B6/Ch7: RAVAGED BY RUMORS

Jacob reads Baxter’s latest column 

 
The village of Welshport was once again a buzz with Baxter Murphy's latest column in The Globe. The recent slaughter of the fisherman on the docks of town sent Baxter and the village into a whirlwind of speculation on who exactly was the culprit, and Baxter's finger was sternly pointed at the mysterious circumstances of Sebastian Lord.

For Baxter it was finally clear: The Lords were hiding a monster in their family and finally there seemed to be proof. 

Sebastian had become a virtual enigma to the public since his disastrous wedding to Evie when the family said he had been kidnapped and replaced by a look-a-like who was shot and killed. Then when the supposed real Sebastian returned from his kidnapping, he again supposedly died in a terrible fire--all of these excuses concocted by the family to hide Sebastian's vampirism. 

Now the rumors swirled! Evie was reported as saying her supposed long dead husband Sebastian was the one who saved her from suffocation in her premature grave. 

Either Sebastian was dead like the Lords reported, or he was somehow alive and saved Evie.

Both could not be true --- and yet both were true. 

"I heard he's been in Paris all this time in a mental institution and he came back just in time to save the woman he loves!" A woman told a friend in the park after reading Baxter's article.

"He'd been in prison this whole time, is what I heard. They're lying to us all. He's the one who shot his uncle Jacob and poor Christian Evans. That's what I think." A sailor said to his mate on the docks as they tied off ropes holding ships to shore. 

"Poor boy lost his mind, I think, ever since his own mother was strangled on Bellmore Beach. He's mad I tell you, Baxter's got it right. He's out for blood and guts. We have to watch ourselves now." Another man was overheard in Gramercy Cafe after reading the article. 

Over at Tirymor Jacob furiously slammed the copy of his own company's paper down on his breakfast. 

"I'll strangle him!!!" Jacob yelled referring to Baxter. 

"This, this is bad." Celeste gulped. "Where would he get an idea like this?"

"I have no idea." 

"It's too close to the truth, Jacob. We have to do damage control." She added.

"Murphy has always had it out for this family and I should send him out on his ass…but he's a damn good writer. People buy anything he says in print. He’s wild stories sell out editions of that paper weekly. This may have gone too far." Jacob replied sipping his coffee.

"It can't be true, can it?" Celeste asked. "Those bodies were destroyed. We know how savage Sebastian can be when he's.... well, when he's out of his mind with hunger." 

Jacob's eyes narrowed with anger realizing Celeste's questioning meant she was now feeling a slight bit unsure of what she had told Jacob of Sebastian’s fate months ago, a macabre agreement the two of them had to make sure that not only would Evie  be out of the way by lying and locking her in an asylum but that Sebastian too would be out of the picture; gone for good— a job Celeste said she bestowed on Johnathon.

"He's dead." Jacob replied quickly. "Johnathon took care of that. That’s what you said would happen, isn’t that Right? Why would you think twice?" 

"I, I think so." She said.

“Think? Celeste you told me…” Jacob began.

“I know what I told you!” His wife shouted back.

"Then go find our dear little brother Johnathon and ask him what in hell he did with Sebastian right now! Make sure Sebastian is really gone. I'll take care of Murphy." 

****

Tensions continue to brew at Tirymor

Elsewhere at Tirymor House in the brightly lit and glamorous golden chandelier room, Cora paced back and forth with the latest edition of The Welshport Globe tucked under her arm.

Her lavender dress seemed to float along the golden hardwood floors as she paced in the sunlight that beamed down into the room from the large windows. Her heart raced as she wondered how this would all end and if she'd be discovered as the person who had leaked the what Evie had said to Baxter. 

"They'll destroy me." She whispered to herself. "Lear." She added wondering why Lear would want to help her brother do this to his own family. 

As she continued to worry about her place within the household and fume over what her brother Baxter had done, in walked the ladies of the manor Rebecca and an extra nervous Celeste to find Cora facing away from the doors.

"Lear." She whispered again out loud to a surprised Rebecca and Celeste.

"What about my nephew?" Rebecca asked. 

Cora almost jumped out of her skin hearing Rebecca's voice from behind. 

"Well?" Rebecca asked, hoping to get the suddenly mute Cora to speak up. 

"Uh. He... he was here." Cora said, failing to say anything concrete to Rebecca's liking.

"Today? When?" Celeste asked.

"….the uh….other day." Cora replied with a pregnant pause.

"Yes?" Rebecca chimed in waiting for more information from Cora's strange behavior.

"He was here." Cora said again.

"Miss Taylor what the devil is going on with you?" Celeste asked as she and Rebecca sat side by said on a golden sofa in the sun light.

Cora was petrified and all she could do was remove the paper from under her arm and lift it up.

"Oh! That." Rebecca finally said. "Yes, well, I'm sure our company will have a lot to say about Mr. Murphy's latest attempt at throwing some kind of social scandal down our way. We’ll deal with him the way we've always dealt with him in the past." Rebecca replied doing her best to pretend she didn’t know what Sebastian truly was capable of if pushed to the brink and starved for blood.

"You're not worried about what he wrote?" Cora asked.

Rebecca chuckled. "You mean that fantastic story of a monster in my house? That Sebastian is some kind of killer? My dear I’ve seen the likes of many ghost in the shadows in my day, believe me or not and my grandson is gone. He is not here. Baxter Murphy knows that. It’s a fantasy. Nothing more. The story will feed the villagers' desire to know what happens behind these walls and when the next scandal happens this one will just float off into the distance like rose petals on the sea. The very idea of my grandson being some kind of monster is idiotic to say the least." 

"But he knew so much detail, about what was said and who said it. I think Cora's worry might be warranted. If the things we are saying to each other when we think it’s safe, in our own home, down how leak to Baxter it can lead to more of this. " Celeste said. 

“What are you saying Celeste?” Rebecca wondered somewhat irritated at Celeste’s show of being lady of the manor. “Should we question the staff like some kind of Spanish inquisition? Some of them have been with this family for decades and you know this! I can’t imagine Baxter got his information from someone here.” Rebecca added doing everything she could to negate her daughter in law.

