Shadows On The Wall

Chapter 83: Darkness Inevitable

by Nicky


Voiceover by Lara Parker: "Darkness at Collinwood.  Falling, like heavenly
shades of night, softly and inevitably.  And two women, more alike than they
would ever want to consider, find that the darkness inside them both places
them in direct opposition.  And the world trembles in fear."

(Angelique)

Water.  Sinking.  Water below, fire above; ice and darkness; flames and savage,
oh, such savage heat; and it burns her and freezes her and consumes her and
FILLS her, Her, and She opens Her eyes and She can see -

There is a pulse in the universe, a beat, and forces flow from it, against it,
and around it, but the pulse continues, throbbing through the central core that
runs through this world and every world; and she can sense that there is more
than one -

But this pulse, this rhythm, is inside her now, in her veins, like silver, like
sunlight, but then darker, and then twisted, and then righted again; this is
god, she thinks; no, this is GOD; this power, this pulse, this deep and
endless, this eternal throbbing, this is GOD and it's inside me, inside me,
inside me right NOW -

She is flying.  Through nothing.  Through eternity.  Back through times,
looking down with quiet amazement at the tiny people, scuttling below her,
going through the motions of their lives, and each one is bound to the other,
connected, knit together, these separate destinies, into one by the pulse that
even now throbs through her, and she can see it all, and it so beautiful that
she must weep -

But the tears refuse to come, and so she flies onward, through galaxies shot
through with pulling tides of stars and planets and comets, glittering in the
ebony darkness like precious silver jewels, now winking out, and she is a sun
before a supernova, consuming its power, swelling off it, growing ever larger,
and she is the lake on some distant, lifeless planet and the silt on its
bottom; and she runs with the deer in some vast forest in North America,
snapping at their heels with her yellow fangs; and she sees through the eyes of
a man as he pulls a gun and cocks it and aims it at the pale girl behind the
bank counter; and she is the bullet as it flies; and she is the crow; and she
is the worm; and she is the earth itself; and on and on; flying into each new
incarnation and taking the power that flows into herself; she can see and she
can feel, the pain and the joy and the lives of the multitudes on this and
every other world, and then it's too much, suddenly it's too much -

- but then feeling is gone, and there is nothing.  Everything is just. 
Nothing.  Nice black nothingness, and then everything is dark, and there is a
spark inside her, a red flare of rage, and suddenly she is awash in a tide of
evil colder and more intoxicating than any magic she has ever known.  The Dark
Spirit was nothing compared to this, she thinks dimly, and she is suddenly
aware that she is standing in Professor Stokes' cottage with the cold metal of
the Mask of Ba'al pressed against her face, and her husband and lover is dead.

She lowers the Mask, and stares at these people who were once her friends. 
Stares at them, and sees the shock in their sheep-faces.

She smiles.

Because she has transformed.

(Barnabas)

I could have stopped her.  I could have reached for her, held her back, before
she reached the Mask.  But I didn't.  Angelique knocked Eliot aside with some
vestige of power that must have come from the pain and rage she felt from
losing Sky (or could it possibly be that she saw it happen?  that's almost too
horrifying to contemplate), and in that moment I could have taken her.  I could
have stopped her.

Instead I watched, frozen as Julia was, as she reached inside the lead box and
brought out the Mask.  It was hideous; the only light in the house now was the
moonlight falling through the windows, and it shone dully over the accursed
Mask of Ba'al.  The damnable thing seemed to glow in Angelique's hands, as if
by merely touching it she had ignited some sort of life inside it, and it threw
back the moonlight a hard golden color.

And still I could not move.  Even as she brought it up to her face - even as it
touched her skin and she arched backwards as if electrified - even as a wave of
darkness blacker than the night around us enfolded her - I could do nothing.

I merely watched.

And Angelique was consumed by the black power that flowed from the Mask.  We
felt the earth tremble beneath our feet, and at that instant all the lights in
Collinsport went out.

Beneath the metal of the Mask, Angelique screamed.

I wanted to go to her then, but Julia placed a firm hand on my arm and said,
"No, Barnabas.  It's too late.  It is done."

The only light in the room came from the Mask of Ba'al, which glowed with an
eerie silver light as Angelique lowered it from her face.

I gasped, and heard Julia gasp beside me.  From behind us, Eliot moaned.  We
couldn't help ourselves.  Because Angelique ...  Angelique had changed.

