Shadows on the Wall Chapter 130

CHAPTER 130:  What Friends Are For

by Nicky

Voiceover by John Karlen:  “Tragedy has struck again at the great house of Collinwood.  As the Enemy of this and all worlds readies for its final assault, it falls to the rest of the inhabitants of the house and the town below it to gather their own forces.  But are the ties that bind them together strong enough to save them … or will they all be destroyed?”

1

            “How are we friends, you and I?”  Angelique inhaled the smoke sharply from the cigarette Julia had handed her, stone-faced, five minutes ago or so, as they stood on the Collinwood terrace.  The sky was leaden above them and sharp crystal shards of snow spun lazily down; the moon was full somewhere up there, and though the clouds obscured it, both women knew that, somewhere, Chris and Sebastian were out there, fanged and deadly, though Sebastian insisted that the training they had been working on together was working out, that Chris claimed to remember little bits and patches while he was transformed.  Angelique watched the dragon-tail of smoke blown from her mouth caught by the wind and swirled, tattered, and shredded, until it joined the patterns of snow and was lost.  She glanced over and Julia was looking at her now, unblinking, those great almond eyes guarded and wary, and Angelique felt a tremor.  She was relieved; feeling, any feeling, was a relief to her in the wake of the return of her powers.  She even allowed herself a smile.  “It doesn’t seem very likely, does it.  I’ve tried to kill you, you’ve tried to kill me, and yet …”

           

            “And yet, here we are,” Julia said quietly.  She was not smoking; in fact, the cigarette she’d retrieved from her bag and given Angelique wasn’t exactly stale, but it certainly wasn’t fresh. 

            “Yes,” Angelique murmured.  “Here we are.”

            The wind moaned, and they both looked up at the sky where, for a moment, a sliver of the moon revealed itself.  Julia shivered, despite the thick winter coat she wore and the blue wool sweater beneath it.  Warmth, Angelique thought, and Julia suddenly blinked and gasped, then narrowed her eyes.  “Why did you do that?” she said.

            “What do you mean?”  But she knew.  Of course she knew.

            “I’m warm,” Julia growled.  “As if someone draped a blanket over me.”

            “I didn’t,” Angelique said, “not exactly.”

           

            “Don’t lie to me.”

 

            Anger lapped inside her somewhere, rough as a cat’s tongue, and now her own eyes narrowed.  “I’m not,” she said.  She forced herself to take a breath, to push the anger away.  Because who knows, she thought with a stab of fear, what else would materialize unexpectedly because her emotions, as always, were connected to the magic.  “These powers, Julia … I didn’t have them for so long, and to suddenly have them back …”

            Julia glared at her, then softened, relaxed.  “I’m sorry,” she said at last.  “You … startled me, that’s all.”

            “I startle myself, sometimes.”

            They chuckled together.

            “Doesn’t it ever seem extraordinary,” Angelique said, “that, despite everything, that after everything we’ve been through together, that we are able to stand here, just you and I, and not kill each other?”

            “The thought,” Julia said dryly, “has crossed my mind.”

            “And yet we haven’t.”

            “No.  We haven’t.”

            Somewhere, out there in the darkness of the woods, a howl rose up toward the moon, and less than a second later another joined it.  Both women reacted; Julia leaned over the stone railing of the terrace and dug in with her gloved fingers.  But the howls were of joy; they both realized that, of triumph:  over death, over murder, over the power of the Beast.  They were Animals now, not Beasts.  They have triumphed over their baser nature, Angelique realized.

            Through the power of love.

            It should’ve been ridiculous, trite … but it was true.  She knew it was true.  True love conquers all, she thought, and wanted to laugh.  But she didn’t.

            “Do you think we stand a chance?”

            Angelique stubbed out the cigarette and flicked it, uncaringly, into the darkness, where it sank and vanished into the snow that was gathering in drifts on the terrace.  She turned to face Julia completely, and folded her arms over breasts.  “Do you want an honest answer?”

            “I know you’ll give me one.”

            “Of course I will.”  She smiled her old sphinx-smile.  “The answer is no.  I don’t think we will.  The Enemy has grand ambitions, we know that much.  I’ve had grand ambitions before myself; so have we all.  But Collinwood is cursed, and the shadow of that curse hangs over everyone under this roof, affecting all our choices, our outcomes.  And the shadow is long.  Very long.”

            “Curses can be broken.”

            “True.  But both the Dagger of Ereshkigal and the Amulet of Caldys are lost to us.”

