Series 13/Chapter 7: BLOOD AND MADNESS

Camron finds Lucas' file

The Autumn sun burned slowing in a sky filled with circling seagulls searching for a place to rest their wayward bodies from a wind swept flight down into the Village. It was a cold late afternoon and Collinsport was still chocked by the morning fog that remained like a white gauzy sweater keeping the warmth in and the cool sea air out. 

Over in Lucas Grainger's small apartment across town, Cameron flipped through the pages of a book that could not hold his interest. It had been two days since he agreed to help his aunt search Collinwood for any sort of evidence on his father's supposed murder. The truth was, Cameron wasn't really sure what to believe. His aunt had lied to him all his life about his birth parents and now to have to come to terms with such a fantastic story about Carolyn Stoddard being his mother and that his father Beau was some how killed or disappeared by that family---his family---it was all too much.

As Cameron impatiently awaited Lucas' return with take out from the diner at the hotel, Cameron went into the bedroom to replace the book on the small book shelf in the corner. He knelt down and slid the book back into it's and as he stood up, he looked at himself in the mirror just above the bookshelf and noticed in the reflect an odd envelope peeking out from underneath a stack of sweaters in the closet just behind him.

Cameron's brow furrowed. It was an odd place to keep a manila envelope. It was an odd place to keep any kind of paperwork. Cameron walked over and carefully pulled on the visible corner of the envelope and pulled it out.

He held it in his hand and flipped it over. The seal, with its golden wing clasp fixed perfectly in it's place seemed too easy to just lift and open. 

He didn't want to do it. But Lucas' strange instant behavior the other day at The Old House: pushing the topic of helping Noelle with the matter about Beau. Cameron found it odd to that Lucas was so keen on helping his aunt rather than siding with him in such a quick and unquestionable manner. 

Everything to Cameron now seemed suspect and suspicious. He was cautious. Careful. All the lies had made his unsure of who to trust, even Lucas. And now, this envelope was practically begging to be opened. Why was it hidden in a stack of sweaters in the closet? Was he meant to find it? 

He decided that there was no point in wondering and lifted to two little golden tabs and pulled them through the envelope's seal and poured it's contents out on the bed. 

Papers. Lots and lots of papers.

Cameron sifted through them. Names. Lots and lots of names. Some he recognized and some he didn't.

CAROLYN COLLINS STODDARD (daughter of Elizabeth; Married name THORNE)

DAVID COLLINS (son of Roger) 

CATHERINE COLLINS (mother of Elizabeth and Roger) 

JAMISON COLLINS (father of Elizabeth and Roger) ....

ELIZABETH....

PAUL ....

ARABELLA.......

Names names and more names. It was a family tree. But one name, one scratched out then written over and scratched out again was at the bottom of the forms. The link over the name was a different color than the name was written in. A name that Cameron had never heard before...

BARNABAS COLLINS (Dead?) 

Cameron suddenly felt sick. Why did Lucas have all these papers? How long had Lucas been hiding this? Why was he hiding this interest in the family? It was so strange. It was disturbing. Another person in his life keeping secrets. As Cameron began to replace the papers a sinking feeling of regret and worry in the pit of his stomach. There was obviously more to Lucas, the man he had been in love with for shorty over a year than he realized. 

Then, another sinking feeling ---the sound of the front door opening.

"Hey Cam!? They didn't have the meatloaf today at the diner so I got us this lasagna that the waitress said is amazing. That ok?" Lucas shouted unsure of where in the apartment Cameron was. "Cam? Hey Cam?" He added.

Cameron took a deep breath and walked back into the living room from the bedroom...with the envelope in his hand.

"Hey Kiddo! You hungry? I got...." Lucas said before he noticed the envelope and stopped suddenly telling.

Cameron tossed the envelope on the kitchen counter.

"Look, I can explain." Lucas said. 

"I don't want to hear more lies. Lucas. Just please. No more lies. No more lies." Cameron said.

