Series 13/Chapter 1: DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS

 Barnabas travels to a convent in 1850 Bangor 

***BANGOR, MAINE, 1850***

On a foggy dirt road beneath a murder of crows cawing at the setting sun in the distance, a black horse clip-clopped it's way through its own flurries of dust that lifted like clouds of sand. The horse turned down a slope towards a closed off compound and slowly made it's way to a small courtyard open to the public that belonged to a Catholic church that housed Carmelite nuns that ran an orphanage and school on the church grounds. The horse nay'ed loudly as the man riding it pulled the reigns tight to slow the trot. 

The man, dressed in a woolen black cloak to protect him from the cool November air, dismounted the horse that huffed a large plume of white breath from his quarter-sized nostrils. In the distance through the thick blanket of shrubs and bushes two wolves howled at the stranger in the nun's courtyard. The man winched at the thought of the beasts stalking him from behind shadows. 

He was a tortured man from another time  and from many times, as it were, and yet he was a man from no time whatsoever with a slow and painful heartbeat that ticked away the years of his turbulent suffering. 

As the two wolves eventually dashed off into the dusk, the man carefully walked a tightly bundled package in his arms to the front door of the orphanage and pulled on the long gold rope attached to a chime that rang  inside the nun's quarters alerting them to his presence at the gate inside the courtyard. 

Two of the sisters peeked through a private iron gate that locked away a frosted over garden. They looked at each other wondering who could be at the gate at such an late time of the day. 

The man, his hair combed cleanly to one side, smiled at the two nuns from his side of the gate in an attempt to lure them closer. They hesitated. His face somewhat obscured by the darkness the trees cast on his face. There was no noise, just the huffing from the horse in the background. The man, seeing the nuns locked in a suspicious and tense stance on the other side of the gate dipped his head into the last droplets of weak sun revealing his face, he smiled again. 

Sensing at ease, the two nuns fluttered over to the gate where he stood and unlatched the iron hook and eye lock. The first nun, larger in body and meaner in temperament, opened the gate only half way to meet the handsome stranger while the other stood to the side still peering through the iron gate shaped in various types of ivy. 

"Yes?" The larger nun asked, the word puffing out of her mouth in a white breath like the horses. "What can I do for you?" She asked as the last bit of sun vanished behind the night clouds. 

The man looked down at his bundle to reveal the face of a small child hidden in the warm wool blankets he was carrying her in.

The large nun gasped in surprise. "Sister come!" She said to the other nun, thinner in frame, her face pale like the November  morning sky.

The man handed the larger nun the baby. "Can you keep her safe here? Can you take care of her?" He asked. "Please, she must be kept safe. Here and here alone, she cannot leave this hallowed place." He added.

"Of course! Come in! Come in! Take a break from the cold. You must be tired." the thinner nun said as she took the baby from her companion. 

"NO!" He shouted as he looked away from the nuns who were standing directly on either side of a crucifix crowned church steeple. 

His shout startled the two women who did not expect his outburst. 

"Please, you look tired, we can give you something to eat and then you can be on your way." The thin nun replied, now feeling a bit of nervousness seeing as the man was too sending out nervous energy.

"I apologize, but I must leave this place.” Than man said again, clutching his side as a sudden pain from seeing the church steeple seemed to be stabbing him in the gut. “Just promise me that she'll be safe here and that she will never leave this place." The man then demanded, knowing that the baby was the child of two unfortunate and supernatural souls, two souls that could not care for her the way she needed to be cared for and that in this holy place she could and would be kept safe. 

The larger nun began to feel strange about accepting the child from a man who was so adamant about her place there. To her, something was beginning to feel off about the man; his nervous nature, his forcefulness and lack of eye contact.

The larger nun narrowed her eyes in suspicion. She grasped the golden rosary beads In her pocket the asked:

"Who are you? Why have you brought this child here? Where is her mother?" The larger nun said now closing the gate in front of the man.

"It does not matter who I am. All that matters is that she is kept safe here from the world and that you treat her with kindness...show her what truth and mercy are." The man said as he turned and handed the larger nun 8 golden coins. 

