Series 10/Chapter 9: TESTING FATE

An overcast sky covered a new day in Collinsport. The winter chill had subsided, but spring had yet to fully warm the air and embrace the atmosphere around the soggy Maine fishing town. There was an anxiety, too, that surged around town after a violent accident in front of the Collinsport Inn rocked the community, injuring three and killing one. Those who survived where lucky to only escape with scrapes and bruises but the question of why the car was speeding in the first place still stung in the minds of all who say they saw a  monstrous creature break free from one of the cars. Needless to say, the escaped lycan wolf Andrew had the town on edge.

At a smaller motel across town near the highlands of grassy knolls that resembled the beauty of Ireland, Angelique prepared herself for a visit from her new love Curtis. She looked in the mirror and primped her hair and adjusted her makeup. Her eyes were a crystal blue that shined. She was a perfect beauty with a deadly secret.

Angelique pulled out a small envelope in her pocket and removed the long dark brown hair that she took from Victoria Winters during their altercation at a restaurant 5 nights before and began to wrap it around her finger again. She closed her eyes and continued to whisper a curse in Latin to be sure that Vicky's voice would not be heard. She wanted Vicky silent, she wanted Vicky out of the way, but she wanted to take it step further. She wanted to punish Vicky for her outburst in the lobby of the Collinsport Inn for almost exposing her to Curtis. Had Curtis not been under his own spell by Angelique, Vicky would have destroyed her perfect love forever.

Angelique unwrapped Vicky's hair from her finger and stretched it out it's entire length. The 7 inch strand of hair caught the glimmer of light from Angelique's motel room window. It shined like an chestnut colored treasure so perfectly in the light.

Angelique spoke her second spell on Vicky with the hair strand pulled tightly between her two hands like a tight rope between two skyscrapers.

"Oculi Odio
  Oculi fatis
  et prope
  aetenus et umquam

  Oculi Odio
  Oculi fatis
  et prope
  aetenus et umquam"

Then Angelique snapped the hair in two and tossed the equal strands to the ground then stepped on them over and over again as if she were putting out a fire.

As she did, a knock came from her small motel room door. Angelique knew it was Curtis. She rushed over to the door and opened it. There he was. The most handsome man she had seen in centuries. His tall frame, fair skin and ice blue eyes felt as if they were piercing straight through her. It was a feeling she had wished for from a man all her life. He truly loved her, this was the proof that what she had done to Vicky, the curses, the treachery, was all worth it.

"Come in! Come in!" Angelique said standing aside from her hotel room door.

"Thanks." He said grinning like a happy child.

"I'm sorry we had to meet here, I just haven't found a permanent place to stay yet, and when I went to the Inn earlier there was all this commotion over an accident that happened last night, so I thought I'd just stay here at this smaller place for a few days while they sorted it all out over there." Angelique explained to Curtis who still believed her name to be Cassandra.

"No problem. I'm just glad I get to see you. I feel so bad about how my mother acted a the last time we saw each other. I just feel so embarrassed, and you and I haven't really had a lot of time to ourselves to talk about it." Curtis said sitting on a soft red chair near the motel window, Angelique sitting on the bed across from him.

"It's fine, really." Angelique said knowing Vicky was paying for her outburst as she spoke.

"My mother has been through a lot in her life and I think sometimes her post-traumatic stress gets the best of her and lately she's been sort of going into these manic states. A few weeks back she thought someone was in my apartment. She thought there was someone, invisible, standing in our apartment." Curtis explained unknowing that Vicky was correct about her feeling and that it was Angelique's ghost-like presence Vicky felt.

"Stress can do that." Angelique replied.

"She's been sick too. In the last few days she's caught the worst case of laryngitis I've ever seen. She's exhausted, she can't even make a sound. Nothing. She sleeps a lot, she's just been taken down by this cold it's incredible." Curtis added oblivious it was really Angelique's spell that was about to get worse.

"That's horrible." Angelique said in a cunningly convincing conserved voice as she moved over to a small bar to pour them an afternoon drink.

"You won't hold it against her will you Cassandra? I just really wish we could get past it. If you knew what she had been through in the past you'd understand how hard it is for her to be in town and not have all those awful memories come flooding back." Curtis explained.