"I won't lie. I promised." Lucas said putting down the lasagna he was cutting up in servings. 

"Why? Why do you have all of this information on this family? ...My family? Are you and Noelle working together? HAVE YOU been working with her all this time?" Cameron asked. 

"No. No. Look...I...Ok, I don't know where to start." Lucas said as he came closer to Cameron who backed up.

"The beginning. That's usually the best place to start when you have a lot of explaining to do." Cameron snapped back. 

"Cameron I think that what I have to say might just be a bit strange to hear and I don't want to freak you out, I don't want to scare you off and finding out the other day that you and Noelle were somehow connected to this family was a total fluke. I never ever even had a inkling that you were related them. Not in anyway." Lucas began.

"Is that why you jumped on Noelle's bandwagon on searching that giant house on anything regarding my dad? What is it about them that you're so curious about? What is it about them that you want to know so much?" 

"I..." Lucas began to speak before he realized I lie was about to come out of his mouth and he paused, he didn't want to lie. He didn't want more to pile on poor Cameron. "Yes. That's why. It was a perfect storm that I would be in love with you and somehow you're related to this family that I've been studying for so many years." 

"Studying? Why are you studying then?" Cameron asked.

Lucas had the answer to this too. The Collins family, the most famous family in town and in Maine had a long woven history deep into the fabric of old Maine folklore. Was it true about all the ghosts? Was it true about the supernatural creatures and sorceresses that lived among those walls in the dark mansion on Widow's Hill? It sounded crazy to anyone who even bothered to look into those stories. But to Lucas, deep in his chest in his heart and his body it was all real and it was the driving force and passion to what he had been working and studing on for so many years of his adult life. 

The world of the supernatural. The world of the shadows. It is what he had always wanted to feel and see with his own senses. And now, with Cameron's connection, it was at his own door step and in his bed. Lucas knew that all of it was true and he was closer than ever before; Noelle and Cameron were the keys to unlocking the secrets of this family and Lucas needed them. 

"The Collins history. They are incredibly influential and powerful in this region and Ive been studying that. All this time. And now, I'm close. I'm so close to actually meeting one of them." Lucas said.

A lie. He couldn't bring himself to tell Camron the full truth of his investigations of the supernatural and how the Collins were connected to it. 

Cameron sighed. He turned away from the man he was in love with all this time and suddenly was seeing someone different someone he didn't recognize. The Autumn sun that was sinking in the horizon was now was shining in Cameron's deep eyes that reflected a sadness Lucas had never seen before. 

Lucas, for his part, didn't want to hurt him and never ever intended to hurt him. But it had already been done.

"Are you ok? I don't know what else to say. I should have told you and I know that it's going to be weird now that I have told you about this and that they're you're family. I know that it must be weird Cam, knowing that I know more about your family history than you do. But.... I promise I had never even thought about your connection to them before Noelle told us. I swear." Lucas said---this time the truth.

Cameron realized that there was going to be a lot more hurtles to jump through in the future because he promised his aunt Noelle one week of investigations at Collinwood over Beau's disappearance. He promised and he intended to keep his promise because in his heart of hearts Cameron believed he'd find nothing---nothing but dust and old paintings and spider webs and old furniture in the mansion on Widow's Hill....not answers to his father's death.

Cameron turned back around to Lucas.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." Cameron said, expressing own half truth. "I guess this has all been a lot for me to take in. Noelle hasn't ben truthful with me --ever--and I just really need you to be honest with me. Always. Lucas, I love you too, and...having your total honesty is something that is more important than ever." Cameron said, his hands resting around Lucas' perfect face.

"Of course. That's what I want too. That's all Ive ever wanted." Lucas said, again, another half truth. Lucas did love Cameron. He adored him in fact. But the desire and the pull of what secrets and mysteries he could uncover on Widow's Hill were now driving Lucas' passions.

