Night fall in Collinsport. As the stars fill the sky that reflects a crashing sea just beyond the horizon a storm billows. Clouds fold into each other sparking thunder and lightening. A foreshadowing that only gets more and more macabre as the storm approaches.
Up at the great Collinwood Estate, Kat and her husband Caleb sit in the library relaxing after a long day of work. The fire place crackles and burns as the coming spring storm begins to surround the small fishing village as a pounding rain beats down on the windows from outside.
"It's really coming down out there." Caleb said as he sipped from his glass of after dinner red chardonnay.
"Lucky you made it home in time huh?" Kat said hugging him from behind.
"It's been great being back at the office. The fleet has had a great month. We've picked up numbers of albacore just off Newfoundland, hopefully that'll bring in some new business with corporate canning companies." Caleb said in his businessman voice.
Kat sighed and went back to the over stuffed library sofa, her bounce deflated it a bit, the leather stretched and squeezed at the seems as she landed.
"What is it?" Caleb asked noting her pouting.
"I don't know. Do you think I went back to work too soon after the baby?" Kat asked concerned.
"Too soon, Kat, it's been 8 months." Caleb shot back to Kat who grimaced. "How long do new mom's usually take?" He added as a saving grace.
"Four, five months at best. I just feel like we're so busy lately you know? I don't want the chaos of our lives to take away from raising Canan. When my mother died and my father ran off, Bash and I felt like we weren't good enough. All we did was wish our parents were back ...they were always gone." Kat mentioned.
"Canan is not abandoned, Kat, we're here as much as we can, and Carolyn is doing a great job taking care of him. It's fine." Caleb said kissing her cheek.
"I just feel so guilty." She responded as a thunder clap lit the room.
"We are not our parents, Ok? Think about it, we've both had some really messed up things happen in our childhood. My mother cheated on my dad and then had him locked up in a mental hospital for 20 years; messing with his mind and D.N.A. But we're not like that." Caleb explained.
Kat looked at Caleb with a glare of disbelief. In the two years that they'd been back together since their original tryst in high school the most unbelievable things had happened to them. She had been attacked by a vampire and lost her memory, he almost died in a plane crash and was kidnapped and brain washed, not to mention her time traveling to the year 1920.
They were indeed living an extraordinary life. Kat's fears that Canan was being exposed to whatever supernatural vibes that flowed within the walls of Collinwood weren't based on fantasy. They were real.
"After everything that's happened, you're really going to look into my eyes and pretend that we haven't gone through some pretty strange things, much like the things that've happened to your family for decades here?" Kat joked.
"Ok, Ok, I guess there are those moments, but I really believe it's all over. Our boy is safe, Kat. No one is going to hurt him. We wont let it happen." Caleb said again kissing his wife on the lips.
In her mind she believed him. She believed that he believed himself too. They wanted to do everything they could to protect their son from whatever energy the Collins named carried for all his lifetime, whether is was good or bad. Most of all they wanted him to be safe.
Caleb sat back on the over stuffed sofa and began to read over files from the Cannery while Kat wrapped herself tighter in her sweater and walked over to the window. The rain was now streaming from the sky like a waterfall and poured down the windows like a river. As Kat looked on through the glass she could see the Old House at is sat in the gloomy distance lit periodically by a flash of lightening. The murky air filled with rain and wind swirled around loudly. The over grown trees and shrubs that surrounded the Old House too reached up to the sky like thousands of skeletal hands trying to pull themselves from a grave.
Kat got chills that went up her spine.
There was something in the air.
"Mr. and Mrs. Collins....you have visitor." A voice came from the door of the library.
Kat turned to the door of the library and Caleb lifted his head from his files, the family butler who was just about to end his shift announced the unexpected guest and he seemed uneasy.
"He's in the drawing room." The butler continued.
Kat composed herself and looked at her watch noting the strange late hour.
"At this time of the night?" Kat said as she and Caleb followed the butler downstairs.
In the drawing room, a man stood at the mouth of the fireplace warming himself on the chilly rainy night. As Kat and Caleb entered her turned, it was Kat's father, Maggie's ex-husband, Thatcher Banning.
"Daddy??" Kat said in utter shock, Caleb turning to Kat with a surprised expression on his his face.