            “But don’t you think,” Julia said, drawing, in her excitement, patterns in the air with her hands, “don’t you think that, perhaps, the curse will affect the Enemy as well?  Bring all its plans and schemes crumbling into destruction?”

            Angelique considered this.  “It’s possible,” she said at last, and with some reluctance.  “Anything is possible, I’ve learned.”

             “I want it all to be over,” Julia said.  Her excitement fell and faded as quickly as it had come.  Her shoulders slumped, and she shivered again, despite the magical, invisible blanket Angelique’s powers had draped over her.  “I want to be able to rest.”

            “In the darkness,” Angelique said carefully, “in the utter nothingness that will await us after the Enemy succeeds, I suppose there will be rest.”

            “Or we won’t know any better.”  Julia sighed.  “Oh, Angelique,” and she reached out suddenly and seized one of Angelique’s hands in her own and held it tightly, “I don’t want to die, I don’t, I don’t!”

            “No,” Angelique said.  She glanced uneasily out at the darkness that lay against them, pressing all the time, and choked with heavy snow.  “I don’t either.”

2

            Angelique and Julia were outside somewhere, Quentin knew; Carolyn was upstairs, meditating, she claimed, learning to deal with the spirit of Leticia Faye that was now a part of her, just as if she’d always been there; Chris and Sebastian were out, transformed, in the woods; who knew about Audrey and Willie; who knew about the Enemy; who knew about Valerie, who knew, who knew.  Quentin sipped at the brandy Barnabas had poured for him, then watched, carefully, his cousin pacing before the fire.  

            “We’re missing something,” Barnabas said for the millionth time.  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s out there, something, some mystical object, some spell, some incantation that we have to discover, something that will stop the Enemy once and for all!”

            “Mm hm,” Quentin mumbled, and sipped at his brandy.

            “Angelique’s powers are back, I’m restored, you’re healed,” Barnabas said, glaring into the fire, “so we have a chance, we must!”

            “Mm hm,” Quentin said.

            “We are not without powers!”

            “Mm,” Quentin said, “hm.”

            “Quentin,” Barnabas growled, “if you’re just going to stand there –”

             “As opposed to what, cousin?  Stalk before the fire?  Smoke cigarettes?  Or struggle not to smoke them?  Or screw my brains out?  I’ve thought about that.  About all of it.  And I prefer,” and he swirled gently the tumble in his hand, “this.”

            “We can’t just give up.  We can’t just lie down and take it.”

           

            “No,” Quentin said, sighing, “because that doesn’t work either.  I’ve tried it.  It’s not even fun.”

            “You are useful to us,” Barnabas said softly.  He crossed over to Quentin and laid a hand on his shoulder.  “You are, you know.”

            “Am I?”  Quentin chuckled humorlessly.  “Do you really think so?  What talents have I offered to our merry band of saviors?  I can’t even transform into the wolf any longer so Sebastian can train me to not kill the people I love.  And Eliot …”  His hand trembled minutely for a moment, and the liquid splashed in the glass.  “And Eliot is dead.  So much for any chance of redemption he could offer me.”

            “Is that what you want?”

            “I don’t know,” Quentin sighed.  “I don’t know what I want.  That’s been my trouble for the past century.”

            “Don’t you think you could have it now?  Redemption?”

             Quentin lifted his shoulders, then lowered them.  His face remained sardonic, exhausted, weary.  And young.  Eternally, eternally young.

            “You can, Quentin.  Help me.  Help us.  It isn’t too late.”

            “Isn’t it?”  Quentin tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t hold it.

            “Yes,” someone said, sneering, from the drawing room’s double doors.  “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

            Quentin saw, smiled, and sipped at his brandy while Barnabas’ head whipped up and he glared at the intruders who now stood in the doorway.

            “Get out of here,” Barnabas snarled.

            “Oh, I’ll do no such thing,” Nicholas Blair said, smiling his typical feline smile.  Maggie Evans stood beside him, her hair jet black, her skin the color of salt, almost perfect expect for the place where the beauty was marred by the jagged black sigils that marched over her face and down her arms, bare despite the cold and the snow outside, and as chalk-white as her face.

             “You burned,” Barnabas growled.

            “Numerous times,” Nicholas smiled.  “They never take.  Surely your experiences with dear Angelique have proven to you how inefficient fire is, despite numerous old wives’ tales to the contrary.”

            Quentin looked up.  His eyes met Maggie’s and widened slightly.  Her face, however, remained perfectly staid, unemotional.  Her eyes, glistening black pools of oil, seemed fixed, staring somewhere up and to the left.  “Maggie,” Quentin whispered, but she didn’t move, didn’t react at all.