Angelique, grinned, he knew, if anyone knew about the terrible memories of Collinsport, it was here.

"Curtis, there's nothing you need to worry about, I don't hold grudges." Angelique said lying.

"Wow..." Curtis grinned. "You're perfect." He said in jest.

"I try." She joked back. "But if you're mother is really so ill, why ....uhh, why don't you have her taken into a care facility?" She added attempting to get Vicky out of the way anyway she could.

"A care facility?"

"You know some kind of hospital that can manager her illness. Away from here. Like Windcliff, they have a very good ....care program." Angelique said surprisingly forward.

"Windcliff, that place is...well it's not really for someone like my mom." Curtis brushed off.

"Not exactly. Its a large place. There are people who can help care for her needs, other than just physical." Angelique pushed.

"Well, I don't know I mean she's only been sick for a few days. I would hate to just take her somewhere if she was only sick from a bad flu." Curtis answered.

"You're right, I hope it doesn't get worse." Angelique said, knowing full well, her spell would get much worse for Vicky.

"Anyway, aside from that, I'm very happy to see you. I've been thinking about us so much, about you really." Curtis added getting up and standing directly behind her putting his hands on her shoulders.

"I'm glad you said that.....Me too." She said turning to him.

They were facing each other. She had never seen such a face. He was equally as fascinated by her. He leaned in and began to kiss her passionately. She could feel their two natural energies combine. It was as if the world had opened up and it's molten core was exposed radiated a heat between them that nothing could extinguish.

They continued to kiss and she fell backwards on her bed. He lay next to her and stroked her hair. She stroked his and kissed him some more. They were in a passionate embrace, feeling their hearts pound inside their bodies. He slowly began to kiss her neck, then her cheek, then her lips.

As the warm sun shined into the small hotel room, Angelique and Curtis made love. She had never felt like that before. He had never felt this amount of passion in all his life. They made love and connected in a pure moment of passion and love.

****

At Curtis' apartment, Vicky slowly made her way down the hallway for a drink of water. She could not speak. She could barley walk. She was tired and trying to make things as normal for herself as possible. Vicky could not understand how she became so ill so quickly.

She sat at the kitchen table and drank her water and worried that Curtis was making the biggest mistake of his life being around Cassandra...or Angelique as Vicky knew her. Vicky sat there and thought that there had to be a way for her to save Curtis from a life with this woman, this witch who had done horrible things to so many people all the time Vicky knew her. 

She sipped her water and closed her eyes. She hoped and prayed for someone, something, anything to help her. She kept saying the same words in her mind over and over again.

"If you're listening. Please help me. Spirits of the past, spirits of the now, please help me get this darkness away from my son, away from my heart, away from this place. Take Angelique away forever."

And before Vicky could open her eyes, the face of the woman she had admired so many years ago, the face of the woman who had at one time almost died for back in the past came to her. It was the face of Josette Collins, the woman who adored Barnabas at one point, the woman Angelique had come to Collinsport from Martinique in the 1790's to work for. The woman caught in a love triangle that would lead to Barnabas' blood curse and Angelique's ultimate obsession to destroy. Josette had become somewhat of a guardian angel to Vicky and so many of the Collins family. 

And she was there now. A flash of a face in Vicky's mind as a reminder that she was still there, and she could still hear Vicky speak to her from beyond the grave.

Vicky, her eyes still closed, shed a single tear and whispered her name out loud as best she could. 

"Josette."

But when Vicky opened her eyes after her small prayer for help, Angelique's second spell had taken over....Vicky could no longer see.

She panicked and blinked fast in an attempted to restore her vision. She jumped out of her seat at the kitchen table knocking over the glass of water. All she could see were bright flashes of light. It was as if she were buried in a white-out of snow, sun and clouds. 

She continued to panic, the fear of what was happening strangling her brain. She tried to walk and tripped over a kitchen chair and fell to the ground and began to cry. 

She was now in dyer-straights. It was clear to Vicky now that this was no ordinary illness, she had been bewitched, and only one witch could be the culprit. If anyone was going to save her, and protect Curtis from Angelique's clutches it would be Josette. 

Vicky lay on the floor and cried. It was all she could do. Cry and pray for help from her guardian angel Josette. 