His hand touched hers and it felt like ice. She pulled back her hand quickly. He noticed her shock of his touch. It was cold. Colder than had ever felt. His touch felt......dead. 

"Sir...you're .....so cold." The nun said placing the coins in her pocket. 

"It's nothing." the man said as he prepared the saddle to ride again. 

"But sir, I should tell you we expect it to be..." The nun began again before being interrupted by the stranger.

"I SAID NO! I will be fine. Keep her safe. That is all I ask." He said again jumping up on the horse.

"Of course." the thinner nun answered as she slowly backed away from the gate with the child.

"STOP!" The thicker nun said, her fingers gripping on to the now closed front gate of the Church courtyard as she watched the man begin to take his horse down the dirt path. "What is her name? What do we call her?" 

The man did not answer. But the baby did have a name, she did have parents, and she did have a connection to the man on the horse. 

As the man rode off into the darkness the thinner nun stepped up to the larger nun and showed her the baby's face. She was beautiful. Large hazel eyes and very short auburn hair with soft golden strands that seemed to be spun of real gold. Her skin was pink and fresh and she coo'ed and giggled at the nun's caress.

"What do we call her? He didn't give us a name." The thinner nun wondered.

"Today is the feast of St. Claudia....why not Claudia?" She said satisfying her sister-nun.

The two walked back into the convent past large white statues of various saints that looked down on cold black and white tiled corridor that was lit with the golden light of several hundred candles. The red and orange glow flickered and bounced light back from the stain-glass windows above illuminating everything in the sacred space. 

 The two nuns walked into a chamber filled with books and equally as dark as the corridor that lead to it. There, sitting at large oak desk writing, was the mother superior Magdalena Patrice of the small Bangor convent. She was a stern looking woman of 64. Her skin like wrinkled fine lace crowned with two dark eyes that seemed to stare right through anyone that she fixed them on. 

"What is this?" Mother Magdalena asked as the two nuns smiled and removed the shrouded beautiful baby. 

"A man came. He just dropped her off. Isn't she exquisite?" The thinner nun said.

"Indeed Sister Louisa, indeed." The mother superior said as she took the baby into her own arms.

The thicker nun, Sister Carlotta, then informed the mother of the babies name.

"Claudia." The mother said with a grin. The mother looked down at the baby. There was a spark of light in her eyes. There was an almost electric feeling inside mother superior at first touch of the baby. It was an instant feeling, an automatic knowing....this child was something special. 

She could tell that this baby was like only one other that she had seen many, many years before. A baby that was special too. A baby she had met on the island of Martinique when she was a young novice on a trip from the islands to the main land. 

"Sisters, would you leave me with the child alone. I'd like to pray silently with her here in my chambers. I will bring her to you shortly." The mother superior said.

"Of course" Sister Louisa and Carlotta both said grinning with joy of the new baby as they curtsied and left the room.

The two nuns closed the chamber door behind them, and the mother superior slowly waited for their shadows to disappeared from the glass squares in the door. 

Once she felt safe, she walked the baby over to a large golden candelabra that towered over a black leather sofa. The head-nun, removed her thick black habit revealing long black hair that went all the way to the small of her back. She grinned at the child who grabbed the superior's finger and giggled. 

"I know your kind my young sister. I know what you are. You're a child of the sun, a child of the light. You are like me. I can feel your energy my darling. You are a gift to the coven like only once before you....I can feel your light and see the spark of power in your new eyes. From here on out, you will be known as Claudia, but I will give you the last name of your true mother. The mother I see in your eyes, the young girl I helped raise many full moons ago. You shall be called Claudia Bouchard. Daughter of my own sister of the coven, Angelique. I shall protect you. Forever." 

The Mother Superior was truly a woman of great powers and secrets. She had been hiding as the Pius Magdalena Patrice from Martinique for centuries to protect herself from witch hunters and trials and burnings. The baby, now named Claudia, had the blood of witches in her veins. Witches, like the mother superior, who's true name was Bathlem. Bathlem had known Angelique as a girl and could sense that this new baby was that of her protege. The power in this baby was the same as that of Angelique. It was as if she was seeing the reincarnation of Angelique, there in her arms, in a convent where Bathlem was hiding too. 