"Hello Princess. Good to see you!" Thatcher said his arms open ready to receive a hug. "What a place you've gotten yourself into, huh?" He added looking around the marvelous mansion.
"What are you doing here?" Kat asked suspiciously.
"Well I heard my little girl had baby and got married, can't a man come and congratulate his favorite daughter? Hi, Thatcher Banning." Thatcher said extending his hand to Caleb in their first introduction.
"Pleased to meet you finally, Kat's ...uh...She's said a lot about you." Caleb said making small talk even though Kat rarely talked about her father.
"Well, that's nice to hear. How have you been princess? I've missed you." Thatcher said stroking his daughter's face.
"Daddy, this is .....umm, this is a very big surprise. I haven't heard from you in a really long time. So forgive me, but what are you really doing here? How did you even know I lived here?" Kat said with an uncomfortable tone of voice.
Caleb knew that after Kat's parents divorce things were very strained. He knew that Kat's father left her and her brother Sebastian with a family friend when their mother died. He knew every sorted details of Kat's upbringing. They were, after all high school sweethearts. He could also tell that the conversation that was about to happen needed to happen in private.
"Why don't I let you two get better acquainted, I'll go up and check on the baby." Caleb said excusing himself.
"When do I get to meet my new grand baby?" Thatcher said with a crooked smile.
"Maybe some other time Daddy, I think we should talk first." Kat said now in a stern tone.
"You sound angry princess." Thatcher replied condescendingly. "I'm actually here to see you. And to find your brother. I haven't heard from him in a while. You wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you?" Thatcher added.
"As a matter of fact, I have. Bash came to see me the other day when he got back into down,. but let me just tell you that he and I have both been through a lot and if I were you I wouldn't just try and jump back into any sort of relationship. It won't work this time." Kat through back.
"I want to see my son. I want to see my daughter and her baby. Why do you always think the worst of me Kat? It's like everything I do you're suspicious of. It's not like I faked my death and ran off somewhere right?" Thatcher said referring to what Nick said of his ex Maggie.
"What?" Kat asked in a totally confused reaction.
"Where's your mother?" Thatcher growled.
"My mother? What are you talking about? She died years ago." Kat replied outraged.
"I know that's not true. I went to Windcliff and I asked around. She faked her death. She lied to us all. Have you seen her? Has she come to you? You tell me now girl!" Thatcher said grabbing Kat's arm.
"Daddy, get the hell out of here." Kat scolded forcibly removing her father's hand from her arm. "And leave us alone. You just can't help yourself, can you? You come here with some false story about looking for Sebastian or wanting to see me, but you're just as cold and vengeful as ever. Just go." She added.
Thatcher lifted an eye brow, he knew something was out of place. He knew, deep in his bones that Maggie was alive. He'd find her no matter what.
"I know she's in town. Just you watch.....your mother is alive, and she's lied to us all. Just as she always did. Just lied all the time, and one day you'll finally see that I was telling the truth. Just you wait. When you see your brother, tell him I want to see him." Thatcher said as he grabbed his coat from the sofa leaving Kat a ball of nerves in the drawing room with only the thunder and lightening as her company.
****
As the rain subsided and the misty fog crept over the main front lawn of the house on Widow's Hill, Anna sat in a screen off patio area out on the east wing of the mansion that looked over the great lawn.On the patio, that the family called the screen room, Anna sat back on a beautiful French wicker chair clutching the locket around her neck that belonged to Laura Collins. Her hand began to heat up, and the gold necklace started to burn like a hot coal.
The energy inside of that locket began to infuse itself into Anna's skin and through her hand then up her arm and around her neck and into her eyes changing them to a fire red. She sat up and looked out onto the lawn and smiled a sinister and cold smile. She knew the time had come, the souls she needed to release Laura the Phoenix from inside of her were about to begin their journey from the mortal body and behind the veil of the living and the dead.
Anna closed her eyes and whispered something to herself over and over again. She clutched the locket around her neck and whispered again louder the name of the liken werewolf Sebastian.
"Change and morph, my liken friend, bite and scratch and bring the end of someone's life upon this earth. Bring me the first soul of seven I need to free myself of this body seed."
The message was heard loud and clear, and seemed to be carried by the fog into the air and around the trees and into Sebastian's ears across town. He was just getting home from visiting with his sister earlier in the day and stepping into his apartment. He was placing the key into his front door just as Anna's message from Laura's spirit broke into his psyche.