Cora gulped at Celeste hinting that she was the provider of such details to Baxter, her secret brother. 

"Yes. Well, the mole must be smoked out somehow. We can’t go one letting more and more personal stories get into our own paper like this. Think about it Rebecca, what would Baxter do with stories of you and your new husband and how you found love in a mental ward." Celeste replied smartly. 

Rebecca cleared her throat, a sign of her frustration with Celeste again showing her up, but the Queen bee met her match in Celeste.

“Perhaps you’re right. I’ll see about questioning the staff, no one else. They’re more comfortable with me.”

"Thank you." Celeste said then looking up at Cora who had the face of a trapped rat.

The young governess had to think quick on her feet "I just hate what he's done. Truly! You have all been so kind of me and Gabriel is such a sweet and innocent boy who has asked for none of this. I'd do anything to make sure Baxter Murphy ended his revenge on you all." 

Rebecca slightly unfazed by any of the drama as she was used to it removed a deck of cards from the small box on the table in front of her and began to play solitaire. She knew how to maneuver around these types of attacks in the press towards her family, she wasn't worried.

But Celeste, her nerves frayed from her contentious conversation with Jacob and constant back and forth with Rebecca perked up with Cora's use of the word "revenge".

"Why would you say that?" Celeste asked standing up.

"Say what Mrs. Lord?" 

Rebecca then lifted her eyes from her game of solitaire and watched Celeste move over to Cora. “‘Revenge’." Celeste repeated. "Why would Baxter Murphy want revenge on this family?" 

Rebecca sat back and crossed her arms over her knees. She had never thought any of Baxter's negative articles in their paper were at all acts of revenge but acts of a zealous journalist looking to get himself in the path of fame and fortune with exposés of the rich and powerful.

But Cora made it seem personal.  

Again, Cora felt trapped, she shouldn't have said it "No, I .... well, I meant that," but Celeste interrupted.

"You said revenge. When I think of revenge, I think of someone going after another for something done in the past. To seek retribution. Why would Baxter seek that against this family?"

Cora, in truth, didn't know her brother’s real motives. Was he just a menace; a divisive slug who only wanted to put the rich and power in their place? Or was he very much trying to seek revenge for something they had done to him personally? It was never clear when speaking to Baxter. By now, however, Rebecca caught on.

"Lear." Rebecca said.

Celeste turned back to her mother in-law. "What?" 

"When we came in, we heard her say my nephew’s name. And then she said he was here. It’s him, isn't it? You think my nephew is the one seeking revenge and leaking these stories to Murphy." 

Celeste turned back to Cora who finally saw a way out of her own pickle. "YES! I do believe that." 

Celeste furrowed her brow; she did not buy anything Cora was trying to sell.

"I would watch him very closely." Cora added.

"We will." Celeste replied coldly. “Among others.”

"I should check on Gabriel." Cora said as she zipped passed Celeste and Rebecca and left the golden sitting room.

"Something about her..." Celeste said. 

“You suspect her don’t you?" Rebecca wondered.

Celeste sat back down next to her mother-in-law Rebecca. Across from them was large mirror on the wall the reflected the two sitting on the sofa. Both women had on similar style dresses in dark toned gray, a gray that almost looked black but when the light shined in the right spots it shined metallic. This similar dress was an accidental coincidence but now looking in the reflection Celeste was seeing herself turning more and more like Rebecca. The years that she was married to Jacob, all the time the two Mrs. Lords shared together -- good and bad -- was seeping into her DNA like molten lava and oozing into her words, mannerisms and personality.

Celeste, like Rebecca, was now much more cunning. Curious. Her suspicions of everyone were always at a high level.

Jacob's wife trusted no one. 

"I suspect a lot of things." Celeste answered.

Rebecca chuckled "My dear, the walls of Tirymor have certainly started to close in on you. Don't worry. It won't hurt a bit." Rebecca said as she stood up leaving her card game unfinished.

“You’re done with the cards?” Celeste asked.

Rebecca turned back and shrugged her shoulders. “I have someone to meet.”

Both women felt a connection, a kinship, and now a sort of rivalry that could lead to rough waters ahead but for now it was clear that there was indeed a mole in the house and Cora dropping Lear's name made a lot of sense to at least one of them: Rebecca.

She knew exactly why her nephew Lear would do this, and soon she'd cut Lear off at the pass. This would be her nephew's first and last attempt destroy his aunt for her past indiscretions. 

No one ever said ancient trees couldn't turn a new leaf, they just took longer. 

****

Filipe awakens in the woods 

As the entire town buzzed over the news in The Globe, far off in the distant Tirymor Forest, a seething pack of wolves circled something in a thicket of thorn bushes as the sun of the new day peeked through the canopy of large birch trees. 

The wolves sniffed around and suddenly, there was a stir. 

It was a body. It was Filipe, covered in blood and in the fetal position. Naked and shivering in the fresh air. 

When he came to, the man who's first turn as a wolf when the quarter-moon came, found himself covered in blood. The wolves that surrounded him scattered into the brush but kept watch as Filipe stood with his knees shaking. 

He couldn't comprehend where the blood had come from. He had no wounds. He had nothing on his body that would suggest the blood was his, but then, like a beam of light from a sun a memory flashes.

It was night. There was the sound of the ocean lapping and crashing up against the docks mixed with the chatter of two men. He saw himself partly changed into the wolf that came with the moon slowly approach the men stalking them as if they were two gazelle and he was lion in African brush. The waves crashed harder and harder onto the rocks below.

The men, two fishermen, never saw the sunrise. 

Then Filipe lunged. His teeth sank deep into the flesh of the first man as the other screamed in horror and tried to fight the creature attacking his friend. It was futile. Filipe claws ripped at the man's throat, and he fell backwards and watched as his friend was ripped to shreds in front of his own dying gaze. 

"No, I couldn't have. I couldn't have done that." Filipe said in whisper to himself.

But the blood all over his naked body didn't lie.