****

The negative energy at Collinwood was palpable. The world seemed to be crashing down around the family once again. It was hard to understand when everything would fall back into place but no one knew for sure.

Siobhan cradled baby John in her arms and paced the floor of the drawing room, peeking into the foyer periodically, awaiting David's return from the hospital where he had gone to pick up Alexandra who had been treated for her minor injuries in the accident.

Just before Siobhan grabbed her cell phone to call and check on David and Alex, the two walked into the mansion, Alex was bandaged up and slightly limping for her sore muscles. Siobhan put the baby in a small crib by the window and rushed over to Alex to greet her.

"Oh thank god you're ok!" Siobhan said as the two gently hugged.

"Thank you." Alex grinned, her face still twisting in a grimace from her sore muscles.

"Where's Carolyn?" Siobhan asked thinking Carolyn would have come home with them, no one had seen her.

David's face changed. His worry worsened.

"She wasn't in her room last night and this morning. No one's seen her. I should have checked on her....I...." David continued, his sentence trailing off. He began to feel guilty that so many bad things were happening on his watch. He was the head of the family in some respects and it felt like he was letting them all down. Disappearances, deaths, violence, all under his eye.

Alexandra noticed his seemingly guilty face and patted his shoulder to comfort him. She too had allowed the chaos of her own life to neglect to check up on Carolyn who was still mourning the death of Jude.

"I thought she had business around town, and .... everything has been so intense lately, I didn't even notice her gone." Alex said moving her hand from David to rub the bandage on her head.

"Did anyone call her?" Siobhan asked surprised in Carolyn's absent behavior. "This seems unlike her."

"Her phone is off. She's always been very much on her own, when she wants to deal with stress she had a tendency to take off and recuperate, I just thought maybe she was having one of those weeks. I didn't want to bother her." Alex added.

"She didn't show up after I left her messages." David added of his cousin's strange behavior.

"What do you mean? She hasn't called you back--at all?" Siobhan asked.

"No." David replied in a worried voice.

As Siobhan turned to handle baby John in his crib by the fire place, David pulled Alex aside. On top of everything with Carolyn, he was concerned about what he had seen with Andrew the night before The concern was cutting him deep...it was the memory of watching Christopher go through the same thing.

"Alex," David said, now in a hushed tone so Siobhan could not hear "what's going on? Andrew left here yesterday ill...I could see it in his eyes that things were not right. I've seen that look before. You know I have. Is ...it what I think it is?" David said, his worst nightmare being that Andrew's sudden illness and disappearance had something to do with Chris' own issues from the past.

Alex took a gulp of air and changed the subject. She could not wrap her head around Andrew brutal attack and horrible transition, and the fact that he was on the loose all night.

"I would really much rather find my mother than talk about Andrew." She said do David's disappointment.

"Alex, I just want to help." David said, his guilt washing over him. You know can always tell me anything." David reassured her as they hugged.

"We have to find Carolyn." Siobhan said, as the baby relaxed "This is a serious situation." Siobhan scolded.

Alex knew too that Carolyn needed to be found, with Andrew on the loose the whole night there was no telling what he --or who---he could have encountered.

"She hasn't answered any of my messages about Alex's accident. I'll call Loomis and see if they can get some officers on the look out for her." David said.

"That doesn't sound like her at all. Especially when it involves Alex." Siobhan answered.

"When was the time anyone saw her?" Siobhan asked. "Wait----I thought I saw her go over to the Old House just after dinner."

"The Old House?" David's internal alert system flared. "Has anyone seen Barnabas? He hasn't  been around in a while either, I'm definitely not enjoying that coincidence." David said about Siobhan's father.

"Oh, David, don't." Siobhan replied, as she could see where David might be going with his insertion of Barnabas.

"I'm only putting two-and-two together. Two people who live on the same property suddenly vanish around the same time, you don't have to be Loomis McGovern to think that their disappearances might be related." David said, to Alex's nod in agreement.

"David, really! What would my father gain by doing something or taking Carolyn away from here! And if he did it, why would he leave too. He loves this Collinwood and the Old House. He would never just pick up and go like that without telling, at least me, goodbye." Siobhan said protecting her father.

