B9/Ch13: END OF AN ERA

Jacqueline surprises Verity 

On a cool evening, Jacqueline made it over to Welshport Island from Goode Island just before she began her night-shift at Churchill Green Asylum where she could be near Johnathon. But the condemned witch had one stop to make: The Braga family home. 

Her mission was to confront Verity on the horrible state of Mary's health. As broken as their coven was, Jacqueline realized she could not sit back and watch Mary suffer this way, not after everything they'd all been through during the devastating witch trials, even though Jacqueline had took the brunt of the blame for that — rightfully so. 

Nevertheless, Jacqueline recognized that Verity had gone too far to keep her new life secret.

The warmth of a home, the love of a man, the dependence of loving children was like a drug to Verity. She never imagined just how happy she would be living Mary's life. Although there were bumps along the way, Verity felt secure in her scheme.

Verity walked into Caleb's nursery, a small room of pale blue with a single window that had it's drapes drawn. She had checked on the boy and realized it was time for his feeding. She picked him up and walked him to the rocking chair where she removed her breast. 

The two had not exactly bonded, as she would hope, and Caleb would not nurse. She tried and tried but the boy would not nurse. This wasn’t the first time. The baby in fact never nursed and in Verity’s frustrations she’d often end up giving him a milk and flour formula in hopes no one would notice.

As Verity continued to try to get the baby to nurse from her breast she suddenly felt the eyes of someone watching her. It was a heaviness on her, the weight of someone who knew her secret, knew the truth was watching her with anger from the darkened shadows of the baby’s nursery.

Then like the came the clicks. 

A silhouette of a woman suddenly appeared in the blackness of the room— Jacqueline — snapping her fingers awakening candles all around Verity and the baby as they were still seated in the rocking chair. Verity gasped, shocked to see Jacqueline, and quickly put the baby back in his crib and buttoned the top of her dress.

"What are you doing here?" Verity asked in a panic. "What do you want?" 

"You've certainly settled in quite well in this role, haven't you, flambeau." Jacqueline said, jokingly using the French word torch a nod to Verity's time tied a burning stake. “Too bad all that milk has gone sour.” 

"Jacqueline, get out." 

"No. Not until you hear what I have to tell you about -- its Mary." Jacqueline said. "She is ill Verity, she's very ill. I don't know what her illness is as you've been very clever to write a ring of salt around the pit you've placed her in, but I can see with my own eyes just how bad things are. Are your intentions to kill her?" 

"What? NO! I wouldn't kill her. She's ... my sister. I -- that's not what I want to do." Verity admitted.

"Then? How long do you think she'll live at the bottom of pit? You have to end this."

Verity's concerned face quickly changed to a frozen expression of mistrust. "End it? Why would I end it? Why would you want me to end it? There's no love loss between you and my sister. After all you had her arrested for witchcraft. I'm only here because of all of your actions." Verty reminded.

"And I've been thoroughly punished. But what you are doing out there will only come back to haunt us all. You must hep her."

"Still..." Verity answered with suspicion. 

"Verity, I have nothing to gain from asking you to help Mary. The witch council was very clear when they revoked most of my powers. There's nothing I want from her -- aside from her life being spared. Even I don't want to see her die -- not anymore. Not after everything I've lost and she's lost. I just isn't worth it." Jacqueline admitted.

"That's an interesting change of tune. The once confident and defiant Sister of Highgrove has seen the light of good?" Verity replied, suspiciously still.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes.

"The only real reason you'd risk it all by being seen in Welshport as yourself is if there was something advantageous in Mary return to her life and for me to -- what? -- vanish into the oblivion? It's not going to happen Jacqueline, I've seen what it's like to have a life outside in the real world and its wonderful. Every emotion, every sensation, every touch and hug and kiss and -- I tell you, the moments spent with Filipe alone together as husband and wife. I'll never give that up." 

"You're in love with him; you've really fallen in love with him." Jacqueline replied in shock, not seeing that that was a possibility.  "Well, you can't be in love with him. You have to stop. You have to help your sister in that hole you left her in so she doesn't die." 

Verity turned away, almost as if to hide her face with embarrassment at the realization that she was really in love with Filipe. It was true. Jacqueline didn't need to look her in the eye to know it. A woman who had loved as hard as Jacqueline had Sebastian knew it when she saw it others. It was an animalistic glare, the eyes of someone who could only see themselves with that person and no one else. Nothing in the world would stop the power of obsession-- it was the hurricane of all emotions, and Verity was now square in that storm herself. Not Jacqueline, or Mary's alleged illness could take Verity out of her new life.

The imposter Mary stared at the family photo sitting in front of her on a dresser while Jacqueline continued to beg her to help her twin Mary. The photo was of Filipe and the ream Mary, and their children: Charlotte, Caleb and even Morgan who had become a sort of surrogate son. Even though it was Mary in the photo Verity saw herself, they shared a face after all. Jacqueline's voice suddenly cut through and she reached for Verity's arm and yanked her around so that they'd face each other.

"You have to stop!" Jacqueline shouted. 

Verity freed her arm and crossed passed Jacqueline, taking the family photo with her. 

"Or what? You'll expose me? If I'm exposed -- you will be too! Everyone will know what you did to Mary, everyone will know how you tried to have her killed -- burned as a witch and everyone will know that if it wasn't for me, Mary would be dead and gone. My life saved hers." 

"But now her life is in danger. Don't you see? This is a test; this must be a test by the witch council. They've given you an obstacle and you're failing!! You're allowing your blood sister, and coven sister, to suffer. Look what they did to me when they punished me for getting Mary and the others tangled up in trials. I was sanctioned. They bound me, and I've yet to receive my full powers back. Is that what you want when they eventually discover you just let Mary rot in that hole with nothing more than scraps of food and a lamp?" Jacqueline said, hoping to appeal to Verity's human side. 

"Mary won't die." Verity replied, holding the photo tightly to her chest. 

Jacqueline could say no more. She had to be over at Churchill Green shortly for her shift. "Just remember this Verity, the witch council -- they watch and they wait. If Mary dies that is a mistake that they haunt you, the council will see to that." 

With those last words Jacqueline snapped her fingers twice then vanished into thin air leaving Verity shaken. 

The imposter paced her room. She could still smell Filipe's aftershave. It filled her lungs like the powerful smell of fresh jasmine blossoms engulfing her whole body. It reminded her of his body. His strong shoulders. His big arms and how he carried her to bed and made love to her and how deeply he'd kiss her on areas of her body she didn't know a man could kiss. His tongue, the taste of her all over him. It was passion, and it was erotic and she could not give that up. 

The thought of losing that intimacy with him and free Mary seemed life ending. She thought of how she may never find what she had with Filipe ever again. 

"No." she whispered to herself as she sat on the bed. "She'll never come home." 

Verity knew now that not only was Mary's existence a threat to her own happiness -- but now so was Jacqueline Gray. Perhaps both of her coven sisters needed to be gone-- for good. 

****

Aurora comes to and meets Viktor Holten 

Dawn. The sun started to rise over the dark blue sea near Evie's Bellmore Beach house. The light peeked through the front parlor; its white walls awash in the glow of the early morning. Aurora stirred on the floor, her face turned to the right protected from the light by a half-closed drape in the window. 

Her neck was sore, her head buzzing with the blow it received when she hit the floor. 

Although the sun was coming up, the room still had the slight shadow of the night in it's recesses. Her eyes could not make out much just yet, as they were not only opening for the first time in over 12 hours but recovering from Caspian's violet attack. 

Sitting across from her smoking a cigarette, was Caspian himself, his feet resting on Eden Sydney's unconscious body, himself a victim of an ambush by Caspian's alter ego Viktor Holten. 

Aurora, groggy and sore, mustered the strength to stand and looked around the room that had been torn about in the two fights. 

"I'd lay back down if I were you." Caspian said. His voice cold and vacant of any emotion other than hate. 

"What have you done?" She asked, finally spotting Eden under Caspian's feet as if the Barrister was some sort of human ottoman. 

"What have I done? Not enough!" Caspian answered. "I've finally come to my senses, Aurora, finally. And please stop calling me by that ridiculous name. Caspian.  That was the name the creature gave me.” He said with a sudden sinister grin slicing across his face. “You remember the creature, don’t you? How it loved you one night in your bed."  

Aurora felt sick, he was taunting her with the night the possessed Caspian tricked her into sleeping with him. She stepped back, her long dress caught under her heel and she fell slightly but caught herself on the adjacent sofa. 

"Careful now, you wouldn't want to bump your head. Again!"

"I don't understand what's happened to you, you've gone... mad? You’re not… my god, are you what you were before?" Aurora questioned, believing the demonic creature had returned. 

" I can see where you'd be confused.” Said again, the crooked grin still marking his face. “No, I’m not the creature again. You see, this is who I've always been. I am Viktor Holten. The man, in the flesh. The very, very hungry flesh of a man who wants only to hurt. It's sick isn't it? Why would I want to hurt anyone, you may ask. Well it stems from decades and decades of life hitting me in the face and taking what it wanted and never ever giving back. Life is not kind, Aurora, not in the slightest. Now I pay it back." Viktor began as he slowly made his way towards Aurora. 

"Caspian, or Viktor, or whomever you are, I know you are not this way, this isn't who you are!" She said, walking backwards closer to the front door. Her eyes darting back and forth from her captor and Eden still on the floor but slowly waking up.

"You don't know me, Aurora. You never did. You knew Caspian." Viktor mocked. "The man with no background, with no family, with no history. Unfortunately for you all of what he was, was pretend. He's gone now. Gone for good. The headaches took care of that. The head trauma I sustained in the caves, well that started the process. I've come back to my body, my mind, MY LIFE!" Viktor yelled.

"What do you want?" She wondered, Eden slowly still waking.

Viktor stopped his slow walk to Aurora, she stopped too. It was a strange dance one step, two step, yet their bodies did not touch. He was watching her, any flinch of her body towards the door and he knew he could grab her and break her neck. There was nothing left for him to do but that. He had zero reasons for keeping her alive. 

His whole life had come to this. The man that was Viktor lived a dark history. He was brought to America from Denmark in hopes to make money, millions and millions of dollars he was promised but the man he partnered with in their shipping business lied, cheated and stole every dollar of invested money. Viktor began to lose his mind, everything crumbled in front of him including his wife Lina who'd began an affair. Danielle, Viktor and Lina's daughter, had been away at school, none of this known to her. 

Viktor's hate for this fate, his desire to destroy his cheating wife and business partner led to the entrance of the dark figure Eliza Goode had summoned years ago. The creature, Eliza called the Hunter, found the hatful soul of Viktor, entered it and reclaimed the body -- as the host -- and named himself Caspian Casador. 

Now he'd finally returned to his rightful place -- in his own body and own state of mind thanks to the head trauma he had suffered at the caves months ago when the town had taken the Lords hostage and assaulted him there. 

Viktor stared at Aurora, her heart pounding in her chest "What do I want?" he repeated. 

Aurora didn't answer she only stared at him as a cold chill ran up her spine. 

"I want to send you back to your husband Richard. TO HELL!" 

In a split second, the hateful Viktor, his heart full of rage and detest for human life, lunged at Aurora, she screamed closed her eyes and turned away as if to block what was about to happen to her but then nothing happened. 

She remained standing.

When she opened her eyes again, Eden had grabbed Viktor, they were rolling around on the floor. Fists flying, grunts, punches, blood splattering from Viktor's mouth. The two men, equal in height and body mass, once again became entangled in blows. 

