Series 13/Chapter 10: TREACHERY

Justin and Evangeline and the Spell Book

As the evening shade began to descend over the Old House, Evangeline began to wonder just what would become of her. She had now been held captive, powerless, in the basement of the Old House with Justin for what seemed like forever. Time felt like it had stalled, she felt frozen in a place that she couldn't escape.

Her connection to Justin, or Leopold as he was calling himself to protect his identity, was strong. She did feel as if there was something inside of him that she could latch on to and be with forever. But she was confused. She wanted, and NEEDED, to get herself back on track and get back to Collinwood where her destiny awaited. It was essential for Evangeline to fulfill this task. She needed to await her father Barnabas. She knew he would return. She knew he would come back to the place he loved so much and when he arrived, she'd be there. Not as the baby tossed away to an orphanage but as a grown woman who needed answers, needed solace, and needed revenge.

Bust Justin, so in love and so tossed around by fate himself like a tiny boat in a wild sea, would not, and could not let her go.

Evangeline sat on a chair under a gas lantern that burned a blue and yellow flame just above her head that made her look as if she had a halo encircling her golden brown hair just as Leopold (Justin's alias) descended the stone staircase and returned into his dark layer under The Old House.

She stood up and took a deep breath, she was ready to tell him to release her. 

"I know what you're going to say, I know that you think you want to leave and get back to this silly mission of yours about your father but it cannot happen. We cannot be without each other." Justin said turning away from her and adjusting his shirt nervously. 

"Leopold. Look at me." Evangeline said using Justin’s fake name. 

He turned to her. "I know that in such a short time you and I have found a bond; a connection. I don't want you to think that I don't feel it too, but I can't just stay down here with you forever. It's not feasible. There are things I need to do out in the world. You can come with me!" 

"No! NO! We can't leave this place. It's not safe. I've been out there I've seen what happens to the likes of us. I want to keep you safe and down here, you're safe. With me you're safe." Justin replied never one giving up his real name.

Evangeline could see that there was no changing his mind. She turned and walked over to another chamber of the basement, the chamber that held Barnabas old Coffin that Justin had been sleeping in. Although the two were so connected and falling in love Evangeline could see that it would not last if they could not break free from each other even for a moment. She stared down at the coffin as Justin walked in behind her.

"You won't let him go will you?" He said.

"I have to be there when he comes back. I have so much unfinished business and emotions about what he did to my mother, and to me. That's why you have to let me go." Evangeline said as she ran her hand over the coffin's lid.

Justin thought for a second and with a stern face said only one word "No. I won’t. The Collins family thinks you’ve gone back to wherever you came from. They’re not even looking for you. You’re mission there...is over.” Justin replied in a cole voice. 

Evangeline was now getting frustrated. She felt cornered. Trapped. Love could not blossom in this environment. She knew that although there was a passionate connection between them... they were toxic together.

 If he continued to keep here locked away below in the Old House, hiding her like this, they would only self-destruct. They would be over before they could have had even a twinge of a chance to bloom.

"I don’t need them to know where I am or who I really am, Leopold, in truth they don’t matter. Only my father does.” She said.,

Justin scoffed. He didn’t believe her. He felt like she did. Something was taken from him too. All those years ago. Not a single day has gone by since his transformation that he didn’t want revenge on all who forgot him. He knew Evangeline wanted all of The Collins family to pay too...not just Barnabas. They were all connected. Her attempt to escape by downplaying her hate for her birth family was transparent at best. 

“They don’t care about you like I do. They never will. They never will.” Justin simmered.

She could she he was unrelenting. But then something dawned her on her. Something that was so obviously missing 

“Tell me, how did you take my powers away? How did you make it so that I couldn't fight you back?" Evangeline asked.

Justin turned away almost embarrass.

"I found a book." he replied softly. 

"A book? What kind of book?" She asked.

