make me yours.

           

            “No,” Valerie whispered, and he moaned again, but with loss this time, as he always felt loss when she withdrew.  “No, I won’t.”

            “Won’t?”

            She shook her head sadly.  “I won’t make you what I am.  I won’t do that to anyone.”

            “I want to be yours.”

             Her smile was bittersweet.  “That will change,” she said.  “You don’t know now; that’s the nature of this particular beast.  But you won’t want me anymore once you die and … and return.”  She shuddered, and delicately wiped a tiny crimson pearl from the corner of her mouth.  Her fangs were still visible; he throbbed at the sight of them.  “You will despise me, just as I despise my maker.”

            “Barnabas?”

            “And Roxanne,” Valerie nodded.  “They will pay for what they have done.”  Her eyes flashed red, and then returned to their very Angelique-blue/green/gray.  “And for that.  That desire for vengeance.  I hunger for it as much as I do for blood.  I never did in life, you know.  I was always afraid.  I wanted my husband to protect me, and when they locked him away, no one else would do it.  So I cowered, afraid.”

            “But you aren’t afraid anymore.”

            “The one good thing about this curse,” Valerie said reflectively.  “The only good thing.  But it doesn’t matter.  I don’t want this life.”

            “What do you want?”  He gave her his best crooked smile, that sexy Quentin Collins special that drove all the women mad.  He added a quirked eyebrow.  “Me?”

 

            “You are so like him,” Valerie whispered, and traced circles on Quentin’s naked chest.  “But no, my darling.  I don’t want you.  Not like that.”  She closed her eyes and stretched for a moment, then rose.  She was as naked as he was, and he watched her backside appreciatively as she slid into the diaphanous blue-white gown she always wore.  She gazed back at him with wicked eyes.  “I want extinction.  Only extinction.”

            Quentin’s mouth opened and then closed.

            “Then please,” a pleasant voice said, “allow us.”

            Valerie hissed, a terrible cheated sound, and her face scrawled into a hateful grimace.  The wooden bolt flew from the bow Alexandra March held in one firm hand and would have struck home, but Valerie was quicker than that.  She had already begun to fade, her body losing form and substance until it was little more than gauze, and the wooden arrow sailed harmlessly through her.  Then she was gone.

            Quentin wailed.  He couldn’t help himself, and it wasn’t a terrifically manly sound, but he wailed nonetheless.  She was gone, his dark goddess, and when would he ever see her again?

 

            “Oh, Quentin,” Chris Jennings said sadly, and came forward with a blanket he had pulled from the bed where Quentin slept, usually fitfully, while Valerie lay in her daytime death-coma.  They would destroy her coffin now, he thought bleakly, burn it, and she’d have to find a new place to rest.  Quentin sat numbly as Chris wrapped the blanket around him.  He turned to Nathan Forbes, who stood slightly behind a grim-looking Sebastian Shaw in the doorway, and said, “You were right, Nathan.  Good work.”

            “Yes,” Sebastian growled.  “Good work.”

            “We have to get him to Julia,” Chris said, concern wrinkling his forehead.  He stared into Quentin’s eyes.  “Gramps?” he said gently. “Gramps, you in there?”

            “She’s gone,” Quentin said.  His voice was flat and dead.  “She’s gone, gone, gone.”

            “Julia will have to begin the injections,” Nathan said helpfully.  “The same ones she gave me when I …”  He saw the steely looks that both Chris and Sebastian gave him, and smiled sheepishly.  “Never mind,” he said.

            “Vampires,” Alex said disgustedly.  “Why are there so many goddamned vampires around this place?”

4

            Angelique folded her hands placidly before her, opened the dresser drawer, and squinted.  It was empty … or it seemed to be.

 

            “Appear to me,” she whispered.  She was stripped of her powers again, but that didn’t matter.  The spell she cast while inhabiting the body of Valerie Collins in 1840 waited for those three words, and indeed, as she watched, pleased, the empty drawer began to glitter and flash, and within seconds, the antique hand mirror she had placed there and then enchanted grew back into reality.  “Yes,” she whispered, then lifted the mirror, face-down, as it had been that night a hundred and thirty years ago (though in reality, it had only been a few days for her), and placed it, still face-down, on the top of the bureau. 

            Then she turned and examined the room.  Josette’s room, or so it had been when she first came to this country (as Angelique, you mean, she reminded herself; a silly thing, reincarnation, when you came right down to it).  But now it’s mine, she thought grandly, and a bit sadly.  Barnabas hadn’t been able to look at her, not really, since their return from the past.  He’ll never look at me the way I want him to again, she thought, not after what I did to him.  Again.

            This stupid room, she thought furiously, a tribute to her, a dead woman.

            I have to make things right.

            And so she would.

            She was terrified, she realized.  Her lips were dry, cracking, and so she licked them.  Didn’t help. 

            “Angelique,” she whispered, and looked around the room.  No candle, no fire to transmit her thoughts; neither would have helped.  She would have to rely on her doppelganger’s powers and pray that the creature would listen.  “Come to me.  Come to me this night.  Appear to me in this room!”

 

            And when the green witchlight flared in the far corner of the room, and Angelique saw herself standing there, her arms wrapped confidently around herself, she felt that spear of terror pierce her again.  If I fail tonight, Angelique thought, despite herself, I will be returned to darkness.

            As will we all.

            “If you fail?” the Angelique-goddess said sweetly in her chiming, silvery voice.  “At what?”

            Angelique raised the mirror.

            “At this,” she said.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...