Aurora screamed and ran to the other side of the room. She grabbed a heavy silver candles stick and rushed behind Viktor who turned, swatted it out of her hand and landed a punch to her face. Aurora went flying to the floor and Eden then leaped onto Viktor bringing him down as well.

They continued to fight, and rip at each other's clothes. Aurora got up, her lip plump from Viktor's giant hand hitting her. She rushed to the candles stick and when she turned back around the men were standing facing each other with their arms open as if they were ready to hug. Viktor's face bruised on one side, Eden's eye swollen from a blow. 

"You're quite a formattable beast, Barrister Sydney." Viktor said, Eden said nothing.

"Aurora, find a telephone and call Justin Ryan, tell him what's happened here." Eden ordered.

Viktor only released a deep chuckle, unafraid of anyone. There was nothing Constable Ryan could do to save any of them. 

The man once possessed by a demon had himself been like a demon in human form. A man who allowed powers of darkness to make him do even more horrible things. He was a lost soul and only felt hate and disdain for anyone around him. Lina, his former wife, died with this on her mind. The guilt and pain of what she had done. His business partner was never heard from again, and when Danielle came back to Welshport to handle her mother's will assuming Viktor was dead too, she never dreamed he was the man named Caspian.

Viktor wanted to cause pain, suffering, like he had been forced to suffer in. There was no way out for him. His future was locked in the destiny he lived in way before the demon took over.

"Nothing will stop me from fulfilling what I have to." Viktor said, then he rushed Eden.

The men growled like two wild animals in the forest, pawing and beating each other with their first. Viktor pushed Eden back. The two men fell over the larger sofa that went backwards and both fell through the front window of the parlor. 

Their bodies blasted through wood and glass; Aurora screamed and covered her face. When the shards quieted on the floor and only the loud ocean waves could be heard in the new warming sun, Aurora rushed over and saw that only Eden was on the porch suffering from minor cuts.

Viktor had vanished into the morning.

"Eden! EDEN! Are you alright???" Aurora said, coming to his aide.

"Yes, yes. I'm fine. I just need some bandages." He said gripping a cut to his hand. 

"Come with me." Aurora said, hurrying him back into the house. 

"We have to get out of here and over to Justin, now! This man is going to kill someone today!" 

With those words it finally sunk into reality to Aurora, the man she once knew as Caspian, a man she was slowly beginning to be more and more fond of, was no more. 

The man named Viktor was on the loose and she could have easily been one more of his victims. Flashes of their past flooded her mind. How his possession was more a real version of who he was than the man that came after. The evil plots, the coercion, the twisted manipulations and sinister mind games were all ammunition for the man she thought she was falling in love with.

A dangerous man, no longer hidden behind the lore of the creature that once over-took his body and mind, was on the loose and only Aurora and Eden could help stop it.
 

****

Celeste meets with Julian 

Around the same time that afternoon, Celeste DeViana-Lord arrived at Churchill Green Asylum to an appointment Dr. Julian Pascal had arranged for her. She was there not as a patient of his but as a family observer for her brother Johnathon who had suffered a set-back in his mental health care only weeks ago when Celeste arranged for him to remain at the asylum a bit longer. 

Celeste, dressed in a beautiful plumb dress with leather gloves and her hair up in dark curls, needed the time away from Tirymor, certainly to care for her ailing brother, but also to keep her own mind free of the constant revolving chaos of her husband Jacob and his family. 

She entered a small room inside the hospital. It was warmly painted with windows towards that back that looked over a large garden. There was a sofa, almost the same color as Celeste's dress, that faced a large window that looked into another room just on the other side of the wall. In that room, a single comfy chair, a large sofa, a bookshelf and lamp. There was a faireplace, it looked like a parlor of some sort with a bay window directly across from Celeste's view. 

Dr. Pascal entered Celeste's room, his smile brightened up the already warm room, he closed the door behind him quietly and walked over to Celeste. She began to stand to green him but he motioned for her to sit back down.

"No need to stand, please Mrs. Lord. Thank you for coming at such short notice." Julian said.

"Of course!" Celeste answered excitedly, then quickly feeling foolish for it, as it wasn't a happy occasion. "I'll do anything to help my brother get back on his feet." She added.

"I was hoping you'd say that. As you can see, we are looking directly into the room next to us. This is where Johnathin and I will have our session." He explained.

"Oh, when you asked me to come to one of his sessions, I assumed because you wanted me to participate. What exactly will I need to do?" 

"Well, you will participate but in a way that isn't as conventional as you may think. You see, I need to understand more about Johnathon's psyche. I need to understand what and who he is; where he came from. He's been very good at holding back. I can't help him if he's dishonest or withholding information about his world that might help me get to the bottom of what exactly has turned him to such drastic mental breakdowns."

Celeste gulped. She knew what had done this to her brother. The shock that he was the son of Albert Lord, not of Paulo DeViana, the horror of discovering Sebastian's secret, Celeste asking him to help rid them all of Sebastian, the marriage to a woman who betrayed their family and sent an angry town with weapons to kill them all, the loss of a child before it was born.  

"We all have our ghosts, doctor, I'm sure you can understand why someone wouldn't want to reveal them all. It's too painful." Celeste replied. 

Julian nodded, "Yes. Well, think of me as the ghost hunter." He said, reaching for her hand and squeezing it.

That quick feeling of affection or attention from such a handsome man sent a jolt up Celeste's arm and into her heart. She felt her hand quickly pull away from him like he was made of fire and her skin felt the touch of the flame. He felt it too but like two teenagers in a forbidden romance they quickly gathered their wits and focused again on Johnathon's care.

"In just a minute, nurse Isabel will bring in Johnathon and we'll begin his session. I just want you to listen and see if you can pinpoint places that he is holding back truth. That's all. Once I know where those fractures are in his story I can better help drill down a way to help him through it." Dr. Pascal explained.

Celeste smiled politely and Pascal exited her room. She didn't want to help him in truth; Johnathon's mental health issues were caused by deeply strange issues within the family that she wasn't sure any of the Lords wanted out in the universe again. The witch trial had caused too much trouble already. But she sat there, clasped her hands over her lap, and hoped Johnathon would remain tight-lipped.

Nurse Isabel, Jacqueline in her transformed self, walked her estranged husband down the long hallway towards the room where Dr. Pascal was waiting. They were arm in arm -- Jacqueline's mind was on Verity and Mary. 

"You haven't said much since you came to get me." Johnathon said, dressed in his pale blue hospital clothes. "I've missed you."

"I've been off work Johnny. You know that if I'm able to continue to come see you looking like this I have to keep a regular schedule so no one suspects. I'm sorry. I do wish we could get out of here soon." She whispered.

"My sister has control of my life right now. I don't know how to get out from under it." 

"Don't worry, I'll figure out a way." Jacqueline replied. "Listen, when you get in there do your very best to answer Pascal's questions but beware ...he's fishing for information. We can't let him know everything." 

"What kind of information?" Johnathon asked.

"Anything to help figure out what got you here, do you understand?"

Johnathon searched his mind; it didn't take long for him to remember his breakdown. The demise of his marriage to the very woman he was talking to, the horror of realizing what Sebastian truly was and the loss of the child Jacqueline was carrying that he believed was his. All of that compounded with the sense he would never truly be a member of the Lord family despite who his biological father was.  

"I'll do my best."

Jacqueline, as Isabel, smiled, looked around and saw no one was around as they got to the door of the room Pascal was waiting in. Feeling free to do so, she kissed her husband on the cheek and squeezed him tight.

"Careful." She whispered again. 

Johnathon nodded and entered the room where Pascal was waiting patiently with a note book. 

"Johnathon, so good to see you. Please come in, make yourself comfortable."

Johnathon took a deep breath in and noticed the mirror on the wall. It was oddly shaped, rectangular still, but there was an oddness he could not pint point. He entered and sat and Celeste watched from the other side with bated breath at what this hypnosis would reveal. 

 

****

Jacob & Charlotte reunite at Rebecca’s hearing 

Elsewhere in town as the sun filtered through an afternoon sky of high clouds and a blustery cold wind off the Atlantic, the courthouse near Village Hall began filling in an impromptu hearing regarding Rebecca Lord-Casador's fate. 

Jacob entered alone. He walked towards the front of the courtroom on the side of the Assistant Barrister representing the state of Maine. Jacob calmly chatted up the AB, as she fiddled through the papers Barrister Eden Sydney had written up for the hearing and had not shown up for.

Charlotte entered through a side door that came from a corridor that led out to a small park. She quickly spotted her father Jacob and rushed over to him just as her uncle Christopher and his fiancée Genevieve entered with Morgan with a group of others through the back of the court. It was a strange and uncomfortable courthouse family reunion to hear what would happen to their very own matriarch.

Jacob turned from his chat with the AB and smiled at his daughter whom he hadn't set eyes on in weeks.

"Well, good of you to show up." He said to Charlotte. "How's your new life as a Braga." 

Charlotte clocked his jealousy as she had been living with her mother Mary and stepfather Filipe Braga. The soon to be 15-year-old paid no attention and didn't take his bait. 

"Why are you sitting on this side?" She asked him.

"What do you mean?" He replied, as Chris, Genevieve and Morgan sat on the side of the defense. 

"The family usually sits with the defendant. Grandmother will be of there." Charlotte noted.

Jacob arched a brow and sat his daughter down next to him in the old wooden Courthouse bench that oddly resembled a church pew.

"Charlotte do you know what your grandmother was accused of?" He asked in a whisper.

Charlotte nodded, as Baxter Murphy, Danielle Holten and Nikolas Jordan entered room with Lear who rushed up to the front desk. 

Charlotte and Lear made eye contact as she replied "Yes. I've read the papers."

"So then why would I sit with that side? We have to protect our family's image, our business. There is millions of dollars in play here. Your grandmother's antics has battered our company and us; I have to do damage control. Seeing me on the opposite side shows that the family doesn't coopt what she did." Jacob replied in an honest, yet cold reply.

"But she's your mother. You have to support her." Charlotte answered.

"You want me, the co-head of a company that will define your own financial future to sit behind a confessed murder?" 

Charlotte sat there stone faced, she sat there staring into the face of a murderer and an attempted murder himself and the hypocrisy felt choking. She felt her blood pressure rise and it was as if all her skin's pores open up with the sickness of Jacob's betrayal of Rebecca. 

"I, I can't believe you'd say that." She replied. "But I'm glad you did. I should have thought twice before I assumed you'd rally behind your own family. But you'd rather sink them, shoot them, and strangle them any way you can. Just as long as you get ahead. I feel so sorry for you daddy." 

Charlotte got up from the courthouse bench and sat next to Morgan. He looked over at her sympathetically and grabbed her hand. She squeezed it tightly as a bailiff walked Rebecca into the courthouse. 

Rebecca, her hands clasped in shiny silver handcuffs, looked around the filling room. Her two sons on either side of it. Her granddaughter stood up slightly so that Rebecca could see she was there too just before the bailiff turned Rebecca around to face the front of the courtroom.

"Where's my mother?" Nik wondered. 

Danielle looked around the room, no sign of Aurora. 

"She said she'd be here too." Nik added.

"My father isn't here either." Danielle said of Caspian. "I would have assumed they'd both come, being that Rebecca is his ex-wife and all." 

"Maybe it was too much for him to come. Especially if he's suffering from headaches."

Danielle nodded in agreement. That had to be it, she said to herself. 

"She looks --- ten years older." Christopher said of his mother.

"She's been through a lot, honey, anyone would seem aged." Genevieve replied.

"I hate all of this." Chris added. "If I could change it all I would. I would have never ever gone away and dealt with Jacob myself all those years ago. It wouldn't have come to this." Chris whispered.