"Why are you questioning me? Why are you acting this way? We have found each other Evangeline? We have both gone through hell on earth over decades of time and somehow we have found each other. It seems like you're attempting to sabotage us before we have even had a chance to really flourish. I don't think I like that." Justin said, his eyes narrowing in suspicion of Evangeline's constant questions. 

"Was it a spell book? Was it my mother's spell book??? You used magic against me?" Evangeline asked starting to connect the dots.

Justin did not reply.

"You're already binding me. You're already doing what my father tried to do to my mother. You're just like him! I....I want to leave. I need to leave NOW!" Evangeline shouted as she lunged out of the coffin chamber and towards the stone staircase that lead to the upper level of the Old House. 

"YOU CAN'T!" Justin yelped as he grabbed Evangeline pulled her back around by her wrists locked in his hands. 

"This is not the way for us to start our journey together. If we even have a journey in the firer place. I can't live this way." Evangeline replied out of breath.

"You can't leave. You can never leave. We WILL have a journey, can you see? We were meant to be!” He replied, his gaze fixed in hers. 

"Help me then. Help me bring back my father with my mother's book. I need to see him and I need to end all the terror and pain that has been in my heart all my life. Please. Show me the book and help me conjure my father's spirit so that I can release him and then destroy him. It's the only way I can be free ...it's the only way WE can be free." Evangeline said to the now unsettling and unsteady Justin. 

 

Justin released one of her wrists. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what she really wanted or how he should proceed. He felt like his mind was going out of control and that everything he had dreamed of, a love, and life, a partner was slowly slipping out of his hands. He dragged Evangeline over to the large bed with a golden bedspread and giant Empire pillows with tiny tassels on the end that looked like they were from the palace of Versailles. 

He knelt down directly in front of her. She wasn't sure what he was going to do. Then he dipped his head just below her knees and pulled out Angelique Bouchard's black book of spells from under the bed.

Evangeline gasped. She had never seen it before. She could not believe he had found it. She ran her hands over the cover of the book and felt every nook and cranny of the black leather and the black dyed rope that bound it's pages. 

He allowed her to take hold of the book and she stood up and went over to the floor. She grabbed a black piece of cold from the dead fire in the fireplace and walked over to an open space on the floor. She drew a large circle and five cornered star in the center that touched the rim of the circle. 

She sat in the center of the star and  opened the book. She flicked through the pages and found the page she wanted first.

She read allowed the spell in Latin:

"Earch converti viribus ignis.....earch converti viriburs ignis..."

Justin, sat on the bed listening then realized what she was saying. She was betraying him. She was not attempting to bring in her father, she was attempting to return her powers to herself that he had taken from her weeks ago when he kidnapped her.

Justin leaped from the bed and knocked the book out of her hands. The book flew across the room and hit the wall and fell to the ground closing shut.

"WITCH!" Justin screamed, the word coming out his mouth like an obscenity. 

Evangeline sat still on the floor. Her eyes glowing. She smiled a cold and crooked smiled, like that cat that ate the canary. As she began to stand, a wind began to blow around her and lifting her from the ground. She was now floating, levitating, upright with her toes 2 inches from the 5 cornered star she drew on the floor in soot and opened her eyes to reveal they had turned totally white. 

She lifted her hands and Justin, seeing his love, the woman he had so quickly felt a connection to was attempting to remove herself from him. 

His own eyes shifted to black and his teeth grew into sharp spears ready to bite her, take her life. 

It was clear now that they could not trust each other. They didn't even know their own real names. The trust between a vampire and witch could never be true, love between a witch and a vampire could never ever flourish like those of two mortals. 

Justin, calling himself Leopold lunged at the witch Evangeline, calling herself Claudia. Both beings obsessed with one another, both beings thirsty for love and a connection. But both beings lost in a world of lies and self-destruction and sabotage because they could not see beyond their own misery. 

If Justin was successful in his attempt to bite her, One drop of her blood would kill them both. A witches blood was poison to a vampire, and a vampire's bite was like acid to the skin of a witch.

