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| Sebastian frantically digs for Evie |
Dawn quickly approached the frozen-over cemetery of St. Thomas's. Sebastian bashed the trap door of the vault under the Crypt of Annabella Collin's tomb with his shoulder. The stones that Johnathon placed on top of the trap door rocked back and forth but could not be toppled.
In her own coffin underground, Evie scratched and screamed at the lid breaking more of her nails in the process. The air was beginning to thin, the stress on her lungs slowly began to make her feel like the space she was in was even smaller than it really was. She was about to be asphyxiated. Evie began to pray and hope for a miracle. A selfless wish that everything she was going through was a nightmare and that at any moment she'd wake up in her warm bed at Tirymor next to baby Gabriel's crip.
"Dear god, please, please god, help me. Save me. Wake me up. Wake up Wake up. WAKE UP" She said to herself.
Back at the Crypt, Evie's voice kept echoing in Sebastian's mind giving him a powerful incentive to free himself and save her. This force gave him more and more strength. He switched shoulders and bashed again and again on the vault door from below and finally, with the succession of large blows from his body, the stones above fell over, and Sebastian was able to push himself through from where Johnathon had trapped him and out of the secret grave below the Crypt.
In a swirling cloud of dust lifting into the air, Sebastian raised himself out of the grave covered in the ash-colored debris and screamed into the cold air a sound of frustrated pain of the agonizing battle to free himself as his body stretched and became upright again after several days in the tiny coffin of long dead Annabella Collins.
With his body aching and night quickly evaporating into the ice-cold morning Sebastian used all of his supernatural abilities to find his child's mother who was slowly slipping unconscious from the lack of air in her coffin.
Every second counted and Evie had no idea whether or not someone had heard her pleas for help but Sebastian was determined to find where the screams where coming form, he could sense Evie's life slowly dimming like a candle at the end of it's wick.
He trudged through the graveyard's snow covered ground, his eyes black as the night that was vanishing. His heart pounding, his chest heaving in large heaps of winter air into his lungs.
"Evie! EVIE!" He screamed into the wind.
Her eyes slowly opened. She whispered his name.
Sebastian's ears could hear the very tiniest animal scatter into the snow-covered bushes, and he could hear Evie's fading voice.
Finally, covered over by a mound of snow, was Evie's yet to be marked grave sight.
Sebatian could feel her there, her heartbeat like a honing device. He fell to his knees and began shoveling snow with his bare hands until he got to solid ground. He then began to dig with his hands, his elbows, his fingers digging into the frozen ground ripping through each patch, and swatch of dirt like a plow ravaging the earth below. His nose dripping, his mouth frothing, his heart-breaking as he imagined finally reaching Evie and finding her dead.
"EVIE STAY AWAKE! PLEASE!" he screamed down "PLEASE EVIE, STAY AWAKE!"
"Sebastian." Evie said with a faint voice in reply as she kept pushing herself to breath and breath and stay awake as long as she could.
She muttered to herself "air in. air out. air in. air out."
Off over the horizon ma pink glow peeked up from behind giant waves off to the east. Sebastian had almost no time left to get Evie out of the ground and also run back to his own safely away from the sun's killer morning rays. Sebastian had nothing to fear now that he was what he was. He did not fear the dark. He did not fear torture or solitude. He did not fear death as he had already experienced and fought his way out of all of those things. The one thing he feared was the light of the morning sun, it was the one thing that would finally vanquish him into ashes.
But Evie's life mattered more.
He dug. He dug and he dug until his fingers bled. He dug and he dug until two of his fingernails lifted and pulled off thanks to the rough hard frozen ground.
Thanks to his incredible strength, his powerful love for Evie he finally reached the edge. There, just a few more moments of digging was the top of Evie's coffin.
She was choking now inside, unable to breath, unable to stay awake. "Help.........." she whispered one last time before passing out.
The sun peaked through the branches of the eastern side of the cemetery, still too far to reach where Sebatian was sitting in a deep hole where Evie was buried. The walls of the grave he had just uncovered protected him for the coming sun, for now.
He ripped through the last layer of earth and busted in the top of the coffin's lid.