"You don't know that." Genevieve replied. "We're here now because of what she did not what you didn't do. Chris she's confessed to it all. We have to remember that." 

Chris nodded and reached for her hand which Genevieve took happily and held. 

"ALL RISE!" The Bailiff announced. 

"Here we go." Reporter Baxter Murphy said to Nik as he grabbed his pen and paper notes. Nik rolled his eyes.

"The Honorable Judge Coleman Banning presiding." 

Rebecca took a deep breath. Her mind filling with what she had done. What she had confessed to and worst of all -- poor Asha Hoffman who's life was gone. 

As the Judge read the situation of the case, Dr. Peter Ward and his wife Laurel entered quietly into the courtroom. Dr. Ward had a double stake in the hearing. It was at his hospital that Rebecca committed her crime and he and Laurel had been friends with Rebecca and Albert for decades.

The judge rattled through the precordial and formal notes in the case in front of him. This final stage of the case, which to him had come at lightening speed because of Rebecca's confession and her choice to skip a trial and go straight to her punishment. Rebecca's choice was her right, but to Judge Banning it was odd. 

"Do you fully understand what you've confessed to Mrs. Casador? And on top of that, do you understand what you've chosen by way of skipping a trail where evidence would be heard in your defense. By choosing me to go straight to your judgement leaves out a lot." The judge noticed.

Rebecca turned to Lear, her nephew and lawyer who nodded that it was ok to respond out loud. 

She stood. 

"Your honor, I have fully confessed to the crimes that I committed -- alone. I want this to pass so that my family who are all here in this room can move on with their lives. I know they need it, and frankly sir, I need it." She replied stoically.

Judge Banning narrowed his eyes. "Are you doing this only to make things easier on your family, ma'am or are you truly ready for my judgement on the counts." He replied pulling up the paper that read off the counts she was accused of "1 count involuntary manslaughter, 7 counts negligent bodily harm with special circumstance of poisoning." 

"I am doing this, sir, to take responsibility for those I caused illness and most importantly for Dr. Asha Hoffman's life." She replied, "But also for my own family. It is both." 

"Very well." Judge Banning said pulling a pen from the drawer in his bench, signing the decision in ink that he had made and had been written ready to read out loud. He cleared his throat.

"Ms. Assistant Barrister of the state, I'm surprised to see you here alone." Banning said, noting Eden's absence. "Where is our new District Barrister Mr. Syndey?" 

The AB stood "Sir, unfortunately your honor he was indisposed and could not make the hearing." She said.

"Indisposed. I'll note that." Banning replied disappointed, then added "Mr. Lockwood, have you anything to add?"

"No sir. My client has decided this on her own and I do not believe she should be refuted." Lear said.

"Prosecution?" Banning asked. "Any issues?"

The AB stood once more, "No sir. We've looked over the papers and are content with what is present in them."

"Good." Banning replied, clearly annoyed with the quick motionless hearing. "Mrs. Rebecca Lockwood-Lord-Casador, please stand." Banning demanded, as Rebecca stood. "I have read your case, all the details of it. I have seen the evidence and have noted this in my decision. I have thought about this with the very short time I was given with this case due to your request of a speedy hearing as is your right, guilty plea and no contest to a bench trial. In the above and entitled action, I hear-by approve your guilty plea of the poisonings of seven patients at Welshport Hope Hospital causing illness to six and of the more serious crime of death by the same means of Doctor Asha Anand-Hoffman. Ma'am, I sentence you -- more formally as -- Mrs. Rebecca Lockwood-Lord-Casador -- to 10 years in prison."

The room gasped in the length of time.

The judge banged his gavel. "Should your behavior there, in prison on the mainland of the state of Maine in the town of Augusta, fair well your sentence will be reconsidered. This is so after 2 years of incarceration." 

Banning banged his gavel and closed the case. The bailiff came quickly and took Rebecca into custody.

"GRANDMOTHER!" Charlotte shouted. Morgan grabbed Charlotte's hand. 

Rebecca turned and smiled but was quickly ushered out. All the drama quicky noted by Baxter for his afternoon column in The Globe.

"I didn't get to hug her goodbye." Charlotte said with tears in her eyes.

"She knew you were here, that's what will get her through." Morgan said hugging Charlotte.

As the court began to clear Nik, Danielle were confronted by Dr. Ward and his wife. Dr. Ward reached for Nik's hand and shook it.

"I am truly sorry I accused you both of anything. I truly am." Dr. Ward said.

"Thank you." Danielle said softly.

"You're both welcome to come back to work anytime." Ward added.

"Thank you sir, I'm sorry too for anything that attributed to this tragedy. I truly am." Nik added.

"Dr. Jordan, if I know anything it's that we have a lot to learn still about ourselves as people. Doctors aren't perfect. Let's move on from this and hope for better days." Ward answered.

For their part, The Lord family was numb. They couldn't fathom Rebecca's future in prison. As they stood stunned in silence in the courthouse, Jacob began to make his way down the aisle of the courthouse, Chris stepped in front of him stopping him cold.

"This is all your fault." Chris told him, as Baxter quickly moved around to catch the chat for his column.

"Chris, let it go." Genevieve said.

"How is this my fault David?" Jacob asked, calling Chris by his birth name. "Did I give her the idea to do this? Did I choose this for her? She took responsibility for what she did. We should be proud that she did this." Jacob added.

"She wouldn't have had to go to prison for 10 years had she had help with what to do. You turned her in! She didn't have time to clearly think it all through." Chris noted.

"Chris, this was her choice." Lear added now standing with his cousins.

"Wouldn't you have put on a case to help her? Regardless of her guilty or not?" Chris asked Lear.

"Well of course."

"But she didn't get a chance to even think of that thanks to Jacob's quick call to the Constable. You did it on purpose, you wanted her to panic, you wanted her to crumble under the pressure of it all, and for what? Huh? FOR WHAT!!" Chris shouted.

"Chris!" Geneieve exclaimed. 

Jacob smiled, his cold expression proof of what Chris was saying. It made Chris sick to even look at his older brother standing there in his beautifully tailored suit with this bow tie and hat. His hands strong and thick covered in luxuri0ous leather gloves. 

"I guess we can all see what side of justice you're on, little brother. Let that be quoted in Murphy's column." Jacob said replacing his hat as Baxter hurriedly wrote down the events of the brotherly argument.  

"He planned this all." Chris whispered to Geneveive as Charlotte and Morgan circled them.

"Why would he do that?" Lear wondered. 

"Money and Power." Charlotte said. "My father only thinks of those two things and how close he can get to them." 

"He won't get away with it. No, not this time. Chris whispered. I won't let him." 

***

Behind closed doors, Rebecca began her decent back to her holding cell. She would be sent to Augusta soon. As she walked the heaviness of her loss started to settle in. 

Everything was gone. Her home. Her family. Her hopes. Her husbands. Her life.

As she walked with her hands locked in silver cuffs, several people in the hallways began to come to watch the great Rebecca Lord be carted off. There were deputies from the police station, courthouse clerks, even Judge Banning himself.

As Rebecca made her way through them all, she began seeing their faces changes and morph into laughing faces. Faces that hated her. Faces that wanted her hurt and dead. Faces the feared, and suddenly their faces changed again to Albert's face. Everyone standing and staring at her had the face of her dead husband Albert laughing at her.

Rebecca began to pull out of the bailiff's hands fearing for herself. She began to breath heavily and panic. The faces got closer and closer to her. She looked up at the man yanking at her arm, the man's face too had suddenly changed to the cruel face of a laughing Albert.

Rebecca screamed.

The courthouse shook with her voice. Her family heard her. Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to telepathically link to her grandmother just behind the walls but to no avail. 

The faces were all around Rebecca, haunting her, taunting her. She screamed again and then fainted in the arms of the bailiff taking her back to her cell. 

Rebecca Lord, the stoic queen of Welshport. The head of the Lord family. The iron lady of Tirymor House had fallen from grace and her downfall would be the catalyst that changed the face of her family forever. 

B9/Ch12: NOTHING GOOD COMES FROM NOTHING GOOD

 

Lear gives Rebecca a jailhouse visit 

It was late evening; the sun had set deep over the hills beyond the mainland of Maine and Rebecca Lockwood-Lord-Casador sat in a small wooden chair staring up at a clock from behind the bars of her small Welshport jail cell. 

She watched as the second hand of the clock ticked away minute by minute. She felt like Marie Antoinette awaiting the executioner leading her over to a guillotine. As the door to the jail opened the executioner never came -- only Rebecca's lawyer nephew Lear Lockwood with papers for her to look over and sign.

Rebecca smirked, quietly waiting for him to say something first.

"Aunt Rebecca, how are you doing? Has everything been ok?" 

"Are you asking me how my accommodations have been? Look around. It's the Waldorf-Astoria!" Rebecca joked. "This isn't my first time in a jail cell, Lear, and I'm fine." She added, recalling when Jacob accused Rebecca of being his mysterious shooter in Village Park that left him in a coma years back. 

"I just want to be sure you're going to be ok. What ever happened in the past -- this is different.” Lear then reached for the papers and help them up. “I have your confession for you to sign. Constable Ryan had it officially documented — it's now ready for your signature." 

Rebecca stood up from her chair and came over to Lear at the bars. She extended her hand and he passed her the papers. She looked them over, slowly, meticulously, making sure every word on those papers were hers, and only hers. 

"Well, it's very different to read it all back in your own words." She said, her smirk quickly vanishing into the creases of her face as it all set it.

"Is it really all true?" Lear asked.

She nodded. "Your aunt Rebecca has truly fallen into a very dark place, wouldn't you say?" She said to Lear as she reached for his pen.

He handed it to her but did not let go before a he warned her. 

"I want you to be sure that you understand, Aunt Rebecca, that when you sign this, you're agreeing that there will be no trial and you're allowing a judge to make the decision on your punishment. You killed a person and several people became ill, this could give you a very long time in prison." 

"Lear, listen to me very carefully. I don't care what happens now. My horrible mistake took a woman's life and for what? For Caspian? A man who has already signed divorce papers and is leaving me and has nothing left to give me? No. I need to take what has happened for what it's worth and deal with what I have done. Asha Hoffman's family deserves at least that." 

Lear smiled, he felt it was the first time he was truly seeing the aunt he cared for and the aunt he knew as a child the person who was strong and good-willed and never took anything from anyone. Somewhere, she lost her way. Perhaps, Lear wondered, if it all went away when Albert died. The click of hope turning to despair at the end of someone's life had to change one mentally, he thought. But he would never truly know.

Rebecca signed the confession and handed Lear back both pen and papers. 

"On a bit of good news, we finally know exactly who Cora is." Lear said. "She is my sister Maggie. It turns out, the person responsible for her illegal adoption with my father was someone close to us all. This person admitted to helping my father in exchange for money that he needed to pay off debts." 

Rebecca's smirk returned, she raised her brow and returned to her wooden chair. "You must be very happy, I wish her all the best. Give her my love." 

"I am, yes. Although she's decided to stick to using her Coraline as her name, but other than that I hope that we can all get something back after all these years of thinking she was gone." 

"Yes, I'm sure it is a very comforting thought to have you sister back." Rebecca replied solemnly. 

"I was hoping that would cheer you up under the circumstances, but I guess nothing can really do that, not even the news of your niece's returning home, can it? I'm sorry." Lear replied.

"Not at all, I'm very happy for Maggie -- Coraline, I mean. So many people with different names I sometimes forget who goes by what." She joked, noting Welshport citizens often using names. "But I am happy for her. I just feel I should just stay out of any family celebrations after what I've done. I'd be just a sad reminder of the tragedy I caused." 