Cameron's big brown eyes looked deep into Lucas's. He felt at least for now, he could let Lucas slide. There was a certain kindness and beauty to Lucas that would always melt Cameron's core and get Lucas off the hook. 

"Let's just take a breath and enjoy dinner and it's going to be fine." Cameron said feeling overwhelmed and tired about talking about so much. 

"You sure?" Lucas said,  his ice blue eyes showing a deep concern for Cameron. Deep and legitimate concern. 

"YES! Now...let's eat...I'm starving." Cameron said tossing the envelope from the kitchen counter to a side table away from sight and plastering on a plastic smile to save face.

Cameron would for now allow it all to happen. It had to happen. Everything had to happen the way it was flowing so that he could finally tell Noelle she was crazy and obsessive and never going to find blame on the Collins family about Beau because to Cameron there was no one to blame. Cameron thought it was all in her head and once he and Lucas got into the mansion and found nothing and more nothing, he would finally show them both they were wrong.

But secrets never live on a single thread alone. They are often times tangled up together like a giant ball of old Christmas lights that have been left in a bin for years and years only to be discovered and discarded to the side because of how complicated the unraveling process would be.

That is what Cameron was walking into. A long tangled web of Christmas lights, and untangled them at Collinwood would prove much more terrifying than he would could ever imagine. 

****

Kimberly stalks David in the Study

That evening as the last of the seagulls circled the sky crying out in mournful screeching to the anchored ships in the French Bay that gave Collinsport it's salty air, the mood at Collinwood was no different. 

Tonight Kimberly would begin the process of removing every last Collins family member from the face of the earth. 

But she was nervous. After all this was her family now too. 

Kimberly's brainwashing by Victor and The OTH came at a time when she and David were having trouble in their marriage 4 years prior. It wasn't something out of the ordinary. Marriages often times suffer bumps in the road. But Victor and Chancellor Devlin of The OTH saw an opening, a fisher in this relationship that they would and could take advantage of.

Four years ago, Victor set his sights on Kimberly and sinked his claws into her. He began a long processes of brainwashing and torment that eventually set her against her husband's cursed family. She also became pregnant by Victor, and the baby she was currently carrying was going to be an essential part of project Futura,....the process of the removal of the Collins family named by the OTH. 

But on this night, David was first on the list. 

David was sitting in a second floor study reading through more Cannery paper-work that he would bring over to his Aunt Elizabeth in the morning for her to look over and sign. This was now part of his daily and nightly routine. Paperwork. Cannery work. Work. Work. Work. David was the main go-to-person of the company. Nothing got done without David knowing, however Elizabeth, was still a major factor and symbol for the Cannery, even in her old age. Everything had to be signed off by her no matter what--even if David was in total control. 

He flipped through the papers. Checked off areas for Liz to sign and initial just as a secret door behind a tapestry in the wall of the study slid open. There, 8 and a half months pregnant, was Kimberly Collins. Her face shadowed by the doorway and her hand gripping the syringe filled with the hallucinogen serum Victor had given her the night before. 

The hallucinogen would flow into David's veins and speed thorough his body like a racehorse. It would cause him to feel a lack of control, his mind would feel like it was racing and drive him into fits of insanity. It was designed to take grip of a person's most horrifying fears and illuminate them to the most extreme. 

It was a powerful drug. Something that would slowly make David die inside. 

This was trial one, Kim would have to inject him two more times for the full effect. 

She slowly slinked out of the hidden doorway and walked slowly in from the side of the study where he could not see her. She thought about all of their good times and their mutual son Caleb. How could she explain this to him? How could she explain to her little boy that his father was going insane and eventually, if Victor's serum worked, David would die and Kim would then have to explain to the boy his death.

The power of The OTH was stronger than her instincts. She had now reached the point of no return and David's life was minutes away from being changed forever and ever. 

As he sat at the desk heavily into the paperwork in front of him, Kimberly raised her arm high from behind and dropped it down onto David's back injected the serum into his body.