A shooting pain burst from his brain down to the edges of his toes. Sebastian dropped his keys and fell to the floor writhing in pain. As he screamed in agony, his body began to change into the wolf, the same wolf that Christopher created him months ago.
Sebastian's eyes turned to yellow like the sun, his nails long and sharp ready to slash at human skin. His body covered in the fur of a an inhuman thing born of an ungodly curse.
As his transformation began without a single ray of moon light, Sebastian snarled and huffed his first monstrous breath.
In the darkness of the night Sebastian bay out a bloodcurdling howl and dashed into the Collinsport fog leaving only a pile of destroyed clothes and bent apartment keys.
Sebastian was in search of blood.
****
Thatcher made his way out of Collinwood and down the long front lawn to the locked front gate. Just outside was a car with Nick Blair waiting for his new partner in crime to come back.
Seeing an opportunity to seek revenge on his mother Maggie, Nick Blair pared up with Thatcher to find her and end the her lies forever. Maggie had faked her death years ago at Windcliff Sanitarium where Thathcer last saw her and now that the jig was up, the two men who felt betrayed by her would stop at nothing until they had what they wanted. Their one big clue of her whereabouts was where Nick last saw her, when she banished him back to the shadows to his father Nicholas Blair Sr...the Collins family mansion: Collinwood.
"How'd the family reunion go?" Nick said with a wicked smile.
"Shut up....I have a feeling we're really going to find something tonight. She's hiding something." Thatcher answered.
"How did you know Maggie was here?" Thatcher said in the dark Collinsport night as he and Nick walked up the grounds of the mansion.
"This is the last place I saw her, this is where she'll be." Maggie's son by surrogate with the evil Nicholas Blair said of his mother.
"What's your deal? Why are you helping me find her?" Thatcher asked of his partner in crime as they filled a duffel back with duct tape and rope.
"She left my father years ago...it's like she doesn't want me to exist. All I wanted was to be close to my mother in some way shape or form, but she .....she sent be away. At least she thought she did." Nick said referring to Maggie vanquishing Nick back to the shadows where his father belonged.
"Mother, what are you talking about? You're her kid? She never told me she had an older kid." Thatcher said stopping in the middle of the foggy lawn.
"She never knew, but when she found out she came out of hiding...she hates me." Nick said, the darkness in his eye sending a shiver up Thatcher's spine.
Thatcher, who was even more confused than ever, shook his head and picked up the duffel bag.
"I do all the talking, whatever happens, don't touch her until I say so. We're going to tie her up then put the tape over her mouth. Do you understand?" Thatcher said hatching the plan.
"I want to strangle her." Nick said in an another chilling tone of voice.
"Hey, you listen to me, I don't know what the hell you're talking about and I don't know your real deal with Maggie, but she's the mother of my children, alright, We're not going to hurt her, we're just going to take her away from here. I want her unharmed." Thatcher said stopping Nick in his tracks.
"That's not the deal. We both want her, so we both get a crack at her. You have no idea what she did to me." Nick said as if he was foaming at the mouth.
"Now you listen to me, you nutcase, maybe I should be doing this all alone. You should go back to that hospital, maybe that's where you belong." Thatcher said.
"No. We're going to get her back, together. You promised!" Nick yelled.
Thatcher began to see the cracks in Nick's veneer. He was still unsure of Nick's accusations that Maggie was his mother, but he could see that the he was one sandwich short of a picnic and it worried him.
Thatcher began to rethink the whole situation. And as they stood there on the lawn arguing in the lights of the house in front of them, something else was watching them just beyond the fog and mist.
The watchful creature paced itself behind the two men, stalking them with its yellow eyes. It was Sebastian in wolf form ready for his first taste of blood and ready to release a soul for Anna's locket, the first of seven she needed to release Laura Collins spirit.
"What was that?" Thatcher said hearing movement behind him.
"The wind." Nick said picking up his own tools for the kidnapping.
"It sounded like something was coming up behind us." Thatcher said looking back.
"Shut the hell up! We have to take care of this right now before it's too late." Nick said.
"Look...over there....are those eyes?" Thatcher said noticing the two yellow balls.
"It's just a cat or something. Come on." Nick said continuing his way up the lawn.