This witch Bathlem, was a queen among her followers, but she secretly escaped trials and plots to kill her. Her safety was in assimilating into a world where they'd never discover her. Inside a convent with Nuns. And now, with this baby, a chosen child of her coven in her arms, Bathlem felt like all was not lost for her kind. For wherever Angelique was, this baby was now Bathlem's to protect and to teach,. 

In truth, the man who left the baby with the nuns was Barnabas Collins. He used his power of time travel to take a baby he had been tricked into conceiving with Angelique when they both returned the time-line of events back to it's normal placed. 

Barnabas and Angelique were bound together, no change in time no change in events could ever part them and everything that had happened to them had again occur the same way it had originally happened but now, there was a baby, a baby conceived when Angelique tricked Barnabas into making this child while she was posing as Cassandra Collins, the wife of Roger. 

Cassandra attempted to pass the baby off as Roger's but disaster struck, and in the wake of a tragedy Barnabas took the baby, named Evangeline at birth, back in time and to a convent in 1850, a place Angelique could never ever find her.

Bathlem raised the baby up into the light of the candelabra, to see her better. It was true, she was the spitting image of the moon-eyed Angelique. But as she did so, a flash of light blasted into Bathlem's mind causing her eyes to go all white and her mind to numb bring in a flow of images showing the baby's heritage

In her vision Bathlem saw the baby's mother. Her father. The Collins family home high atop Widow's hill. The magic and trickery Angelique (as Cassandra) used to force the baby's conception with Barnabas, a spell of love and love making. 

Then Bathlem's vision showed a coffin with the father inside. But Bathlem knew he was not dead---he was one of the undead. She could sense it in her vision. She could almost feel the hardened skin, cold like marble. She could hear his heartbeat, a deep and low thumping that echoed in her mind. A vampire. 

The shock of the vampire father lifted the trance and Bathlem's eyes returned to normal. She cuddled the baby in her arms now knowing her full history. A child of the future. A child of the past. A child of a witch.....a child of a vampire. 

A special child. A daughter of the night. 

"Whatever happens, you are now of my own coven, of my own family. You are of Angelique, where ever she is may the light of the moon protect her." Bathlem said again cuddling the baby. "I will protect you forever." 

She replaced her habit and carried the baby back out into the corridor where the two nuns who first brought Claudia in where now surrounded by other nuns eager to meet the new member of the orphanage. 

The all squealed with glee at the new face in the halls. 

 Bathlem, concealed as her personal of Mother Superior, handed the baby off to Sister Louisa.

"She's ours." The mother said as the other women bowed their heads in prayer. 

Bathlem & Sister Carlotta with baby Claudia 

***COLLINSPORT, MAINE 1990***

As a gusty sea wind blew across the glistening front lawn of greens and gray of the Collinwood estate a young woman stood staring at the floor in her bedroom on the third floor. She sat on her bed with a stern look on her face. Someone had come and trounced on her territory. Someone had come and interrupted her Secret life, interrupted her Secret place among the Collins family, the family she had secretly infiltrated as a governess to the Young Caleb Collins, son of David, grandson of Roger. 

She was thirsty for revenge .

“SHE” was Claudia Bouchard, now calling herself  Evangeline....the name her mother Angelique gave her at birth. 

Evangeline  looked down at a young woman that she caught rummaging in her room just hours before. This mysterious young woman had traveled back in time and was trapped in a cycle of time travel that she could not get out of. 

Evangeline looked down at this woman that was unconscious, gagged and tied up on the floor of Evangeline's bedroom and wondered what or who had brought this girl here. 

The mysterious young woman was INDIA DO-ARCO, David's future daughter. 

Evangeline wondered, could this girl be like her? Could she had been sent by someone of her coven?