Dirt and shards of wood fell on Evie cutting her in several places on her beautiful unconscious face.
"No! MY GOD NO! Evie!!!" Sebastian shouted reaching in and pulling the woman he once loved out of her coffin and held her in his arms. "Please, wake up, please Evie. Please! God, please help her. Wake up Evie, wake up!" He said kissing her on the lips over and over again. "Wake up Evie. I'm here. Please, wake up." He said again rubbing her chest to warm it. Kissing her again and again on the lips until they felt warm.
And then, like a spark, her eyes slowly blinked open until she saw Sebastian staring back at her.
She had not seen him in almost 2 years. She had thought he was killed. She had thought he was gone for good. She wished it not to be true, but had moved on with Matthew and then he was taken from her too.
She couldn't believe her eyes. It was really him, there sitting with her inside a long deep hole where she had been buried alive. She was weak, exhausted, almost dead, but she mustered the strength to reach around and pull him into a hug that was punctuated with sobs.
She cried into his shoulder for what seemed like forever and when she opened her puffy eyes, she saw the sky's purple tone of dawn.
"Sebastian, the sun!" She said exclaimed.
Sebatian looked up from the grave they sat in then looked back down at Evie "Looks like this is it. Trapped like a rat." he joked.
"No, no, we have to get you out of here. We have to get you somewhere where the sun won't touch you." She replied frantically.
"Evie, it's too late for me, ok? Its too late. But not for you, I want you to go back and find your place at Tirymor, do it for me, do it for our son. Raise him well, raise that beautiful baby boy of ours to remember me and love me and tell him every single day how much I adored him."
Evie began to cry seeing Sebastain was giving up. "I won't let you do this; we have to find a place for you to be safe. There's still time!" She said trying to pull him up and out of the grave.
"There is no time. This is it."
"There is no time. This is it."
She begged him but he would not move. She kissed him and hugged him, and they sat there in each other's arms in the grave she almost died in; the grave he saved her from and waited for the sun to finally peek over the open mouth of cemetery's freshest plot and waited for their final moment together.
They held each other in the cold air and felt the silence of the moment. The listened to each other's breathing. The looked into each other's eyes.
Then Evie spoke softly.
"We should take you somewhere, a place where you'll be safe forever." She said.
"What do you mean?"
Sebastian wiped away her tears "Well," she began "I don't want anyone to know where you lay. If you die here, you'll...................I don't know what will become of you." She said after a long pause.
"Ash. I'll be just ash." He said.
"Sebastian, please, let's find a place where you can be laid to rest so that Gabriel can come to you and be with you. A final place. Just between the three of us." She said.
"Evie, leave. Leave me. Just go, go back to our son like I said and...." he paused to look up at the light slowly turning the sky from purple to a lavender to a dark turquoise.
She looked up too and began to cry.
"Please." She begged. "We need to find you a place."
He shook his head no and then; they held each other again and waited for the sun to finally reach above the horizon where the sun would touch Sebatian's vampire skin and soon turn his body to ash and as the light broke through the skeletal branches of the bare trees of St. Thomas's Cemetery, Evie pulled Sebastian closer to her and held him as he too began to sob awaiting his inevitable fate.
“I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to let go.” She sobbed. “Not after everything, not after how far we have fought.”
With his cold hands he lifted her chin; their eyes met. He kissed her deeply on her pink lips that stung with the frost from the winter air.
Their love, although tormented and thrown into a tailspin even before it could truly begin, was real. It was precious, it was theirs. They adored each other no matter what the circumstances really were. There was passion and fire and tenderness between them forever. Their love made a beautiful baby boy and would forever last even if it were just in their memories.
The clock was ticking, and the sun was rising.
Sebastian then again, kissed his bride through his tears.
****
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| Filipe shields Morgan from the wolf |
That morning over on Goode Island, Mary tended to her young son Caleb. His rosy cheeks dimpled when he flashed a gummy grin at his new mother. Mary was so proud of the little boy and how quickly he adapted to his new home. She wondered, however, if the baby had flashes of the mother he'd never meet and inside she hoped she'd be the best mother for him now her family was all he had.