And just as Thatcher turned around to follow Nick up the lawn in the dark, Sebastian jumped up from the fog and landed in front of Thatcher in a snarling, foaming heap.
"Jesus!!!" Thatcher said falling to the wet ground.
Sebastian, in wolf form, stepped closer and closer to Thatcher. His breath puffing out from his nostrils like two chimneys in the winter pushing out white smoke with every breath.
"Get back! Get back!" Thatcher said, not knowing it was his own son in front of him transformer under the Phoenix's spell.
Nick turned back and run down the grassy slope and as the fog cleared her saw the beast in front of Thatcher. The wolf turned and looked at Nick and snarled a wet and horrible snarl showing his teeth in a hungry crooked smile.
Nick reached into his back looking for something to keep the monster back, but has his gaze went down to the bag the wolf jumped on his crushing his chest.
Nick screamed in agony as the wolf began to slash and tear at Nick's flesh. Thatcher got up quickly and began to push the animal in his side trying to anything and everything to get him off of Nick.
"Get him off!!!" Nick said in a gurgle.
Thatcher kept punching, but the animal's strength was beyond anything he had ever seen. It was as if the wolf didn't feel a single punch.
As he continued to rip into Nick, and the blood spilled over the green grass and seeped into the Collinwood soil, a giant paw swung and smacked Thatcher to the ground blasting him 10 feet into the air. Thatcher fell to the ground and watch the wolf continue to tear into Nick. Thatcher scrambled to his feet and ran off into the foggy and shadowy distance of the Collinwood ground.
The werewolf Sebastian turned his yellow eyes to met Nick's, those emptying brown eyes that seemed to resemble Maggie's own. Sebastian recognized those eyes, for they both shared her as a mother. The life was draining from Nick once more bit by bit. This was a more painful and gorier death than the vanquishing by Maggie. The power of the monster was overwhelming Nick's body and slowly his heart began to stop.
The wolf gained his first victim, allowing Nick's soul to flow from the body and into Laura's glowing locket that hung around Anna's neck. Anna looked out of the screen room window and smiled, her eyes still flickering a golden flash of light from deep inside her body. Laura's life force gained once of the seven souls it needed to be free from Anna's body. The phoenix was on her way.
****
Carolyn's car was pulling up the long winding road the lead up to the Collinwood estate driven by, Powell, her faithful driver and butler. It was dark, and the road was shaded by the thick forest on Widow's Hill that surrounded the Collins' compound.
Carolyn sat in the backseat of the black sedan contemplating her conversation with Maggie earlier that day at the Evans' family cottage. Could she really help Maggie take another man's life even if it meant keeping Kat, Maggie and Sebastian safe from an abusive cruel person like Thatcher?
She knew she had a lot to think over then suddenly, Powell violently slammed on the breaks in the middle of the road half way to Collinwood, the careened off to the side of the road tossing Carolyn to the other side of the backseat.
"Powell!!!" Carolyn screamed.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Thorne, this man, he popped out of no where." Powell said looking back at Carolyn.
"Man? What are you talking about?" Carolyn asked as she adjusted herself in the seat and looked out through the windshield.
Standing there, square in the headlights, was a heavy breathing, sweaty, bleeding Thatcher Banning who had been running down the hill towards the main road away from Collinwood. Carolyn gasped.
"Don't get out of the car." Powell whispered as he locked the doors. "Do you know this man?" he added.
"No." Carolyn whispered not knowing the man she was contemplating murdering was standing in front of her.
Thatcher looked terrified, his breathing was hard and fast. He was holding his wrist in pain. Squinting, he looked into the lights of the car, but could not tell who was inside. Then a glimmer of consciousness came back and he realized he had been seen, and dashed off into the woods to find the car he and Nick came in.
"My god, what was he doing here?" Carolyn said as Powell continued on their drive up the road to Collinwood.
"Maybe he was lost." Powell offered.
Carolyn's concern grew deeper and deeper as they slowly drove up the main lawn closer to the half circle drive way that placed the car at Collinwood's front door.
But as they drove, Carolyn noticed a shadowy figure strewn out on the lawn. It was human like, she could see a head, shoulders.
"Powell, what is that? Just over there?" Carolyn asked.