Filipe fell to his knees and cried. The awful truth was that Fatima was right. This transition was just the beginning of the terrible things to come. He hadn't seen anything yet, as the full moon in all its gloomy white glowing glory was coming and there would be much more suffering to come at the jaws of Filipe Braga. 

The wolves began to slowly creep out of their hiding spots as they watched the crumbling Filipe on the ground in the forest begging to be killed by them in hopes they'd take pity on him and save him from what was to come. The wolves, seeing Filipe as their pack leader, only circled him and sniffed him. Then, a large gray wolf off in the distance watching, the wolf that made Filipe what he was, howled into the air. The returned the deep howl of the pack.

Filipe got up from the ground. He looked out into the distance at the large gray wolf that almost seemed to glow glowing in the sun light that bathed him. Filipe's breathing began to shallow. He was fearful of the monster that made him what he was but at the same time a wave of calm fell over him. He said nothing. He did nothing, just stood there under the Tirymor Forest canopy, his muscles bulging, his naked body glistening with the blood of his first victims.

And then, his eyes changed. The circle pupil turned to a long black slit floating in a yellow iris. 

The gray wolf howled again and Filipe, feeling the strength of his pack howled back in a human voice. But when he was done, his eyes returned to their normal human form. It frightened the man. He could not understand what was happening to him and if he could be saved. 

"How many more?" He asked himself of the people he'd kill.

With his mind racing, his heart beating in his ears, the naked Filipe made his way through the forest and tried find a way to make it back to Fatima's house without being detected. 

The wolves joined the grey wolf off in the distance and vanished into the mists of the trees returning in the night to watch their pack leader Filipe continue his ravaging when the full moon finally turned him into the complete monster that it Fatima's prophecy promised. 

****

New Lord in-laws 

Later that afternoon back at Tirymor House, the Lords were still licking their wounds at the vicious report in The Globe about Sebastian's supposed involvement with the two men who died a gruesome death on the docks. 

They all knew of course that it was a possibility. The truth of Sebastian's life in the shadows was an unspoken secret that no one in the Lord family dared utter out loud to anyone outside their inner circles. They all saw what he had become. They all whispered prayers for his possible return to some sort of healed life but of course that was not to be. 

Inside their own subconscious they allowed the explosion at Lockwood Thicket over a year ago to cover for Sebastian truth and let the world believe that’s how his life ended. It was an unspoken pact that no matter what, the explosion would be how the public believed Sebastian died. 

Jacob’s memory would often go back to the night Gabriel was born and how Sebastian seemed so normal, so himself…. so human again. He had tried so hard to vanquish his nephew over the years and now, it seemed like the world was trying to too. 

The entire family knew what Sebastian had become all those years ago, so was it so hard to believe the killer Baxter was writing about was Sebastian after all?

The other question was: where was he? 

The only person alive who knew this part of the equation was Evie who hid her beloved ex-husband away somewhere, a place no one would find him and where he remained safe from the hungry eyes of villagers. 

No one truly knew what to make of the killings and Sebastian’s disappearance. And so, the rumors swirling were just that. Rumors. Spun by Baxter Murphy's wicked envious pen. 

Inside the Golden Sitting room Celeste and Jacob watched as their two boys played on the floor. Fabian worked out a puzzle, one his 5 year old little mind could put together in seconds. Cora sat with little Garbriel as he continued to work on ways to communicate using signs. Cora's wonderful knowledge of such a special way to help people who had a hearing emplacement such a blessing for little Gabriel.

As they made small talk, Johnathon entered the room. His skin looked fresh and warm, sparkling even. His eyes glistened in the bright room. He had the biggest smile on his face, it almost flew in the face of Jacob's scowl of his younger half-brother's. 

"Well, he shows!" Jacob said closing the book he was reading and placing it on his large knee. "Where the hell have you been? We expected you at the office. My mother was extremely excited, for reasons I'll never know, to have you under her wing now that's she's back at the helm." 

"What is it?" Celeste asked also noting Johnathon's strange happiness in a time no one felt happy.

"I have very exciting news." Johnathon replied. "I've married." 

Celeste, in shock, scooted to the edge of the sofa. She turned to Jacob who turned to her. 

Both speechless.

Fabian giggled, he knew what married meant and ran up to his uncle diving in for a large hug.

"What? What do you mean you've married? To who?" Celeste asked. 

"Darling?" Johnathon said turning to the door of the sitting room. "Come in." 

Celeste stood, Jacob too, the book falling from his knee as Jacqueline Grey walked into the room in a beautiful dark blue dress. Her thick curls tied to the back of her head and pearl drop earrings danced from hear ears casting oval shadows on her bare shoulders. 

"Oh." Celeste said recognizing the earrings as her mother Cristina's. Gifts from Albert Lord while in the throes of their long secret affair. 

Jacqueline smiled shyly. "I know it was sudden, but we, we just couldn't wait." 

"I... I don't know what to say." Celeste said. 

"I do." Jacob replied. "What on earth have you done!?" He added turning to his half-brother.

"I'm in love. We're in love. We decided that we didn't have to wait any more time. This was what we wanted. I wanted." Johnathon replied to a stunned Celeste and Jacob. 

"Johnathon I don't know what's gotten into you, but this is certainly not what I thought you were headed in your life. You've only been apart from Genevieve for half a year, you just got a promotion at the publishing house. With all due respect, Miss....." Celeste replied still not knowing Jacqueline's name

"Jacqueline. Jacqueline Gray-- well now DeViana. That sounds quite nice, actually. Jacqueline DeViana. Or is it Lord?" she said with a grin.

Jacob felt sick, another Mrs. Lord to contend with. 

"For god's sake." He scoffed. 

"She's my wife." Johnathon said, his voice sounding odd and distant. His eyes too, they seemed glazed and cold. There were no feelings in his words. The love of man and wife and yet he was only saying words. No heart. It was Jacqueline's spell holding him in her web of secret.

Celeste sensed it.

"Yes, well you have to understand we're a bit shocked. This is coming quite suddenly. Johnathon you never even told us you were seeing someone serious enough to marry." Celeste noted

"Of course I did." Johnathon said his words again blanketed in a vague distant tone.

"No, you didn't." Celeste counted back forcefully. 