Before Lear could reply, a voice sounded from behind them both. "What have you done!?" 

Lear turned, Rebecca too, it was Charlotte. Her face seemed warn from crying. Her eyes swollen and her mouth trembling with the truth of her grandmother's guilt. She rushed over to the cell; Rebecca's lips trembled with emotion as her one true love Charlotte had grown so much over the months. She was now a young lady standing before her.

"Charlotte, darling, oh my darling, girl! What are you doing here?" Rebecca shouted, rushing to the bars, reaching through them and hugging her granddaughter. 

"I heard what happened. Everyone is talking about it but I had to come see you, I had to come ask you if it was true. How can it be? You wouldn't do that to Dr. Hoffman, would you? Why? Why would you do such a thing?" 

"Charlotte, I never meant for anyone to die, I swear that on my own soul, that part was an accident." 

Lear gulped, hearing the truth again still shocked him.

"But you did mean to poison her and those other patients?" Charlotte asked. "Why???" 

"Selfish reasons." The grandmother admitted but gave no more insight. 

Charlotte let go of Rebecca's hands as they had still held each other through the iron bars. She turned to Lear who was placing the signed confession into his briefcase. 

"You're going to help her, right? She can't stay in here." Charlotte said.

"She's confessed Charlotte, she requested no trial. I have to do what she asks." 

"Lear you can't be serious! My grandmother isn't thinking clearly, look what she's done! We can't just let her go to prison." Charlotte begged not realizing a confession was as good as a conviction.

"Darling..." Rebecca began before being interrupted by Lear.

"She absolutely is in her right state of mind now and has taken responsibility for this. I think you should listen to what she wants and understand that this is actually better, not just for her, but for Asha's family, your family and the company. Aunt Rebecca's actions have cast a very dark shadow over Lord Publishing, and I commend her doing this quicky, you should too." Lear suggested.

"Is that true?" Charlotte asked turning to her grandmother. "You're just going to take the what punishment the judge hands you?" 

"Charlotte, she has to." Lear replied

It slowly sunk in to the young woman. It was over.

Rebecca stood there, almost like her own ghost. The conversation about her slowly took her out of her own body and she could only stand and not speak. She became pale. Vacant. She stared off into the distance between Lear and Charlotte thinking about her future when suddenly she could see a shapely shadow forming. It walked into a dim light just outside the corner of the room. She could see the face forming into the face of her dead husband Albert. 

He smiled at her coldly. His face had withered into something she wished she had never seen. Something sickly and wrong and from her own nightmares. He shook his head in a patronizing manner shaming her for her crime. 

Rebecca stepped back from the bars as Lear and Charlotte's voices seemed to disappear into the vision of Albert. His neck, she could see, had a noose around it. He loosened the rope and lifted the loop over his head and threw it into the jail cell. The ghostly ligature floated over and through Lear's body and into the jail cell and fell at Rebecca's feet.

Rebecca backed away from it and fell into the small wooden chair in her cell. 

"Grandmother? Grandmother, are you alright?" Charlotte's voice begged. 

Rebecca made no connection to the young woman's cries. 

"She seeks you still." Albert said of Charlotte. "Hoping something good will come of this. But nothing good comes from nothing good. Rotten. Spoiled and tainted for all the world to see. Nothing good comes from nothing good Rebecca. You're nothing good." 

"STOP IT!" Rebecca shouted at him. "STOP IT NOW!" 

Lear and Charlotte looked at each other, they didn't understand what Rebecca was talking about, they could tell that the stress, the anxiety and guilt was taking over her. They needed to leave her to rest. She was exhausted. Broken. The world crashing at her feet and never to return the way it was before.

"Take this." Lear said, tossing a small packet into the room. A sleep sedative wrapped in a paper bundle tired with twine. "It'll help you sleep." 

Rebecca did not move or pick up the pack she only stared out of her cell at Albert's ghost. 

"What's wrong with her?" Charlotte asked, her tone soft and childlike, finally sounding her age. 

"She'll be alright." Lear answered, unsure of his own words. "We just have to get her through to the judge's decision." 

"Decision? I thought there was no trial?" 

"Judge Banning will still decide her punishment." Lear whispered. "We should go." 

Charlotte nodded but grabbed the bars with her hands and looked in at her frightened grandmother one last time. Rebecca looked back seeing her only granddaughter standing next to the taunting spirt of her dead husband who moved his index finger to his lips shushing his wife.

"Sleep now." Charlotte said. "I love you." 

As Charlotte finally let down her guard, her mind opened up. She then sensed a presence. Something strange in the room that she hadn't felt when she was trying to get through to Rebecca. She turned to the side and in her mind she could see something, a light but glowing in a way that felt inside-out. Not bright, but burning within a dark orb of some sort. She reached for it and Rebecca screamed for her to stop seeing that Charlotte was reaching for Albert's ghost.

Charlotte reached and felt it, she saw the face of a creature, not Albert taunting Rebecca from the other side of the bars. 

Charlotte gasped and lifted her hand up pushing the creature, became visible to all and began gyrating and laughing all the way back; back, back into the shadows. 

"AWAY!!!!!!!!!" Charlotte shouted. 

The thing obeyed and left in a taunting wind of laughter. 

"What in hell was that!?" Lear shouted seeing something incredible before his very eyes. 

"Albert! It wasn't Albert!!" Rebecca shouted.

Charlotte looked back at her grandmother; tears were in her eyes. "No, no, it wasn't. Pick up the packet, Grandmother, take what's in there and sleep. You need to sleep."

Rebecca, shocked at what she just saw, listened this time and did as she was told.

Charlotte grabbed Lear, looped her arm through his and began their exit. 

"Charlotte, what just happened?" He asked.

She held him close and whispered, "You don't want to know." 

****

Cora & Aaron’s wedding 

The next morning seemed to come in a wash of spotty sunny skies with the occasional white fluffy cotton clouds clustering in bunches. There was no ominous storm coming, just an early spring day that felt cool like fall but sunny enough to keep the chill off the Atlantic at bay. 

It was the day of Aaron Hamstead and Coraline Taylor Murphy's wedding, and the guests were already arriving at St. Catherine's church, dressed in the best attire. The men in their top hats and tales, the women in large hats and paste taffeta dresses. The happy occasion, however, was not immune to the cold truth of what had happened just weeks ago with the death of Asha Hoffman. 

Nothing made that clearer, that Nik and Danielle's arrival - together. 

Outside the church under a guard of large beech trees, Danielle replaced her lace gloves slowly after she and Nik exited the cab. People entering the church whispered at the couple who were making their first appearance together since the tragedy. Even though news had swiftly come that Nik and Danielle had nothing to do with Asha's death yet gossip and disapproving eyes made things awkward.

"We shouldn't have come." Danielle said. "No, I shouldn't have come." 

"Stop that, Coraline invited me and a guest. She's been almost like an aunt to Gabriel, I couldn't just not come and celebrate with her. If she felt it would have been inappropriate she would have said so. She knows, just like everyone else by now, that Rebecca did all of this. Not you or I." 

"Such a beautiful day for a wedding." Christopher said, walking up with Genevieve and Morgan. 

They all greeted each other, the men shaking hands, the ladies double kissing. They were a group of town outsiders in a sense. One couple the spitting image of a tragic romance that they all believed died on Bellmore Beach, the other more recent paramours connected to shocking poisonings at the hospital. Seeing them all together made the entering guests salivate with intrigue.

"Looks like we're not the favorite couple to whisper about anymore." Geneveive said. "I don't wish it on you, but it does feel better to have eyes look elsewhere." She admitted.

"It's awful, I can't imagine how you both lived through it." Danielle answered

"We're still living with it." Chris said. "I wanted to also apologize for what happened, my mother's involvement in Asha's death and how she tried to see it that you two were held responsible. I-- I don't even know what to say." 

"Something in her snapped." Nik replied. "It wouldn't be the first time. I'm just glad Justin was able to convince her to admit what she'd did before it got any worse." 

"Rebecca hasn't been herself since -- well -- since Caspian's you know." Genevieve replied. 

Danielle's body twitched with discomfort, her mind quickly rushing to the story of her father Viktor, known as Caspian, had his history of darkness. The literal demons of his past almost destroying so many lives. Rebecca, as they all saw it, was his first victim as she had never been the same since the demon brainwashed her. 

"I wish I could have been here before all of this happened." Danielle said, the shade of the tree branches splattering a pattern of shadows over her light green dress. “Maybe I could have stopped him all those years ago.”

"Honestly, there may have not been anything you could have done." Nik replied. "None of us knew what was going to happen at any point in this tragedy, from beginning to end and we all have to understand that. I think about this too; what Rebecca did but also what Asha did, what she hid, and the truth we'll never know." 

"What truth?" Chris asked.

Nik gave Danielle a look who took a deep breath in, finally more secrets revealed.

"It wasn't that Danielle and I didn't want to make our relationship known. We did, but Asha was hiding something from us all that I needed to get from her. She lied about the child my mother and Caspian conceived. She told us all a boy died at birth, but in truth, a girl was born and she and Gregory took that child and gave it away to another couple somewhere. We don't know who, we don't know where. We just know they both lied. Gregory died with that secret, and now, so has Asha. That was the whole purpose of me trying to keep Asha close to me without revealing that I'd fallen in love with someone else. Asha lied, she did something awful and lied to all of us about it. She certainly didn't deserve the fate she got, but I can't say that she didn't put herself in a terrible place because she continued to keep those lies. I feel horrible saying that out loud, but it's true." 

As the story settled into Chris and Genevive's minds, an uncomfortable shill went up Chris' spine. He felt he strong choke hold of shame about his mother's involvement in the entire situation but there was nothing he could do. 

As the of the reality set in of what had happened, the church bells tolled signaling the wedding would soon start.

"Shall we?" Chris asked.

Genevieve grabbed her son Morgan's hand who had stood there listening to all of the grown-up drama without saying a word and moved up the front steps of the white church long side the foursome. 

Inside the church, Lear and Lucas were sitting behind a few pews of Coraline's friends, a steady group of ladies she knew from school. Jane Donnelly among them. Jane quickly swished around her pew to the one behind had and sat next to Lucas. Her eyes glowing with the gossip she had just heard from the other ladies.

"Did you hear?" She whispered to the men.

Lucas shook his head "Hear what?" He whispered.

"Baxter isn't coming. He wasn't invited." She whispered back.

Lear rolled his eyes "That's not true, Coraline invited him."

"She did? Where is he then? He's the brother she grew up with, and he's not here. But you are: the brother she never knew of." Jane whispered, full emersed in the news that Coraline was a Lockwood not Murphy.

"Jane, Cora invited him, Baxter chose not to come. He's still healing from his attack. He wanted to be sure to let Cora have her day without the physical reminder of something awful that happened just a few blocks away." Lear said.

"I think that was nice of him." Lucas added, Lear smiled and squeezed his partner's hand.

"Did you hear the other news?" Jane whispered.

"I think we've heard everything you've heard." Lucas smiled hoping to keep the Tirymor House maid from sending them into more village tales. 

"About Rebecca?" She asked.

Lear turned his head, like the snap of a catapult towards her. His eyes met Jane's and she quickly saw his stern reaction, she forgot his familial connection to Rebecca and his employment as the family's personal lawyer.

"Of course you have." She answered. "I was the one who tipped off Jacob. I thought I'd help him know that the police were readying an arrest. He took care of it on his own."

"What do you mean by tipping off the police?" Lucas asked.

"I heard them talking about their evidence, so I told Jacob. He turned her in. That house of cards fell on itself in days." Jane replied proudy.