"Do you really think she's been taken?" Alex said, the situation of her missing mother starting to sink in.

"I don't think she would have left here without telling us anything. I called her all day and all night and nothing." David replied as he picked up his cooing baby son.

The family had no idea that Carolyn was only a few yards away...sitting in a locked body made of stone. They no idea of her confrontation with Barnabas and Angelique when she interrupted their act of spiritual and supernatural joining of forces that eventually backfired the night of the full moon.

"Listen, both of you. I know my father has a terrible history , especially with you David. I know that in the past he's done things that ....well, I can't explain, and I won't even try to. But the man I grew up with in Singapore took me in when my parents died, he was there for me my whole life. He loves his family. He brought my mother back! Doesn't that show you how much he loved her, so much so he would bring her back to us?" Siobhan said to an unconvinced David.

"That show's he does things for himself." Alex muttered to Siobhan's snicker.

"Honey, Barnabas has different sides to him. Like all of us, but his second face, his second side is dangerous and cold. That's the side of him we're seeing right now and no one is safe when that side of him is exposed. In my heart, I know it's now who he wants to be or who he really is deep down, but its there. That part of him is there and we have to face it when it rears its ugly face. Like now....think about all the terrible things that have happened in the last few months." David explained.

"My father had nothing to do with most of the things that have happened!" Siobhan shot back.

"We don't know that. We can't put anything past him." The always cautious and suspicious David replied to his quickly angering wife.

"Alex?" Siobhan asked looking for an ally. "In your heart of hearts, do you think Barnabas has had his hand in all that has happened, not just your mother vanishing, but say, this car accident, or even Christopher's death?"

Alex didn't know what to say. She knew Barnabas' history. She knew from the stories of her family, from her mother's first hand knowledge what Barnabas was capable of. Alex was a Collins too, she knew the darkness that lurked in Barnabas' heart but she also knew that he loved his family more than anything, which brought her to what David had said. The duality of his existence was unpredictable.

In the end, Alex was determined to do things her own way.

"Listen, I just need to find my mother and I need to find Andrew. They're both in danger and that's all I really want to focus on. Not whether or not Barnabas has had a hand in creating all of this turmoil, because to be honest we have no real proof he's involved at all." Alex replied as she slowly got up to go to her room to avoid World War III leaving David and Siobhan in the drawing room.

"Get some rest honey. We'll find them." David said to Alex as she left the room.

"Well I don't know, I didn't want to say anything in front of Alex, but ever since Jude died Carolyn has been on the edge, there's no telling what she would do or go." Siobhan said in a whisper.

"Shiv," David said, calling Siobhan by her nick name, "You know that that's not true. Carolyn would never just up and leave without saying anything. Especially to Alex." David replied to an annoyed Siobhan.

Despite all her calls for Barnabas' innocence, deep down Siobhan knew that there was always a possibility that her father, as much as she loved him, could have been involved in Carolyn's disappearance. She took the baby out of David's arms and began to rock him in her own arms. She kissed his little warm head and stared out of the window in the direction of the Old house allowing the leaves from the trees outside to speckle her worried face with their shadows.



Alex, now in her room alone, felt like her mind was in two places. Worried about her mother and worried about Andrew, whom she had grown very fond of. There was nothing she wouldn't do to get them both back. But she had no idea how. She sat in her room at her small vanity and closed her eyes with  her hands on the desk facing up. A wind began to blow in her hair, she could feel herself transporting, she could feel her powers mystically pointing her in the right direction.

Her magical powers, the powers that she had inherited 5 years ago when the witch Claudia possessed her body, were getting stronger. She had suppressed using these powers to live a more normal live when she lived in London, but she needed them now, She needed to find the people that she loved.

She focused on their names in her mind. She started to see the ocean. She started to see the waves. She started to see the bottom of Widow's Hill. She started to smell the salty sea air. She could feel the sand on her feet. She was there. Her body was there. She was now on the  beach. The wind was flowing through her hair, this image of her this dream like feeling of her standing on the beach felt so real. She touched rocks, and they felt real. She walked along the beach and when the waves washed over her feet she could feel the ice cold water wash over her skin. She was in a white spaghetti strap dress that was flowing in the wind like a sail flapping in the wild ocean breeze. Everything felt so real, in this vision, even the silk from the dress felt soft to the touch.