            “Yes, Mr. Collins,” Nicholas purred.  “Your Maggie.  Well, the woman who was your Maggie, once upon a time.  She’s mine now, as you can tell.”  He kissed her on that snow-white cheek; again, she didn’t move, didn’t react.  Those cold, dead eyes – shark’s eyes – stared into nothing.  “Mine, for the rest of eternity.”

            “Maggie,” Quentin said.  “Maggie.”

             “What do you want, Blair?” Barnabas snarled.

            “Why, what’s mine, Mr. Collins!”  Nicholas lay one hand, sheathed in a glove the color of the placid sea, against his breast.  “This house, and everything in it.”

            “That will never happen,” Quentin said.  He rose from the chair to his full height, and stood at Barnabas’ side.

            Nicholas smiled, removed his hand from his chest and thrust it out before him.  His eyes flashed hellish obsidian for a moment, and Quentin flew backward and struck the wall behind him.  “And I’m surprised that you haven’t learned that never means nothing in this house,” Nicholas purred, “and it never has.”  He chuckled.

            “Maggie,” Quentin said, picking himself up from the floor and wiping away the tiny trail of blood that had escaped from his right nostril, “Maggie, help us.  You can help us.  You know you can.”

            Maggie said nothing.  She stared; she might have been a porcelain doll, life-sized.  Only the sigils, the magical symbols that were as black as her eyes, continued to move and slither over every inch of her exposed flesh.

            “She can’t, not unless I tell her to,” Nicholas grinned. “Such is the power of my pact with the Master.  I sacrificed her, you see, on the Black Altar.”

             “You monster,” Quentin roared, and hurled his tumbler at Nicholas’ head.

            Maggie’s hand moved like a flash, lifted into the air, and held her palm up flat, and the tumbler, divested of the brandy Quentin had sipped only moments before, froze in mid-air, held only inches away from Nicholas’ face as if held by an invisible hand.  Maggie raised her index finger and slowly spun it, and the glass shivered, cracked, then crumbled all at once into dust and vanished from sight.

            “If I’m a monster,” Nicholas said, “I’m not the only one.”

            “You have no claim on this house,” Barnabas said, “or on this family.”

            “But I do.”  His sharp smile grew sharper.  “As you’ll see, Mr. Collins, the one with the most power can claim whatever he wants.”

            “But you aren’t the one with the most power.”  Angelique emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room, green witchlight glowing off her porcelain features.  She smiled, and silver and black sparks danced on her fingertips as she raised her hands threateningly.  “I am,” she said, and tossed her hair back proudly.

             “We shall see, my dear,” Nicholas said, and nodded his head in Maggie’s direction.  Before Angelique could move, Maggie and Nicholas had locked hands; they leveled their free hands at Angelique, who froze, immobilized.  “The Master has turned his favor back to me,” Nicholas said, “as you can see.  To me, and my beautiful bride.”  Angelique’s face twisted, grew red with the effort she expended to break through the spell, but she remained frozen in place.

            “I won’t let you –” Barnabas growled, fangs bared, but Maggie turned her head the slightest, the barest inch, and he froze in place as well.

            “You have no say,” Nicholas said cheerfully.  “None of you, none of you have any say.  And you won’t, ever again.”  He took Maggie’s hand and kissed it.  “Collinwood belongs to us … and soon, the Master will rule from this most powerful seat … as it was meant to be.”

3

            Quentin blinked; he was not standing in the drawing room any longer, not watching Nicholas Blair kiss his former lady love with his disgusting weasel lips.  He looked around, but there was nothing to see – merely a void, endless gray nothingness. 

            But he wasn’t alone.

            “Hello, Quentin,” Maggie said.  Her voice was thick with sweetness and rang through the nothing around them like bells.  She was restored to the way she’d been when they had first started dating, what felt like a million years ago:  her auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes were liquid and brown and human.  Her hands were clasped delicately before her.  “I’m sorry to bring you here like this, but I didn’t see any other way.”

             “Not a problem,” Quentin said.  “I wasn’t doing much good back there.”  He touched his nose and looked at his hand, which was stained with a maroon smear.  “As you saw.”

            “We only have a moment.  Less than a moment.  He’ll notice that something isn’t right soon.”

            “I don’t understand this.  I don’t understand how we’re here, why you’re helping him again –”

            “I don’t want to help Nicholas,” Maggie said.  “You must know that.”

