Monday, August 31, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Shadows on the Wall Chapter 129
CHAPTER 129: The Good Fight
by Nicky
Voiceover by Nancy Barrett: “Collinwood,
where we are all cursed in our own particular way. And on this night, we will rise up, because
none of us are content to simply sit back and accept what fate has handed us
with its wicked hands. No. We will fight.”
1
We
should leave Collinsport, Sebastian thought grimly; and so thinking, he reached
out and took his lover’s hand. Chris
looked over at him, and smiled gratefully.
Sebastian nodded. This world
isn’t so different from mine, he thought, not really. Gay rights are just
getting off the ground. Segregation is
dying. Women are fighting; Indians are
fighting; everyone is fighting for
something. For things to get
better. That is the same in both our
worlds.
So why do I want to run away so badly?
Sebastian
was used to fighting. He’d always been a fighter; of course, having the
power to shift his shape, combined with his height and his strength, had
usually levelled the playing field. But
the stakes were higher now. He was in
love, really in love, with Christopher, who had somehow come back to him, and
they had more in common than they’d ever had before; and I will not lose him again, Sebastian thought
ferociously, not ever, ever again.
We could go.
We could just go. Leave these
people to fight for themselves.
Christopher
knew he was a Collins, but the rest of the family didn’t. And he had never seen fit to tell them in the
year since he’d made the discovery, nor had Barnabas or Julia or Quentin. They don’t need him, Sebastian thought
sourly, the high and mighty Collinses of Collinsport. He needn’t be bound to them, he needn’t end
like my Christopher did …
“This
is going to work,” Chris whispered, and Sebastian snapped back to reality.
Alexandra
March waved her hands above Quentin’s throat, her face set and grim with
determination. Quentin lay supine before
her, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, the wounds on his throat standing out
against his grayish flesh like something out of one of those Hammer Dracula
flicks, mottled and purple and bruised, no neat and pretty pinpricks. Quentin’s eyes rolled beneath his closed
lids. He moaned and his hands beat a
light tattoo against the divan.
“Are
you sure this is a good idea?” Sebastian asked.
“For
the ten billionth time,” Chris said, “yes. It’s the only
option.”
“But
Julia said that when Alex’s sister tried healing like this, there were …
consequences.”
Chris
licked his lips. “We have to try
something,” he said after a moment.
“Quentin can’t stay like this.
Her slave.”
“We’ll
fix it, baby,” Sebastian said, and put his hands on Chris’ shoulders. Chris sank back against him wearily, allowing
the ministrations to loosen up the tension that gathered like barbells in his
muscles. “We’ll deal with whatever we
have to deal with.”
“I’m
just so tired,” Chris whispered. “When
is this all gonna end?”
“I
don’t know if it ever will,” Sebastian said.
“We never stop fighting. Not when
there’s something to fight for.” Just
go, he thought, just take him and run away; don’t tell anyone; what’s holding you
here? And the danger …
He
turned his gaze to the corner of the room and felt dark hatred rise up inside
him.
As
he had been doing for the past hour or so, Nathan Forbes stared at them both
from the chair he had occupied since Alex began her ceremony, his fingers
tented, his eyes slitted.
“What?”
Sebastian growled.
Nathan
raised his eyebrows and then dropped them, but said nothing. He continued to glare.
“Oh,
leave him alone,” Chris said. “He’s not
hurting anything just sitting there.”
“And
he’d better keep it that way,” Sebastian said.
Nathan
snickered. “What are you gonna do about
it if I don’t?”
Sebastian
left Chris’ side immediately, his hands balled into fists, his teeth bared into
a grin that grew sharper with each step he took. His eyes flashed green. “Care to find out?” he growled through his
fangs.
“Stop
it!” Chris cried, and tried to step between them.
Nathan
rose from his chair, grinning. “Eat me,”
he said. “Go on, do what you already
threatened to do to me. Tear out my
guts. Roll my head around like a bowling
ball.” He shoved Sebastian. “Come on, freak! Rip me apart!”
“Guys,
stop it!” Chris tried again, but he was pushed out of the way … until a blast
of green energy erupted, sending all three men flying.