She thought of how she was born in secret, taken back in time to 1850 by Barnabas from the 1970's --- as Barnabas' true and biological child, he wanted to keep her safe from her sorcerers mother Angelique. She had grown up, under the watchful eye of Bathlem. Bathlem taught Evangeline everything she knew of the wilds of the world and magic and sorcery. 

Evangeline was also taught about her biological family.

Every bit of information was transferred to the child by Bathlem. 

Everything. Good. Bad. And Ugly.

India's arrival was something like a supersonic explosion in Evangeline. She could feel that India wasn't just some run-of-the-mill cat-burglar. She could sense, like a bloodhound hot on the trail of game, that India had magic surrounding her. Supernatural powers. She could almost feel it in her bones. 

India's presence forced painful memories to come flooding back into Evangeline's mind.

*

When Evangeline turned 16 Bathlem gave her a most powerful gift, a gift all sorceresses were bestowed on that special milestone of life. A gift that if not squandered or taken by another supernatural being would prove most fruitful: the gift of immortality and over the years she lived and loved and lost and searched for her Collins family---her father most of all. To find him and seek her revenge was all Evangeline thought about.

By the the year 1989 felt the power of something immense burst into her heart, like a gravitational pull, yanking at her soul; a tether pulling her closer and closer to Collinsport, Maine. 

When she arrived to town, David and Kimberly Collins needed a governess for their small child Caleb. Evangeline, hoping her father would return again to his native home on Widows' Hill reverted to her birth name, changing it back from Claudia, and got the job as the Nanny and began her wait for her vampire father to return.

*

And now.... India arrived, an innocent by stander and of Collins blood trapped in a nightmare of time travel that came from 2019, to 1966 and now 1990, to Evangeline’s time. 

On the floor of her room, Evangeline waited for the stranger, India, to wake. She stared at her beautiful face. Evangeline wondered if what the young woman had initially told her  was true; she was somehow connected to the family from the future.

Evangeline did not trust anything that came out of anyone's mouths. She had learned to distrust as a survival mechanism, she had learned to never get close to anyone. 

Bathlem told her.

Bathlem warned her. 

Mortals were never to be trusted.

But if India, this stranger from the future, this time traveler from another world that had been sent supposedly by Barnabas to 1990 was telling the truth, she could perhaps could be a key to her truth. A key to her ultimate revenge.

Evangeline thought it better to keep her alive, tied and gagged... but alive.

She studied her every crease in her face, so soft so beautiful. She followed all the single natural bright blond strands of hair that was woven into India's dark brown hair like thin strings of gold just as India began to wake up.

Evangeline jumped from her perch on the bed that was facing India who was on the floor and came down to her level as India opened her eyes. 

Everything was blurry. India felt a small pain in her head from the bump caused by Evangeline's forceful push up against the wall of the bedroom when she was discovered. India moaned a little as she came to and her eyes adjusted to the light of the day peeking in from the half shuttered windows.

"Don't move." Evangeline said as she looked India in the eyes. India moaned something inaudible. "I'll remove the gag but I promise you, if you scream or say anything I'll kill you. It won't take much to do it, a snap of my fingers will snap your neck in seconds. Do you understand?" Evangeline warned. India nodded her head that she did.

As the gag came out of her mouth, India took a deep breath of air filling her lungs. She coughed and rolled herself over and sat up on the floor. 

"Please untie me, I swear, we're on the same side. I promise you." India said in a whispery voice.

Evangeline was unsure. Although she was bred to never trust a single soul she was ready to kill this young woman in a split second, but there was something about her eyes, something about her, this stranger named India, that Evangeline then reached over and untied her hands.

"Who are you?" Evangeline asked suspiciously. 

"My name is India. I don't know where to begin but I've been on a trip, I've time traveled and ....and I can't seem to get myself back home. To my time. All I want to do is get back to where I belong." India explained as she massaged her wrists. 

"How? How have you time traveled? I don't understand." Evangeline replied.

"Barnabas Collins sent me from my time, the year 2019, to 1966. He wanted my help in fixing everything that apparently had gone wrong. I don't really know what he was thinking. His plan failed. Miserably. He disappeared, vanished and I don't know where he went. He promised to send me back but some how I ended up here. 1990." India explained.