The long hair that had flowed down her back in shining gold plaits was now a
deep and inky black.  Her face was pale and calm, and as white and hard as
marble.  Her eyes glowed, as black as her hair, but there was a light in them,
some hellish red spark.  There were marks on her face, and at first I thought
there were veins, like twisted black snakes, but under the light that still
glowed from the Mask I saw that they were sigils, harsh strokes and whorls that
were almost Runic, but unlike any symbols I had seen before.  These same marks
marched down her arms and across her breasts.  

She smiled at us with black lips, and snapped her fingers.  The Mask fell from
her hands to the floor of Stokes' cottage, still glowing dimly.  Instantly the
blue mini-skirt she had donned earlier in the evening was gone, replaced by a
long black ceremonial robe, armless and low cut.  She was beautiful, a study in
black and white, with her marble skin and that uninterrupted flow of inky hair.
She was a goddess; silver energy crackled in her outstretched hands; indeed
she was surrounded by a silver aura, and I drew in a sharp intake of breath.  I
could feel the power coming off her in waves.

(Julia)

I thought at first that she had become Cassandra Collins again; it was that
black hair, I suppose, and my heart froze in my chest.  I had been the victim
of two vampires over the past year; Tom Jennings, a man I had once tricked
myself into thinking I loved, had been the first.  Cassandra had been the
second.  It was hard for me to connect that vengeful hellbitch to the woman I
had come to know as Angelique Rumson over the past few months, a woman I was
still hard-pressed to believe I called "a friend".

But this woman before me was nothing like Cassandra or Angelique.  She was more
than beautiful.  More than stunning.  She was inhuman in her beauty; it was
hard and emotionless.  She looked like one of those greek statues, pure and
white.  Except for the magic symbols that covered her body like ugly stitches. 
And her eyes.  They held the only bit of color that I could see; within all
that black, like distant rubies at the end of a tunnel, I saw two sparks of
red.  My heart fluttered with fear.  I immediately missed those cold blue eyes
of hers.  At least they held some humanity.  The eyes I stared into now were as
human as those of a wolf.

She didn't say a word.  She stared at us for a moment, and a tiny smile dimpled
her lips.

The air before her began to waver, like heat, and then it darkened, and she was
darkening with it, twisting before us, and I caught just a glimpse of those
eyes, glowing a bright, hellish red, and then she was gone, leaving a few
jagged flashes of lightning in her wake and a heavy smell of ozone.

Barnabas sagged against me.  I held him up, as I have always done, even though
his brow and hands were icy cold to the touch.  I wondered if Angelique's
transformation had dragged dark power from him, as Vicki had, and presumably
continued to do.  I thought not.  The Mask of Ba'al had supplied her with
everything she needed to ...  what?

I was afraid to know the answer.

Barnabas looked at me gratefully and squeezed my hand, then turned to Eliot. 
"What do we do now?" he asked.

Just the question I wanted answered.  I was tired of sitting around like a
useless ninny while everyone around me transformed.  There was work to be done,
and I wanted to help.  I had always wanted to help, no matter how altruistic my
motives sometimes seemed.

"I confess," Eliot said, his voice pale and papery, "I am confounded." He
approached the Mask gingerly, but the last of its glow had disappeared.  He
picked it up carefully and put it back in the lead box, then wiped his hands on
his trousers.  He looked at us both soberly.  "I am afraid that Angelique has
gone off to do battle."

"With Victoria," Barnabas said.

Eliot nodded.  "That would be my guess."

"She'll destroy her."

"Unless Miss Winters - and how strange it feels to call her that now; certainly
she isn't at all like the Miss Winters we've all come to know and love - unless
Vicki destroys her first.  Yes.  I think it quite plausible that Angelique will
destroy her without a moment's hesitation."

"There has to be another way," I said harshly, and both men stared at me in
surprise.  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.  Would we spend the rest of the
evening moaning and kvetching or would someone actually get off their ass and
do something?  "A binding spell," I said.  "For both of them.  Until we can
talk them down.  Eliot, surely you have something -"

But he was already shaking his head doubtfully.  I could have cheerfully shot
him.  "I'm afraid it isn't that simple, Julia," he said.  "I'm doubtful that
anything I could find would work on Miss Winters, even though I thought I might
try.  But both of them?  My dear Julia, Angelique Rumson is now the most
powerful woman in the world.  In the universe, perhaps.  The magics she has
channeled are ferocious and primal, it's true, but she was not destroyed by
them.  Indeed, she seems to be in great control of them already."