Cora got up from the floor where the children were. She carefully absorbed the information she was privy to, hopefully something her brother Baxter could bite on and leave Evie alone. Cora felt Evie had suffered enough.

"Perhaps I should take the boys upstairs." Cora said quickly gathering the little ones as they hugged and kissed Celeste goodbye. Celeste noted again, Johnathon not even acknowledging his nephew Fabian as the little boy tried to hug him. 

"This is quite the family circle now, isnt it." Jacob interjected annoyed with everything he was hearing. "And just what do you do Miss... forgive me, Mrs. DeViana? Aside from marrying into dysfunctional well-to-do families that is."

"Jacob please." Celeste scolded. 

Jacob continued "You must have come from somewhere? Do something? Family? Friends?" Jacob grilled.

"I'm from here, the east coast. My family is no longer living -- mother and father. No siblings. I can assure you Mr. and Mrs. Lord," Jacqueline began as she turned to her spellbound new husband and gripped his hand "we are in love and very happy."

Celeste sighed uncomfortably and turned to Jacob and rolled her eyes. "I seriously doubt that."

"But we are!" Jacqueline exclaimed.

"I love her. We are married." Johnathon said robotically. "We have come here to give you our happy news."

"Johnathon I need to speak with you alone." Celeste said, charging over and taking her brother from his new wife.

Jacob lifted a brow and grinned evilly at Jacqueline. He could spot a snake in the grass form a mile away. Like recognized like. 

"Seems as though you've hit the jackpot, haven't you Jacqueline. Tell me, how long did it take you to bed my half-brother and go the distance? I'm assuming we'll be hearing the pitter-patter of little feet quite soon." Jacob said, assuming Johnathon and Jacqueline's marriage was the result of some tryst that ended with Jacqueline expecting a child.

"I assure you, its not like that." She replied.

"So it's money?" He shot back.

"Not everything is about money Jacob. Love can be in there too. Haven't you felt it before?" She said walking closer to Jacob. Her voice growing deeper and her speech slowing. "You know what I mean don't you? Love. The light of the world, that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when that perfume enters your airways." 

She was now only inches from him. Jacob could spot a snake, but Jacqueline could spot the devil. She saw through Jacob and all his cruelty. Her powers were so strong she could enter his mind and know his entire history. She felt all his cruel intentions. She saw all his evil deeds. His loves. His betrayals. His wicked obsessions.

"What do you want?" he whispered to her.

"I just want love. Just like you. That's what you've always wanted. Love from your father and your mother. Love from the world....love from Sabrina. Do you miss her? Do you think about her? I know you do. She's always on your mind. The ghost that won't leave you and find it's way to the light sits on your heart like an embedded bruise. It hurts too much to admit it, I know, but it's there. Always." Jacqueline replied.

"What do you want?" Jacob repeated this time in a colder tone. 

Jacqueline's eyes narrowed ready to say all she wanted was Sebastian's whereabouts, her true love, but she held herself back and only replied again the word Love. Which was true, but it was Sebastian's love she wanted, not really Johnathon's. 

Jacob shook his head and reached for his drink on the table. He chuckled, assuming she had read about the family history in some magazine or book. Everyone knew about Sabrina and Jacob's rumored affair. It was biggest part of the lie Jacob said was the reason David killed Sabrina in a drunken jealous Rage. 

The truth of course was Jacob's dark lust killed her and framed David.

Jacqueline knew that too. She saw it all in her own powerful mind. 

"You'll be searching all your life, whether it is long or short, Mrs. Jacqueline. Love is hard to keep. But knowing this world as I do, all they money Johnathon has may have to be a consolation prize." he added. 

Then, Jacob paused, and his eyes darted to Jacqueline's stomach, assuming again she was with child "And a very hefty prize it is for you...both, thanks to my mother." Recalling how his mother helped bring Johnthon into the family fold at a much higher position at the company than Jacon had ever wanted  

Silent now, Jacqueline reached down to where Jacob's eyes were looking. Even though she was the person with all the powers, she felt he too could see right through her. At the end of the awkward conversation, she found herself also agreeing with Jacob when it came to Love's illusiveness especially when she found it with Sebastian. 

As long as she lived, Jacqueline would die trying to find her true love. 

"What are you doing?!?!" Celeste aske furiously in a side room with Johnathon. "What's gotten into you?"

"I'm in love. We are married." The bewitched Johnathon repeated.

Celeste scoffed "Yes, you've mentioned that. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say this was happening with this woman? A woman we've never met!"

"I wanted to do this. No one forced me." Johnathon replied oddly.

"I never said anyone forced you." Celeste answered. "Something isn't right, Johnathon. Who is Jaqueline Gray?" 

"We should go, love." Jacqueline said, entering the room.

"Excuse me, my brother and I are having a private conversation." Celeste interjected.

"We're going out to the gardens. I want to show her the gardens." Johnathon replied almost robotically. 

"Johnathon we were speaking! We have to discuss what you've done here." Celeste replied.

"We'll be back, you can talk again." Jacqueline interjected.

“Jacqueline please don’t come between my brother and I, we’re trying to have a conversation.” 

Jacqueline lifted a brow. “From one Mrs. Lord to another, Celeste, I wouldn’t start throwing any moral weight around. We’re both cut from the same cloth and came into this family to keep ourselves safe and protected. Don’t think I don’t know the real reason you married that stain on humanity you call your husband. So if I were you I’d wish Johnny and me good luck and stop trying to pull your false moral weight around.”

Celeste felt as if she were cold-cocked with Jacqueline’s words—every word the the truth about how she married Jacob for virtually the same reasons Celeste married Johnathon.

Johnathon said nothing in his sister’s defense and only stared at his sister with a glaze look. Jacqueline looped her arm through Johnathon’s and yanked him towards the French doors to gardens.  

The witch knew her spell had worked this time, but the more Johnathon stay away from her, the weaker it may become. She knew she had to stay close, otherwise she risked the fade of the spell and Johnathon realizing the truth. 

"Johnathon, wait...." Celeste exclaimed. She felt suffocated and unable to control the situation. She watched as her brother and his bride walked off to walk the grounds of Tirymor. 