Powell stopped the car and Carolyn moved over to the left side of the backseat and slowly rolled down her tinted glass window.
"Can you tell what it is?" Powell asked.
Carolyn took a break and reached for the lock on her door and flipped it, she pulled the door handle and slowly stepped out of the car.
"Mrs. Thorne, please don't go out there....Mrs. Thorne, wait!" Powell said, scrambling to turn off the car and go after his boss.
In the dark of the night, in the fog and sea mist, Carolyn slowly walked across the wet lawn and came closer and closer to the shadowy figure laid out in a heap. It soon became clear that it was a body on the grass as she came closer. Her eyes were wide, a shiver ran up her spine. The body was face down.
"Don't touch him. I should call Miss Kat. She'll know what to do." Powell said in a worried tone of voice.
"Shhh." Carolyn answered as she knelt down and pulled the body over revealing the bloody, scared, and torn up body of Maggie's son Nicholas Blair Jr. Carolyn screamed and fell back on her behind on the lawn, Powell quickly gathered her up.
"It can't be. How can he be here? How could he have come back?" Carolyn screamed into Powell's chest.
"Who is he?" Powell questioned as she hid her face from the body.
"It's Nicholas. It's Maggie's son."
"What happened to him? How could this have happened here on the lawn?" Powell asked looking around to find some sort of evidence of what had occurred.
Carolyn had seen this type of brutality before. She thought of only one person that could have caused such carnage. She lifted her eyes from Powell's chest and looked over through the mist in the air towards the Old House. The sense of dread and terror in her body quickly dissipated and turned into anger.
"Barnabas." She said in a hushed voice.
Carolyn tightened her jacket's grasp around her body and stormed off through the yard to the Old House and without even facing back to Powell, Carolyn had one more thing for him to do:
"Powell, go inside and get Kat to her partner Detective Loomis McGovern over here. It seems we've had another animal attack." She said, I'll be at the Old House."
Carolyn was sure that the only person who could have ravaged Nick's body like that was Barnabas. But she was wrong, and had possibly forgotten the terrors a werewolf could inflect on a body. But Barnabas was always her go-to when these things happened, and being that she hadn't seen him since he traveled back to 1920, she was sure, he had returned and was thirsty.
Outside the Old House, Carolyn noticed a strange car in the driveway, It was Xander's car.
She marched into the old house. The front rooms were empty. She quickly searched for Barnabas.
"Where are you, you monster. Where are you!" She said out loud.
Down in the basement, Xander, Barnabas, and Jacqueleen could hear her rummaging in search of her cousin from another century.
"We have our first guest." Jacqueleen said with an evil grin.
"Stay where you are. Carolyn has no idea I've returned, it's a sensitive situation." Barnabas said fixing the jacket of his suit.
"I'm your wife, how would it look to your family if you just kept me hidden down here in the basement in this coffin. You don't want to come off cruel, now do you husband?" Jacqueleen joked.
"You are not my wife! Carolyn and the rest of the family ..." Barnabas began before he was interrupted by Carolyn coming down the steps of the basement.
Jacqueleen smiled wickedly and adjusted the curls in her hair in anticipation for meeting Carolyn, the candles burning all around reflected a yellow and orange glow that lit the room melodramatically.
"It is you." Carolyn said at the foot of the stairs.
"Cousin," Barnabas said with a nervous smile. "It's so good to see you again." he added with his arms opened.
Carolyn stepped off the last step and walked over to Barnabas at a quick pace and slapped him across the face.
"MONSTER!" She screamed at him disregarding the other two people in the room with him.
"Carolyn!" He said holding the side of his face.
"How could I think that going back to do your 'good deed' to get the baby back would change you? You'll never change. A monster is a monster is a monster!" Carolyn said with tears in her eyes.
"What do you mean? What's happened?" Barnabas questioned in confusion.
In the past, Barnabas would quickly admit his shortcomings, especially to Carolyn, his favorite of the family. Carolyn could sense that something wasn't what it seemed. Something was indeed with this softened Barnabas.
"You really don't know, do you? A body was found on the lawn just now. It was ....it was disfigured, bloody. I thought..." Carolyn said before Barnabas interrupted.
"You thought it was me. I understand. My history certainly would lead anyone to believe that. Come, let's go upstairs, I have many things to explain." Barnabas said grabbing Carolyn's hand.