"That's a terrifying notion," I sniffed.

"I agree," Eliot said, "but I doubt that any of my admittedly paltry spells
would compare to the magics inside her now.  It would be like sending a guppie
off to do battle with a great white shark.  No.  I don't think I have anything
that could be used to contain both of them at the same time."

"Angelique will win," Barnabas said morosely.  "She has always had a great
capacity for vengeance; Victoria doesn't stand a chance."

"We have to do something," I said for the one millionth time.  "Eliot," I said,
and pointed at his desk, "I know you have some anti-witchcraft charms.  Get
them.  Get them all.  We're going to Collinwood." No one is going to be
destroyed on my watch, I thought, and didn't wait for them.  I marched towards
the door of Eliot's cottage, completely unaware that I was a naive fool.  Even
then.  I know better now, I think.

(Quentin)

I could smell the burning.  Roger's hair, I think, mostly, but there was
something else.  Melted polyester, cotton perhaps.  The smell of flesh, like
roasted pork, sickening and sweet.  The smell lingered in the air even after
any trace of him had otherwise evaporated.

And I was facing the monster that killed him.  How could I call her a monster? 
I loved her; I had always loved her; for a century I had loved her; and I loved
her still.  

Victoria Winters.  But never again.

Unless ...

She was staring at the place where Roger had been, and her eyes were wide with
...  I wasn't sure what.  Terror?  Horror?  Disgust at what she had done.  I
told myself I saw these flit across her face like shadows, but I could be
wrong.  I don't like to think that, but it's possible.

The she smiled, and the black glow surrounding her darkened.  I thought I heard
shrieking in the air, as if some far off chorus of the damned were watching and
commenting the only way they knew how.  "Pay attention, children," Vicki sang. 
"There's far more where that came from."

"Roger," Elizabeth whispered.

David wailed, and flew to Carolyn, and they clutched at each other on the
couch.

My head still reeled from the thumping it had taken when Vicki had knocked me
out of her way.  And I was afraid.  I can admit that, because I've always been
a coward, haven't I?  Can there be any other explanation for the way I am
today?  For the things I've done, the choices I've made?

I wanted to run away.  I wanted to run away fast.  From Vicki.  From
Collinwood.  From the blasted remains of my family and my heart, from Barnabas
and Julia and Eliot and Christopher, wherever he was.  Just run somewhere and
drink and drink and drink until -

But I didn't.  

"Vicki," I said, and she turned her white and grinning face to me.  My lips
buzzed; my head felt huge and heavy.  "Please.  Don't do this thing."

"But I'm so good at it," she purred.  "Honestly.  I think I was meant for this
line of work.  I'm afraid the Collinses are just going to have to find
themselves a new governess.  I've got bigger and badder plans than that." She
turned to David and Carolyn, and they cringed back.  "Starting with you two."
She raised her hand.

"Vicki," I said, and licked my lips.  "I love you."

She froze.  She didn't turn to look at me, but I saw that her entire body,
twisted as it was by whatever the Leviathan power within her had done to it,
had tensed up, and quivered a little.  "No," she said, and her voice was
steady.  "You don't."

"I do.  Vicki, I have never loved anyone in this world as much as I have loved
you.  Not Jenny.  Not Beth.  There's only ever been you.  I love you, Victoria
Winters."

She turned to me, and her face was terrible.  It was twisted; her fanged teeth
gnashed; her black eyes blazed; and I knew in that minute that Vicki was dead,
and I was facing the monster that had killed her.  "No!" she screamed.  "No you
DON'T, no you DON'T, no you DON'T LOVE ME, you don't KNOW ME, you don't LOVE
me, you don't KNOW ME, how can you how can you how can you love me?  HOW CAN
YOU LOVE ME?" She threw out her hand, and I was slammed back against the far
wall of the drawing room.  My head struck the wall again, and the second time
proved to be the charm.  I slid gratefully, cowardly, into unconsciousness.

(Victoria)

She watches as Quentin slides down the wall of the drawing room, and her
nostrils still flare; his eyelids flutter, and then his head drops, and he
sags, slumped and unaware.  She smiles.  This is good.  How dare he try to
confuse her.  She is a great and powerful warrior, a sister of the dark, and
she will bring her wrath down in a cleansing sheet upon the world, so how dare
some mere MAN try to tell her that he loves her?