***

Evie Arrives at Tirymor House

Meanwhile, Evie Jordan-Lord was arriving by car with Aaron Hamstead who had come to pick her up in town after she rushed off from her meeting with Matthew at Gramercy Cafe.

The purpose of her visit was to confront anyone in the family who had brazenly spread the rumor of Sebastian that got into the paper, but mostly to see her little boy Gabriel. 

The trip up the winding gravel private driveway felt eerily familiar - a déjà vu of her very first trip up the same driveway when she first arrived in Welshport three years earlier. Gazing out of the car window at the sprawling grounds of green grass locked in by ancient trees of the Tirymor Forest that reached up into the foggy Maine sky. Then, as the car turned around its final bend — once again, the golden palace the Lords called home appeared. 

Again just as it did that first day, glittering in its sun drenched facade. Evie felt nervous just as she did that first day, but now for a completely different reason. 

As she stepped out the car, held open by the towering Aaron Hamstead, she looked up and smiled at him cooling the rage inside of her.

"Thank you for coming so quickly and picking me up." She said as she adjusted her hat. 

"Anytime." He winked, his fondness for the young Lord bride still strong as the day he met her.

As Arron stood to one side allowing Evie to make her way up the many steps of Tirymor's front entrance, a shock fell upon her face. 

"Miss?" Aaron asked noting her reaction to something off in the distance.

Over passed the house walking in the lush gardens among to green topiaries and rose bushes and just beyond the entrance to the tangled hedge maze walking arm in arm with Johnathon DeViana was Jacqueline Gray, the witch who sent Evie to her grave -- ALIVE.

Evie's blood ran cold; flashbacks flooded Evie's mind of Jacqueline telepathically taunting her while she stood over Evie in her grave, the witch's evil laugh, ripping at the top of the coffin with her bare hands, her nails ripping from her fingers, blood, scratches, the smell of wet dirt from the melting snow seeping into her grave!

"Miss???" Aaron said again seeing Evie's face freeze with shock of Jacqueline so openly at Tirymor House.

"Its her. She's here. She's here!!" Evie said in terrified voice.

"Who Miss?" the driver asked turning to look where Evie's eyes lead him.

Evie braced herself with Aaron's hands. 

"The witch. The witch Jaqueline Gray." 

 

                                   

B6/Ch6: MEMORIES OF BLOODSHED

Filipe’s terrifying transformation begins 

In the basement of Fatima Braga's home, Filipe writhed with pain. The muscles of his body expanded and twisted around bones that began to thicket and enlarge. His face, although remaining human, hardened. He cried out in pain as the change from the moon pulled at every fiber of his DNA. 

He ripped at his clothes exposing his naked body, clothes too tight for the creature he was becoming and then, his eyes, his soft chestnut-colored eyes began to flicker like a flame into a warm amber.

He stared up and the burning laps in his basement prison and without hesitation howled like the beast that bit him.

Inside her home, Fatima could her the commotion. She stood in a doorway panicked for her son that was raised her nephew. Her prophecy of the Lobo da Lua coming true below her feet.

She covered her mouth hoping to keep her own screams of fear from making the monster in the basement want her blood. The house shook, the walls and floorboards creaked. And then, a sign of hope, Filipe in his natural voice screamed for her help.

Fatima didn't know what to do. It was too dangerous to go down and see him, she knew the beast in him was begging to be fed and she could be the meal he desired. But that voice, that pained awful voice of the Filipe she loved so much begged for her mercy.

Fatima grabbed hold of her rosary beads and quickly went down into the basement. 

The stairwell was dark, there was dim light at the bottom where Filipe was locked in chains. 

She took one step at a time and when she reached the bottom, there he was, half man half beast.

"Please." he begged. "Please, do something." 

"We have to wait." Fatima said at a distance. "The moon will go soon, and the transition will fade away. Mary promises she'll find a way help you after this first full moon, my love. We have to wait." 

The chains rattled as Filipe pulled on them as hard as he could. Fatima's eyes looked at the bolts that locked the chains to the brick wall and could see them loosening. There was no way she could tighten them, she had to calm Filipe so he wouldn't notice his strength was indeed breaking the chains.

"Darling, please rest. You must rest until the night is done."

Filipe's head snapped in Fatima's direction, his eyes locking on hers. "Kill me." he said in a low growl. "Destroy me now." 

"Stop it!" She shouted in horror to his request. "STOP THAT! I will not kill you!" 

Filipe growled again, his teeth now sharp as shark's and he continued to yank on the chains hoping they'd break free. He pulled and he pulled. More and more brick broke away from the bolts. Fatima rushed over to the wall and placed her hands on the bolts as if that would do anything. 

The beast grew wilder in Filipe. He was yet to fully transition, but the moon's full face would soon show, and this night was just the beginning of what was to come. 

He pulled again, wanting to be out. Wanting his life. And then, with the power of something out of this world, from some other place, supernatural and wild, Filipe pulled one final time and the chains broke free from the wall. His thick strong legs yanked the chains around his ankles, and they too became free from the opposite wall. 

He stood there half naked, hairy, growling. A monster in the face of the woman gave him life. He stumbled over to Fatima who cowered on the floor in the dust of the broken bricks. He sniffed her and growled hoping she's stab in the face or slit his throat.

"Kill me," he said softy. "do it."

"I will not Filipe, you have to stay here and get through this. Mary will help! She promised to find something in her mother's book to help reverse this curse." Fatima reminded him.

Filipe, angry with Fatima's refusal to end his painful existence howled like a monster and began to go up the stairwell. Fatima grabbed on to what was left of this shirt and his large hand now thick like a paw swung back and swatted her clear across the room.

Fatima hit the other brick wall of her basement and fell in a heap of black fabric from her dress-- out cold. 

Filipe sniffed and snarled and went up the stairwell on all fours banging and beating the wood with this large thick feet and hands. He burst through the basement door tearing it from its hinges and like a trapped bull in a pen blasted his way through Fatima's house and through her front door vanishing into the night. 