"Why would you do that?" Lear shouted, his voice echoing in the church, bouncing between status of the Madonna and child and St. Joseph. 

Jane sat back, shocked at his response, but there was no time for her to answers as her attention quickly turned to the group walking in: Nik arm in arm with Danielle, Chris arm in arm with Genevieve and young Morgan.

Jane let out a small disappointing "humph" at Lear and quickly turned her nose up as the group that entered that came and set behind Lear and Lucas.

"What was that about?" Morgan asked about Jane's reaction as the groom and his best man entered with Father Donavon from the front of the church.

Genevieve shushed her son as the ceremony was about to begin. 

The music swelled at the front of the church amongst several large brightly lit candles. The sunlight beamed in from the four skylights in the ceiling onto the white flowers that adorned the ends of the 12 pews that made up the interior aisle of Saint Catherine's church.

Aaron, a man of over six-feet tall, held his hands clasped at his waist. He looked proud, happy and slightly nervous as the ceremony began to build while they awaited the bride. 

As the music made it's way through an opening pomp and circumstance before the actual wedding march began, Lear turned back to Chris with a very concerned look and leaned over the pew.

"It was Jacob." He whispered.

"What?" 

"Jacob, he's the one that turned in Aunt Rebecca." Lear whispered.

Chris's eyes widened. 

"Why would he do that?" Genevieve asked, also whispering under the music.

Chris sighed, the only reason was one that built up over time, a perfect storm of the Lord family breaking down in front of the world's eyes in Jacob's favor and Rebecca's breaking point seemed to be the perfect and final nail in the coffin of anyone standing in Jacob's way of complete control over the entire Lord family empire. Sebastian's supposed death, Christopher renouncing his Lord family name and choosing to allow his alter ego to remain legally dead, Rebecca's one-woman crime spree and her marriage falling apart. 

It all finally fell into place, and Jacob was the beneficiary. 

As all of this landing in Chris' mind, the Church doors opened and a veiled Coraline, dressed in the whitest dress anyone had ever seen began her decent down the short white flowered aisle to be married. 

Cora's eyes glowed bright under her perfect white veil. But she felt a hint of sadness as she had no father to walk her down the aisle. As she put her first foot forward, a man's hand grabbed her arm and looped it under his arm.

It was Baxter, the adopted brother she had grown up with. He was dressed perfectly. Top hat under his free arm. A white tie perfectly matching his white button shirt with black pearled buttons. A tiny sprig of baby's breath poking out of his jacket pocket. A simple gesture to her being his baby sister.  His face still bruised and scarred from Caspian's attack. 

"What are you doing here???" Cora asked, happy to see him.

"I couldn't let the world watch my baby sister get married and not be here to give her away. No matter what anyone tells you -- you're my baby sister too. I want to be here for you." Baxter said.

She reached over and grabbed him into a big hug. She had never been happier. 

Cora and Baxter began their steps forward from the foyer of the church towards the nave. She was going to marry a man that loved her unconditionally. Aaron would protect her and care for her like she had always dreamed of. Her happiness brightly shining like the sun through the skylights above

As they continued, she turned to the right and saw her brother Lear, her true blood brother, sitting there holding hands with his partner Lucas. As she passed him, she smiled her bouquet of white hydrangeas were overflowing in her hands. Lear winked at her as she continued to walk down the aisle with Baxter tightly wound in her arms. Her family finally together. 

The music swelled to an abrupt stop as Baxter handed his baby sister over to Aaron who happily took the beauty in his hands.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here in the name of love. The love of a couple, the love of two families coming together as one, the love of a community celebrating two people who have found their way through a world of darkness and pain and realize that beyond those realms there is happiness, love and true companionship. We celebrate that today but should celebrate it everyday because everyday we can find this same thing around us. In our types of relationships -- not just the beautiful one we are witnessing here today of Aaron ad Coraline." Father Ryan spoke just as Jacob snuck into the church with Celeste. 

Jane, ever the observer, turned when the church door opened and saw her boss and his wife enter. 

Geneveive noticed Jane and turned back, Chris noticed Genevieve and turned back too. It was the first time both brother, Jacob and Chris, had come into contact with each other so soon after Jacob's heart-attack at seeing Chris alive. 

"Don't do anything." Geneveive whispered to Chris.

"Don't do anything." Celeste whispered too to Jacob. 

Jacob bowed his head to Chris who turned away with no emotion. 

Then, Father Donavon Ryan began to read the vows and allowed the happy couple turn to each other to look into each other's eyes. 

Love was in the air, but only restricted to the small church. Elsewhere in the village darkness reigned supreme. 

****

Eden comes to the beach house 

Later that evening, Barrister Eden Sydney made his way to Bellmore Beach house with important documents for Caspian. The divorce from Rebecca had been finalized and Eden had final documents in his hands for Caspian, not only that, but Lear had given the Barrister Rebecca's signed confession, that Judge Banning had also looked over, accepted, and signed. 

The news of Caspian's now ex-wife was heavy, Eden felt it necessary to bring the news to Caspian in person rather than send it with a currier from his office at Village Hall, it was an orthodox way thing for someone in his stature to do, but Eden had seen enough pain in the village over the year he'd been there. He felt it necessary to heal some of man to man.

As Eden stepped up the steps of the front porch of the he could see into the front parlor window. There was one lamp on leaving the rest of the house incredible dark. He stepped back down one step of the porch believe that the house was empty but then heard a stirring. Footsteps rushing somewhere in the house, large heavy footsteps.

Eden furrowed his brow, confused, and went up the porch and knocked on the door. No one answered, but more footsteps could be heard, almost manic in their pattern. Eden knocked again, and this time called out to see if anyone was one. 

No one answered. Eden then went to a side window and looked in, a shadow, a large-framed person clearly Caspian, poked out from a side wall then darted back again to be unseen.

"What the devil?" Eden said, the waves over to his side on the beach crashing over his thoughts like thunder rolling around in turbulent sky. 

Eden knocked again.

"Caspian? It's Barrister Sydney. I sent you a note earlier today so my visit wouldn’t be unannounced and I wanted to...." Eden's voice trailed off when he saw the note. It was on the floor of the wooden porch away from the door. 

"...Oh." Eden said to himself. "Looks like the wind blew the note off your door, Caspian, you in there? Aurora?"

Eden reached for the doorknob; it turned and Eden walked into the front foyer of the Beach House. He looked around, there was a sound coming from the back rooms. It sounded almost like a window being lifted up, heavy in its aged wood. The front parlor, to Eden's left was lit still with the one lamp. Quiet. Just the ticking of a small clock on the hearth.

Eden's heart felt like it was racing. "Aurora?" He whispered. "Caspian?"

Caspian stood just away from view. His mind clouded with madness of his split identities. Viktor, his true self, had control fully taking over. The heavy wood Eden heard was not a window opening, but a door from a back area being ripped apart. The heavy shards of the door in Viktor's cold hand ready to bludgeon Eden in the head. 

Viktor watched Eden survey the foyer, he noticed things strewn across the floor. A picture frame broken. A table lopsided with a runner pulled all the way to the end, a vase with flowers over turned. 

"Aurora???" Eden called, his voice sounding much more urgent. 

Eden turned back towards the dimly lit front parlor. Just before entering he dropped his briefcase down and stepped in. He moved towards the sofa and there she was, just her legs sticking out from the back. Aurora's unconscious body.

"OH MY GOD AURORA!! Are you alright? Aurora? Aurora? Open your eyes. Aurora??"  Eden shouted as he fell to his knees to try and wake her.

She had been attacked, strangled and left for dead for almost a full day. She'd waken occasionally but the pain and her exhaustion from the fight with Caspian/Viktor had taken too much out of her.

She started to stir, now that Eden was shaking her awake, but then a blow to the back of the head.

Eden went down, crumbled to the floor like a house of cards collapsing next to Aurora. Aurora, awake now but still on the floor, opened her eyes to come face to face with the cold state on Viktor Holten face salivating at his newest victim.

"Almost got me." Viktor growled low, as a long drop of spittle fell from his lips and on to Aurora's bodice. 

****

Chris visits Rebecca 

As the night wore on, and the wedding in the village went from ceremony to celebration, Christopher snuck off ...he needed to see someone and left his own soon to be wife and her son on their own.

Genevieve and Morgan headed home. Her worry was that Chris was regretting having passed on the opportunity to return to his life as David Lord. She watched him walk down the street from St. Catherine's as she and Morgan drove off in a cab. 

"Do you think he'll be alright?" Morgan asked.

Genevieve seemed to not notice her son speaking, distracted with what would Chris truly wanted for himself and if she’d still fit in once it came. 

He tapped her hand. "Mother?"

"Huh? Oh. Sorry darling, yes. Yes. He'll be ok. He's got a lot on his mind." Genevieve replied.

"About Mrs. Casador? She was always so nice to me, I can't believe what she did." Morgan answered, recalling his somewhat friendly relationship with Rebecca while he lived under her roof at Tirymor House.

"Sometimes people go through things in their life and those things change us. For the better and for the worse. This is --- this may have been Rebecca's worse." 

As their cab turned a corner and puttered down one of the increasingly foggy streets, Chris entered the police station. He asked to see his mother, and one of the deputies refused, saying it was too late in the evening for prisoners to have visitors.

"You don't understand, I just found out she was here and I have to see her. Please." Christ said.

Before the deputy could answer, Constable Justin Ryan exited his office to see David standing at the front desk.

"It's alright Bill. I'll take him down." Just replied. 

The deputy handed over the keys to Justin, and the two men made their way towards the hallway that had a triple lock on it that led to the cells.

"You're her other son, yes? Younger than Jacob?" Just asked.

Chris nodded. "David --- well, I don't go by that anymore."

"I've heard the situation." Justin replied with a grin. "Feels like everyone in town has a bit of a second side. Wonder what mine will be now that I live here." he joked.

"Uh.. right." Chris replied awkwardly.

"She hasn't been talking much since her lawyer came to see her." Justin added. 

"Did he tell her not to speak?" Chris asked.

Justin didn't know. "He came in had some legal things with him for her to look over then her granddaughter came by and that was it. She never spoke another word." 

"Charlotte was here?" 

Justin nodded as the two made their way passed a drunk man in his cell, sleepily tossing and turning and covering his head with a pillow to block out the conversation. 

"She's just down here, we kept her in a private spot downstairs." Justin said pointing towards the locked doors. "I'll let you in, but you can't stay long. I'll be back in about 10 minutes." 

"Thank you." 

Justin walked over and unlocked the gate that led into the stairwell that went down to a more private set of jail cells that had all been freshly repainted and fixed after the police station had burned down. Although not damaged in the fire, the basement cells were still scorched and held debris, now it was clean, the fresh paint smell still wafting through the small corridors and down the stairs that led Christopher to his mother who was reading a book in her cell.

"Mother." He whispered. 

A guard sitting next to a lamp also readying a book lifted his head.

"Constable Ryan let me in." Chris said to him. The officer closed his book and nodded then went back up the stairs allowing Chris and Rebecca some privacy.

"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes, David." Rebecca said of her once thought dead son Christopher, a name she refused to use. She only called him by his birth name David.

"Mother -- I heard about everything. How -- how did -- why..." Chris began before she interrupted.

"It's better I don't fill your mind with the details, son, just know that I'm ready for whatever Judge Banning has set for me. I think its time I paid." 

"I want you to listen to me, ok, I want you to really listen to me when I say this: Are you covering for Jacob? Was it Jacob that really did all these things? Because if it was you --" Chris began before his mother once again interrupted.