Evangeline could not allow herself to die. As the two struggled on the floor, fighting for life and death she came to terms with what she was faced with. A loose cannon. She turned back into her normal self and looked him in the eye.

"STOP! Please, Leopold, please stop!" She said trying to quell his anger so that neither of them died. 

Justin, panting, hissing with a crazed look in his eye came to his senses. 

"Claudia." He said, calling her by the adopted named she told him. 

"I'm sorry." she said, pretending.

He helped her up, feeling successful in taming her. But she, smarter than he thought was only biding her time.

"You will not do this again. Will you?" He asked.

To keep herself safe and alive, she shook her head no. Then with her foot dusted away the 5 pointed start. 

A small amount of her powers were returned to her in the short moment she held her mother's book. She knew that she still needed to escape him. But for now, she would rest the issue. Her life was much more important and her reunion with Barnabas, whenever it would be was too, much more important. 

Justin smiled at Evangeline. She did love him, she really did. But she knew that their relationship was like two sticks of dynamite burning in a room full of gun powder. It could not last. It would not last. No matter how connected they felt inside. 

She hugged him. He squeezed her body close.

But tomorrow she would escape him. Come hell or high-water. She would escape him, and never turned back. Her destiny underway and there was no place for Justin Patterson—or Leopold. 

****

David going insane 

At the mansion, David paced back and forth in his room. Back and forth. Back and forth. He was sweating. He was panting like a dog ravaging the desert for water. He couldn't make sense at what he had done to Noelle. He couldn't make sense of what was going on in his mind. It was like he had flashes of reality then suddenly they'd disappear and a madness filled his mind. His anger, deep and dark waves of it, would fill him up and it would become an outburst. 

All side-effects of the injections Kimberly was secretly filling him with. 

David felt manic. He couldn't contain himself and stood in the mirror of his room a sweaty and panicked mess.

"What am I doing? What is happening to me?" he said to himself.

Then his reflection looked back at him and spoke: "You're losing it kid. You're starting to see just how much of a monster you really are. Just like your dad always said,. Just like your dad always reminded you of." 

David didn't understand what he was seeing. Did he just say that to himself? Was he talking to himself or was his reflection another person in the room.

David looked around. He was soaking wet. Sweat. Stink. He felt horrible. The medicine Kimberly was using to drive him crazy was pulling at every fiber of his psyche and flipping it on him. It was his own mind attacking itself and bring up every fear and self-conscious thought he had ever had and showing it to him, driving him to a deep unyielding psychosis. 

"Don't you think its time you end this David? Don't you think that your father was right all along and that you're just a worthless piece of garbage? You know....I still think that pistol you used to kill Beau all those years ago is still in the drawer over there in the study. Why don't you go and find it, huh? Why don't you use it and blow...."

As David's mind continued to spiral out of control, little Caleb walked into the room. His bright blue eyes seemed to shine brighter at the site of his father whom he hadn't seen much of in the last few days.

"Daddy?" Caleb said, interrupting the malevolent mirror reflection and standing at the bedroom door.

David slowly turned to the door and looked at his boy. He rushed over to him and knelt down and grabbed the child by the shoulders.

"Oh Caleb....Caleb, Caleb! I need you to promise me something Ok? Can you promise me something??" David said as tears came flushing down his face.

"Daddy? Are you sick?" The boy asked. 

"I think so, son, I think so. Can you promise me that whatever happens to me that you will do whatever it takes to take care of yourself and never ever believe that you werent loved by me? Can you do that?" David asked.

"Daddy?" Caleb said not understanding the gravity of what was happening to his father.

"ANSWER ME!" David screamed.

Caleb screamed too. David looked a mess. The medication Kim had given him was eating away at his mind. Eating faster and faster as each dose was slowly taking hold of every cognitive part of his mind. He began to scream at Caleb. He began to scream and shake the boy who was confused and unsure of what his father was doing to him or why. 