What was at the beach? What was telling her to go there? Alex opened her eyes and she was still in her room at Collinwood. She grabbed her coat, and carefully placed it around her sore body. The beach was calling her to find something. Her powers were dropping this clue, and she had to follow through, .

****

A heart monitor at Collinsport Hospital bleeped away each throb of pulse of Quinn's body. She lay in bed, her body broken and sore from the car accident just hours before where she was torn from the automobile she was riding in. As she lay there her mind continued to reply the crash over and over in her mind.

It all happened so fast. She was standing on the side of the Hotel's valet, she got into the car, Jeffery slowly made his way off the drive and in a blink of an eye another car, Serena's car, came barreling through the intersection crushing Jeffery's car and flipping over several times.

Quinn kept seeing herself back in the car flipping and flipping. Glass everywhere. The loud bang  of the other car, more glass, more glass. The smell of smoke. The smell of gasoline.

Then she gasped for air and woke up to the heart monitor beeping.

Julia Hoffman, Quinn's long supposed dead grandmother walked in. She looked at Quinn and took a breath.

"Hi." Julia said softly to the just awoken Quinn.

"Hello." Quinn replied.

"My name is ...." Julia paused, unready to reveal herself. "I'm Dr. Hoffman." She said shrouding herself in an ambiguous name.

"Hi." Quinn replied as she sat up in the bed.

"How are you feeling?" Julia asked.

"Sore. Tired. I feel like I've been asleep for days. How long have I been here?" Quinn wondered.

"A while now, we were able to get you a private room so that you could rest. Do you remember what happened to you?" Julia wondered, checking her memory.

"A car accident. By the hotel." Quinn replied.

"Good. And do you recall what day it is?" Julia asked sitting by Quinn's bedside.

"Uhh... it was Thursday when the accident happened, so...it must be Friday today." Quinn said correctly.

"And your name?" Julia asked.

"Doctor, I think I'm ok. I don't think I have any kind of memory loss. My question how is my body? Anything life threatening?" Quinn asked to a smiling Julia who enjoyed her granddaughter's spunk.

"No, your doctor said your injuries are luckily non-life threatening." Julia replied.

"My doctor? Aren't you my doctor?" Quinn asked confused as Julia had introduced herself as Dr. Hoffman.

"I am a doctor, but no, I'm not your doctor." Julia replied only telling her half the story.

"I'm sorry, I'm confused, so who are you?" Quinn said, now feeling like her brain was actually damaged.

Julia paused and took a deep breath. 70 years of secrets were about to come out in one-two punch truth bomb. It was something incredibly difficult to say out loud. Julia, in fact, had never revealed her truth to anyone, she hadn't even spoken about her first husband Laurence since the trial in 1949. It was all something so distant and painful for her. Not to mention she had no idea how Quinn would react. But, like ripping off a band-aid, Julia released her demon.

"Quinn, my name is Doctor Hoffman, Doctor Julia Hoffman. I.....uh....well, I don't necessarily know how to say this, but you and I are related. I'm a relative of your father's." Julia said.

"Hoffman? Julia?" Quinn said, putting two-and-two together.  "That....that can be right?"

"I'm afraid it is." Julia said.

"But, you can't be. It's ...I mean you'd be.... if you're the same Julia Hoffman that was related to my father that would mean you were his mother, and she died, I mean you would be in your 90s--and you're clearly not.... my god you would be dead. You can't be her. You can't!" Quinn exclaimed, her body shaking in the shock.

"Quinn, I know it sounds incredibly bizarre and you are right to question what in the world it all means but it's true, I am your grandmother. I should be dead, you're right too but... I'm not." Julia said slowly, her words coming from her mouth like slow molasses seeping into every fiber of Quinn's mind.

"I don't understand. I just.... I'm feeling a little dizzy." Quinn said as Julia handed her a cup of water.

"It's a shock, I know." Julia responded.

"A shock? It's more than that! I don't even understand what's happening right now. This town...this place....every time I try to make sense of something another thing happens to confuse me and frighten me and have me check to see if my own heart is beating. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here anymore!!" Quinn said reaching for the IVs in her arm to remove them.