Fatima awoke, her head sore, a cut at her temple. She looked around slightly dazed and realized she was the only one in the basement. 

She leaped to her feet, rushed up the basement stairs and through the broken door into her ravaged home and saw the front door of broken open -- Filipe was gone. 

As Fatima stood in her doorway a cold summer wind washed over her. She was panicking, imagining the destruction that lay in Filipe's wake. Then the distant howl of the monster at the quarter moon.

"God help us." She whispered. "God help us all." 

****

Charlotte enters in Mary’s room 

On Goode Island, Mary tossed and turned in her bed. Her mind flooded with the images of Filipe tied to Fatima's basement wall from his bed. She loved him with every inch of her soul. Her heart ached that he was now in the throes of something so unimaginable and something she could not save him from right then and there. 

She remembered how they came together. Both trapped in the turret room of Tirymor House. Both finding each other in a world that was filled with danger and hate and cold-hearted liars that only wanted them to suffer. They found each other in the darkest moments of their lives, and she now was alone trembling in her bed hoping that she could find a way to break him free of the curse that could take his life.

As Mary attempted to lull herself to sleep by pushing bad memories out with good ones her 14-year-old daughter Charlotte burst into her room in her nightgown with a lit candle in her hand.

"My god Charlotte, what is it!?" Mary yelped startled by her daughter's alarming entrance. 

Charlotte said nothing she only stood there with a strange look on her face.

"Charlotte?" Mary said as she slowly got out of bed. "Darling, what is it?" She asked again.

Morgan came out of the shadowy hall and passed Charlotte and stepped into Mary's room.

"She did the same to me in my room. She won't speak. She only holds out that candle and stares." He said.

"She said nothing? Nothing at all?" Mary asked.

Morgan shook his head. "But look at her eyes." He noted.

Mary got closer to her daughter and saw that her sky-blue eyes were now the color of honey and amber. The same color as Filipe's were now that he was becoming the moon wolf. 

"Charlotte, tell me what has happened, what's keeping you this way?" Mary said as she grabbed Mary's hand and closed her eyes allowing the telepathic connection, they had slowly bound their psychic powers.

Mary was soon mentally transported into Charlotte's mind that had been somehow seized. In the darkness of the mind Mary saw Charlotte standing also holding a candle exactly as she was in her bedroom. Mary walked over to her, and Charlotte took a breath in and out almost as if releasing pressure within her body to finally speak.

"It's Filipe. It's finally happened." Charlotte said. "I can see and feel his whole-body change. When it happened, I became trapped I couldn't speak. I don't know why." Charlotte said. 

"Darling it is the stress of your powers. You are taking too much on. You have to pass some to me; I can relieve you of so much of this. Together we can figure out a way to save Filipe." Mary explained.

"But I how can we? He's already gone." Charlotte said.

"What? What do you mean gone?" 

"He's gone." 

Mary furrowed her brow, "Darling, gone how? What do you mean?" 

Then the two sorceresses began to see a small flickering light in the mind of Charlotte as if they were looking through a keyhole from a darkened room. They walked towards the tiny light that began to grow in size and soon it was a large disc of bright whiteness showing them a scene. 

The scene were the docks on Welshport where two fishermen were preparing the boat for an early morning trip to sea. They carefully tied ropes and connected lures and hooks. Checked the weather, doubled checked their tackle. 

But as Mary and Charlotte continued to watch the scene of the men by the docks, they saw the amber eyes of Filipe slow approach the fisherman and without notice Filipe, still halfway through his transition, attached the fisherman in a bloody fight tearing them to pieces. 

The scene in Charlotte's mind quickly went to black as Charlotte and Mary came-to back in Mary's bedroom. Mary grabbed a sobbing Charlotte horrified at what they saw. 

"What happened? WHAT HAPPENED??" Morgan screeched. 

Mary's heart was pounding. Charlotte shook in her mother's arms terrified of what her mind had just shown her. 

Morgan could see the terror on their faces, he sensed the slow-moving horror had just accelerated in their direction. 

"FIND MY MOTHER'S BOOK OF SPELLS!! BRING IT TO ME!!" Mary screamed while Charlotte sobbed. 

The time had come, a reversal spell was now too late, they needed to find something in Eliza Goode's book to save Filipe and save them all from death. 

It was now or never. 

****

LONDON

Christopher & Genevieve in London 

As night rolled on in Welshport, a mid-afternoon son shined over the city of London in England through a mist of overcast skies in a balmy summer. Walking through the streets together Genevieve Thorne had kept her promise to Christopher Wesley and met him at the outdoor market to discuss Genevieve's plans on seeking the final revenge on Jacob for what he did to both David and Sabrina --- their doppelgängers and her hope of him joining her in America to do so.

"It seems strange to me that you'd come all this way in search of a man you never knew. You'll have to forgive my skepticism." Christopher said as the pair walked through a crowded street market. 

Genvieve picked up a rose at a flower stand and smelled it. She took out a coin and paid for the flower. 

"At first glance at this story, yes, it is strange, so I understand why you'd feel this way." She answered, again smelling the rose. "But if you had something inside of you that pushed you and pushed you and pushed to help and finally make right the terrible wrong that had happened, I think you'd agree with me more. That's what I live with every day, Christopher. Inside of me Sabrina has left her memories of her love her life her passions --- and her pain. I live with them as if they were my own. This is why I need to do this. This was Sabrina and David's tragedy, but it's now left to me to correct -- and hopefully you." 

"I never said I didn't agree." Christopher noted. "I just said it was odd what you'd do for two strangers." 

She stopped on the slippery cobble stone street in the center of the street market and into Christopher's green eyes, something about him told her there was a real connection to Welshport, more than he wanted to admit.  

She decided to push him on this.

"When you look in the mirror now and you know that your face is the same as David's, doesn't that make change how you feel about me? Don't you see what I see and how things in Welshport were left? David to this day is considered the killer of his own wife -- he's innocent. How does that make you feel?" She asked. 

"I ... I don't know." He looked at her confused.