"David enough! Your brother is a lot of things and to be honest I can't fault you for assuming that I would be covering for his disgusting behavior as I had done so many times, including what he did to you. And for that, perhaps, this is my punishment because no one can or should cover for any one whose done something like I have. It was all me, no one else. I was selfish, and stupid -- a woman who's had everything she could ever want and for some reason I wanted more. I wanted it all, and losing Caspian was the catalyst for me trying to destroy what stood in the way of that want." She explained.

"But, you killed someone." Chris said.

Rebecca's eyes began to water. The truth once again setting into her mind of what she did to poor Asha Hoffman, a woman she'd manipulated into going along with her scheme to destroy Danielle Holten, their mutual rival. 

It was never meant to go the way it went, Rebecca, continued to say but, Christopher couldn't shake the feeling that Jacob could have helped their mother instead of turn her in.

"He did it for the good of the family." Rebecca said.

"The good of what family? There's no one left. He destroyed any hope of Sebastian being the head of this family some day, he's alienated Sebatian's wife and child, he killed my wife, banished his daughter, exiled me... and on and on. Now this, now he's turned you in instead of helping with a defense that would protect you from any heavy sentencing. He just threw you to the wolves." Chris replied angrily. 

"I have to be punished." She admitted.

Chris knew she was right but the thought of Jacob knowing that every family member was now either missing, dead or incarcerated meant he could now control the entire empire his family controlled without any say from anyone else on the family tree. 

"We were supposed to all look out for each other; Father would have wanted it that way and Jacob could have found someone to help you navigate a guilty plea and still get you a sentence worthy of his mother. Now, now there's nothing." Chris explained rightfully. 

"Perhaps, but at this point, what's left for me on this earth? I eagerly await a rest." She said turning back to her chair and sitting down.

"What are you saying?" He asked. 

Rebecca did not reply, she only looked passed him into the corner once again where the shadows began to form into the creature forming and posing as her dead husband Albert.

This time, the creature only stood there, His eyes, Albert's eyes, daring her to speak his name. But she refused this time and only stared back. Her stoic look was a game to the creature. Who'd blink first? Rebecca knew that an insanity plea was out of the question. She'd done it all under perfect frame of mind, calculating it all to the last second. Except for the one mistake -- the overdose. 

The creature looked at and mouthed to her "Say goodbye" and moved his finger, Albert's finger, across his neck. 

"Darling," Rebecca said softy "I think you should go no. Go and be happy with the rest of your life. It's the best thing you can do now. For me and your father."

The creature in Albert's face grinned crudley, his teeth sharp and jagged. He pretended to sniff Christopher, searching for the scent of his soul. Licking his hand to taste him, the salts of the skin acted like little bits of bread marking the way to the sweet kind soul that stood there.

Rebecca stood up, the creature laughed and backed away from Chrsitopher. 

"Go." She said to her son.

"I can't watch this happen to you." he told her.

"I've watched happen to myself, already, before it's even happened. Its what has to be, David. It's what has to be." She said.

Chris began to cry. She hadn't seen him cry in decades. Her son, her sweet middle child whom she remembered as sensitive and kind. The one who was always first to reach for her hand to hold when he was little. She’d missed out on his life for over 20 years when they feared he'd jumped off the lighthouse to his death. He'd left his family, aided by Aaron, and hid in London and never looked back. When that truth was revealed that Chris, or David as he was known to her, was alive, Rebecca never faulted him for his deception. Chris knew this. 

She knew too that he had to stay away, that Jacob's evil plots and his destructive schemes were the reason for Chris’ disappearance and now distance. 

And for that, she had wished she'd done more to protect Chris and not Jacob. 

It was all too late. 

Chris reached through the bars and held his mother close. The creature pretending to be Albert vanished into the shadows of the wall again. The darkness faded. 

Then Chris left the jail and his lost mother and walked home. The cold night air seemed to bring him back to life. Cooling his hot cheeks and drying his tears. He felt like he'd just spoken to a dead woman walking, Rebecca was a shell of herself after all she had been through. 

He recalled making a truce with Jacob, telling him he wanted no more death, no more battles, no more war between the brothers. 

But now -- his mother gone into the recesses of prison -- Chris thought again. 

"This is all his." He whispered to himself. "I'll destroy him." 

B9/CH11: FALL OF THE MAITRIARCHY

Verity, posing as Mary, makes love to Filipe

On a windy morning, branches from a beech tree scratched the glass of a bedroom window of the Braga home in the village. A couple kissed passionately in the second-floor bedroom in the dim light of the early day.

The wind's unyielding soft howl kept in time with the heavy breathing of the couple, Filipe and Verity, as they slowly began to seep into each other, making love. Filipe believed the woman beneath him was the woman he truly loved: Mary. 

But Verity's switch with her identical twin to take over her life had already taken shape and gone further than she had ever realized. It had become the perfect plan.

She was now making love for the first time. Her emotions and hormones swirled together like a hurricane. She felt like a fire growing hotter and hotter the more she took in Filipe and breathed in his breath. She scratched her nails down his back as the pressure of their lovemaking deepened inside of her. She could feel his body's weight on her, it felt like nothing she had ever felt before. Safe. Warm. Protected. It was erotic, and passionate and she wanted more and more of it and didn't want to stop.

She moaned, hoping to keep him in rhythm with her body's lust, he reciprocated. 

Verity, clearly enjoying her first experience as a real person making love, then slipped out from under him, they rolled over and she startled his body. There was something about her, Filipe noted, something different. Wilder. More insatiable. It was sexy and he liked it but different.

He reached up to her chest; she grabbed his hands and sucked one of his fingers. Verity, masking as her twin Mary, felt every thrust from Filipe's body devouring every second in ecstasy until they finally exploded in unison. Her tired, slick body fell to his side as she quickly cuddled in his nook. 

Filipe kissed her on the neck right below her ear. His stubble tickled her.

"Don't ever shave." She said.

"You usually like me clean shaven." He said with a grin.

She reached up and wiped a sparkle of sweat from his forehead. "But I like you like this now." 

"Ok." he smiled. "That'll be so much easier for me on the ship. No need to take a shaving kit." 

"Ship?" She asked.

He cocked his head to the side. "Yes, at work. When I set out to sea on the fleet." 

"OH! Yes. That ship." Verity said, quickly recalling Filipe's fisherman occupation. 

"Are you alright?" 

She nodded that she was and kissed him. "Let's go again." She said.

"Again? I have to get up! I'll be out to sea again later this evening. You know that." He said.

"Can't you say you're ill and can't go out with them today? What good would a sick fisherman be all the way out there on the sea?" Verity asked, her voice soft and whispery like a schoolgirl's.

"I can't do that." He said, with a grin. "As much as I could stay in bed all day with you, I have to make us some money and you have Caleb to look after." 

Filipe got up out of bed. She watched as his caramel nude body still dripping in areas with the sweat of their love making as he got his clothes and began to dress to go down to have a meal before leaving out to sea. Verity, grabbed the sheets from the bed and wrapped herself in them. Her tussled hair a flurry of blonde curled and scrunched like a nest. 

"Aren't you going to get out of bed?" He asked her, his voice surprised at her lack of movement.

"Can't your mother watch over Caleb? Or Charlotte?" Verity asked.

Filipe turned back around to Verity from the dresser he was pulling a pair of socks from. His brow furrowed. She noted his expression the realized she'd said something wrong. Something Mary would never say. 

"I mean for a minute as I get up." Verity replied trying to cover.

"What's going on with you?" He asked, his question pregnant with wonder as slowly he began to add up the slight differences in his wife of two years. "You've been a little off since right after the trials. Is there something you're not telling me?"

"I'm fine! Really! I know, I know, I've been a bit out on the moon and not myself, but I'm trying to get back to that. That's what this was for." She said hinting at their very fun morning love session. 

Filipe flashed in his mind to just a few minutes before of their bodies tangled up in nude sweaty love making. It was more passionate than ever, it was more erotic and adventurous. 

"All that was just to -- to what? Make up for something? What are you making up for?" He asked sitting on the edge of the bed.

"For being so off. I know it can't be easy to deal with someone who's had so much going on in her life. I'd do it like that every night if you wanted." She said.

"Mary, I want you to be you. That's why I fell in love with you. You were the most natural, the most real, the most compassionate person I had ever met and that's all you need to be with me. Whatever happens to you happens to me. You don't have to make up for anything." Filipe said as he reached for her face and cupped her chin with his hand.

She allowed her face to fall into his large palm, he touched her lips with his thumb, she kissed it. 

"That's why I love you." She said in reply. "I'll always love you." She said.

"I love you too." He replied. "Now, I got to get downstairs for a quick bite before I had to head off. Come on, miss lazy, lets get dressed, let's go!"

He reached over and started to tickle her sides. She didn't feel it. She looked at him strange, and he then looked at her strange. "What happened? No longer ticklish?" He asked.

"OH! I am, yes, Sorry. You see? I'm off." Verity admitted, as she got out of bed. "I’m still getting back to normal after everything — you understand.” She said trying to cover.

“Mary the trial was quite a while ago. I know that what you, Evie and Matthew went through hell all to help me in my condition, but you seemed to be getting back to you. Now … well now you seem lost again. What can I do to help?” Filipe asked noting his cure for lycanthropy was the source of the witch trials. 

“I’m fine. Truly. I am. I’ll get back to myself again. I promise. Now let me get dressed for breakfast."

She quickly went into the adjoining bathroom. She closed the door and stood in front of the long body length mirror in the corner. Her naked body a perfect expression of the female form. She was breathing heavy, her nerves torn to shreds as Filipe questioned her. 

She looked at herself, she saw Mary. She saw herself. Then she took another deep breath. She was faltering, her mistakes now mounting. She needed to keep this new life she was so in love with tight in her hands like a treasured pearl. 

Verity needed to do much, much better to keep it all together — exposure would mean death.

Filipe went back to the dresser and switched the socks for warmer ones. As one pair went in and the other pair came out, he noticed how much they looked alike, yet he knew they were different. Mary looked like Mary, but she too felt so different. He stared at the bathroom door and wondered what in the world could have made her change this way. She was slightly meeker when she spoke, but in bed she was much more adventurous. Perhaps, he wondered, if she needed to speak with the new psychiatrist in town, Dr. Pascal. Maybe something had switched in her mind while she was in jail, while she was suffering under all that stress during the witch trials.

Maybe he needed to talk to Dr. Pascal first -- and alone.

****

Mary pleads with Jacqueline for help 

Over on Goode Island, still trapped in the pit below the cottage, Mary tossed and turned on her dirty mattress. She was sweating, yet her body felt chills. She had been imprisoned here for weeks now, her mind still hoping to be saved -- somehow, some way. Illness had moved faster than a rescue and Mary was now fighting on two fronts, to stay alive in the pit, and the fever that was overtaking her. 

In her mind, as the rush of blood pushed through her veins and into her brain, images of her twin Verity posing as Mary haunted her. It was as if she were watching herself with her husband and children but she knew better.

She saw Verity sitting at her place at the table, sleeping in her bed, holding her husband and kissing her baby good-night. The entire feverish nightmare overtaking Mary's frail and ill body manifested into a blood curdling scream that blasted from her body like a banshee in the night.

Upstairs, Jacqueline Gray was preparing for yet another shift at Churchill Green where she was shapeshifting into a disguise, a nurse named Isabel. 

As Jacqueline fastened a small silver Rod of Asclepius pin to her apron strap, the scream from below echoed into the house.