"Honey! Stop! STOP!" Julia said stopping her.

Their hands touched. They looked into each other's eyes. Family. They were family. Quinn suddenly felt it. She saw her father in her grandmother's eyes.

"This is insane." Quinn said, her voice calm now, a whisper of what it had been just moments ago, the shock miraculously subsiding and acceptance slowly creeping in like a winter fog over the sea.

"Just relax, just relax. I know it's a lot to take in and a lot to make sense of but the reality is, I am who I said I am, and I've just discovered you too. I hope that in some way you and I can ... I don't know, find a way to be friends. I can explain everything to you as soon as you're home from the hospital and recuperating." Julia said, as Quinn stared at her strangely.

"You do look like him." Quinn confirmed.

"Who?" Julia wondered without thinking.

"My father. Your son Michael." Quinn reminded her.

Julia stood up, a little embarrassed. She slowly made her way to the hospital window and slightly raised the shade to allow in a little sunlight from the quickly darkening day. Julia didn't want to talk about the son she abandoned. She couldn't get to that part of her story with Quinn just yet. There was so many more things she wanted to tell her before she got to the horror story that was her life pre-Collinsport. The death of her husband at her own hand would be just too much reality for her to muster at this point. She chose to brush it off.

"I think that you should rest some more." Julia said with a grin as she slowly made her way towards the hospital door.

"Wait, where's Jeffery? Jeffery was in the car with me." Quinn remembered.

"Dr. Shaw? Yes, there were people who told me you were his lawyer." Just said.

"I am his lawyer." Quinn corrected.

"Quinn, Jeffery didn't make it. The accident, I'm afraid, killed him on impact. He died, honey." Julia said breaking the news to an inconsolable Quinn.

Julia rushed over and hugged her. The shock was just too much for her. She couldn't believe how fast things had changed in just a blink of an eye.

"I'm so sorry. I am. I am very sorry." Julia said comforting her granddaughter. "Listen, a friend of mind has a guest house that he said would be fine for you to recuperate at once you leave the hospital. You'll be my guest there and everything will be ok. You won't have to ask for anything." Julia said.

"I...I don't know." Quinn said wiping away her tears for Jeffery.

"I insist. The Collins family has been very good to me over the years.....sometimes..." Julia said correcting herself under her breath, "and this little house on their property would be perfect for you to just relax in and get better. Please I would ....I would really like it if we could reconnect." Julia said.

Quinn thought about it. She had so much running through her brain but at the end of the day this person, this woman who was telling her she was her supposed dead Grandmother seemed almost familiar, with her father's eyes.

Quinn reluctantly, and somewhat nervously, agreed to stay at Seaview Cottage at Julia's invitation and David's permission.

Julia smiled and grabbed Quinn's hand and squeezed.

"Everything is going to be alright. You'll see." Julia said warmly, as the heart monitor continued to bleep away.

As she Quinn fell back to sleep thanks to push in pain killers Julia excused herself from the hospital room and went down the hall for a cup of coffee.

Waiting there was Detective Loomis McGovern.

"Well, how's the patient." he said startling Julia from behind.

"She's doing well, thank you."

"So, where do we start?" Loomis said sitting on a waiting room chair and offering Julia the other empty seat, Julia pursed her lips and remained standing, annoyed with his persistence.

"Care to elaborate?" she said.

"Ok, for one, how are you even standing in front of me and secondly what the hell popped out of that car last night?" Loomis asked

Julia lifted an eyebrow, the answers to his questions still burning on her mind.

****

The creaking old door of the Evans' family cottage opened, and Sebastian helped his mother and girlfriend in. They had just returned from the emergency room where Serena was treated for minor injuries due to the car accident and Maggie's face slashes had been sutured. Sebastian, held the door open for the two women as they slowly made their way into the house, thankful to be alive.

"I'm never letting you two out of my eyesight again." Sebastian said as they made their way to the small living room.

"I feel strange saying this but I'm just happy it wasn't you bursting out of that car looking like....well, like that." Maggie said lovingly caressing her son's face as she thanked her lucky stars that Sebastian too did not have a resurgence of his own lycan curse.