As the baby nursed in Mary's safe embrace, Charlotte entered the room to be with her mother and new little baby brother.
Charlotte sat on the floor at her mother’s feet and watched her nursing. She loved seeing the two of them together, but couldn't help feel like she had missed out in so many years without Mary by her side thanks to Jacob taking her away as a little baby.
"You alright, darling?" Mary asked as Caleb burped with peasure.
Charlotte's big blue eyes sparkled with pride at the little boy just as they did when she met her other brother Fabian whom she missed so much. The young lady nodded yes abut remained quiet to continue enjoying the sweet moment with her baby brother and mother.
"He's going to be the luckiest little baby ever to have you as his mama." Charlotte said reaching for the baby's hand.
"Do you really think so?" Mary asked, surprised to hear it coming from Charlotte who she knew still had an aching heart from not having Mary around for all these years.
Charlotte nodded yes as Mary's lower lip quivered with emotion. "Thank you." She whispered. “It means everything to me to know that’s how you feel.”
As the two beautiful blonds shared a sweet moment, Filipe was out fishing with Morgan by the shore on Goode Island. The ice cold sea splashed up against the stones below sending a shiver inducing mist into the air. The two had caught a good group of fish that would last them a hand full of days, and the cold was beginning to be too much for them to stay out.
"Haul in!!!" Filipe shouted to Morgan who nodded and began packing the nets and fishing lines in the snow. Once all was put away, the two began the slow snowy trek back to the cottage off in the center of the island.
As they walked, something felt strange to them. They both felt the cold stare of something watching from beneath the shadowy brush and under the snow.
"What is it?" Morgan asked, as his breath went out in cold white puffs of air.
Filipe but his hand across Morgan's chest and slowly pushed the young man behind him as the sounds of something watching them grew more and more intense. Filip put his forefinger over his chapped pink lips and shushed Morgan.
As the two stood there, sitting ducks in the snow, a wild wolf leaped from out of the brush and attacked Filipe. Morgan screamed and fell to the ground and began to move himself in the show by his elbows trying to reach a thicket of bushes and thorns. He crawled across the ground and entered the thorny bushes cutting himself all over all the while thinking Filipe was behind him. When Morgan turned and looked back out from the protective thorns, he saw Filipe battling the wolf.
The wolf and Filipe went back and forth, Filipe doing his best to keep the beast away from Morgan but suffering bite and bite in the process. Morgan called for Filipe, but he tried to keep the wolf away from where Morgan's voice was coming from, constantly putting himself in front of the creature whose ribs were showing and mouth was begging for a bite of something, anything. Even the man in front of him.
Back at the cottage, Charlotte stood up from the floor in mid conversation with her mother and began to stare off into the open facing living room. Mary stood up too seeing her daughter's strange and sudden reaction.
"What is it?" Mary asked following Charlotte into the living room.
Charlotte began to feel her heart race. Her blood pressure soared. She began to sweat and trembled in front of her mother and then out of nowhere she fell to the ground and began to gyrate and shake uncontrollably.
"Charlotte? Charlotte!!? What is it???" Mary screamed as she lay Caleb in a crib then rushed over to her daughter.
Charlotte was sensing the danger, the extra violent danger her stepfather Filipe was in the middle of.
Morgan kept screaming for Filipe to come to him, but Filipe was fending off the wolf as best he could. The hungry animal did his best, and finally lunged at Filipe's neck biting him, causing a blood to squirt out all over the pristine white snow.
Seeing this, Morgan screamed in horror and back up deeper into the thicket of thorns.
Laying there in his own blood, Filipe reached for the animal's neck and squeezed. The two--animal and man-- locked in a bizarre battle of survival. Filipe's blood all over the wolf's gray face, and the snow and his neck. Filipe squeezed the wolf's neck again, as it pulled at the flesh of Filipe's throat trying to rip out his voice box. Filipe, with his final bit of strength twisted the wolf's neck with such force it broke it and killed the animal right there with his own bare hands. With a final yelp of life, the wolf was dead.
The limp body hung on Filipe's neck, clamped there with blood oozing into it's now weakened jaw.