It's a joke.

Besides.  She knows that no one can really love her.  Not really.  How could
anyone love a disgusting thing like her?  A revolting, murderous creature?

Very good, my dear.  I see at last you've learned the truth.

Petofi.  She knows his voice even as she hears it.  Somehow that black bastard
has managed to escape the prison where she has secured him, and infiltrated her
brain!  

You know that isn't true.  I haven't been anywhere.  Not really.  Just safe at
home with my little girl.

That's impossible.

I'm gone, but not forgotten, dear heart.  I've only been waiting, biding my
time.  Until the fruit was ripe.  And ready to be picked.

Vicki raises her hands; black death crackles between her fingers.  "I'LL
DESTROY YOU!" she roars.  Carolyn and David and Elizabeth cringe again, but
Vicki isn't speaking to them.  She looks wildly around the room.

In his tiny room in her mind, Petofi laughs his soulless laugh.

Do that, and you destroy yourself.  I'm a part of you, my darling.  I've always
been here.  Always.  Insurance, you see.  Brilliant, wouldn't you say?

"NO!" Vicki shrieks.  The cold and the dark of the power within her is tearing
her apart.  She isn't like her father, she isn't - she never was - Petofi is
gone, she destroyed him ...

..  but the sweetness singing inside her, these great and magnificent powers
that she's going to use to end so much suffering in this world ..  isn't the
voice of that singing ...  doesn't it sound like -

"No," she moans, and her voice has stopped reverberating.  In fact, it sounds a
little like the Victoria Winters everyone has come to know and love.

On the floor, Quentin groans.

Vicki's black eyes dart to him.  She hears Petofi's barking laughter in her
mind, and she covers her face.  She is trembling now; doubts are creeping in
now; this isn't right, she thinks, and it's like waking up - Jeb is gone, true,
and that's horrible, and it's crushing, but you can't do this ...  you can't do
this to anyone else, you can't do this to yourself anymore -

But there's no going back, a part of her sobs, and she feels something hot and
wet on her cheeks, and she won't admit that they may be tears, because tears
come from weakness, and she is the most powerful being on this planet; there's
no going back from this, I've killed, I've destroyed, I killed my own flesh and
blood tonight, and I would've killed Quentin -

I will kill Quentin, the serpents in her mind hiss.  Petofi roars his laughter.

She is rocking, sobbing now.  Quentin is beside her suddenly, and she feels his
arm around her shoulder.  She looks at him through blurred vision; the black
eyes and the fanged teeth have disappeared.  She is Vicki Winters again, and
she's scared.  "I can't help myself, Quentin," she whispers to him; Carolyn and
Liz are weeping on the couch, and David is staring mutely at the spot where his
father met his end so horribly.  "I don't think I can stop."

"Yes you can," he whispers, and kisses her white hair.  "Yes you can, my
darling, you can, you can, we'll get through this together -"

"No," she says, and knocks him away with an energy bolt.  She feels his pain,
and cries out with it.  "Can't you see?  There's only a little bit left of me,
Quentin, and what little there is is already dying.  Soon there will be nothing
left.  Just the power.  And then nothing on this earth will be able to stop
me." Tears stream down her face.  "Don't you understand?  You have to stop me. 
You have to kill me.  Now.  While I'll still let you.  While there's still
time.  Kill me, Quentin.  Please.  Kill me, and end all this suffering.  End
all this ...  all this death."

"Vicki," Quentin says, and reaches for her hand, then pulls away at the last
second.  He drops his eyes and shudders helplessly.  "I can't," he moans, "aw
god, aw god, I just can't, I'm sorry Vicki, but I can't -"

Vicki groans aloud in frustration; black energy crackles in her hands.

"Then please," a cool and altogether pleasant voice says from behind them. 
Vicki blinks in shock.  "Allow me."

(Quentin)

The woman before us was Angelique ...  and not Angelique.  I had seen her only
a few hours before, but the woman before us had changed ...  drastically isn't
even the word.  Her hair and eyes were black, but her skin was hard and white
as marble ...  and she was covered in magical symbols.  I recognized some from
such arcane texts as the Necronomicon, but some I had never seen before ... 
and they moved.  They writhed across her skin like black dapples of light, as
if whatever composed them lived and was aware.  She wore a black gown that
trailed to the floor, and that too seemed depthless.  It sucked up all the
light in the room.  