David yelped a sound she had never heard before as he jolted out of the desk chair trying with both hands to reach for whatever was plunged into his back causing the sudden pain.

As he turned around, panicking and screeching in his pain he saw his wife standing there, her face pale and blank, emotionless. She had the syringe in her hand.

"What are you doing?" David said he began to slur his words. 

"I'm sorry but this was going to happen no matter what." Kim said as she slowly watched her husband go into a strange hazy state.

As the medicine starting to surge through David's body he began to see the walls move. He began to see the light from the lamps leap from under the lampshades and dance in front of him like fireflies dancing in the night sky. The wallpaper in the study was various majestic scenes of men on horseback riding through grassy meadows---all of those scenes began to come to life in David's mind. The room began to spin. He started to feel like everything was spinning without stopping. 

"Help me." He said, as he fell to the floor in manic frenzy shaking and shivering on the floor.

Kim and David were not alone. Someone was to come to the Study for those papers. Someone was supposed to meet David at just the moment Kim decided to start the process of killing every family member. 

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" Elizabeth shouted from hallway and the open study's doorway.

"Elizabeth." Kim said in a soft voice after realizing she was caught with the syringe in her hand. The family matriarch had arrived for her nightly meeting with David to go over the papers she was to sign. 

Liz, as fast as her 80 year old body could take her, began to rush down the hall to find her daughter Carolyn. She passed a table with a large potted fern planted deep inside a copper urn and accidentally tripped on the table's leg tossing the urn and fern to the gourd along with Liz's body just a few feet from the staircase. Elizabeth shuffled up, her body tired and old but strong enough to get up.

"Care-oh..." Liz said in a tired and weak voice trying to call for her daughter. 

Two hands grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her up. Liz felt safe now that someone was there to help her but as she turned to look who her hero was she only saw Kimberly's face looking back her with a cold, dark stare. 

"No!" Liz said as she and Kim began to struggle and scratch at each other.

"Liz please, you don't understand." Kimberly said in a quiet voice attempting to warm over the older woman.

"You killed him, you killed him!" Liz hissed as they got closer and closer, pushing each other and pulling at each other at the mouth of the staircase on the second floor mezzanine. 

"Please! Please! Listen to me!" Kim begged as they both continued to inch closer to the first step. 

But Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with David's treacherous wife. Kim reached for Liz's arm but Elizabeth slapped it away with her left hand and with her right hand swung back and slapped Kim across the face with a raging and stinging blow. 

Kim, her mind spinning with anger, almost as wildly as David's was, in reflex mode, turned around and slapped Elizabeth back so hard that Liz lost her balance, screamed and fell down the flight of stairs falling all the way down to the foyer's hard stone floor cracking her head on the ground in the processes.

Kim gasped at what she had done. She stared down at Elizabeth's body in total shock. She didn't know what to do but then heard a large bang in the study and rushed back to check on David. 

As she went running into the hallway she passed her little son Caleb who witnessed it all. He too was frozen in fear as he watched his own mother and great-aunt fighting, then Elizabeth's fall. 

In the study David was pulling down books from the shelf. Throwing furniture all over the place. He was seeing things attack him, like birds and bats and evil creatures all coming at him in his mind attacking and pulling at him. His mind was in outer space. He was foaming at the mouth. His breathing was rapid and his fists were clenched. 

"DAVID!" Kim said now standing back in the door way.

He turned to her, his body drenched in sweat, his shirt ripped open exposing his hairy chest and his muscles bulging out of his sleeves. He was becoming something else. Something wild. Something mad and monstrous. 

"DAVID! STOP!" Kim said, as Carolyn came rushing down the hall passing Caleb on the way.

"What's happened?" Carolyn shouted as Caleb hid between Carolyn's arms as he looked at his father go mad in the study.

"Carolyn he's gone crazy, he pushed your mother down the stairs!" Kim said lying.

"WHAT!?!? MOTHER!!!" Carolyn screamed flew back down the hallway with Caleb attached at her hand. 