Filipe stood up in the red snow. The animal fell to the floor. He turned to Morgan bleeding profusely. Morgan could only think of the dream he had as he slid up towards the entrance of the thorn bush and how the wolf in his dreams had to have been a sign, a signal, of this very moment. Filipe, standing there in blood soaked closed began to feel lightheaded as the blood began to freeze from his wound.
Then, he fainted face first in the snow.
Morgan rushed to his side.
In the living room, Charlotte comes too. Her mouth suddenly released blood as if she had been hurt, but it was not her own blood.
"My god, Charlotte, please sit up, darling sit up. Are you ok? You're bleeding!!" Mary excliamed.
Charlotte grabbed her neck that was fine when she touched it but when she removed her hand it covered in blood. Mary gasped and went to check the wound on her eldest child's neck but there was nothing there. Not on her neck and not on her hand.
"What is happening?" Mary asked, knowing now it was part of Charlotte's psychic powers.
"Wolf." Charlotte said without explanation. "The wolf of the wood."
Morgan knelt next to Filipe's body; his eyes were open staring up into the sky. He was not breathing. He was not alive, his heart dead.
"PLEASE WAKE UP!" Morgan shouted. "PLEASE!!!"
As the clouds swirled over the two in the forest, the gash on Filipe's neck clotted. The sky darkened and Filipe's pupils dilated. Then with a giant gasp of air into his lungs, Filipe awoke breathing on his own. His heart beating. His skin going from gray to pink to then it's normal copper tan.
"YOU'RE ALIVE!!! THANK GOD YOU'RE ALIVE!!!!" Morgan said burring his face into the man's chest staining it in the process with Filipe's blood.
Filipe was calm, he couldn't understand why he was alive or how, but he was. He patted Morgan on the head. He grabbed a glob of blood-stained snow and pushed into the gash of his neck.
"We .... go. Cottage." Filipe said, his words strained and scattered due to the attached. The boy both then got up and walked back to the Goode Family cottage where Mary would tend to the wounded.
As they walked away, several more wolves came to check on the one that died after Filipe broke its neck. The sniffed its body and smelled Filipe all over it. Then together, the three remaining of the pack howled a violent howl of mourning.
Filipe, a long distance away now, just feet from the cottage door, turned back at the howling. His eyes flashed yellow then back to his normal brown. He was shaking. Then, together with Morgan, limped back into the Cottage to seek Mary's healing.
All the way in Welshport Village Filipe's aunt, Fatima Braga, was in her Parlor knitting. She knitted for hours and hours and hours that morning a large wool blanket. She hadn't even begun to knit with an idea or a reason. She just did it. When she finally finished, she pulled herself up in a tired grown and looked at what she had done.
A large black and gray blanket with the outline of a gray wolf with a black eye howling.
A shiver ran up Fatima's back.
****
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| Lucas says goodbye to his mother in the Azores |
Far away from Welshport Island, the time was nearing the late afternoon. The mysterious man now called Winter who was found after a shipwreck by Lucas Mural floating with the ship's debris in the waters of near the Azores Island in the North Atlantic was standing at a ticket booth smiling from ear to ear.
Lucas and his mystical mother Silvina were standing huddled together for warmth watching Winter as he purchased his ticket.
"Do you think he's ready?" Silvina asked Lucas in Portuguese.
Lucas nodded yes. "It's time he goes back where he comes from. The map we found with him will guide him. It's time."
Silvina took a breath. "Is it strange that I will miss him?"
Lucas chuckled. "Will you?"
"It was like having two sons." She replied as Winter walked over to them from the ticket booth.
"I did it." Winter said.
Silvina gestured to see his ticket. "Comprou dois?" She asked Winter, making sure their secret deal had been made.
Lucas furrowed his brow confused. "Two?" He said, revealing that his mother had asked Winter if he had purchased two tickets, not one.
Silvina turned to Lucas, he beloved son and held his hands in the cold sea air of the north Atlantic. Her dark eyes welled up with tears as she explained to her son it was time he found his way to his own life.