 "What I mean," she added "is that now you know the truth of two people who suffered a great deal because a man wanted to have everything and anything that wasn't his to have to the point where he took a woman's life and framed an innocent person for his own crime, wouldn't you want to help the man that once had your face? I certainly can't let go of my connection to Sabrina, not after having felt Sabrina's anguish so deeply inside. Can you let go of yours with David?" 

"And their child." Christopher noted again to Geneveive's surprise.

"Yes." She said curiously. "And their child. You're very interested in Sebastian. You've mentioned him twice now and yet I've barley spoken of him." 

Christopher shrugged and looped his arm in hers and continued to walk the rest of the market "It just bothers me that that boy has had to live without his parents so long because of how what his uncle did." 

"He was no longer a boy." Genevieve noted with a grin. "By the time of his very sad death he was married and his widow just a few months back gave birth to a son."

Christopher stopped again in his tracks "A grandchild! David and Sabrina have a grandchild!!??" 

Another of Christopher's strange tells the curiosity of David's family.

"His name is Gabriel." she replied. 

There was a clear emittance of glee shining from Christopher's face a joy that Genevieve could feel almost as if it was a radiating sun. She wondered, too, just who exactly Christopher was if he  really wasn't David Lord. He was so determined to know more about Sebastian, the only child of the couple, even though Genevieve had never mentioned him. She wasn't sure how Christopher knew about Sebastian, and it was clear to her that Christopher was very much connected to David-- more than he lead on.

And perhaps he was David himself still forcing the disguise of this man named Christiopher Wesley. 

"So tell me," She began "how did you end up in London anyway?" 

"Long story." 

"I have the time." 

Christopher smirked "I was here for work. I came with a ship that fished the seas of the North Atlantic and received a job offer to stay and work for the fishing company." 

"How long ago?" She asked.

"A long time." he answered without giving too much information. 

"And you're all alone. You have no one with you. No wife. No partner. No ... no anyone." She said.

As they continued to talk they came through the end of the market and to a small area overlooking the river Thames. The water rushed by them in a green murky wash. It smelled like the sea as Christopher gazed off into the distance towards Tower Bridge. 

"There was someone. About 5 or 6 years after I had finally found the flat I live in now. She and I were neighbors, she lived across the hall. I fell in love but it was somewhat of a failed affair. I couldn't keep thinking of other things while I was with her. Unfortunately things broke apart and I never saw her again." Christopher explained.

"I'm sorry." She asked.

"Well -- the saddest part is she and I had a son together. She took him." Christopher revealed.

"You have a child!" She explained.

He nodded. "Yes. He’s a young man now… his name is Adrian."  

"That's a pretty name." Genevieve answered, noting the exotic sound of the boy’s name. "What were the things, the things that kept you from being able to be with this woman forever?" Genevieve asked as a several seagulls swarmed around them. 

"My past. My future. All of that. You know how it is, you meet someone knew and those ghosts never leave you." 

Genevieve knew, she had similar situation with Johnathon after her divorce from Morgan's father Steven. 

"A new relationship does always have to contend with the one before. Sometimes past love makes the new love strong." She said.

"And sometimes it doesn't." Christopher answered. 

His eyes were so mysterious. His entire demeanor was like a blank page, a canvas waiting to be painted. A person she felt like she knew but knew nothing about. 

"I need you to----" she said before he came close and laid his lips on hers. They kissed, the fire the connection was there, true and real. She felt it but had no idea he felt it too.

When he backed away he apologized and she smiled, his face blushing. 

"Who are you?" She asked as the sun slowly slipped out from under a gray London cloud and lit them in the brightest light they had seen all day.

"A man who needs to help you. I've decided, I want to help you." he answered. 

 "Then you'll return with me? You'll come to Welshport, for sure, and help me take down Jacob Lord once and for all." 

Christopher pulled her in close, so close she could feel his breath fall on her face. He kissed her again and said he would. He would help her.

And there in London as Big Ben's bell tolled the hour, she felt her world come together and perhaps she had found the answer to so many questions. If Christopher was David, he wasn't going to give up truth anytime soon, but at least she had him in her corner. 

Christopher or David, whom ever he was. 

****

Back in Welshport over on the docks, two men gathered their belongings to head off out to sea. They were fisherman, a younger man and his son of about 30. Their ship, a fishing trawler from mainland Maine of the Collins Fishing Fleet, was headed their way to pick them up. 

As the son bent down over this sea bag and fishing box, he heard snarling and heavy breathing behind him from the darkness. 

The father walked over to the son. His eyes looking towards the sound. His face a frozen expression of terror.

The son slowly stood up staring at his father.

"Pop? What is it?" The son asked. 

"Don't move." The father said putting his hand on his son's shoulder as if to lock him in place.

"What? Why? What's back there?" The son asked rotating slightly.

"NO!" The father shouted pulling the son back towards him, as the snarling continued to get closer. "I said don't make a move."

The breathing got closer. So close.

The son could feel the angry energy building up behind him. 

The two men stood there in the dark, their breathing shallowing. Sweat slowly dropping down their foreheads and backs.

Suddenly a loud howl and a lunge from the shadows. Teeth. Screams. Claws. Blood.

Death.

Then .... only darkness and the sound of waves lapping up on the docks.  

****

Gregory reveals his secret room to Asha 

The following morning in Welshport in an upstairs apartment just above the Constable's office, Gregory entered a small side bedroom with a small silver try of food and drink. In the room, tired to the bed was the unconscious Asha Hoffman. His desperate attempt to keep his secret quiet meant she could no longer walk among the other villagers. Her desire to tell the truth of what they did to Aurora and the child she gave birth to threatened everything Gregory had worked for.

Asha began to stir, she moaned and tried to roll over in the bed but being bound refused this motion. Her hair was a tangled mess over her face but when she opened her eyes she could see Gregory standing in above her through the strands of dark brown locks. 

"What have you done?" She whispered.

"You're safe. Don't worry." He said in an equally soft voice.

She suddenly inhaled to let out a scream but Gregory quickly cover her mouth with one hand and removed a gag of a rolled up handkerchief from his pocket and forced it into her mouth. 

"This didn't have to be this way, Asha, we're friends. We looked out for each other. I helped you with Andrew Kim, and you helped me with Caspian. But you're not cooperating anymore. I had to make a choice." The constable of Welshport said.