Jacqueline stared at her yet un-shapeshifted face in the mirror. Mary's scream bore into Jacqueline like a knife. It was feral, dark and deeply painful yell. The witch, posing as a nurse, could not resist any more and went back down to the pit where her coven sister Mary was held prisoner. She followed the dark steps down into the basement and saw Mary's lantern on. Jacqueline peeked over the edge, her hands touching the crusted over salt Verity had encircled the pit with to deter Mary's own powers and saw Mary now off her mattress and in the corner of the hole with her knees up to her chest. 

 

"Mary..." Jacqueline whispered over the edge. "You're unwell."

Mary looked up, her face stained with dirt and soil from attempts at climbing out. Her hair wet with sweat and her eyes glistening with tears and red with sorrow. 

"Jacqueline, please,” Mary began taking in slow breaths, “please help me out of here." 

The voice was weak, tainted with exhaustion. 

"You know I can't do that. I've already told you if I interfere with this the council will destroy me. That was my punishment for what I did during the trials, I have to stay out of this." Jacqueline reminded Mary.

"LOOK AT ME JACQUELINE!!" Mary roared, in a burst of her last bits of human energy. "I'm ill, very ill. I need to get out of here and get help, and only you can do that." 

A sudden wave of empathy washed over Jacqueline. She knew had she never used her powers against Mary, had she never betrayed the coven with lies and exposure, Verity would have never been created by the council. It all stemmed from Jacqueline’s anger, her thirst for revenge of years of loneliness and abandonment and the death of her unborn child. 

“What made you sick? I could bring you medicine.” Jacqueline offered.

Mary shook her head, “I don’t know. Maybe the food, the water might be tainted or unclean? I haven’t washed in days.” 

“Some kind of infection?” Jacqueline wondered.

“I don’t want to die here Jacqueline.” 

Jacqueline looked away and towards the staircase that led back up to the house. 

"I’ll bring you medicine, I work at the hospital now, I have access to — " Jacqueline said again but was interrupted by Mary.

“Isn't that just as intrusive into the plan as helping me out? Don't you see, whatever you think you can do verses what you should do is all the same. Please just get me out of here and then we can get me medicine." Mary said.

Jacqueline said nothing. Mary stood up, her body managing to hold itself up with the help of the dirt walls. She walked slowly closer to the side where Jacqueline was looking down into. Mary fell to her knees, coughed out a spray of blood. She looked up at Jacqueline with her mouth red. She extended her hands that had caught the blood drenched cough and showed them to her coven sister.

"This is going to be the end of me. You can stop it. You -- Jacqueline -- you can save my life." 

“Medicine. That’s all I can do.” The punished witch said then vanished back up into the house.

"No... NO DON’T GO! Jacqueline! PLEASE! COME BACK!!! No!! JACQUELINE!!!" 

Mary's screams did not go unnoticed. Jacqueline heard every shrieked word. It surprisingly tore into her that her hands had been tied by the council in such a way. There was no love lost between Jacqueline and Mary; their differences went bone deep, painfully so. But it felt different now to see Mary suffering in a way that felt crueler than anything Jacqueline could have cooked up in her own twisted mind. Mostly because Verity had left Mary unable to defend herself. 

That cursed ring of salt blocking Mary from using her powers and saving herself. To Jacqueline that was a sin against witch. Unfair warfare between sorcerers. 

It was one thing to stab an enemy in self defense, it was another to blindfold them then stab them in the dark and they could not fight you back. 

Jacqueline's body began to swirl like a whirlpool of light and dark colors turning into the woman named Isabel that she had created as a disguise to allow her to walk freely in the village. Her skin, still a beautiful mocha color, her jaw squarer, her eyes wider, her lips slightly thinner. Her mind the same. 

As Mary continued to feel the new illness consume her body, Jacqueline (as Isabel) left the cottage. The gulls above her floated up from the dockside and into the air in big heaps of glowing white feathers. Crows from the edge of the shore of Goode Island called to their avian siblings from atop their beech tree vantage points announcing Jacqueline's departure to Welshport Island.

She shapeshifting witch was not directly going to Churchill Green to be with Johnathon as she had been doing for weeks now in her magical disguise. She had one more stop before that -- she was going to see Verity Spencer and find a way to make her end her torment of her twin sister Mary once and for all. 

 ****

Rebecca faces the truth 

While Jacqueline made her way to Welshport Island from Goode Island, over at Tirymor, Jane stood in a large window in the east wing drawing room that faced the long pebble encrusted path that led from the front gates. 

Her face was frozen in worry as she saw an automobile from the village puttering up the path. She held on to a silver kettle of tea, hot to the touch, in one hand and an empty saucer and cup in the other.

Rebecca entered the intended person to receive the tea, with her dog BeeBee in arms. She walked slowly towards the preoccupied Jane and turned to the window just as the automobile vanished behind hedges off to the side. 

"Who was that?" Rebecca asked, cuddling BeeBee. 

"Oh, Ma'am, I'm sorry, I didn't see you come in. I don't know. I couldn't distinguish who was driving." Jane said, lying. She saw.

Rebecca furrowed her brow and then went to the table and sat for her tea.

"How are you feeling today, ma'am?" Jane asked, hoping to calm Rebecca as she knew what was coming shortly. 

Rebecca did not answer audibly. She nodded. 

"Perhaps you'd like to take BeeBee out for a wal---" Jane said just as she was interrupted by the mansion's butler  

"Ma'am." A butler said from the door of the drawing room.

Jane gulped.

"Visitors." He said. 

Rebecca sighed "I wasn't expecting company. Is it Ms. Braga? I don't think I had an appointment with her." 

"No ma'am." The butler replied, his face white as a sheet.

Rebecca noticed and felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She let BeeBee go, the dog ran over to the butler and peeked it's little fluffy head out to see who the visitors were. He barked, yapped at the strangers, just as the butler shifted to the side and allowed the visitors to enter.

It was Constable Justin Ryan and two of his deputies. 

"Mrs. Lord-Casador, I apologize for entering at this time, I know you weren't expecting company." Justin said.

"What is this?" Rebecca asked, as Jane quickly made her way out of the room to find Jacob. 

"We're here because we have some official and unfortunate news and business to handle with you." Justin answered. 

"I'm sorry -- with me? How so? She asked.

"I think you know." Justin replied. "We have some important questions to ask you about the day of the accidental poisonings at the hospital that led to Dr. Hoffman's death."

Rebecca took a deep breath that felt trapped inside her bodice. She grabbed at her chest, the feeling deep in her chest. She went over to two large sofas that were over to the side and offered the police officers seats. She sat down, stoic, regal almost otherworldly to the eyes of the three men who had never seen the famous matriarch of the Lord family up-close and personal. 

"Will you tell us where you were that day? The day of the poisoning and death?" Justin asked.

"Well, I was... I was here." She said.

"Here? The whole day?" Justin pressed.

She could tell he knew more. "No." She replied but gave no more.

"Where else?" One of the deputies asked. 

"I did go out, I went to the hospital." She said.

"You were there -- that day?" Justin asked.

She nodded affirming but again not going into detail.

"Constable, I would truly like to know what this all about? If you have something to ask me, point blank, please do so because I'm not a woman who likes a man who beats around the bush." She said.

"Yes, of course, you like things direct. I've heard that about you." Justin replied.

"Then you'll indulge my reputation and tell me what you want to know." She said, the bitterness seeping out into her words like acid. 

"Were you involved at all, with what happened with the poisoned patients and the untimely death of Dr. Asha Hoffman?" Justin asked. The two other deputies quickly removed note pads to record her answer. 

Rebecca's jaw clenched like a steel bear trap around an unfortunate hunter's leg. As her chest heaved up with air, she opened to reply with yet another misguided lie, but her son Jacob entered the room with Jane who seemed out of breath.

"Careful how you answer." Jacob replied.

"Mr. Lord, we were just discussing what Mrs. Casador was doing at the hospital that day." Justin explained.

"I've been informed." Jacob said, his eyes flashing over to Jane.

"Your mother was just about to tell us." a deputy said.

"Is that so? Mother, what's your answer?" Jacob moving over to his mother to see if she'd be honest with the police as she was with him when she confessed.

Rebecca didn't know what to do, she hadn't thought about this happening, she didn't look into Fatima's cards and see this happening in her own home. She couldn't say anything, she couldn't tell what they wanted to hear. She hoped a lie, she wanted to tell them a lie, but there was something in Jacob's face that raised the hair on the back of her neck.

She could tell, just in the eyes of her eldest son that he was responsible for the police sitting in her drawing room asking her questions about Asha's death.

"Mrs. Casador?" Justin said, pulling her out of her thoughts and back into their conversation. "Can you answer the question?"

"Answer it mother." Jacob added. 

Rebecca stood up. BeeBee rushed back into the room and dashed up to the sofa and sat in the spot Rebecca was in. She looked into her son's eyes and just behind she could see a painting of his father, her late husband Albert Lord. The comparisons of their faces in her eyes -- the two of them shared the same brow bone, eye shape and ears. She began to feel something in her stomach again. She began to hear herself begging for breath. 

She turned white and turned back to Justin as he and the two deputies stood up watching her begin to hyperventilate. 

"Tell them." Jacob said, his tone cold and unfeeling. 

"What have you done?" She whispered to Jacob.

"Tell them!" Jacob said. Celeste then entered the room. 

"What is this?" Celeste asked.

Jacob turned to his wife, a small half smile skimmed the top of his lips. 

"My mother was about to tell the police, who came all the way into the Tirymor Forest from the village to ask her what she knows about the very tragic death of Asha Hoffman, and she was about to answer, TRUTHFULLY. Because she knows what she told me." Jacob said.

"Jacob --- what have..." Celeste began but Rebecca's next action finished Celeste's sentence. 

Rebecca's had went clear across Jacob's face. The smack cracked the silence in the room. Her arm was so far off to the side Justin was able to grab it and hold it so Rebecca could not slap Jacob a second time -- and she tried.

"Please, Please Mrs. Casador, please calm down. Please." Justin said. 

Rebecca began to sob and in seconds she fell to her knees and let it all out as if all finally came crashing down on the realization of what Jacob had done. 

Her mind flashed to her crime. Her broken heart. Her hope to help Asha with her own broken heart, now that Nik had moved on behind her back with Danielle. Yes, Danielle, the common denominator between the two women. How Danielle's presence in Caspian's life was tearing Rebecca's relationship apart. The young nurse represented Viktor, the man Caspian once was and how detrimental that former identity seemed to be to Rebecca and her relationship to Caspian. Danielle, the new love in Nik's life was just as threatening to Asha who adored Nik to no end. 

It was all out now; Celeste's cried as she watched one of the strongest women she had ever known get her arms tied together in front of her and walked out of the very mansion, she ruled like a queen in her palace be taken off.

BeeBee barked uncontrollably as his mistress vanished down the front marble floored corridor. Jane grabbed hold of the white fluffy dog and held him tight. All the staff came out of their work spots to watch it all happen, shocked, horrified and unable to make sense of it. 

Rebecca had confessed. Finally -- a member of the unbreakable Lord family had finally cracked into rubble. 

"I cannot believe you actually went through with this." Celeste said to her husband.

Jacob turned to her and arched a brow "It was a long time coming, and now dear wife, the rest is ours to lose."

"The rest?" She asked in a whisper as she and Jacob walked out onto the terrace to watch the police car drive off.

"The empire." He grinned. "Its ours for the taking." 

As Celeste let it sink in, the Jacob turned in his mother as leverage to finally and truly take over the family fortune, she realized Jacob's blood was colder than she had ever thought. He may have warmed when Fabian was born, he might have softened and let things go for a short time, but the cruel Machiavellian plotter, schemer and vicious businessman she believed had disappeared was still inside him. 