Alexandra
March glared at them with eyes gone black.
“SHUT … UP,” she rumbled, the voice of a deity. “ALL OF YOU.”
“Yes
ma’am,” Nathan whimpered, pulling himself to his feet.
Alex
turned back to Quentin, resuming her whispered chanting and waving of hands.
“She’s
intense,” Sebastian said, and offered Chris a hand.
Chris,
glaring at him, took it.
“What?”
Sebastian said, bewildered at the fury in Chris’ eyes.
“Nothing,”
Chris said sullenly. He walked away from
Sebastian and stood closer to Alex, watching her intently, watching Quentin’s
face as it twitched, as his mouth gaped open like a fish’s.
Sebastian
narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth, then closed it. He crossed his arms miserably over his
chest. Take him and go, he thought, just
take him and go.
And
when he glanced over at Nathan, the other man was grinning at him, grinning and
nodding.
Sebastian
thought of all the ways he could kill a man.
2
Barnabas
carried Elizabeth’s body up to the front door of Collinwood. Carolyn, behind him, was unable to staunch
the flow of her tears. Julia had hooked
an arm around her the moment after she had burst into the doors of the Old
House, and had left it there ever since.
Behind them came Angelique, holding her head high with a confidence that
had been lacking since the night Edith Collins split her apart with the Dagger
of Ereshkigal.
“I
have to open the doors,” Julia whispered to Carolyn, who only nodded.
“No
need,” Angelique said; with a flick of her wrist, the doors of Collinwood
opened on their own.
Julia
frowned. So Angelique had regained her
powers. Fantastic. But what did that mean for her own humanity,
and for the safety of everyone else?
Barnabas
said nothing. He stepped over the
threshold. Elizabeth’s head lolled; her
thin white hands, the nails beautifully manicured, trailed limply; one crimson
stream that had flowed from the bullet wound in the center of her forehead
managed to run down to her arm, and Julia watched, helplessly, as a perfect
crimson pearl built at the tip of one finger, then broke, spilling tiny red
droplets into the foyer. It isn’t the
first time blood has been spilled in this house, she thought despairingly; oh Lizzie,
Lizzie, my friend, my oldest and dearest friend. She remembered the evil words of the Phoenix,
spoken through the mouth of her child, ridiculing Julia for abandoning Liz the
past two years, and felt shame burst in a sickening bloom inside her.
But
I didn’t, Julia thought, gritting her teeth and keeping her arm wrapped even
more tightly around Carolyn’s shoulders.
Everything I’ve done the past two years has been to preserve this
godforsaken family, to keep the Collinses alive!
That isn’t entirely true.
Julia
wanted to moan.
What have you been fighting for,
Doctor? Really?
“She’s
gone,” Carolyn whispered.
“I
know,” Julia whispered back, grateful for the distraction. She petted Carolyn’s hair. “I know, and I’m sorry, darling.”
“No,”
Carolyn said. Her brow wrinkled. “Not … not just Mother. I mean Leticia. Leticia is … is gone too.”
Julia’s
eyes widened. Oh my god, she thought, we
forgot all about her. “What do you
mean?” she said. “What do you mean by
‘gone’?”
“She
saved me,” Carolyn said, and separated herself from Julia, wiping away the
tears and traces of mascara with them.
“After Gerard … after he sh-shot Mother.
She did what she did before, just the way you described it, Julia. She sent energy
at him, and then … just … vanished.”
Despite
the tragedy of the moment, Julia felt pure, clean excitement rise within
her. “Both of them?”
Angelique
opened the drawing room doors – using her hands this time, Julia thought with
some sense of relief – and Barnabas walked through them.
“No,”
Carolyn said, frowning and shaking her tangled fall of white-blonde hair. “That’s the awful thing. Just Leticia.”
“But
what happened to Gerard?”
“He
fell backward and didn’t get up. And I
just ran, Julia. I r-ran like a
coward. Just like a coward.” Fresh tears fell from Carolyn’s eyes.
“You
did the right thing,” Julia said firmly.
“He would have killed you too, Carolyn, if you gave him the chance.”
“But
Leticia … where could she be, Julia?
What happened to her?”
“I … am … here.”