"Ahem....." Jacqueleen said, clearing her throat.
Barnabas turned and snickered at Jacqueleen.
"Barnabas who is this?" Carolyn said finally noticing the other woman in the room.
Jacqueleen's connection to Barnabas went well beyond the physical, she focused deep in her psychie and telepatically sent Barnabas a message only he would hear.
"You will introduce me as your wife, Barnabas Collins, or I will make whatever years you have left a living hell. Trust me, there are things I will do to you that no one has ever done. You took my life, you took what I was and made me this. You. Owe. Me." Jacqueleen's telepathic message said.
Barnabas' guilt bubbled up in his heart. All the sins he had committed floated around his mind again and again over and over to the point a tear welled up in his eye.
"Carolyn............"Barnabas said before a long pause. "This is my ....wwwwif....wife. Jacqueleen Welsh-Collins." he finished with a large gulp.
"Pleasure to meet you Carolyn." Jacqueleen answered.
Carolyn stepped close to shake her new family member's hand and something seemed off, the woman standing before her, Carolyn had seen her before. Her face was familiar. Her eyes were familiar.
Carolyn had no idea she was looking directly at the reincarnation of her own great-grandmother, now a Vampire, the bride of the undead.
Carolyn sat in the backseat of the black sedan contemplating her conversation with Maggie earlier that day at the Evans' family cottage. Could she really help Maggie take another man's life even if it meant keeping Kat, Maggie and Sebastian safe from an abusive cruel person like Thatcher?
She knew she had a lot to think over then suddenly, Powell violently slammed on the breaks in the middle of the road half way to Collinwood, the careened off to the side of the road tossing Carolyn to the other side of the backseat.
"Powell!!!" Carolyn screamed.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Thorne, this man, he popped out of no where." Powell said looking back at Carolyn.
"Man? What are you talking about?" Carolyn asked as she adjusted herself in the seat and looked out through the windshield.
Standing there, square in the headlights, was a heavy breathing, sweaty, bleeding Thatcher Banning who had been running down the hill towards the main road away from Collinwood. Carolyn gasped.
"Don't get out of the car." Powell whispered as he locked the doors. "Do you know this man?" he added.
"No." Carolyn whispered not knowing the man she was contemplating murdering was standing in front of her.
Thatcher looked terrified, his breathing was hard and fast. He was holding his wrist in pain. Squinting, he looked into the lights of the car, but could not tell who was inside. Then a glimmer of consciousness came back and he realized he had been seen, and dashed off into the woods to find the car he and Nick came in.
"My god, what was he doing here?" Carolyn said as Powell continued on their drive up the road to Collinwood.
"Maybe he was lost." Powell offered.
Carolyn's concern grew deeper and deeper as they slowly drove up the main lawn closer to the half circle drive way that placed the car at Collinwood's front door.
But as they drove, Carolyn noticed a shadowy figure strewn out on the lawn. It was human like, she could see a head, shoulders.
"Powell, what is that? Just over there?" Carolyn asked.
Powell stopped the car and Carolyn moved over to the left side of the backseat and slowly rolled down her tinted glass window.
"Can you tell what it is?" Powell asked.
Carolyn took a break and reached for the lock on her door and flipped it, she pulled the door handle and slowly stepped out of the car.
"Mrs. Thorne, please don't go out there....Mrs. Thorne, wait!" Powell said, scrambling to turn off the car and go after his boss.
In the dark of the night, in the fog and sea mist, Carolyn slowly walked across the wet lawn and came closer and closer to the shadowy figure laid out in a heap. It soon became clear that it was a body on the grass as she came closer. Her eyes were wide, a shiver ran up her spine. The body was face down.
"Don't touch him. I should call Miss Kat. She'll know what to do." Powell said in a worried tone of voice.
"Shhh." Carolyn answered as she knelt down and pulled the body over revealing the bloody, scared, and torn up body of Maggie's son Nicholas Blair Jr. Carolyn screamed and fell back on her behind on the lawn, Powell quickly gathered her up.
"It can't be. How can he be here? How could he have come back?" Carolyn screamed into Powell's chest.
"Who is he?" Powell questioned as she hid her face from the body.
"It's Nicholas. It's Maggie's son."
"What happened to him? How could this have happened here on the lawn?" Powell asked looking around to find some sort of evidence of what had occurred.