She was smiling with black lips.

I watched as Vicki saw her and snarled like a cat, and her eyes - for a moment,
just a heartbreaking slip of time, they had been her eyes, the eyes of my
Vicki, soft and brown and doe-like - darkened once again to that inhuman black.
They had the same eyes, empty black pools.

"Cassandra Miranda Angelique," Vicki chanted, and bared her teeth, elongated
once again.  My heart sank.  I had my chance, and it was gone. Dust. I knew
then I would never see the Victoria Winters I loved again.

Because I'm weak. Because I'm a coward.

"Come to play?" Vicki continued, and smiled slyly.  

Angelique said nothing.  Her smile had vanished.  She seemed wholy
self-possessed, and a little bored.  She eyed Vicki with something that was
cool and empty, beyond even disdain.  It was as if she knew she didn't really
have to be here to do whatever it was she had come here to do; she had come
because she was going to enjoy herself.  Because she wanted to be here to see
it for herself.  Whatever it was.  My internal temperature plummeted several
degrees.

"That's all right," Vicki said.  "Playtime's over anyway." She flung out her
hand, and a fireball the size of my head flew from her fingertips.

Angelique held up one finger.  "Dissolutum," she said in that same calm voice. 
It was unnerving, I thought at the time, because the Angelique I had known had
always been so passionate, especially when it came to spellcasting.  Now she
sounded bored.

The fireball hesitated as it approached her, then burst apart in a shower of
sparks.  Harmless.  

Vicki's eyes narrowed.  "Cute," she purred.  "Very cute."

Angelique remained silent.  She merely stood, hands clasped in front of her,
head lifted high, as if waiting.  Patient.  Calm.

"Gone running back to the devil after all," Vicki said, and shook her white
head with mock sadness.  "Do you really think your Dark Spirit can stand
against me?  I sent him back to his Sheol with his tail between his legs a
million times; everytime he tried to rise it was I who beat him back.  How can
you possibly hope that his powers will even compare to mine?"

"I suppose I can't," Angelique said, and then said, "Condenso," and Vicki
snarled again, like an animal caught in a trap; I saw her struggling against
invisible bonds.

"This is impossible," Vicki growled.  "You can't hold me, no bonds can hold
me." She threw back her head and howled as she struggled, then screamed,
"Release me!"

Angelique approached her slowly, taking her time, hips swaying, black eyes
never leaving Vicki's.  She stood before her and stared at her solemnly.  

"This is for Sky Rumson, I suppose," Vicki said, and tossed her head.  "Do you
want me to apologize for killing him?  Are you that much of a fool?"

"Sky loved me," Angelique said softly.  "The first man who ever really did."

Vicki grated out her terrible laughter.  "You were always weak," she trilled. 
"Always losing your heart to some idiot man.  Look where it's got you,
Angelique.  Nothing ever really changes for you, does it?  You always knew just
the perfect revenge, even as far back as Barnabas Collins." Vicki giggled. 
"Have I touched you?  Don't you just hate me right about now?"

Angelique seemed to consider this.  Then she lifted her finger again and
intoned, "Incendire."

Vicki erupted into flames.  She threw her head back and shrieked, but it was
laughter she screamed.  My heart slammed painfully into my throat; I leaped to
my feet, but I found I couldn't move.  Angelique was studying me with those
expressionless black eyes.  And I realized something with a nasty shock.  Not
only had she known what I was going to do before I did it, she had stopped me
without moving a muscle, without uttering so much as a single incantation. 
Which meant that everything she used to spar against Vicki was only for show. 
Purely for show.

Vicki didn't stand a chance against her.  And there was nothing I could do.

The flames began to die away, and as they did, something began to flicker
before Vicki.  My stomach flip-flopped again as the spirit of Count Andreas
Petofi began to gather himself together to appear in the room.  I didn't
remember exactly right, but it seemed to me that, at one time, Petofi had taken
over my body again and used it to kill Julia Hoffman and take over Collinwood,
just as he had wanted to do the first time he stole my body in 1897.  Vicki and
Barnabas' trip to the past had undone all that lunacy, of course, but it was
still a nasty shock to see the repulsive bastard again.