"I want you to go with him. See him to where he is from and be there with him. This is your chance to experience a new life, a new place. I am old and I want you to have a time that is yours and not cooped up here on these small islands with me, I will be ok." She said to him.
Lucas too began to tear up. "I can't leave you." He replied to her. "Who will take care of you? Who will be here when you need help going up the steps or walking you to church?"
She snickered at her son with a glimmer of playfulness that he hadn't seen in a long time. "I'm old but I'm not incapable my love. I will take care of myself. And you will see a new part of this world with Winter."
The man known as Winter smiled at his friend Lucas and handed him his own ticket for to board the large steamship as it's foghorn boomed in the distance towards the other end of the dock. The ship was a smaller steamship that would carry canned fish, olive oil and other goods from the islands to American and would also have a handful of passengers two of which stood there on the stone paved pier ready to say goodbye to the Azores once and for all.
"I don't know if I can do this." Luas said to Winter.
"You will do this." Silvina replied to her son in Portuguese.
The ship once again sent out it's signal to board. Without luggage, the two men took off leaving Silvina with a few other islanders on the pier waving goodbye. This would be the last time Lucas ever saw his mother. He watched her get smaller and smaller on the pier as he boarded the ship. The chill of the cold air on her skin, she too watched her son get smaller and smaller in the distance as he walked up the long wooden ramp to enter the ship's hull. She put her shawl over her cold head and one single tear fell down her wrinkled cheek.
The ship began to depart and in the fog of the late afternoon, Lucas watched his island with its giant mountain volcano in the center seem to move backwards, a trick of the eye as it was actually the ship moving out to sea.
Winter joined Lucas to wave goodbye to the Island and Silvina.
"I'm never coming back here, am I?" Lucas said realizing his life just changed forever. "How could I have done this; I didn't even think. I just ... I just left."
"You'll be ok. We'll be ok." Winter said.
The man who had been given the name of the season they were in by Silvina's mystical visions had grown fond of his adopted home too. He cared for Silvina and was so grateful for her care of him while he recuperated from the terrible shipwreck. The island, its green pastures, it's majestic mountain that resembled the gray of the surface of the moon had been his home for almost an entire year.
It was now a memory, and he was returning to the place on the map found in his pocket where he believed he was from.
A place called Maine in American and a village Welshport. Here, the man called Winter with his new friend Lucas would attempt to connect to who he really was and hopefully find the beautiful woman in his scattered broken memory with the honey brown hair.
****
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| Aurora, Asha & Nik meet at Gramercy Café |
Back in Welshport, Aurora, Nik and Asha were sitting cozily in Gramercy Cafe in the village at a window seat. The three sipped on coco and chatted about what they had planned for the rest of the winter. Being busy at the hospital and Nik and Asha didn't have much of a schedule to play with but Aurora felt the need to get away from her troubles. She wanted to get away with Gregory and Nik encouraged it.
Aurora worried that everything that she had gone through that year would eventually take its toll on her mental state. A small vacation somewhere, she hoped, would free her from her terrible memories.
Aurora, who was still dressed in mourners black for the two children she had lost: the baby at birth, and Evie in a terrible hospital incident, stirred her hot tea as she stared out of the frosted window of Gramercy Cafe. Across the cafe, Aurora saw walking in the park Mary, Morgan and baby Caleb.
Asha noticed too.... her heart suddenly sank her stomach knotted.
Mary and her small family had had a terrible morning. They'd come to the island for medical treatment for Filipe who had been attacked after a fishing trip by a wolf.
From the window, Nik could see Mary's worried face as she crossed the cobble stone street and looked into the window where she met eyes with the young doctor her expression was clearly a face of distress.
"Let me check on her." Nik said and they all three got up from their cozy cafe suite and exited to meet with the worried Mary.
"Are you alight Mary?" Asha asked stepping in front of Aurora to do her best and block the child from view, the child Mary illegally adopted that was biologically Aurora's.
"It's Filipe." Mary began. This morning he was viciously attacked by a wolf while on a fishing trip.
"A wolf!!" Aurora exclaimed. "My god!"
Mary continued. "I did the best I could with the wounds but I think they're infected, or ... I don't really know. He's just very very sick. Sweating, a fever. I haven't been able to calm him. Is there any change one of you could come back with us to check on him?"