Both
women spun around, their gasps in tandem.
A
figure stood in the still open doorway:
a woman, bent like a willow twig, her long hair snow-white, her lined
face still round, her cheeks withered apples, her turquoise eyes glaring at
them ferociously.
“I am Leticia Faye,” the crone said.
3
“You
don’t want t’kill me, do ya?” Willie
Loomis whimpered.
Audrey
offered him a look of dark disdain bordering on disgust, then turned away from
him to hold up the sacred knife, the Dagger of Whatchamacallit (Willie couldn’t
remember the name; it was a bunch of jumbled together syllables, and though
they’d all been talking about it pretty much non-stop since last winter, he
still couldn’t even begin to come close to pronouncing it, so he just didn’t
try). It glittered in the light of the
moon; they stood together on the beach where she had come to take a little of
his blood, and he let her; he always let her; he loved her, and he figured it
was his duty. Besides, it was sexy, he
wasn’t gonna lie. It hadn’t been that
way with Barnabas or that Jennings freak, but Audrey …
Audrey loves me.
He
wished she were human.
“I
will be,” she whispered, and slashed the air with the Dagger.
“How
do you figure?” Willie scratched his
head. She could read his mind sometimes,
just a little. That freaked him out some.
“The
time has come,” Audrey said, and the Dagger vanished back into the swaths of
her clothing. She had taken to wearing
flowy, diaphanous material in all shades of blue and purple, and it floated on
the air when she walked and made her, and Willie wasn’t sure how this was
possible, even more beautiful than he already thought she was.
“The
time?”
“To
end this,” Audrey said firmly. “I want
to be human too, Willie, as much as you want me to be.” She laughed humorlessly. “Probably more. And the Dagger is the only way.”
“Julia
… her injections –”
Audrey’s
sigh was heavy. “They aren’t
working. I’ve been waiting, you know,
even while she was gone and you were giving them to me. I waited for some sign that they’ve been
working.” She paused. “And nothing.”
Willie
felt himself flushing. “Maybe I
shouldn’ta let you … let you …”
“Maybe.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “But the thing is, I think they’ve kept me rooted
in the human world. I think they’ve made
me want to keep fighting. So they
haven’t been entirely worthless. But the
point is – I still need to feed; I feel the vampire fighting too, I feel the
vampire every night; I feel the vampire wanting to burst out and ravage the
countryside. I want to tear out throats,
Willie; I want to hurt people; I want to make them scream, to make them shriek; I want to drink their
fear.” She turned to face him now and he
saw that her cheeks were wet with tears.
“And that’s wrong, Willie, that’s so wrong. I know it.”
She heaved a sigh. “But soon …
soon I won’t.”
“Baby,”
he whispered, and enfolded her into his arms.
They stood that way for a long time, there under the moon, expanding its
way toward full; he patted her back and rubbed her shoulders in small
concentric circles and let her cry until she was all cried out.
She
pulled back after a time and wiped the tears from her face. There was determination in it now; it was
set, a look he recognized and that scared him a little. Audrey Jones was Willie’s first real
girlfriend; he wasn’t accustomed to reading the expressions and moods in his
former lady friends, if you wanted to call them that; before Barnabas and
Collinwood, Willie Loomis’ motto was pretty much “get some, get gone.” “The only problem,” she said, and frowned,
“is that the Dagger requires a sacrifice.”
“I
know,” Willie said, and licked his dried lips.
“You told me.”
“I
have to keep reminding myself,” Audrey said.
“And part of me really, really wants to just go into town and cut down
someone – anyone. Some innocent person
strolling along the docks –”
“You
c-can’t!” Willie was horrified. It was too much like the early days, when
Barnabas was fresh out of the coffin and would go down to the docks. And actually, Willie realized with a shock of
embarrassment, that was the reason
why Audrey was standing before him now.
She had been Barnabas’ victim as much as she had Gerard’s.
Her
eyes gleamed suddenly in the moonlight.
She must have, as she seemed to do sometimes, caught the tail of
Willie’s last thought. “Of course,” she
said, “of course it doesn’t have to be an innocent. Of course
it doesn’t.”
“What
are you talkin about?”