As Carolyn got to the top of the staircase she saw her mother's 80 year old body laying at the bottom of the staircase, one foot on the last step and her head bleeding a river of blood that created a square shape as it seeped into the grout in-between the slabs of stone that made top the floor of the foyer. 

Elizabeth at the bottom of the stairs 

In the study, Caleb's breathing was out of control. His heart rate was racing.

He was snarling. Growling.

Kim panicked. She didnt know what he would do next. 

And then....he fell to the floor. Fainted. His eyes were closed and his body began to relax.

The medicine had worked and tomorrow she would inject him again. A trial of three injections had to be processed for it all to work like Victor had planned.

"MOTHER! MOTHER WAKE UP! MOTHER CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Carolyn screamed as she touched her mother's soft face. 

Liz, face to one side, looked to be asleep. She was peaceful but at the same time there was something so horrifying in her body shape that Carolyn screamed again looking at her. 

Carolyn quickly got up from the floor, her mother's blood now all over her nightgown and Dailed for an ambulance. 

"HURRY! PLEASE! PLEASE HURRY!" She shouted over the phone. 

"Are they coming?" Kim said finally coming down to Carolyn's side.

"What happened Kim? Why did David do this?" Carolyn asked, her nostrils filled with snot and tears as her mother lay in a bloody puddle.

"I don't know, I don't know. He just snapped. He's gone mad Carolyn. He's insane." Kim said lying.

"First Evangeline's vanishes and now this. You see!? THIS is why I never wanted to come back here. This house of horrors is evil; nothing good ever happens here. Nothing good ever ever EVER happens here/." Carolyn screamed at Kim.

"I don't know what happened. I don't." Kim replied, continuing her lie. 

"None of this makes any sense! Why would he just snap and act like this pushing my mother. What happened? What do you know?" Carolyn shouted, she was sure Kim knew more than she was saying.

"Mommy. Mommy had it." Caleb said from the top of the stairs.

"What?" Carolyn asked.

"Caleb go to your room!!" Kim screamed. 

"What is he talking about? What did you have?" Carolyn asked trying to make sense of the boy's comments.

As Kim tried to convince Carolyn that she had no idea what the little boy was talking about Carolyn knelt back down next to Elizabeth who's breathing was show slowing.

"Mother, please, please stay with me. The ambulance is coming. Please stay with me. Mother. Mother!" Carolyn said. 

"Mommy had a thing. Mommy had it." Caleb said again trying to explain what he saw his mother do.

"CALEB!! What did I say??? GO BACK TO your room NOW!" Kim screamed terrified of what her son had seen and would say.

Carolyn only looked up at Kim from the ground with a withering stare. 

As the flashing police lights and ambulance lights finally began to break through the front windows of the mansion, Carolyn reached down to touch Elizabeth's wrist to feel her pulse. 

It was too late. 

Carolyn screamed a scream so profound and so animalistic that it shook the stone walls of Collinwood. The picture frames seem to all tilt to one side with the vibrations of the mournful sound that matched the screeching of the seagulls that circled the night sky above Widow's Hill.

Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard was dead. 

****

Evangeline and the man who calls himself LEOPOLD

Chaos has a way of filling the air around Collinwood and keep it in an insular form so that where ever it spills remains there. In that spot. As the Mansion was over-flowing with in the middle of the night with Elizabeth's fall and David's drugging, the Old House was serine. Quiet.

Almost peaceful.

Noelle was asleep in her room. She was burgeoning on losing her own mind with all the stress surrounding her, so much so that she took a sleeping pill to fall asleep. She tossed and turned and rolled around in bed but never opened her eyes and remained asleep.

Watching over her was Bathlem, the witch queen who raised Claudia Bouchard, the woman calling herself by her birth name Evangeline. The woman Justin kidnapped and was holding hostage in the basement of the old house, under Noelle's nose.

