The red and blue police lights feverishly flashed in the early morning sun around the Evan's cottage. The police tape surrounded the home and Maggie sat cuddled in a blanket on the back of an open ambulance. Her face swollen with tears as she watched two men bring out the covered body of Thatcher Banning and placed it into another van.
Her mind slipped back to flashes of her fight with Thatcher, then the window breaking, the beast jumping through tearing Thatcher to pieces. It played over and over in her head like a horror show.
Loomis and other Collinsport P.D. officers had arrived from another crime scene at the docks where three fishermen were similarly killed by the deadly animal runamok.
"Ma'am have you called anyone? Can I get someone to come stay with you?" Loomis said as he walked up to the van.
"Oh, I...yes. I'll give my friend Carolyn a call. Thank you detective." Maggie said snapping out of her flashbacks.
As Loomis wrote up a small preliminary report on Maggie's statement of the events, Kat arrived in a separate car. She got out, leaving the door ajar and walked over to Loomis who hugged her then pointed over to Maggie who was still sitting on the back of the ambulance.
Kat, walked slowly, she couldn't believe what she was seeing below the flashing police lights. It was her mother. Back from the dead...or so it would seem.
"Is it really you?" Kat asked quietly as she walked up to Maggie.
Maggie began to tear up, and only nodded yes.
"How? How can you be alive? All these years we were told you .....I don't understand this." Kat asked.
"I'm so sorry darling, I really am. If I could have made things different I would, it was the only way to keep you your brother safe. Your father would never leave you alone if I had custody. It just would have been an even worse hell. Kat, honey, I wanted to protect you both from him. You have to understand." Maggie explained.
Kat's heart melted. She was very little when the worst of her parent's relationship happened but the memory still clung to her all throughout her life. The arguments. The abuse. The pain. The screams. All she could do was look at her mother's face now, and feel only love, and sadness for the years they were apart,
"I don't remember you...I mean...I remember your eyes, and your smile. But your voice. I missed your voice." Kat said stepping closer to the mother she once believed was dead.
"I'm here now." Maggie said softly.
"What happened? How did he?....did you?" Kat asked trying to piece together the violent death of her father.
"No. He came up behind me and attacked me inside." Maggie said.
"How did he die?" Kat asked.
"Kat, where's Sebastian. We have to find him." Maggie said knowing the eyes she saw as the wolf's could only be Sebastian's and finding him before he did this again was paramount.
"Sebastian?" Kat asked confused in the sudden turn in topic. "I don't know. I haven't spoken to him in days. Have you had contact with him since you've been back?" Kat asked feeling there was so much more going on than she knew.
Maggie got up from the ambulance and grabbed Kat's hand. She squeezed it and looked deep into her eyes.
"Whatever that animal was that killed your father, killed those other people too. Kat, that animal is Sebastian. We have to get to him. We have to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else. And we don't have much time." Maggie said as Kat shook her head in disbelief.
"How? I don't understand what you're saying? How does that make sense?" Kat asked doubting what was the truth.
But the look in Maggie's face made her stop and think about her own unexplained past and the bizarre things she had gone through in the last 2 years of her life. The time travel, the strange occurrences at Collinwood. Was it now so hard for her to believe that Sebastian could have done this in any form? Even that of a wolf?
"Alright, fine. Let's find him. Let's go to his apartment." Kat said as she grabbed her mother's hand for the first time in 20 years and took her to her car.
Loomis looked on in suspicion. Once again his partner Kat was hiding something from an investigation breaking a promise she made to him to be open and honest about everything she knew when she knew it.
He handed the crime scene report he was filling out over to another officer and watched as Kat's car speed off with Maggie inside.
"Hey, listen, I've got to run. Can you guys take it from here? Something's come up." Loomis said to the agreeing officers.
Loomis got into his own car and sped off towards wherever Kat was going.
****
At the mansion, Anna causally walked in after being out all night. She, of course, a woman in her mid 20s had no one to ask permission to, but the fact was everyone in the Collins family now knew something was amiss with their beautiful house guest. Especially David who was sitting in the drawing room waiting for her.
"Care for a coffee?" David said from the sofa to Anna who passed the drawing room door in the foyer.
"David! Good morning. I was just heading out." Anna said attempting to conceal she had been out all night.
"Yeah? So early? Maybe you can do some sort of research for the film you've come here for. Isn't that why you're in Collinsport? Researching for film role?" David replied using Anna's cover-story against her as she came into the drawing room looking tired and somewhat disheveled. "Looks like its been a rather long night for you actually." He added handing her a mug of hot coffee.
Anna relented and seemed annoyed.
"You're right, it has been a really long night. Would you mind if I just went off to bed and finsihed this inquisition later?" She shot back.
David looked at her with a funny smile, his eyebrows raised, not expetcting such a sassy response Anna noticed and tried to warm things over.
"Maybe we can have dinner or something. I don't think we should be talking about this right now." She said as she turned to make her way up to her room.
"Is that how you treat your own son? Just ignore the fact that he knows the truth about everything. I know what's happening. I know who you really are." David said finally exposing Anna's secret identity to her shock and horror.
Anna felt trapped, the burning inside her soul began to bubble up again. She knew it was now or never...and slowly turned and looked at David in the eyes.
His mother, the phoenix Laura Murdoch-Collins, the woman who could never die and was reincarnated into Anna Tate slowly and steadily came through. Anna's face oddly changed, yet it remained the same. Her eyes went from an ice blue to a warm amber, hot like lava. In the odd switch in personality, David stepped back in trepidation.
"How did you know?" Laura said in an altered Anna's voice.