            “I don’t know anything anymore.”

            “He came to my house tonight.  I thought he wanted to kill me.”  A tremor quirked her mouth in a bitter half-smile.  “I wish he had.”

            “He performed the Black Mass instead.”

            “He did.  Binding me to him for the rest of eternity.”

            “Oh Maggie.”  Quentin felt something hot and painful claw its way from his chest into his throat.  “I’m –”

            “You don’t have to apologize.  I’m not an innocent in all this.  We both know that.”

            “I’ll fix it,” Quentin said.  “I’ll find a way.”

             “You can’t,” Maggie said, smiling sadly now.  “There is nothing you can do.”

            “Oh my god,” Quentin cried and covered his face with his hands.

           

            Maggie removed them gently and peered into his eyes.  “I didn’t say there was nothing anyone can do.  Just you, by yourself.”

            “There’s hope, then!”

            “Of course.”  She laughed.  “There’s always hope.  Your friends back there have forgotten that.  Do you think the Enemy is going to destroy all the worlds?  Do you think the forces that govern those worlds will allow that?”

            “They haven’t done anything to stop it so far.”

            “Don’t be an idiot.  That’s why you’re here.  That’s why you’re all here.”

           

            “And … and you?”

            She dropped her eyes.  “I don’t know.  I’m not a clairvoyant.  But I want to help.  And I think I can.  If we can just get through this next moment.”

            “That’s how the story always goes, isn’t it?”

            “Nicholas must be stopped.”

            “I knew that.”

            “And we can’t stop him.”

            “Who can?”

            Maggie’s eyes flashed.  “Someone … someone we must contact, you and I …”  She took his hand; it was real, he felt it, despite the fact that he knew – he knew – that they were still in the drawing room, Angelique and Barnabas were both frozen, and Nicholas was about to do god-knew-what to them all.  “I need your help,” Maggie said.

            If I can touch her hand, Quentin thought, if I can touch her –

            He kissed her.  She was real, or real enough; he could feel the soft, familiar crush of her lips against his, the weight of her breasts against his chest, her taste, the way she had always tasted –

 

            They broke away.  She was smiling.  “Just like that,” she said, and they were swept away.

4

            Willie … Willie Loomis …

            “Who is it?”  Barnabas’ most faithful servant leaped to his feet.  He’d been dusting the drawing room of the Old House with plans to sweep it immediately after; Audrey was out somewhere, prowling through the night, and he didn’t want to think too hard about what she was prowling for; after that, Willie planned to wrap the little present he’d found for Barnabas while he was tidying a few days before in the attic.  A diary, old, tattered, crumbling into tatters, but still readable:  the diary of Sarah Collins, Barnabas’ little sister.  There’d been so much trouble lately, and Willie figured Barnabas would welcome the gift.  It was, he figured, the least he could after Barnabas had been so kind to him.

  

            And now this voice, ringing through the drawing room, a disembodied voice, but one that was so familiar …

            Willie felt goosebumps rise all over his body.

            There was a figure materializing; no, there were two.

            “Quentin!” Willie cried, then clutched at his face, digging deep grooves into his cheeks.  “No!  No, you’re a ghost!  You’re a ghost!”

            Quentin Collins stood before him, but he wasn’t … he wasn’t complete.  Willie could see the fireplace behind him, the tongues of the flames licking away at the wood Willie had chopped himself a few hours before.  And beside Quentin stood Maggie Evans, and she was as insubstantial as Quentin.  “We’re not ghosts, Willie,” Quentin said.  His voice echoed strangely, as if it came from somewhere far away.  “Maggie is using her powers, and she can’t use them for long, so you have to listen to us, and do exactly what we tell you … now.”

            Willie squinted.  “You sure you ain’t a ghost?  Maybe you’re dead and you just don’t know it.”

            Quentin rolled his eyes.  “Willie, I’m not a ghost.  If you don’t listen to me right now, we will all die, and then we’ll be ghosts together, and I swear to god, I will find a way to kick your ghost ass!”

            Willie sighed.  “Fine,” he said.  “Fine, fine, fine. Let me just finish up this dusting, and then I –”

            WILLIE.

            Maggie’s eyes were black; strange black marks stood out prominently all over her face; snarls of black electricity crackled between her fingers.

            And she had grown fainter, harder to see.  They both had.  The spell, whatever it was, was breaking.