Noelle had called for Justin to return her to the main mansion but something about her was pulling him closer and closer into her orbit. This connection, this carnal love that was blooming inside of him was something Bathlem was going to protect. 

Noelle didn't need a sleeping aide....Bathlem had raised her hand above the sleeping woman and pushed her deep into a dream state. She would not wake up at all. Nothing would wake her, not a toss in the bed, not the waves crashing against the rocks below the mansion on the cliff--not even the sirens of the ambulance waling down the way at the main mansion. 

Bathlem needed to be sure that Claudia--Evangeline had her time with this man, Justin. He would be key to her survival. 

Down in the basement Evangeline looked around. She imagined her father Barnabas all those years ago laying there in that same place. She imagined him pacing back and forth unsure of what his next move would be. How he would continue to keep his darkest deepest secret from the outside world.

The glow of the candle-light from the ancient candelabras put the entire room stained the stone walls in a fire like tangerine glow. Evangeline walked towards the bed where she had been laying her hand slowly feeling the rocky cracks in the wall all the way back to the bed.

"If these walls could talk, huh?" Justin said, returning into the main room of the basement from adjoining lair that had been turned into a storage room for him filled with pints of blood to keep him alive over the years, thanks to Noelle's work.

Evangeline turned to him and smirked. 

"I don't know what you think you're doing but ....this wont last." She said softly. 

He walked up close to her, her eyes sparkled like two hazel marbles, flowing with fire and light.

"You don't feel it? You don't that between us? Whatever it is? I can feel something in both of us. Its like when I touch you when I look at you I feel a wild ocean crashing into me. I thought I'd only feel that with India but.....I feel it with you too." Justin said.

"Leopold," Evangeline began using the fake name Justin had given her. "you don't understand. I've had a mission all my life and I can't separate myself from it. I have to go back and get this done. I'm waiting for  him." Evangeline said.

"Him?" Justin asked. "A lover? I was waiting for someone too. India. I was waiting for her to come back and she never did. Maybe who you're waiting for isnt coming back either and that's why we were meant to meet. Don't you see that?" 

"No, no...it's noting like that. I've been waiting for my father all these years. He's the only one I want to see again. He's ...." She paused. "He owes me a lifetime. And a lifetime is all he has left---and I want it." Evangeline said referring to Barnabas' eternal life.

"You want to kill him? You want to kill your father?" Justin asked. 

Evangeline did want to kill Barnabas, where ever he was. At least that's what she thought she wanted. Her hurt overshadowed her cruelty and all she really wanted to do was to see him again somehow some way. After all he was her daughter and since he killed and vanquished her mother Angelique decades ago she was all he had too in the world.

Evangeline sighed. She turned to Justin and saw his big blue eyes. She knew too that something was happening between them too. Something from the spiritual side. Something that burrowed deep into her heart like she had never felt before. His touch, she knew, was fire on her skin. And she wanted it. And he wanted it.

"Since the second I saw you all I can do is think of you. I hear your voice even when you're not speaking. Its been a sudden surge of energy these last few weeks and all I can do, all I can see, all I can feel is you. You. You." Justin said.

"Leopold....I don't know. I feel it too. I do. And I can't explain it either. But, us together? It could be like oil and water." She said unsure of what in the world was happening in her mind and heart. The feeling of love and being loved had been gone for so long that this wild passion inside of her was like a perfume that would not come off the skin. It stuck to her. 

"I never thought I'd know this again." Justin said, again using his fake name. She could not know just yet his real identity. It was too risky. It was too dangerous. Justin Patterson should have been old and gray by 1990 after he vanished in 1966 and even if Evangeline was a supernatural creature of the night like----the risk was still dangerous. 

"India." Evangeline said to Justin's sad nod. "She's gone back to where to her beginning. Her life will begin again in a new form. She'll be born by her mother and her father, the same way, but...in time, things for India will surpass what happened to her before. I've made sure of that. It was the right thing to do after what my father did to her." 