"It is you." David said, oddly struggling to believe his mother had come back in this form.
"How did you know?" Anna repeated.
"It wasn't very hard after I saw you out last night walking around alone on the docks. All the feelings I used to get when I was a child started flooding back. The same feelings. The same terrors. What are you doing here? What have you done to Anna?" David questioned.
"It's all a matter of time before you understand, David. I just wish you didn't find out this way. Anna is fine, she'll be fine once this is all over too. You'll see." Laura explained.
"How can she be fine? She's ....she's possessed by you!" David explained.
"Stop that! she's not possessed. Listen, Anna has her own life. She's been able to grow up normal. She's just had two minds. Two sets of memories. She's lived many lives. Everything I know she knows. But it won't be for long." Laura continued.
"Why? What have you done?" David pressed.
"Here....this locket. It contains my soul David, it contains the very essence of my being. Anna has always had it with her, and all I've ever needed was the magic number 7....7 other souls that leave this earth by the mouth of a lycan. And I found that lycan. And he's doing the work for me. We'll be together soon!" Laura said in a delusional turn of phrase.
"Lycan. A werewolf. You've....what have you done?" David said walking closer to the phoenix.
"All in good time." Laura said smugly. "When it all comes together, that's when I can finally take you away. My son. My sweet son." She added putting her hand on his face.
As the two continued to talk Carolyn and Caleb walked in. Carolyn was on her way to spend the day with Caleb at the office. They were expecting to see Anna in such a state.
"What's going on?" Caleb said in a confused tone of voice when he saw Anna touching his father David.
"Get out. You guys should go." David said worried about what Laura would do to them.
"Let them stay! It's a family reunion. I would love to get to know my grandson, Caleb, It's me. Grandma Laura." Laura said, forgetting she was still inside Anna's body.
"Dad?" Caleb said confused and a bit frightened.
Carolyn noticed the locket around Anna's neck glowing, and seething with something sinister deep inside. After her talk with David the night before she agreed that Anna was being controlled by Laura, and now, it was obvious what the weapon of control was.
The locket.
Carolyn daringly reached for the locket around Anna's neck, but Anna swatted Carolyn's hand away then pushed Carolyn down to the floor. Caleb, in a knee-jerk-reaction grabbed Anna by an arm and then reached for the locket on the other hand but the phoenix was too fast. She grabbed Caleb's hand and began to squeeze it pushing deep into his hand with her might cracking his phones.
Caleb fell to the floor in pain.
"Tsk tsk." Laura said as she watched David look on in shock as his son and cousin lay on the floor both in a bit of pain.
"You're just as sick as you've always been. Nothing has changed has it mother? Nothing." David said in disgust as he went over to help Carolyn up off the floor.
"You shouldn't speak to me that way. I'm your mother." Laura growled.
"You're not a mother. You've never been a mother. You've only come back when it suited you and those few times that you come, all you did was make things worse for all of us. You don't belong here!!!" David screamed.
"Dad what are you doing?" Caleb said getting up off the floor holding his hand in pain. "She's crazy." He added noting David was only making the phoenix inside Anna more angry.
Caleb's intuition was right. All Laura wanted was to feel wanted by her son. All she wanted was for them to be together and live a happy life now that things were finally going here way. At least she thought. All she wanted was for another chance to be his mother and to be near him and take care of him and be everything he ever wanted a mother to be.
But those years were long gone. David was in his 50's now. He was a grown man who had lived his whole life without her, withing the creature of fire that created him with his father Roger. Laura was nothing more than a figure of his imagination at this point, a person that only existed to destroy and to putrefy relationships, especially David's relationships.
Laura's anger over the resentment and anger she was sensing from David was starting to overtake her. His disgust for her was palpable, so much so that she could feel it pour over her like rain. Her eyes began to change again, her mind ignited, her heart became a molten rock of lava.
"Get out." David said with a growl.
And without skipping a beat, the phoenix screamed a horrible scream that shook the entire house. Flames in the form of powerful light surged shot out from behind her like a sun burning and bursting in space. The room became engulfed in what seemed like flames more powerful than any wild fire anyone had every seen yet nothing was actually burning.
There was heat however. They could feel the heat like hover over them like a million exploding volcanoes. The light from the screaming banshee like phoenix had overtaken the entire mansion threatening to destroy it. Walls were shaking. Pictures of family members of the past fell from the walls. Glass shattered.
David's pure anger freed the phoenix.
****
"What was that?" Jacqueleen said over at the Old House as she sat at a table playing a game of solitaire.
"What was what?" Barnabas answered annoyed.
"You didn't feel that shaking? Something is shaking. Look...look at the chandelier." Jacqueleen pointed out.
Barnabas looked up and noticed it too....then he stood up, and it became more clear. Something was indeed making the room shake.
"What could it be?" Jacqueleen asked.
The shaking became stronger and soon they could also hear the house move and ground groan from below their feet.
Barnabas ran over to a window that looked out on to the lawn that faced Collinwood.
"Something at the main house." Barnabas answered as he quickly got down off the chair and grabbed his jacket.
"You can't go over there Barnabas. No one is supposed to know that you can walk in the sunlight. Remember?" Jacqueleen said mentioning the part of their curse that had changed.
Barnabas paid no attention to her and continued on his way to the main house. He opened the front door of the old house, and a heat burst into the room as if it were the dead of summer.
"It's like the surface of hell. What's happening?" Jacqueleen said backing away from the door.
Before she knew it Barnabas had dashed out in the direction of the main house, fearing a fire, and Jacqueleen followed suit...the two vampires, unknowingly headed in the path of destruction, death, and of no return.