Evangeline lifted an eye brow. It seemed her father had once again invaded another girl's life and flipped it upside down. Just like her. 

"Barnabas you say?" Evangeline said, feeling a twinge of trust towards the girl India and untied the rope around her ankles.  "What do you know of him after he brought you here---supposedly." 

"I don't know. He just left." India said again managing her aching joints.

"Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're right about him failing. As far as I know, nothing changed. Everything was the same." Evangeline informed. 

"How can you be so sure?" India wondered.

"Because had he changed anything in the past, succeeded in doing so, I wouldn't be here. I'm his daughter." The secret sorceress explained.

India gasped. She had no idea Barnabas had another daughter. She had only known of David's second wife in the future, Siobhan, the child he and Julia adopted from an American couple while they lived in Singapore in the late 70s. But this girl, this powerful woman India encountered, was a new piece of the puzzle that India felt would never be complete.

"I...I didn't know. I ....I'm so confused." India said

"Well its a very long story but my father adores using the trick of time travel to uproot people's lives because he thinks himself a savior of sorts. Unfortunately for you and I, we're victims of his too. Nothing in my life has ever been ordinary and you've some how suffered just as much as I have. Barnabas isn't here India. He hasn't been here since the late 1970s. I know...I've been waiting for him for centuries. Hiding. Searching. Waiting. Expecting him to return. He hasn't. He left with Julia Hoffman and this Willie Loomis person in '72 to search for a cure for his ---situation. He hasn't been back since." Evangeline said filling in India on the past.

"So why am I here? Why would he send me here if he wasn't here. I don't understand anything."

Evangeline took a deep breath and went over to her bedroom window. She released the inner latch of the thick black shutter and opened it allowing the room to fill with the setting sun light. She looked out onto the land that the Collins family had reined over for centuries, the grass of the lawns, the trees that surrounded the mansion, the old house in the distance--and the village below. She knew that Barnabas had not done this, he had not brought India here--to 1990. Something else was afoot. Something just as dark and just a devious, but what?

The daughter witch turned to her unexpected guest, she flipped her golden-brown hair back over her shoulder and again lifted an eyebrow.

"We have a lot to discuss India. But for now, no one can know you are here. No one. Not yet."

"But I have to..." India began but as soon as she opened her mouth Evangeline lifted her hand, a powerful and bright light with 5 equally as bright orbs of light encircled her hand, the orbs soon zapped from her hand and into India's body causing the time traveler to glow. India felt her body burst with energy and suddenly the light from Evangeline's hands trapped India and pulled her into the powerful stream of light that pulled India into Evangeline's body. 

Just as Barnabas had done with Vicky and India, yet another family trait father and daughter shared.

Inside her body, Evangeline could keep India safe. Safe until she understood what was happening. Safe from whatever --or whom ever---was out there that brought India to this time. To Evangeline's time. 

To Claudia's time.  

Just as the powerful sorceress absorbed India into her body, her bedroom door burst and in ran the child Evangeline was in charge of: Caleb Collins, David's young son.

"VANGIE! VANGIE!" he yelled as he jumped into his governess' arms. 

"Well hi there!" She said cuddling the boy.

"Where's the lady? Where's the pretty lady?" He asked her, referring to India.

"Oh, you must stop asking about her, ok? We'll all get into trouble, now. The lady is a secret, do you know what a secret is?" She asked him in a whispery loving voice.

"I know lots of secrets. Lots!" the boy said.

"Do you now? Well, Would you like to share new one with me?" Evangeline said with a grin.

"Yes!" he replied.

"Good....let's keep the lady our secret. No one will know our fun secret ok?" She said.

"Miss. Capwell,” a voice said calling Evangeline by her fake last name. “Whats all this about games and secrets? Hmm? What are you teaching my great-nephew?" The voice, deep and smokey, bellowed from the bedroom door. It was 79 year old Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. 