"I think those days are long behind me." Sebastian said, his mind slowly drifting off into horrible dark memories.

Maggie smirked but the worry still shown on her face.

"What do you think the police will do about Andrew?" Sebastian added.

"I don't know. Loomis has been very good about helping us keep a lot of these things tied down but, I don't know just how much longer he can." Maggie said, mentioning Detective McGovern, the close friend of the Collins family on the police force who would often squash the unexplained situations and goings-on at Collinwood. Andrew's wolf transformation and the accident not-withstanding. 

"So, do you mind telling me what exactly you were doing with Alexandra Thorne and Andrew in the first place?" Sebastian then asked his secretive girlfriend Serena. 

"I'd like to know that too." Suspicious Maggie wondered out loud awaiting her explanation. 

"It's a very long story, but the gist of it is that were were hoping to find some of the serum that Kimberly Collins made that helped manage Christopher's transformations. We didn't find any." Serena said disappointed. 

"The used the last on me." Sebastian said to a shocked Serena and Maggie.

"The last of it? Are you sure?" Serena said.

"The last of it." Sebastian said in a sad tone for Andrew.

"What is Andrew going to do?" Serena said, her sadness seeping for her voice. 

"I think what you need to do now, is rest. Both of you. From my experience, whatever happens next will be up to Andrew himself. He's going to have to manage his father's death and his transformations on his own. We can't be there for him; not any more." Sebastian responded trying to distance himself from another lycan creature as it was too close for his own comfort. 

Although Sebastian had been cured from his own wolf transformations, he still retained territorial urges. He felt like Andrew was monopolizing Serena's time and all he wanted was for things to finally get back to normal. But what he didn't know was that was long gone. His life now, was changed, and everything he had known was gone. Serena was in too deep. 

"Sebastian, how can we just abandon him now? I'm the reason he is the way he is. Granted, I had no idea this would happen but I can't just sit back and let Andrew and Alex deal with this on their own. If we could help them..." Serena was saying before Sebastian interrupted.

"Serena stop!" He yelled to Maggie and Serena's surprise. "I can't continue fighting battles that have nothing to do with me. I want things to be good with you, I really do, but..." he paused, "look, Andrew is no longer your responsibility, ok? Just...just....leave it alone." Sebastian said feeling the pressures and discomfort of his own lycan history bubbling up in his mind.

"Honey, just relax, ok? We'll figure it all out somehow."  Maggie said seeing her son starting to crack, which for her was signs of Sebastian's father's temper, something that Maggie bore the brunt of many times before. 

Sebastian agreed, and went into the kitchen to make Serena and Maggie tea. Serena sat back in a soft chair allowing herself to be pulled into it's soft corners and wondered just what would happen next.

All she could think about was how much pain Andrew must be in and it was all her fault. She also couldn't help but wonder about Sebastian and his own transitions. Were they really over? He hadn't had one in years, but would the stress of having Andrew around somehow bring them on again? 

Now, Finding Kimberly's notes to recreate the serum for Andrew and possibly Sebastian were more important than ever. Serena had to find Kimberly's old notes, this was a life and death situation. For everyone in town. 

As Serena contemplated her next step, Maggie went into the washroom and ran the water from the sink and just wanted the water fill up the white porcelain then get sucked down the drain. She stared at the water circle round and round. She just stared at it for what seemed like hours. Her mind totally void of though.

The sound of the water calmed what was beginning to brew up inside of her. There was something shaky, some kind of nervous energy. She had felt it before throughout her life. It was a symptom of the trauma of years of horrible events in her life. Kidnappings and brain washings, abuse, and mental hospitals.

Maggie looked into the mirror and removed the white patch of gauze the hospital had placed over the slash marks from Andrew's wolf claws. She stared in the mirror, her face, a face she did not recognize.

She stared and stared, the red, swollen, stitched up face of hers was scared even beyond what Andrew had done to her. It was as if the ugly horror memories of her life had finally manifested themselves on her face in the form of Andrew's slash marks.

As the water continued to rush down the bathroom sink, Maggie continued to stare at herself in the mirror. She stepped up to the reflecting glass and touched her face, touched the cuts the werewolf Andrew had given her.