The screaming, from both father and son, startled Carolyn who was in her room going over more paperwork with Web Garner, specifically paperwork that got her family off legally for any kind of wrongful death of Noelle. 

Both Web and Carolyn came rushing down the hall and burst into the room. 

"DAVID! What are you doing!??!" Carolyn screamed and pulled Caleb out of David's grip.

"Calm down, David, calm down!" Web said. 

David struggled in Web's grasp. The two men pushed and pulled at each other, David attempting to flee and Web attempting to hold him back from hurting anyone including himself.

"Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!" David shouted throwing a punch in Web's direction. 

Web pulled his head back missing David's fist by an inch; instinctively Web threw a punch back and landed it clear across David's chin causing him to bite his tongue. 

Bloody mouthed and losing his mind David fell to the floor.

Caleb screamed at the site of his father's bloody dripping mouth.

"GO!! GO!!" David said his mouth full of red liquid. 

"Jesus! I'm sorry. I just... I reacted." Web said reaching down to help David up.

"What happened?" Kimberly asked rushing as fast as her pregnant feet could bring her.

"David, he was shaking Caleb when we came in. They were screaming. I don't know what's going on with him. Come Caleb, come in the hall with me." Carolyn said trying to free the little boy of the horror of his father's deepening spiral into madness.

Web followed Carolyn into the hall as Kimberly went in and closed the door behind her.

"Give me a minute." She said just as the bedroom door closed.

"What the devil is happening with him? I've never seen David this way, I've never seen anyone this way." Web said.

"It's been a challenge Web, you can see now why he couldn't come to the Will reading. I don't know what's happening in this house. It's nothing new to be honest but...I don't know if I've ever seen it this bad. First the nanny runs off—spooked by Something only Caleb saw, then my mother, then Noelle. This house is ....” Carolyn stopped before the word cursed came out of her mouth.

“The nanny?” Web asked. 

“Caleb’s nanny. She ran off weeks ago. She just left. She saw something awful, frightening, and just left. We never heard from her again.” Carolyn assumed, not knowing she had been kidnapped and locked away in the basement of the old house all this time Carolyn’s own high school ex-boyfriend turner vampire. 

“And what about David...has this happened before? This kind of psychotic break I mean.” Web wondered. 

Carolyn was holding Caleb close to her. Hugging him tightly as David’s name came up. He looked away. 

Madness. Murder. Insanity. All of it. It had happened before. The family had always kept it secret from the lawyers. It was always just too much for anyone to admit. But now Webber had seen it for himself. 

"Carolyn? Say something? Has David always been this way?" Web pressed.

"No. No...but he's not the only one to go through something like this within the family, Web. Please...just don't jump to any conclusions ok? Don't jump to anything." Carolyn asked as the light from the crack in the closed bedroom door cast a long bright diagonal yellow light, like a golden divider down Carolyn's whole body.

Inside the bedroom managed to get David back into his bed. She patted a dry cloth over his forehead to soak up the sweat. She smiled, seeing that it was all working in her favor. David would soon be nothing more than a man consumed by the ghosts of his own insane mind and she would be free of him. Just like Victor and the Chancellor of the OTH wanted. 

Certainly, she thought, she would be rewarded by them. 

Kim then pulled out a needle from her pocket and injected David again. More drugs. Although with this injection she felt perhaps, she would lower the dosage. It was too powerful. And she was beginning to feel afraid of what it was doing to him. 

Then Kim exited the room and met Carolyn and Web in the hallway.

Caleb rushed to her side. She comforted him like a mother who was truly concerned, not like a mother who had been causing these issues.

"Kimberly, how is he?" Web asked.

"I've sedated him. He'll sleep now." She replied feigning the sad wife. 

"I'm so sorry this is happening. For all of you. Web replied, as he scratched his thick beard in a nervous tick. 