Her aged face, cross-crosses with thousands of lines and wrinkles that told the story of her life. Liz narrowed her weak eyes at the governess awaiting an answer.

“It was nothing ma’am.” Evangeline said. 

“Nonsense. Teaching him nonsense!!” Liz yelled from her tiny statures body. 

Elizabeth had often wondered where this governess had come from. She did seem to have popped out of no where, "like the mist from the sea" Elizabeth would say. Liz was forever the most secretive of the family---so she trusted no new face.

And if anyone knew how to pluck a governess out of obscurity and put them in a world of madness, it was Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. 

"It just a game Mrs. Stoddard." Evangeline replied dropping the boy down to the ground.

 Elizabeth, her hair still black as night with growing grey roots, had been passing through the hall by Evangeline’s when she overheard the conversation. She blew a puff of cigarette smoke into the room from her freshly lipsticked mouth and coughed out another sentence. 

"Those are not games for children, I implore you too..." The matriarch began before being interrupted by the boy's father. 

"Aunt Liz....here we go again!" A handsome 38 year old David said to his aunt as he pushed Evangeline's door fully open and taking his adorable blond son into his arms.

"David I just want to be sure we're teaching your son the best way possible, not foolishness and rough housing." Liz said commenting on the noise as Evangeline coward at attention at David's side.

"Yes, yes, you've always been a staunch and profound patron of fine education, I know. I know. David said winking at Evangeline. "Kim has a wonderful meal for you downstairs, why don't you let Evangeline take you down so that we can all enjoy it together." David added.

"Kimberly cooked?" Liz asked of David's young and pregnant wife. 

"No. The Cook did." David said annoyed with Liz's obvious joke about Kim's lack of housewife duties. “Kim is too busy at medical school to cook.” He added. 

"Is that so?” The lady of the manor grumbled. “Where's my care-taker? Why isn't she here to help me down?" Liz continued in an annoyed tone with everything. 

"Aunt Liz, you gave her the night off. Let Evangeline help, now, be a sport." David said to his ornery aunt.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and put the cigarette in her mouth and allowed Evangeline to take her arm and the two went down for the early dinner. David sighed and shook his head, his aunt would never change. And this was a good day. At times Liz would lose herself in thought. She often drifted off into daydreams her past life. She’d mumble to herself. Speak to walls and paintings. Go off on tangents about nothing and everything—sometimes all at once. 

Then, there were her visions. Her nightmares. The family had hired a caretaker 12 years earlier to help her. And it did. 

Suddenly , from the corner of David’s eye he saw ropes all scattered in the corner of Evangeline's room. Some were knotted. Some seemed to have been knotted then untied. Then he wondered what game was she talking about with Caleb when Liz walked in...what did Evangeline need those ropes for? 

Like any father, a spark of concern burned in his mind. It was strange. Bizarre. Perhaps he did need to look into this Evangeline a little further. 

India, tied up and hidden in Evangeline's room

***

At the old house on the estate, a slow drifting fog began to slip over the grounds like slow moving sheet of white and grey mist floating down from the sky and curling around the columns of the colonnade of the front entrance. 

Inside the old mansion that had been repaired and renovated several times over the years, its new inhabitant, a woman in her early 50s', sat in the main drawing room in a black flowered skit with tiny embroidered golden flower in it that she nervously picked at fulling the tiny threads out and tossing them to the floor. With her other hand she flipped through a book that was given to her many years ago by her brother. It was a book she had read over and over again since it was gifted to her but it was special. It meant so much to her, in fact it was like the last connection she had to her brother. Her brother beau.

The woman was Noelle Cielvert.

Noelle had been suspicious of the Collins family ever since the late 1960s when her brother revealed to her that he was in a secretive relationship with Collins family heiress Carolyn Stoddard. Back in those days Beau had begged her to help him investigate a missing woman connected to the Collins family by using her special supernatural abilities, her psychic third eye. She at first refused, but then, within days of his request, Beau vanished never to be heard from again. 