Death had not done much good for Petofi.  His skin - what I could see, since he
was still mostly transparent, and flickered in and out like a bad hologram -
was the color of cottage cheese, and was just as lumpy.  His eyes swirled
behind the spirit of his spectacles.  "Miranda," he said thickly, through what
sounded like a throat clotted with seaweed.  "I see you've grown in stature
since last we met.  I bested you then too, my girl.  What makes you think that
this time will be any different?" He reached forward, his Hand glowing
brightly, and as he neared Angelique I saw with horror that he was becoming
more solid, more there.  But Angelique didn't move.  This, too, seemed
inevitable.

But as the Count's Hand reached her, I saw it hesitate for a moment ...  but a
moment was all it took.  His face took on an expression of confusion, and then
terror, and then pain.  His arm solidified, and the rest of him followed suit
quickly.  And as he became more real, more alive, I saw that he was also ... 
human.  Angelique did nothing.  She stood before him, a man she had rendered
flesh and helpless.  "Isn't this what you wanted, Excellency?  Always?" she
asked softly, leaning forward a little to speak into his ear.  He tried to back
away from her, and stumbled over his own feet.  "Isn't this it?"

"Get up!" Vicki shrieked.  "Get up and fight her, you bastard, fight her!  You
bested her before; I brought you back so you could fight her; so FIGHT HER!"

"Too late," Angelique said, with a sad shake of her raven hair.

The Count was decomposing.  It happened so quickly that at first I thought I
was imagining it.  His skin began to run and dribble in a white tide until it
sloughed right off his bones.  His eyes grew wider, and I realized that it was
the sockets growing; a moment later and his eyes fell in.  He opened his mouth
to scream, and the oral cavity grew and grew; the teeth fell apart like candy
corn; his curly hair began to drift away; his entire skull was swallowed by
that enormous maw; a moment later and only his clothes remained.  In a second
those too had disappeared.

Vicki's face was twisted with rage.  "This ...  cannot ...  BE," she growled,
then shrieked, "THIS CANNOT BE!" The entire house shook with her wrath.

"You took Sky away from me," Angelique said.  Her voice was no louder than a
whisper, but I heard it clearly; it was as if the words were etched on my
brain, and suddenly I saw it; I saw it, as she must have; the images of Sky
being drained of his powers and his lifeforce by the parasite before us were
stamped indelibly on my brain forever, just as they were on Angelique's.  I
felt her pain, her loss, her rage, and then the coldness that had descended
over her like a comforting mantle.  Tears burned in my eyes, and across the
room I saw Elizabeth, holding Carolyn and David, and they were weeping too. 
Quietly.  I knew that they saw what I was seeing.

Vicki paused, suddenly confused.  She threw out her hand; the black energy
zinged forward, and fell apart into nothing halfway to Angelique.  Angelique
took a step forward.  Her hands had clenched into fists.  Her eyes had widened,
and they were rimmed with hellfire.  The temperature of the room began to
plummet, but roses had bloomed in the white deadness of the witch's face.  

Vicki began to back away.  "No," she said, panting like a dog, "no, no, no no
fair no fair no no get away no fair -" She began throwing both hands in
Angelique's direction like a child using his fingers as pistols, and blackness
leaped from her fingertips, but it all fell apart harmlessly.  She was
screaming nonsensically by the time she reached the wall, and still Angelique
came on.  Slowly.  Deliberately.  Inevitably.

I couldn't move.  I couldn't help her.  I maintain that to this day.

There was nothing I could do to prevent the final destruction of Victoria
Winters.

(Barnabas)

"We may be too late, Julia," I told her as we rushed up the drive to
Collinwood.  I saw immediately that the glass had been shattered in every
window in the house; the only lights that burned were those in the drawing
room.  I knew that the battle was taking place in that room, and I knew that it
was still going on; Vicki's slow drain of my own powers was still continuing, a
constant process, a gradual whittling.

Julia could feel it too.  Her connection, I thought, to the Leviathans.  It
must be, even though their influence had gone.

"We have to help them, Barnabas," Julia said grimly.  I was startled by her
absolute attitude reversal regarding Angelique.  The woman had tried to kill
her ...  but then again, hadn't I?  Julia and Angelique had come to terms with
each other while dealing with my own descent back into the darkness.  Perhaps
that was why she wanted to help her so badly.