"Where did you get a sedative?" Carolyn asked in her usual suspicious tone.

"Carolyn, I may not be a doctor just yet but I do have some pull when it comes to getting help in medicines that will help my husband." Kim said with a grimace. "Now do you see what I'm talking about? He's losing his mind. Noelle is dead and he almost...well I don't want to think about what he was going to do to Caleb." She added. 

"Noelle's death is taken care of. The poor woman's family will get a sum of money. I've made sure that this..."  He paused to pull out the medicine examiner report. "was taken care of." He finished showing the medical examiner had ruled Noelle's death an accident. 

"Two deaths in the last week and a half. It's no wonder people run away from us when we walk into town." Carolyn scoffed. "Not to mention a missing Governess no one ever reported." She added.

"You know the rules." Web reminded her. "You set them up yourself. Loose lips sink ships." 

Carolyn rolled her eyes at Web throwing her own family's mantra back in her face about talking in public about the strange occurrences that happened in and around the people that lived on the land on Widow's Hill. Her family's bizarre attraction to the stranger, the beguiling and most often the deadly. 

"Thank you very much, Webber." Carolyn snarled. 

"What about David? What have you found is the issue?" Web asked brushing away Carolyn's annoyance and changing the subject. 

"We don't know for sure." Carolyn replied. 

"I think that we should rethink the idea of getting David help. I think that he doesn't seem to getting better here and I can't keep him sedated forever." 

"No." Carolyn replied sternly.

"Carolyn, if Kim has a way to get David help and its in his best interest why would you disagree?" Web asked. 

Carolyn turned to Kim who lifted an eyebrow waiting for her response. Carolyn, no matter what she did, was always the person who pulled the breaks when it came to sending anyone in the family to Windcliff. She knew how horrible it was when her mother was there. She new the things Julia Hoffman had done to several others who had gone there. Windcliff was Kim's end all. She wanted it. She wanted it bad for David. 

Carolyn turned and looked at little Caleb, terrified of what his father did to him. She thought of Noelle falling to her death. She thought of possible future dangers that could occur and most of all she thought of Caleb. Screaming. Terrified. Hurting.

"It has to be this way." Kim said in a hushed tone.

Carolyn closed her crystal blue eyes one more time. David was her closest relative. They were like brother and sister. They were the only two around that could really fully understand what was really happening in their lives and in their family. They were soul mates. Best friends. It killed her to allow this, but the truth was Kim was his wife. She could decide this for him no matter what.

"No, I just can't support this I just can't." Carolyn said as she reached for Caleb's hand took off down the hall back into her room where she needed to continue to look over the legal papers surrounding Noelle's death on the grounds of the mansion.  

Web looked over at Kim she smirked that sent a shiver up Web's spine. 

"Umm...I'll make sure we send funds to Windcliff for his care." the lawyer replied as he quickly made his way down the hall after Carolyn. 

Kimberly, still smirking evilly, peeked back into David's room where he was fast asleep. The smaller dosage of the drug make him tired. Her fears were quieted for the moment and she felt safer. 

The plan was working. 

****

In her small office on the second floor across from Caleb's bedroom, Kimberly sat alone. She wondered what was happening to David and why Victor wouldn't tell her what was in the vials he had given her. 

She looked at one of the empty glass cases and noticed the words "JENNINGS 1970" written on a small piece of tape.

Kim picked up the phone on her side table and dialed Victor's number. She had concerns on the drug she was administering to David. It was becoming too much for his own system. She wanted to know what it was--for her own sake.

"What is it?" Victor asked answering his phone. He knew who it would be. 

"Your drug is working. You should be very happy about it." Kim said looking at a framed wedding picture of her and David on her desk.

"Good. This is good, the chancellor will be happy to hear this." Victor replied.

"What is Jennings?" Kim asked straight out to Victor's surprise.

"There's really nothing you need to know about that. That's just a name." Victor said.