Over two decades passed since Beau's disappearance. She could not see him in her mind, her powers brought her no solace and Noelle vowed to find out what happened to him Noelle's suspicions had always linked Carolyn running off to Europe that year to perhaps Beau too vanishing. Noelle was so certain Carolyn was involved that she even  followed Carolyn on that trip to Europe in late 1966

What no one knew was that Carolyn was secretly pregnant with Beau's child. Carolyn's mother didn't know. Not even Carolyn's best friend Maggie. No one knew. Beau too was left in the dark to his future child. When Carolyn went off on her own, she pretended she went in search of her missing Aunt Arabella---the woman Beau needed Noelle's help with, but Carolyn's reason for leaving was all a lie. 

In early 1967, after a few months in London, Carolyn gave birth to a son. Beau's son. Noelle's nephew. Carolyn knew she could not raise him. She knew no one could know about him. She wanted to do what was right for the boy and she gave him up so that he would be raised in a home that would love him regardless of how he was brought into the world. It broke Carolyn's heart. It tore at her insides for years and years. But the pain soon dulled away.

Carolyn soon returned home to Collinsport after the birth. Secrets have a way of coming back into this small Maine fishing village:  the child was not adopted by an English family as Carolyn had often wondered when she'd stare off into the Atlantic sea towards England from her fern filled balcony at Collinwood. In fact, he was adopted by a single mother who brought the boy back to the US ....closer than Carolyn would ever imagine.

Now, 24 years later, in 1990, the boy was grown and living with his aunt Noelle at the Old House on the Collinwood estate. Noelle had knowingly adopted her own nephew right under the nose of Carolyn---who over the years had returned to London, married a man named Jack Thorne, and had recently given birth to her second child, a little girl she called Alexandra.

Noelle too knew what she was doing. She had raised the boy as her own even though he called her "Auntie" and maneuvered herself into the Collins family's good graces by getting a cushy job as Elizabeth Stoddard's care-taker in her old age. 

Elizabeth, now in her mid 80's had no idea the young man living at the old house with her care-taker wasn't just the woman's nephew, but her true-blood 24 year old grandson, who Noelle named Cameron Frame.

Cameron was an innocent. He had no idea of any of this. Not of his father's connection to the Collins family. Not of his Aunt Noelle's relentless 3 decade search for answers and most importantly not what Noelle was hiding deep in the basement of the old house. 

As Noelle continued to fiddle with her book and the golden flowers on her dress, Cameron came bursting into the house, full of energy and a giant smile on his face.  His smile reminded Noelle of Beau. Big. Toothy. Beautiful. He was of medium build but healthy. He was, in Noelle's eyes perfect. He had just come home from a lunch date with a new boyfriend that he was dating and was on cloud 9, eager for Noelle to finally meet his new boyfriend. 

As she looked at her happy nephew leap into the room, ready to give his good news on the new love in his life he noticed that Noelle's face seemed serious changing his mood completely. She put down the book she was reading on his golden flowered dress and stood up. She mustard a half smile then took a deep breath.

"We have to talk." Noelle to Cameron.

"What is it? Are you ok?" Her asked her as the giant cherrywood grandfather clock struck 8:00pm, the chime echoing through the vaulted ceiling of the foyer.

And just as Noelle began to open her mouth to give her explanation--the explanation decided to reveal itself first.

Justin Patterson, the undead, the vampire, the man who had fallen in love with India in 1966 and was later found by Noelle in Barnabas' coffin walked into The Old House Drawing room. His face pale and cold. His eyes deep and dark. His thirst for blood quenched by a quick bite of a rabbit he snatched on the grounds just outside.

"What's .....going on?" Cameron asked unsure of what this stranger was doing in the house he had grown up in. 

"It's time." Justin said in a deep voice that shot chills up Cameron's spine.

Noelle turned to her nephew from Justin and took another deep breath, the air filled her lungs and allowed her to free the words she was dreading to say to her beloved nephew for his whole life. She was about to fill him on a secret she had been keeping for decades. Something had happened. Something, some kind of energy pull had occurred waking Justin....and now things were about to change for everyone.

"Sit down Cam.....we have to talk."