She
seemed not to have heard him. “I wanted
it to be Roxanne,” she murmured, “though I’m not even sure the Dagger would
accept one vampire for another as a reasonable substitute. The rules of magic are stupid, I keep finding
out, and there are some things that work and some things that don’t for no good
reason.” She grinned suddenly, and
Willie, seeing the glint of her fangs, felt that old familiar combination of
horror and lust at the sight of them.
“But I think this time the magic will work for a very good reason. And it won’t be Roxanne either who falls beneath
my blade.”
“Wh-who
will it be?” he forced himself to ask.
She
closed her eyes reverently as she spoke the name, nearly obscured by the
endless crashing of the waves along the shore:
“Gerard Stiles.”
4
Quentin
stood and smoked on the balcony of the West Wing room where they had brought
him after saving him from Valerie Collins.
Chris approached him hesitantly; behind him, Sebastian offered an
exhausted Alexandra March a cup of coffee.
Nathan was nowhere to be found; he had vanished midway through the
ceremony while no one was looking, and Chris was not willing to analyze the
curious and troubling mixture of relief and distress he felt at that
disappearance.
“You
okay, gramps?” He wanted to sound gentle
and amused, but he failed miserably on both counts, he knew.
Quentin
stiffened, then relaxed, but didn’t turn around. “I’m all right,” he said at last.
Chris
nodded as if this was what he expected.
“Something is happening downstairs,” he said for something to say. “We heard a scream or something a few minutes
ago.”
“You
should go check it out.”
“We
will. In a minute. No one wants to leave you alone.”
“Of
course not,” and now, with a sinking feeling, Chris heard the fury in his
great-grandfather’s voice, the bitterness, and when Quentin deigned to glance
over his shoulder, those blue eyes were aflame.
“Of course you won’t. None of you
will. Ever.”
Chris
opened his mouth, then closed it. His
own particular brand of bitterness rose inside him suddenly, and anger with it,
and it was a relief, so he allowed it to blossom into full-fledged fury. His teeth ground together; if it hadn’t been
for all the work he and Sebastian had been doing, all the practicing, his eyes
would have brightened into a lupine emerald and his teeth would have flashed
out, sharp and deadly. But they didn’t;
he was in control. Still, the anger
remained. “Is that what you really
want?” he asked.
“Yes,”
Quentin said immediately.
“Too
damn bad,” Chris snapped back, and put his hand on Quentin’s shoulder and spun
him around. Behind them, unseen, Alex
and Sebastian exchanged twin glances of alarm.
“Quentin. You sonofabitch; did
you really think we’d just let her kill you?
Turn you into a vampire? Is that
what you really thought?”
“I
thought,” Quentin growled, “that you’d all know by now that I am beyond
saving. That I can save myself, and if I
can’t do it, then no one else should either.”
“When
did you start smoking?”
Quentin
shrugged.
“It’s
part of this pity party you’ve been throwing for yourself ever since Victoria
Winters died, isn’t it.”
“I
don’t want to hear her name.”
“Is
that why you want to die?”
“No
one said I wanted to –”
“Jesus
Christ,” Chris exploded, “what else did you think was going to happen to
you? And you wouldn’t just be dead, you
idiot; you’d be just another vampire for us all to deal with. Or maybe you’d kill a few more people; isn’t
that why you’re feeling so goddamn guilty?
Because you think you killed people?”
“There
are things,” Quentin growled, staring at the stone floor of the balcony,
“things about me of which you know nothing.”
“Probably,”
Chris agreed, nodding. “Oh,
probably. And you’ve done some shitty
things in your life. We wouldn’t be here
right now if you hadn’t.” Quentin opened
his mouth, but Chris cut him off. “You
think I still blame you? You think I
haven’t recovered from my own temper tantrum last year? God, Gramps, if you think I still blame you,
hell, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I don’t blame you anymore. You
aren’t that same person; look at me, you aren’t. You are not the same Quentin Collins who
murdered his wife in 1897.”
“I
am,” Quentin said. His voice was small,
almost indistinct.