"But it means something. I'm looking at this vial right now, its one of the vials I've used to inject into David. So It means something. Is it the name of the manufacturer of this medication?" She asked. "What exactly is it doing to David?"

"Manufacturer? I guess you can see it that way, sure. It's not just a drug Kim. And as I told you before you have to keep administering it to David for it to work properly. Once it's all done, once you've used all the vials I have given you, you'll see exactly what the JENNINGS serum will do. It'll be glorious." Victor said.

"But what is it?" Kim demanded to know.

"Kimberly if you were meant to know the entire plan you would know. Now stop asking questions and keep doing your part." Victor said in frustration as he slammed the phone down on his lover.

Kim, worried, unsure of what she was doing, put her phone down. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. To her, she was doing what was best for her baby. She had to be. It was her only option.

She was in too deep. 

****

Windcliff Ambulance arrives for David

Later on that evening, over in Carolyn's room, she was sitting at her desk and read through papers as Caleb played on the floor with his teddy bear. She looked over at him and felt an immense sense of sadness for him. His father was crumbling under some new devastating mental issue. His mother, in Carolyn's opinion, was cunning and secretive. She watched him as he played clearly attempting to push his feelings away. 

She thought about how much she wanted to take care of him. How he would fit in perfectly with her in London. If she couldn't save David, she could save Caleb. In London, the fog there was safer. The darkness only came when the sun went down, but there were no monsters. She wanted to keep the little boy safe. But how could she? How could she do this with Kim's agreement?

Web walked back into the room and stood in front of her. His face was kind and friendly. He knew how hurt she was over seeing David the way he was. But the truth was, perhaps, Kim was right. David needed more help.

"You can't just let him alone like that Carolyn. He needs help. What if Kim is right? What if Windcliff is the best place for him?" Web asked as Carolyn scoffed and walked over to a chair facing Caleb was he played on her pristine white carpet. 

"I don't want to hear any more about it." Carolyn said sternly.

"Carolyn, you're going to have to face it. It's really not your decision anyway. I've been here all night working with you on all this stuff....and I can tell how bothered you are by all this. I can imagine, it's not pleasant. I mean Death...and people dying. It's ....its uncomfortable. But David can be saved. And if you're on board things would probably be much more easy to digest." Webber explained.

"You want me to just be happy that that woman is going to take my cousin to some mental hospital? Do you know what they do there? Have you seen the type of unscrupulous...." Carolyn began before being interrupted.

"Carolyn...." Webber began.

"WHAT? WHAT Web!" Carolyn was finally showing signs that she understood that she was about to lose David.  She had to. He needed to go. Kim was going to do it anyway. 

"Carolyn. Kim has already called them, they're here. David is leaving." Web said finally landing the blow that Windcliff had arrived to retrieve David. "I just thought you'd like to say goodbye to him, for now." Web explained.

"I can't. I just can't." Carolyn said as Caleb saw her breaking down and crawled up on her lap to cuddle her.

"Ok. I'll let them take him now. Try to keep calm ok?" He replied as he left the room.

Carolyn nodded. Caleb kept cuddling her.

Carolyn picked up his little body and paced her room. He kissed her on the cheek to try and calm her. She smirked and squeezed him tight. 

She walked over, Caleb in her arms, and looked out her window that looked down on the front lawn of the mansion. There, a white van parked outside opened up it's back door and a gurney with a sleepy David tied to it wrapped in a white sheet, was pushed into the back of the van.

Kim was out there. She watched the whole thing seeming to have no emotion what so ever.

"We'll take care of him. We'll make sure that he's protect, wont we, Caleb? Wont we?" Carolyn said as little Caleb nodded his head  yes not really knowing what she was talking about. "I won't forget about you David. I wont." Carolyn added.

The white van, swallowed up by thick black fog of the night and with it, David Collins. Gone from his home to the awaiting dark corners of the mental institution known as Windcliff Sanitarium.