I loved her in that moment, her hair a dark crimson beneath the red light of
the moon, her eyes narrowed and determined, like those of a jungle cat, her
mouth a trembling bow.  I loved her as I never had before ..

..  and then, within the house, I heard an inhuman voice wail, "THIS CANNOT
BE!"

Julia's eyes widened.  "It's Victoria," she said grimly, and seized my hand,
pulling me towards the house.  "Come on."

(Julia)

We entered the drawing room together, Barnabas and I, just in time to see
Angelique advancing on Vicki.  I was startled and sickened by the change in the
former governess since the last time I had seen her.  She seemed to have ... 
to have elongated somehow, as if her body had stretched and thinned, like
taffy.  Her hands were black claws, and her hair was a white hag's bloom on her
head.  Angelique, meanwhile, never faltered.  She moved forward slowly and
deliberately, inexorably perhaps.  I was terrified.

Vicki was babbling, and suddenly I was assailed with a clear vision of Sky
Rumson's death.  Tears burned in my eyes, and a sob was wrenched out of me. 
Beside me, Barnabas' eyes leaked scarlet tears.

"Do you see?" Angelique said.  "I think you should." More images cascaded over
us; Sky taking Angelique's hand in a tiny bistro with brick walls as he slid a
ring onto her finger; Angelique in a shimmery white dress, looking like a fairy
princess as a justice of the peace pronounced them man and wife; Sky giving her
a puppy; Sky kissing her; rowing; walking; laughing; kissing; embracing; the
warmth in their love for each other flowed over us -

- and dissipated as it was jerked away, and I cried out again, with loss this
time, a profound and heartwrenching loss, and I felt it as she had.  Sky had
loved her.  Wholy.  Without question or compromise or condition.  And that love
was gone now.  Forever.

How would I feel if someone ever took Barnabas away?

I hated Vicki at that moment, and didn't have time to feel shame.  Shame came
later.

Angelique's face was impassive beneath the magical symbols that crawled across
it like living ink.  Vicki was twisting and snarling before her and beating at
her own blackened eyes with twisted fists.  "No," she wailed, "I don't want to,
I don't, I don't want to know -"

"It's too late," Angelique said, and I suddenly felt her fury, beneath the
cold, beneath the magic and the power, there was her fury.  Even our own sun
paled into insignificance beside it.  Her entire body was knotted with that
awful fury.  I could feel her powers gathering and coalescing.  "It's all just
nothing, isn't it?  Don't you believe that, Victoria Winters?" Her eyes glowed
a hot red, and Vicki's words died in her mouth.  "Because I do.

"And I'm going to show you nothing."

(Barnabas)

There was nothing I could do to stop it.

(Julia)

There was nothing I could do.

(Quentin)

I did nothing to stop it.

(Barnabas)

But I felt it the moment before it happened.  Angelique didn't move.  Her eyes
widened, if possible, hellish pits of flame and an empty charred blackness; her
black lips writhed against her teeth; Victoria Winters threw back her head in a
scream -

- and a living tide of beetles flowed out of her mouth.  Black beetles, as
opalescent and shining as Angelique's eyes.  The fruit of her power.  Darkness
coalesced.  They poured out of Vicki's mouth in an unending flow, chittering
and clacking and popping as they struck the floor and were crushed.  I heard
Julia groaning beside me; on the floor, Quentin retched helplessly.

Vicki was trying to scream.

And the beetles began to eat her.

They devoured her lips.  They gnawed at her face.  They ate her eyes.  She held
up her hands and they had become alive with black serpents, their gaping mouths
ringed with tiny serrated fangs that gnashed as they struck Vicki over and over
again.

She had become a pillar of living darkness, alive with the sounds of her
destruction.

Angelique watched.  Her face was a perfect study in black and white.  Marble. 
She was doing this effortlessly.  She didn't even have to move.

The floor gave a tremendous heave beneath us and opened up at Vicki's feet, but
I didn't really believe anything existed of Victoria Winters anymore.  The
floor cracked open, spewing enormous chunks of stone and black earth, and we
were instantly assailed with a charnel smell, cold and moldery and putrid.  The
living curtain of snakes and insects that had devoured Victoria Winters held
for an instant longer, and then collapsed into the gaping maw of the earth. 
She had been swallowed whole by the darkness.  For a moment longer I caught a
glimpse of the light shining off those glittering obscenities as they still
clicked and chittered.  Then the ground trembled again, and the wound in the
floor healed, as if it had never been rent apart.