“Okay,
maybe you are. Maybe we’re all who we
are, and we always will be. Should we go
die? Should we drown ourselves in the
sea; wait for the sun to destroy us; eat a silver bullet? Destroy the paintings that keep us whole and
sane?”
Quentin
said nothing.
Chris’
tone softened. He put a hand on
Quentin’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly.
“I love you,” he said in a voice too low for the others to hear. “I don’t tell you that; we don’t tell each other that.
Not enough. But there is death in
this place, more than anywhere else in the world I think, and we should love
each other while we can, before it comes.
Even if you’re immortal, Gramps, you’re gonna bite it someday.” Quentin’s lips quirked into a small smile,
but he still didn’t meet Chris’ gaze.
“Look, all I’m saying is that I’m here, and you’re here, and we love
each other and we should keep loving each other until the last possible minute,
until the end is here and we are taken away from each other, from all that we
love. We shouldn’t waste it, not a
single goddamn second.” His anger had folded and collapsed upon
itself, and Chris found he was trembling on the verge of tears. “I’m not letting you go,” Chris said,
“because I’m not ready for you to be gone.”
Quentin
drew in a hissing breath. His fingers
grazed his throat, newly unabraded; of the terrifying purple-bruised marks of
Valerie’s undead affection there was no sign.
Alexandra March had done her job well.
“All
right,” he said at last, and finally lifted his eyes to meet the man who might as
well have been his son, with whom he shared everything. “What do you say we find out what’s going on
downstairs?”
5
“Help
her, Julia!” Carolyn screamed, but there seemed to be no help for the old
woman; she stumbled forward, suddenly unable to support herself, and Carolyn
caught her. Her terrified eyes searched
those of Leticia Faye, and though her face and body had aged a hundred years in
the hours since last they saw her, Carolyn saw that the eyes were still the
same; why, they’re my eyes, she thought, wondering; they are, they are exactly
the same.
“There
is no help for me.” Leticia’s voice was
the whisper of leaves against concrete, a slight rustle, fading, fading so
fast.
But
her eyes: they caught Carolyn and held
her.
Julia,
distant, was taking Leticia’s pulse.
Carolyn didn’t see her.
He isn’t dead.
Carolyn
nodded.
We succeeded, but only for the moment. I was foolish. I won’t be foolish again.
“Oh
no,” Carolyn whispered, an affirmation.
Julia stood, said something about her pulse, how it was just a bare
flutter, but it didn’t matter, none of it did.
I shouldn’t even be here. Not like this. Everything will be right in a moment. Do you trust me?
“I
trust you.”
Good.
It will be easier if you trust me.
The fight isn’t over, Carolyn Stoddard.
“No. The fight isn’t over.”
They
were looking at her: Angelique, Julia,
Barnabas, and the drawing room doors were opening and there was Quentin, Chris,
Sebastian, and that woman who looked so like Vicki it hurt, but there was no
time for them.
It
was going to happen.
The
old woman’s eyes widened. Carolyn’s did
as well.
Take my hand.
She
did.
I love you.
“Love
you too,” Carolyn whispered. A tear she
hadn’t been aware gathered at the corner of her eyes broke and fell and struck
their hands, entwined.
They
were coming to separate them, and they mustn’t, because –
Then
it happened.
Leticia
smiled. She sighed.
The
light went out of her eyes.
And
she turned to dust.
Carolyn
cried out and stood up, scattering the dust, and there was the wind, the barest
hint of the wind
do you trust me
and that feeling, that feeling of being entered, and she backed away, shaking
her head, because she had sworn, she swore
she would never let it happen again.
trust me
“Carolyn,
calm down!” Julia was offering her a
sedative. She was laughing and crying
and shaking her head, denying denying denying; she didn’t need a sedative, and
she was being stupid, being foolish, because she did trust Leticia. Leticia trusted her, had sought her out ever since the Grand Séance, and here was the
reason.
They
were the same.
I’m
not possessed, Carolyn thought, wondering, and stopped her struggles
completely; I’m not possessed at all; that’s what she meant, why she said she
never really belonged here, should never have come here at all: because she’s been here all along.
Because she’s me.
She
knew it was true.
And
Leticia Faye peered forever out of the turquoise blue eyes of Carolyn Stoddard.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)