"Of course, I'll go." Asha said.
"Are you sure?" Nik asked her.
"Stay with your mother. Ill be fine." Asha answered.
"Thank you." Mary smiled. "Charlotte stayed back with Filipe, I don't want to be too long. We have a boat docked down on pier 4, we'll take you right away if you can." Mary said.
"I'll need my doctor's back, it's back at my apartment."
"Morgan, send Morgan to fetch it. He's faster." Aurora said.
Morgan nodded as Asha gave him her keys and directions... "It's right on the kitchen table. 56 Cape Road. Just three blocks down the street to the left."
"Quickly Morgan." Mary said as Morgan dashed off to Asha's apartment for the bag and medical supplies.
As Morgan passed the group on his way Mary turned slightly allowing baby Caleb to come into view with Aurora. As she lay her eyes on the baby, she felt a flutter in her heart. His little hands reached for her. He giggled and rubbed his little eyes showing he was ready for a nap.
"He's ...darling." Aurora said grabbing the baby's little fingers.
Asha again gulped hoping Aurora wouldn't recognize the baby as her own.
"He really is." Nik said not knowing he was staring at his own half-brother. "When did you give birth?" Nik added laughing at himself. "Sorry, that's such a doctor's way of asking when is this little guy's birthday."
"Well, he was born a almost a month ago. We took him in. His mother died at birth. I unfortunately had a miscarriage of my own baby, and he came at the perfect time."
Aurora gasped. "You too."
Mary cocked her head. "That's right, did you also have a ...." Mary paused. She realized then that Aurora was no longer pregnant. She knew that she and Aurora were both expecting babies around the same time, but Aurora, who's baby with Caspian was something everyone was concerned about, was not with Aurora.
"...My child did not make it." Aurora answered.
Asha stood there unsure of how this was going to go. Surly Mary would connect the dots. Surly Aurora too would connect the dots. Would they realize that something of a coincidence was here, that one baby was between two mothers? Or would the lie Asha and Gregory concocted hold firm.
"My baby girl died at birth and --- well, every time I see a new baby I just wish I could have seen her face." Aurora said repeating Asha and Gregory's lie that had a baby girl to conceal Caleb's identity.
"I had a girl too." Mary said. "She didn't make it either after the accident."
"It's been a season much loss." Nik added. "I'm glad that this little one here made it and seems happy and healthy, how did he come to you?"
Before Mary could answer Asha interrupted "I helped."
"What?" Aurora asked as Nik too furrowed his brow not knowing his girlfriend had done this for Mary.
"I had a patient that was very ill and was expecting a baby. She died and when Caleb was born and Filipe knew that Mary was prepared for a baby and I thought it was the perfect step to take."
"What patient?" Nik asked, not remembering a patient at the hospital dying at childbirth.
"She was a private patient. She died on a house call. She had never seen a doctor." Asha said, adding to the lie.
"That's awful." Aurora said as she stared at the baby who's eyes would not leave his true mother's face.
"Aurora, he seems to like you." Mary said.
"He's perfect. Everything about him is perfect. It's strange, he reminds me of you at that age Nik." Aurora laughed.
Nik smiled but felt strange when he looked at the baby all of a sudden. Asha's story seemed too contrived, too perfect, too rehearsed. He thought it was odd that Asha wouldn't have told him of this boy's mother dying. He was surprised she had helped Mary and Filipe take in the, again, without even mentioning things to him. They shared everything they went through the patients as a way to learn from each other as they were both new to being doctors. All of it seemed like yet another one of Asha's secrets.
"He is very cute." Nik reply-- Asha could tell the wheels in his head were turning.
Then, out of no where like a whirling dervish, Morgan appeared with Asha's doctor's bag.
"I got it!!" He said.
"THANK YOU!" Asha said. "Let's go, let's go!" she added quickly getting the baby and Mary out of Aurora's sight. "I'll be back as soon as Filipe is ok."
Nik nodded and hugged Asha rather lightly and she noticed. The group headed down to pier 4 where the boat was waiting leaving Aurora and Nik on the snowy sidewalk outside of Gramercy Cafe.