Carolyn had seen this type of brutality before. She thought of only one person that could have caused such carnage. She lifted her eyes from Powell's chest and looked over through the mist in the air towards the Old House. The sense of dread and terror in her body quickly dissipated and turned into anger.
"Barnabas." She said in a hushed voice.
Carolyn tightened her jacket's grasp around her body and stormed off through the yard to the Old House and without even facing back to Powell, Carolyn had one more thing for him to do:
"Powell, go inside and get Kat to her partner Detective Loomis McGovern over here. It seems we've had another animal attack." She said, I'll be at the Old House."
Carolyn was sure that the only person who could have ravaged Nick's body like that was Barnabas. But she was wrong, and had possibly forgotten the terrors a werewolf could inflect on a body. But Barnabas was always her go-to when these things happened, and being that she hadn't seen him since he traveled back to 1920, she was sure, he had returned and was thirsty.
Outside the Old House, Carolyn noticed a strange car in the driveway, It was Xander's car.
She marched into the old house. The front rooms were empty. She quickly searched for Barnabas.
"Where are you, you monster. Where are you!" She said out loud.
Down in the basement, Xander, Barnabas, and Jacqueleen could hear her rummaging in search of her cousin from another century.
"We have our first guest." Jacqueleen said with an evil grin.
"Stay where you are. Carolyn has no idea I've returned, it's a sensitive situation." Barnabas said fixing the jacket of his suit.
"I'm your wife, how would it look to your family if you just kept me hidden down here in the basement in this coffin. You don't want to come off cruel, now do you husband?" Jacqueleen joked.
"You are not my wife! Carolyn and the rest of the family ..." Barnabas began before he was interrupted by Carolyn coming down the steps of the basement.
Jacqueleen smiled wickedly and adjusted the curls in her hair in anticipation for meeting Carolyn, the candles burning all around reflected a yellow and orange glow that lit the room melodramatically.
"It is you." Carolyn said at the foot of the stairs.
"Cousin," Barnabas said with a nervous smile. "It's so good to see you again." he added with his arms opened.
Carolyn stepped off the last step and walked over to Barnabas at a quick pace and slapped him across the face.
"MONSTER!" She screamed at him disregarding the other two people in the room with him.
"Carolyn!" He said holding the side of his face.
"How could I think that going back to do your 'good deed' to get the baby back would change you? You'll never change. A monster is a monster is a monster!" Carolyn said with tears in her eyes.
"What do you mean? What's happened?" Barnabas questioned in confusion.
In the past, Barnabas would quickly admit his shortcomings, especially to Carolyn, his favorite of the family. Carolyn could sense that something wasn't what it seemed. Something was indeed with this softened Barnabas.
"You really don't know, do you? A body was found on the lawn just now. It was ....it was disfigured, bloody. I thought..." Carolyn said before Barnabas interrupted.
"You thought it was me. I understand. My history certainly would lead anyone to believe that. Come, let's go upstairs, I have many things to explain." Barnabas said grabbing Carolyn's hand.
"Ahem....." Jacqueleen said, clearing her throat.
Barnabas turned and snickered at Jacqueleen.
"Barnabas who is this?" Carolyn said finally noticing the other woman in the room.
Jacqueleen's connection to Barnabas went well beyond the physical, she focused deep in her psychie and telepatically sent Barnabas a message only he would hear.
"You will introduce me as your wife, Barnabas Collins, or I will make whatever years you have left a living hell. Trust me, there are things I will do to you that no one has ever done. You took my life, you took what I was and made me this. You. Owe. Me." Jacqueleen's telepathic message said.
Barnabas' guilt bubbled up in his heart. All the sins he had committed floated around his mind again and again over and over to the point a tear welled up in his eye.
"Carolyn............"Barnabas said before a long pause. "This is my ....wwwwif....wife. Jacqueleen Welsh-Collins." he finished with a large gulp.
"Pleasure to meet you Carolyn." Jacqueleen answered.
Carolyn stepped close to shake her new family member's hand and something seemed off, the woman standing before her, Carolyn had seen her before. Her face was familiar. Her eyes were familiar.
Carolyn had no idea she was looking directly at the reincarnation of her own great-grandmother, now a Vampire, the bride of the undead.