Suddenly, the bathroom's temperature dropped, the water froze in place sticking out of the faucet like a frozen water fall. Maggie's eyes flashed a bright yellow light, the color of a wild wolf that roamed the woods in search of human flesh to devour, then quickly, as if it had never happened, Maggies eyes turned back to normal and the water quickly broke it's ice encasement and began to rush down the drain again in chunks.

Maggie gasped and jumped backwards, her back hitting the wall behind her. What had just happened?

She touched the scars on her face again. She was shaking. Was her body was now infected too? The Lycan curse she saw so pain her own son, was it now running through her veins?

****

The Old House was quite and dark. The silence was broken by the front door opening then a snap of someone's fingers caused the candles and the fireplace in the front drawing room to light and flare up as if they had been burning and warming the room for hours.

It was Angelique. She had returned from her motel tryst with Curtis feeling like things were finally going her way. She no longer needed to keep the lie about Julia trying to kill Barnabas alive to protect Curtis. Angelique's plans were moving forward, on her own terms, and nothing was stopping her.

She sat down on the sofa and stared up at the two strangely formed stone statues staring back at her. She laughed at them. She couldn't believe it had gone so perfectly. Her spider like web of lies and deceit not only caught one fly in Barnabas, but two with Carolyn.

She flicked her magical wrist and a glass of Chardonnay appeared, the liquid blood red and thick in the glass. She sipped on it, fully embracing the evil and cruel way she had taken out Barnabas and Carolyn, standing there together, in stone starting back at her; Barnabas with an expression of anger, Carolyn with a face showing fear and terror, her mouth open, frozen in a scream.

Angelique stood up, in the dim flickering lights of the fire place and candles and walked around that statues that she created surveying them like a sculptor observing their fully finished work for the first time. She giggled with delight. She was feeling happiness for what felt like the first time in her whole life. She sipped on her wine and danced with glee around Barnabas and Carolyn's statue bodies.

Then Angelique, feeling the effects of the blood red wine in her veins stopped dancing with a dizzy head. She looked over at Carolyn and patted her on the cheek. She then moved on to Barnabas and looked into his solid stone eyes. She caressed his cold face with her hand like it was soft flesh. She got up on her tip-toes and kissed his lips one more time, the lips that she once loved so much, a love that she obsessed over for decades and decades but now had been replaced with Curtis.

She was in love with Curtis. The love they made at the motel connected and bounded them now forever. Angelique was sure that Curtis was the man she had always been meant for.

Angelique stood in front of the statues again and pulled out the two strands of Vicky's hair that had once been a single strand that she picked it up from the motel floor before she left. She bound Vicky from speaking, she bound Vicky from seeing, and now the two strands would burn in the fire place, locking her spell in place forever.

Angelique looked into the fire and grinned evilly. She tossed in the two strands of Vicky's hair and laughed again, a laughed the chilled the air of the Old House, so cold that Angelique's breath was now visible in a mist despite the warm fire blaring in front of her.

In her final steps to take out Victoria, as the two strands burned in the fire Angelique spoke:

"Mulieris insanium
Ego te
Victoria, Adiouro te.
Mulieris insanium
Ego te
Victoria, Adiouro te."

The final aspects of the spell, a spell that would drive Victoria insane. A spell that would make her mad and force her sanity to vanish, every last bit of sanity.

Angelique sat back again on the sofa. Her heart like a fire burning in her chest with how pleased she was,  but he fireplace began to burn, hotter and hotter. It was A heat that warmed the wicked ice air in the room, so hot that Angelique began to fear that it would jump from the hearth and into the room.

Then suddenly The room began to shake. Angelique's wine glass fell to the floor spilling on the refurbished carpet of the drawing room of the Old House.

The heat began to expand all around her. The shaking continued so much that the painting of Josette Collins above the fireplace fell to the floor, the frame bursting into pieces around Angelique feet, Josette's eyes directly making contact with Angelique's as if the two rivals were now looking at eachother.


Angelique stood up, her heart pounding in her chest, her breathing shallow.

Had Vicky's prayer, her wish...had it reached Josette? Or was it all just too late? The fate of the Collins family now rested in the hands of a witch and her spell and the prayer of a woman on the brink of insanity ....but only one of these two women would succeed.