"What is it?" Aurora asked Nik knowing her son had something on his mind by the look on his face.
"Nothing, nothing, I just feel strange about Asha not telling me she helped that child find a home."
"Nik, she's been very busy. You've been very busy. Goodness, give the girl a break. We can't remember every single little thing that happens on our daily lives."
"Mother," Nik replied a bit frustrated. "this wasn't just anything. A new mother died leaving her baby behind. No father? No Family? That would have been on my mind all day if it were me who delivered the baby. I would have talked to her about it. I just don't know, why would she keep it from me?"
"It's not the same." Aurora answered.
"What?"
"It's not the same situation. Asha had a lapse in judgement when she kept what she had learned about Alice months ago. She was sacred, she was unsure of what to think of that information. But this is different. Don't hold a grudge son, grudges only kill love. It'll eat and eat and eat at you for all time." Aurora warned.
"But what if it is something she's holding from me? What if there's more to it than her just forgetting to tell me?" He wondered.
Aurora patted her son on the back and then looped her arm into his, together the walked back to their cushy seat inside the cafe. She asked the waitress for more coco for Nik and coffee for her and then gave him more advice.
"If you let every little thing bother you like this, your relationship with Asha will not survive. I think she's a good girl, a good caring person. She thinks from hear heart and sometimes that can get people in trouble, but it also shows that she's truly someone who loves from her whole soul. At least that's what I think." Aurora said sipping her fresh coffee.
"But what if she is hiding something? I mean -- I can't just pretend my doubts aren't real or aren't legitimate." Nik countered.
Aurora shrugged. "All I can tell you, is to love and trust. The truth will come out -- and when it does, I'm sure Asha will be totally free from any doubts. I believe that."
Nik smiled and kissed his mother's hand; it was a flash of optimism from a woman who had been through so much horror in the last 6 to 7 months. He decided not to keep pushing the topic and to let it lay in the happy optimism of a woman who had every right to go pessimistic but chose not to.
As the two continued to enjoy their quick break from reality at the Cafe, Aurora's mind drifted to the face of that adorable baby boy named Caleb in Mary's arms. She saw his little eyes over and over and over again in her mind. She couldn't stop thinking about him and how much he truly did look like Nik when he was a baby.
She shook the thoughts out of her mind and drank her coffee. The day, she decided, would not be shadowed by sad memories and negativity. Aurora needed to have a good day.
Finally.
But on the boat to Goode Island, Asha panicked. When she returned, she knew she had to get with Gregory and make sure Aurora did not have any more encounters with Mary or Caleb or their secret would be exposed and the two conspirators would lose everything.
****
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| Fatima & injured Filipe after the wolf attack |
On Goode Island, Charlotte carefully washed the wound that Mary had sewn up on Filipe's neck where the wolf had latched on. She placed the warm cloth with that was soaked in a potion that Mary had made to help make sure the wound would stay clean but there seemed to be an infection and Filipe sweated and remained a sleep in his bed.
Charlotte, sniffled as she softy cried for the kind man that she saw as her stepfather. She worried that this attack would end his life, and hope that her mother and the rest of the group would return with medicine.
She thought of the conversation at Filipe's bedside just before her mother left in search of a doctor.
"I'll find something in the book--- in my mother's book! There has to be something in there to keep him safe to heal him to keep him alive!!" Mary panicked as Charlotte recalled.
"Book? A healing book?" Charlotte remembered asking.
"Charlotte, listen to me, when the time is right, I will explain everything there is to know about who your grandmother Eliza was, who I am, and perhaps who you will be. The book I have is a book of spells. A book that sorceresses like me and Grandmother Eliza go to heal and help others. I need to find something in it to help Filipe."
Charlotte remembered her mother grabbing the book and quickly flicking through the pages. She was confused and couldn't believe what her mother Mary had told her and as Mary did search for a spell to reverse and sickness or possible death that would come from the attack, Filipe lifted his arm and grabbed Mary's wrist as he lay there beaten, hurt, and still suffering from his neck would that had been freshly sewn up.