And he just showed her not even the woman who gave birth to him was safe from his ambitious treachery. 

The iron front door to Tirymor House closed and Rebecca watched from the car as the mansion, the place, her safe place got smaller and smaller and smaller and fell behind the growing trees of the forest that surrounded it and hid it away. 

She'd return there -- no more.  

**** 

Danielle & Nikolas at her home  

Later that evening, at her home in the village, Danielle sat at her vanity with two large candles lit. The sun hadn't yet set but her room felt dark enough that she needed light. She stared into the mirror as she looped drop pearl earrings into her ear. So many questions flooded her mind as Nik Jordan entered the room.

He looked handsome, dressed in a tuxedo. His face glowing with perfection. She turned to him and smiled the saddest smile he'd ever seen.

"Oh, don't do that." He said. "This is a happy occasion. We're going to a wedding." 

"I know its supposed to be happy but I can't help but feel all of this is my fault. Had I never come back to settle my mother's estate when she died I would have never come across my father. I would have never pursued the idea that he truly was my father Viktor and Rebecca would have -- " She paused still unsure of their theory on Rebecca's guilt was right.

"You can't do that to yourself." Nik said lifting her up out of the vanity's chair. "If Rebecca really did all of this and tried to frame me for it, that's something she has to live with and the law will have to decide whether or not she should be punished. You cannot punish yourself. All of this is a tragedy from the very beginning with Asha and my mother's child -- all of it happened before you came back. Somehow, this is where it led and we have to all live with the final outcome." 

"I hope Cora and Aaron aren't too upset that I won't be the picture of happiness at their wedding." Danielle said.

"I'm sure they'll understand. To be honest, I'm surprised they invited us. I don't know Aaron too well and Cora and I had only minor conversations, but she's been so close to Evie and my mother through her time with Gabriel, so I guess we're all sort of connected." 

"Have you heard from your sister?" 

Nik sighed and shook his head. "Yet another mystery for us to chew on, no. When Matthew left, we all figured he'd go after her and even he's gone off the radar. No letters. No messages. Nothing." 

"I don't know, Nik, maybe we should just stay here. You just got finished being questioned by the authorities -- it just feels strange going out to celebrate." Danielle confessed.

"No, no, no -- we did nothing wrong. Hiding out just feels like we're admitting to something. We shouldn't vanish from the world just because people think we did something that you and I, our friends and family, know we didn't do." Nik replied, but Danielle couldn't be convinced.

He reached over as she turned from him and looked into the mirror again. He hugged her from behind as they stared into the mirror at each other. Nik kissed her cheek and she snuggled to his arms.

"I've fallen very much in love with you, Danielle." He whispered. "Nothing, and I mean nothing will ever come between us." 

She turned back to face him. His eyes were so soft and she could tell that he was in love -- she was too. His sincerity felt almost too good to be true but there was nothing stopping her from really believing him. No matter what happened next she knew he'd be by her side and she'd be by his.

She held his face and kissed him there in her room in her gown and drop pearl earrings. He pulled her close and held her in his arms as a ring rang on the telephone in the hallway.

The paused, not expecting any caller at that time of the evening. Danielle went over to the hallway and picked up the candlestick phone and put the receiver to her ear. 

"Yes?"

The voice on the other line wasn't clear at first but then repeated after Danielle gave no answer. 

"Is this the home of Danielle Holten?" The female voice asked.

"It is." 

"Please hold. Patching through Constable Justin Ryan." The operator announced.

Three clicks and Justin came on the phone.

"Danielle, Its Justin.?"

"Yes, Justin, hello. What is it?" She said as Nik slowly made his way into the hall. 

"I have good news. Mrs. Casador has confessed to Asha's death and the other poisonings." Justin confirmed.

"WHAT! That's... I... I don't know what to say!" She replied.

"Dani?" Nik said.

"I hope you and Dr. Jordan understand I was only doing my best while the investigation was on-going. Please let him know that the constable's office has cleared him now that we have confirmation on the actual perpetrator. I've already spoken with Dr. Ward. Your suspensions will likely be lifted soon. But I'm sure Dr. Ward will confirm that once he gets the go-ahead." 

Danielle let out giant sigh of relief and thanked Justin then leaped into Nik's arms dropping the phone to the ground.

"What is it? What's happened?" 

Danielle kissed Nik again and began to explain the call. "It's over." She said. "It's really over!" 

****

Aurora is not home ... alone 

Aurora arrived back home to the Beach House in a flurry of worry for Caspian and anger at Rebecca. She tossed her coat over the sofa and fell into its deep white cushions allowing its cozy folds to hold her in place as the worry continued to overtake her. 

Suddenly she felt eyes on her. It was like someone was in the corner of the room watching her. This weight on Aurora made her jump quickly and stare at the blackness… she slowly made her way to that area of the parlor where the heaviness emanated from holding her breath the whole time. She reached for the lamp, shaking as she  pulled its beaded switch illuminating that darkened corner.

There was nothing there, only the pale wallpaper and photos framed of her grandson. There was only the light now and the sound of Aurora’s thumping heart.

Aurora took a breath of relief and returned back to the sofa and her thoughts on Caspian's manic disappearance and wondered where he could have gone. 

As she sat there, a figure in silhouette fluttered in the background from yet another of the house. Aurora, this time, heard the clumsy footsteps. She jumped up again and backed away from the sofa staring directly into the darkness that was the other room she believed empty but clearly was not. 

"Who's there? Come out. Come out now." She said forcibly. 

Aurora took two paces to the left near a hearth and grabbed a fire-poker. She lifted it up into the air and demanded the person show themselves to her.

Then, slowly creeping out from the darkened area of the room, entering into the light of the parlor came Caspian Casador.

Aurora gasped.

Caspian was disheveled. Unshaven. His face was emotionless and empty. He stared at Aurora like he did a long time ago -- when he was something else. Something much more sinister and not of this living world.

"Caspian...?" She whispered, the poker still raised. "Caspian?" she repeated.

He did nothing at first, he just stared at her and walked closer. Aurora's breath became shallower as something in her told her this man, the man she felt she was finally reconnecting with after tragedy took their child had returned to the creature that had raped her and conceived that child. No more was he the kind Caspian who had turned a new leaf since the demonic possession left him, no more was the man she thought would help her finally reconnect her fractured family. 

"Who are you?" She asked, believing that he was truly possessed again.

"Who I always was. Who I've always been. This is me, Aurora. This is who I am." He said in a growl.

Aurora's expression showed confusion.

"My name is Viktor." He replied in a cold tone of voice as he slowly moved around the white sofa coming closer to her.

"Viktor?” She asked but soon her mind began to connect the dots “The man you were before --- before you took the name Caspian.”

“At your service.” He answered, bowing slightly.

“I don’t understand, this is who you were before the possession?” She asked, he nodded. "How did this happen?"

"The how really doesn't matter, does it? I'm here now. And I’m not leaving. Nor ever again.” 

“What do you want?” She asked, her hand shaking with the poker still tightly gripped. "To be as you were?"

“As I was?” He thought. “I can be honest with you. We've been through so many things. You see Aurora, I was never a good man. Never a man who watched out for his family like he should. My wife Lina suffered with my awfulness. Dani too -- the poor girl all but abandoned her mother for nursing school away from here to free herself of the wretched life I gave them." Viktor admitted.

"Then you want to make amends?" Aurora hoped, she slightly lowered the poker.

"Amends!?" He laughed. "Its too late for that. I fell prey to the darkness that all humans are prey to and when the darkness overcame me and created Caspian and was summoned through a force, I never felt more alive.” He asked rhetorically.

"I -- I don't understand. A force?" 

"You can thank the late mistress of shadows...Eliza Goode." Viktor confessed revealing the late Eliza's hand in forming the evil entity that eventually took hold of Viktor's human body and inhabited it as Caspian.

"You're frightening me." She replied. 

"Ohhhhh am I frightening? Poor you!" he mocked with a chuckle. "Have I sent you to a place you feel threatened? By the look of it, I have. No one holds an iron poker above their head like that if they're not threatened." 

"Caspian, you're not well, something is very, very wrong." Aurora said.

"On the contrary, Aurora I have never felt more right! And that name -- THAT NAME! Caspian! I chose it for him but I can't stand to hear it. Viktor, Aurora, this is the name I want to live by. It's the name I was born with." Caspian said as he got closer and closer to Aurora. 

Then in a split second he lunged at her. She lifted the poker up higher ready to swing but he blocked it with his hand and yanked it from her. The force of the pull threw Aurora to the ground. She screamed and began to crawl, a futile attempt at an escape. Caspian grabbed her heels that were peeking out from under her dress and pulled her back. He got on top of her and held her down. 

"Viktor is the name of the man you see now, and it's the name of the man who'll take your life." 

Aurora's eyes were as wide as saucers as his hands went down around her neck and began to squeeze. She felt the heft of his body on her, she could not move she could not breath. She began to see spots and a darkness floating above her like a smoke, the lack of oxygen pulling her into it faster and faster.

Then Caspian literally leaped off of her. She choked, the air flooding back into her lungs. She turned to see him rolling around on the ground as if he was on file. 

He got up, his body contorted in a strange position as if he was physically pulling himself in two directions. 

"Caspian!!! Please, please stop!" Aurora shouted from the floor as she continued to catch her breath.

Caspian lurched to the left, the right. He fought his inner self tearing at his clothes screaming in anger towards the two men in one body. 

He fell back into a wall, a mirror tilted to the side and Caspian faced it. The mirror reflected something awful, his face but cold and menacing not the face looking in. 

"This is no longer yours." The reflection said.

"GET OUT!!!" Caspian shouted to the mirror.

"THIS IS NO LONGER YOURS!!!" The reflection said again, screaming it this time splitting Caspian's mind into two again. 

Caspian fell to the ground, pulling the mirror down with him. It shattered into pieces. Aurora got up from the floor, she lunged for the door but Caspian grabbed her by the forearm and yanked her back.

It was the Viktor's face she saw again.

"Going somewhere?" He grinned evilly. 

She screamed and he grabbed her by the neck and began choking her. She gasped, ripping at his hands with hers hoping something, some kind of force inside of her would stop him from killing her. She reached over, grabbed a vase and crashed it over his head to no avail. He was unstoppable.

She continued to choke and walk backwards as he held her. She saw the blackness come again, slowly seeping into her eyes as she blinked with lack of air. In a last ditch effort she grabbed a picture from a wall they bumped into. She pulled it off the wall and placed it in front of Viktor so he could see his reflection. Caspian's face. 

Caspian in the glass of the picture lunged forward which made Viktor's head lunge forward into the glass, the reflection and body being as one. The glass shattered all over Viktor's face cutting, slashing him. He screamed and fell to the floor letting go of Aurora who fell to the floor as well. She was unconscious but alive. 

Caspian finally came about, shocked, horrified of what his alter ego Viktor had done to Aurora; what he did to Aurora. It was his hands, even if his mind was doing the devil's work. He crawled over to her, his face bloody slashed. Then Viktor took over again.

The man's body jumped up, almost as if he had not felt a thing. He took the fire poker that he found on the floor and made his way to Aurora. His homicidal instincts now in overdrive and just before he drove it down over the unconscious woman's head, Caspian yanked back control over the body they shared and threw the poker across the room, then pulled his body forward so far so that he fell over the sofa and crashed into the glass top of the coffee table slashing his body even more and knocking him out cold.

Both minds now unconscious in a heap of broken glass and blood.

Aurora in the corner slowly seeping into the blackness of death as her breathing slowed. She, along with the twisted double mind of Viktor and Caspian.