Justin squinted at Evangeline. All this information coming from her shocked him. 

"How do you know this? Did you have something to do with her never showing up here in this time? You...it was you who sent her away?" He said, angry at himself for blaming Noelle for India never showing up as promised. 

Evangeline looked deep into Justin's eyes. From her gaze he knew the truth. He felt his heart shrivel a little. It was like someone had come in with a sledgehammer and plowed him in the stomach. The woman he was falling in love so suddenly was directly responsible for his first love's vanishing. 

Betrayed already. And it had only just begun. 

The anger deep inside were starting to boil in his body. He started to breath heavy. He started to get angry. Lies. Lies and more Lies. Maybe Evangeline wasnt supposed to be the one for him. Maybe she was there to destroy him and make him kill more. Maybe she was a test of his passion, she ruined his plans to be with India forever. This knew woman. She was no savior to his love, was a thief and a Jezebel! 

He raged. He screamed. All this time it was Evangeline who had taken away India. It was Never NOELLE! He picked up the bed and threw it up against the wall. He knocked over candles and screamed again into the stone walls of the basement of the Old House.

Evangeline kept her cool. She knew what she had done was the right thing for her and even more it was the right thing for India.

Justin, his dagger teeth now exposed lunged at Evangeline, he felt her now an enemy but then she lept in the air. The break and force of gravity extinguished the last of the candles in the room leaving them in patch black darkness.

Evangeline began to glow, a bright white light that blinded Justin.

He fell to the floor covering his eyes. Evangeline knew it was all too good to be true. No vampire could ever purely love a witch. There would always be secrets. There would always be betrayals and lies. In fact the two didn't even know each other's real names. 

The powerful witch Evangeline, Claudia Bouchard as she was named by the nuns that raised her, lifted her hand up and was about to destroy her captor when suddenly Bathlem appeared in the center of the room and blocked her coven daughter in her tracks.

"ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!" Bathlem screamed, her voice echoing like banshee in the sky.

"He must be destroyed Mother Batlem. He must be destroyed." Evangeline said. 

"Foolish child! You have allowed your past to constantly block you from the truths of what you really are. And now you go as far as taking the life of this mongrel vampire ... for what? For who? Listen to Mother and listen to me well, child, he may be the key to a future. Kill him and all will be lost for you. A thousand curses will fall upon you. When a vampire kills a witch he too dies burning fiery death, but when a witch kills a vampire her coven abandons her and her life is cursed for ever." Bathlem warned. 

Evangeline listend to the woman she admired and loved. She lowered her arm and Bathelm, still dressed in her nun's habit clap her hand loudly. The clap echoed again in the chamber below the old house and all the candles became flaming flickers again

Justin started to wake from a confused state and in her head she heard Bathelm's voice. 

"Never speak India's name again----love him. Love him to the end of time. Our coven's future needs you to."

"What.....what happened?" Justin said standing up. The powerful Bathlem erasing his memory just seconds before. 

Evangeline looked around the room. It was still tussled and torn  up from Justin's outburst.  She waved her hands and all the turned over tables and bed jumped back into their places and she helped him  up.

"Don't worry about it." She said softly. 

As he stood up he had no memory of what Evangeline had said of sending India away. They were face to face now. And the fire in both of their hearts burned bright again. There would be secrets. There would be lies. There would be imperfections. But this love, this true bright beautiful and uncomfortable love between a witch and a vampire needed to endure. It needed to happen. 

They kissed. 

"I need to go back tomorrow to the mansion. To Collinwood." She said to him after their lips parted and letting him know that her place was at the side of Caleb Collins.  

"Tomorrow." He whispered. 

He laid her down on the bed. She smirked as they were face to face. Eye to eye. They kissed again. Deeper and more passionate. And as the candles flickered off one by one, they removed each other's clothes and felt their naked bodies suddenly becoming like one. Skin to Skin. 

They made love that night. Passionate first love.