            “All right!” Willie said at last.  His voice was resigned.  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

5

             “Let’s start with you, my dear Angelique,” Nicholas said, grinning his whippet’s grin.  Beside him, Maggie was a perfect statue, unmoving, unblinking.  At Barnabas’ side, Quentin was as frozen as the witch and the vampire.  “The Mask of Ba’al has made you ridiculously powerful, and perhaps I’m the just the teensiest bit jealous that you used it –”  His face darkened momentarily.  “- and destroyed it before I could take its power for myself.”

            Angelique’s lips moved minutely; her hands had managed to clench into fists.  But it wasn’t enough.  Her eyes remained wide and crystal blue.

            “My dear Maggie’s powers are stronger than ever,” the warlock said, “and the only thing really holding you back now.  Of course they won’t last long – you are amazingly powerful, after all; don’t think I’ve forgotten that – which is why I’m going to destroy you now.”  His eyes were plunged suddenly into blackness, as if night had spilled out and over them.  “Ignis,” he said, “intende.”

            Angelique couldn’t even throw her head back to shriek as the fire rose up around her, ferocious tongues that licked at her, seared her, burrowed into her. 

 

            She was on fire.  She was blazing – her hair was a golden corona of flames now – and there was nothing any of them could do.

            “Take her, Master!” Nicholas cried feverishly.  “Take her back to the fires of hell, where she belongs!”

            Beside him, Maggie’s eyes widened slightly; they were human again, soft and brown; her lips curled into the smallest of smiles.

            Angelique was a skeleton wrapped in flames.  Only her eyes remained, cold and blue and blazing with fury.

            “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!”  Nicholas shrieked.  Ecstasy overtook him; his hands were fists and they pumped at the air.  “Take her!  Take her now, Master!  Take –”

            Blood in an amazing black spray burst from his mouth. 

            The flames around Angelique froze, hanging in mid-air.

            His eyes bulged.  His fists relaxed.

             He turned, slowly, his mouth agape.

            “Surprise,” Audrey said, framed in the door.  She smiled, revealing her fangs.

            “You – you –” Nicholas tried to say.  Another gout of blood burst from his between his lips.

            Angelique released a howl of anguish and, released from Nicholas’ spell, sank to her knees.  The fire was gone, as if it had never been.  Barnabas rushed to her side, but she waved him away with an impatient hand that was already regaining the flesh that had, only moments ago, been seared away.

            Audrey held up the Dagger of Ereshkigal, shining with Nicholas’ blood.  Before his furious eyes, she licked the blood away.

            “The last surprise,” she said, and plunged the Dagger into his throat, pulled it out, and stabbed his chest, deep, deeply into his heart.

            Choking, snarling, Nicholas clawed at Audrey, his eyes black again.  The magic was working.  His wounds were healing.

            Behind him, Maggie, still smiling, raised her finger again, and again she spun it gently.

            Nicholas froze.  Caught in the snarl of Maggie’s spell, he couldn’t blink, couldn’t continue to heal himself.  He could only watch helplessly, furiously.

            Slowly, her hips swaying, Maggie walked to Audrey.  Silently, she held out her hand.

            Audrey’s eyes met hers and widened.

            Her lips twitched into a smile.

            She handed her the Dagger without a word.

            “N-no,” Nicholas managed to wheeze.

            Maggie turned to him, and held the Dagger aloft.

            “Good night, sweet prince,” Maggie purred, and swung her arm in an arc.

            The Dagger sang as it sliced the air, shone with all the points of its reflected firelight, and neatly separated Nicholas’ head from his body.  It was dust before it struck the floor; his body, stuttering to its knees, joined it a moment later.  Dust, dust, all became dust.

            Gasping, Angelique rose shakily to her feet.  Her body glowed with silver energy that grew gradually brighter and hotter, until it was the pink of the sunrise.  Her skin glowed the same rosy pink, the bloom of health as it was all restored to her, as if she had never been burned.

             Audrey stood where she had when she had entered the room, unnoticed by them all.  Behind her, a cautious Willie Loomis joined the others.  “I did it,” he said, voice quavering.  “Just like you told me, Quentin.  Maggie.  I brung her for you.  Just like you asked.  Did I do right?”

            “You did perfectly, Willie.”  Maggie’s voice was soft and lilting.  Her eyes were brown and human again, but the dark magical symbols continued to march up and down the length of her body.

            “Perfectly indeed, baby,” Audrey said.  She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth.   “You done good.  Real good.” 

Maggie continued to hold the Dagger aloft.  “Now,” she said, and balanced one of the remaining drops of Nicholas’ blood on the tip of her finger, then watched as other streams ran up and down the blade, “what do we do with you?"

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...