And for the next half second there was silence.

Quentin split it in a choked wail of utter grief.  I would have joined him, but
I felt paralyzed with disgust and horror and exhaustion, and a sudden
traitorous relief.  It was over.  The threat of the Leviathans had passed. 
Petofi had been destroyed forever.  It was all done.

And then I looked at Angelique ...  and the heart that stood still in my chest
was rimed over with ice.

(Angelique)

She felt nothing.  This was odd.  She was used to triumph, to the rush of
victory, blood in her face, hot and beaming, nearly hysterical with her
success.

Now she was only ...  cold.

Her darkened eyes flicked around the room.  Elizabeth and Carolyn and David,
crowded together like pale sheep on the sofa ...  did they recognize her?  Did
they see Cassandra Collins, and now know the truth?  Angelique found she didn't
terribly care.  They were nothing.  Useless.  Not worth ...  not worth
anything.  

And Barnabas.  He was looking at her in a way he never had before.  He had
hated her for years, and now ...  this horror.  This repulsion.  Was it because
of what she had done?  He didn't understand.  She found she didn't care about
that very much either.  He didn't matter either.  She didn't love him; had she
at one point?  Didn't matter.  She didn't love him anymore.  He was worthless
too; she could crush him; should crush him -

Julia Hoffman.  Fragile.  Human.  Looking at her with disappointment in her
eyes.  Screw her.

And Quentin.  Sobbing on the floor like a little girl.  All that potential once
upon a time, such a creative, chaotic spirit, reduced to this.  To weeping for
his lost ladylove.

They were pathetic.  She should destroy them all.  She should -

(Julia)

I don't know what she felt as her eyes ranged over us; I can only guess.  My
heart hurt for her.  It wasn't only because of the scenes she'd forced us to
endure or the feelings she'd forced us to share with her.  It went deeper than
that.  I felt a ...  a kinship with her, more than I ever cared to admit to
myself before tonight.

But now a very dear friend of mine was dead.  A woman who had saved my life -
all our lives - once upon a time was gone, and I was looking at the woman ... 
the creature ...  who had murdered her.

And all I could feel was hurt.  And a sadness that went much deeper than my
heart.

Angelique's face was cold and completely devoid of any emotion, none the least
of which was pity.  She seemed absolutely frozen in place, except for her eyes,
which swept over us almost imperially.

Then her eyes narrowed, and I saw her hands clench into fists.  The temperature
around us dropped, and I could suddenly hear my heart pounding in my ears, and
my head swam with a tide of nausea and dizziness.  Something was going to
happen; the darkness inside her was too much; she would destroy us all -
Barnabas ...  Barnabas ...

And then it passed, and the world righted itself again.  Angelique's eyes were
wide with dismay, and for a moment I fancied I saw the blue behind the
darkness, still there ...  still reachable.

She held out one hand to us, why I'll never know -

And then she disappeared.  She simply wasn't there anymore.  She left behind
only a smell of sulfur in her wake.

I wondered if we would ever see her again.  If she was done with us, or, having
saved us, she would disappear to grieve for Sky.  I wondered if she were
capable of grieving.

The answers to those questions would have to wait.  I would have to attend to
Quentin, Elizabeth, Carolyn, and David ...  and then would be more questions. 
I had learned a long time ago that there would always be more questions.  I
wasn't sure, this time, if I was prepared to answer them.

(Victoria Winters)

But perhaps not all is lost.  Perhaps there is still hope, another chance. 
Maybe things can still be different some day.  She - whatever there is left of
her, if anything - truly believes this.  There is a flash of light at the very
edge of Widow's Hill, a spark, and then the spark splits into two, like glowing
eyes that stare down at the mansion far away, and then out over the sea; there
has been so much death, but it is over for now.  And she can rest.  At last she
can finally rest in peace.

Then there is only the wind, and the endless crashing of the waves on the rocks
below.


"My name is Victoria Winters.  My journey is beginning.  A journey that I hope
will open the doors of life to me and link my past with my future.  A journey
that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea, high
atop Widow's Hill ...  to a house called Collinwood.  A world I've never known,
with people I've never met ...  people who tonight are still only shadows in my
mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomorrows."


To Be Continued ...