He couldn't speak, Charlotte recalled, but he yanked the book from Mary's hand and it fell to the floor.
It was a clear sign he wanted nothing of magic. He was done with it. He had seen what it had done to Sebastian, and in fact what it had done to him as he was the life source that helped Sebastian to live as he was.
"No." Filipe said in a whisper of a voice filled with gurgles of blood that came from the wound.
"Filipe if I find something in there, it may be the only way to save you." Mary said as she fell to her knees to better see his face as he lay in bed.
"No." He repeated.
Standing there now alone with Filipe, Charlotte knew he was dead set against any magic from whatever source that book or anywhere else could muster. But Mary's words continued to echo in Charlotte's mind: "Who you will be."
"Filipe," Charlotte whispered "I'll be right back, I'm going to fetch clean water."
Filipe asleep, did not answer.
He was alone now in his bed fighting the bite of the beast from the forest. But he would not be alone for long. The closet door of his bedroom that he shared with Mary slowly opened and out of the shadowy wardrobe a woman in a dark dress emerged. It was Fatima Braga, Filipe's aunt who had quickly come to Goode Island as soon as she saw what became visible in what she knitted.
She brought the blanket to show Filipe and had no idea what she would find, her nephew close to death in bed with a wound from the mouth of a wolf.
"My boy, my sweet boy. Was this why I was brought back into your life? To watch you die this way? This cannot be the way it all ends, I pray to god, to any god, that it is not the way it ends." She whispered to him. "Olha," she said then, in her native Portuguese she pulled out the dark gray and black blanket she knitted with the wolf on it. "I made this. I don't know why I made this, I didn't set out to make it like this, and yet there it is. The animal that has almost taken you from this world."
Filipe moaned with pain at hearing her voice.
"Sim meu amor," She said egging him on to wake, "wake up. See, I’m here."
He opened his eyes that were red with blood from the attack but said nothing to Fatima.
"The wolf has come for you, has it not?"
Filipe carefully nodded his head.
"And what comes after this? I don't know if I want to find out." She said. "I fear there the words, Filipe. I know you know what I'm talking about. The moon comes again soon, and it will be full. We only have a few nights to prepare."
He moaned.
"You know the legend of the lobo, I know you know it well. You were raised on that story. We cannot allow you to be free on the night of the full moon, can we? The animal that attacked you was killed and you survived. O Lobo da lua gave you his life. Now you are one. We have to prepare to care for when your bodies finally merge--- the moon will tell that story." She said staring at the man, her nephew, she held in her heart like he was her own son.
Filipe moved his body in pain and tried to speak. Fatima shushed him but he was sure he had to say something to her, his estranged dear aunt. He peeked around the bedroom door but Charlotte was still fetching water. She then went back to Filipe.
"Save your strength, do not speak." She said.
"O lobo da Lua." Filipe whispered in a scratchy pained voice.
"Yes, yes, Oh you remember the story!" his aunt replied happily. "We have to get you out of this house and away from this family before you merge into one on the night of the full moon. If you do not leave, there is no telling what horrors you will create. No one has ever survived an attack from someone who was created lobo da lua." Fatima explained.
"I won't hurt them." He said.
"You won't, but it will."
Filipe gulped with a twinge of pain …he understood what Fatima’s was getting at. He had to leave. He had to leave now, or risk something deadly after his wolf attack.
Fatima would take him away. They'd be safe together once the full moon came, in just a few nights. The safely of his family was the most important thing to Filipe. The love of his life Mary, his new child Caleb, and Morgan and Charlotte, the children he'd actually grown very fond of. He was a father figure to Morgan now, and a stepfather figure to Charlotte. As soon as the effects of the wolf's bite came, it was destined for him to become a creature such as the wolf and murder his own family.
He had to leave.
Charlotte entered the room with fresh water. She gasped and dropped the water all over the floor when she discovered the room empty and only an open window filtering in the freezing air from outside.
Filipe had vanished.
He was gone and she stood there in shock with a porcelain jug of clean water and stared out of the window into the forest where the show showed two sets of footprints leading from the bedroom off into the distant dark snow-covered forest.