She began to cry. Her life slowly flashing before her eyes. An avalanche of questions began to swirl in her mind: What did she do to deserve this? Could she escape? Was she going to do? What was he going to do?

"Don't worry," he said trying to reassure her "there's nothing to be afraid of. I'll figure this all out and we'll move on somehow and someway. You just have to promise me you won't tell Aurora or Nikolas what we did. Can you do that?" 

Asha, her eyes blood-shot from crying, her cheeks red and aching, nodded -- agreeing she would lie for him. But he didn't believe her. Something in his training as a police officer could see her body language was telling her truth -- she would NOT lie for him, she just wanted to be free. 

"Tsk tsk tsk. I don't know. I really don't know." Gregory said. "I need to feel confident that we are on the same page, Asha. But I can't trust you." 

Asha shook her head, she motioned to Gregory to remove her gag. She had to speak, she had to make him believe he could trust her and that their secret would be safe -- even though deep in her mind it was all a lie. 

Gregory tilted his head and knelt down next to Asha and slowly removed the gag from her mouth. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her mouth dry. She licked her lips and took a breath "I won't tell anyone anything. Just let me go Gregory, let me go and all of this will be forgotten." 

Gregory knew she was lying. He replaced the gag as she gasped and tried to spit it out. 

He went over to the closet and opened it. He shoved the clothes aside revealing a small door. Asha attempted to peek to see what he was doing as the closet was slightly to the left of her and obscured. 

She only heard the squeak of hinges.

Gregory had opened a small door deep in the back of the closet that lead into a secret smaller room. It was originally a private office where the Constable of the town, whomever held that position, could interrogate people in private. It was a room filled of history that centuries of Welshport Constables used to keep the village's secrets over time. Christian Evans, the Constable before Gregory, and Gregory himself had never used this small office. It had been empty for a decade but Gregory now saw a better use for it.

The constable went over to Asha and flipped up the hem of her long dress and untied her ankles then he went to her wrists and did the same. Asha rubbed her sore wrists and removed her gag surprised he was allowing this, but Gregory knew her fear of him would keep her silent. 

"Get up." He said.

She was shaking in her clothes. She felt as if she was going to faint but remained as strong as she could. Everything she had done was rushing into her mind. Why did she trust him? Why did she ever trust him!?

"This room is where you'll remain until I figure out what to do with you." Gregory said pointing to the open door deep in the closet. 

Asha looked over and saw only a black opening to the room. No light. No way of getting out.

Asha lunged for the bedroom door to escape, Gregory grabbed a loosened sash on her dress and yanked and Asha tumbled to the floor. He jumped over to her and grabbed her right arm, she swung back with her left and scratched him on his face drawing blood. He groaned with pain. His large frame was too much for and he picked her up by the waist and held her in place right in front of him. She tried to break free. Hitting him. Kicking him and just when she remembered to scream he covered her mouth and dragged her over to the closet and into the secret room that had no light. He tied her hands and feet up again on another smaller bed and wrapped a scarf around her mouth to muffle her crying. 

Trapped.

"Don't worry. This is only temporary until I can figure out what to do next. You won't be hurt." He said.

The tears slowly seeped down her check and puddled at the top of the handkerchief.

He lit the small oil lamp that sat on a stool and told her he'd return with food and water shortly.

"I promise this is temporary." He said.

 As he left her in the room behind the closet of his guest bedroom, she begged for him to come back and not leave her, but the door closed behind her and he was gone. She cried and couldn't believe what had happened to her. She felt the fear and panic begin to fill her body. To Asha, this felt like the end of the line.

On the other side of the closet door, Gregory too cried. He hated what he had come to, but Asha knew too much and wielded too much power with her breaking their pact. 

"It won't be long." He said to himself through his tears cryptically describing the length of time Asha would be alive. 

Then a knock at the front door. 

Gregory's heart sank into his stomach. He composed himself and looked back at the closet. He covered the secret door again with the hanging clothes and went over to a mirror and realized he had three long scratches down his face from the tussle with Asha.

"Shit." he whispered.

The knocks became more and more impatient. 

Gregory took a breath and slowly made his way to his front door and when he finally opened it there stood Dr. Nikolas Jordan.

"Thank god you're home!" Nik said pushing his way into the upstairs apartment. "I was downstairs and one of your deputies said they you hadn't come in yet."

Seeing Nik's panic-stricken face, Gregory jumped to worrying about Nik's mother Aurora. The woman Gregory loved. 

"What is it? Is it your mother? Is she ok?" 

"She's fine! She's still saying with my sister Evie at the new house over on the beach. She's fine." Nik answered knowing Gregory's devotion to his mother. "It's Asha. No one has seen her. I stayed at Evie's last night and when I came home Asha hadn't been there all night. I thought she might have picked up an extra shift at the hospital but no one there had seen her either."

Gregory gulped.

"What?" Nik aske noting Gregory's odd pause.

"Oh god, Nik, I'm so sorry. I've been so busy the last two days that I forgot to tell you about Asha."

Nik tilted his head. "I don't understand, what do you mean?"

"She left town Nik. She had a terribly emergency with her family and she left town. Yes, a telegram came early yesterday and she left and wasn't sure when she'd come back. I was supposed to tell you but I completely forgot to come by the beach house to tell you." Gregory said lying.

"No, that's not true. She wouldn't just leave and not tell me." Nik said.

"I'm sorry, kiddo, she did." 

Nik's mind felt like it had been flooded with thoughts and none of them were making any sense. Asha had never mentioned anything going on with her family, for all he knew they were fine and living in Chicago. She would never not tell the hospital she couldn't come in, she would never do what Gregroy was telling him she did. 

"Gregory she wouldn't just abandon everything here without notice." Nik said. "It's so unlike her."

"You're right, its very unlike her but it was an emergency and she had to go. It was my fault that you didn't get the message and I was supposed to tell the hospital too but again, I dropped the ball." Gregory explained.

"That's a very heavy ball you've dropped." Nik replied, his eyes narrowing with disdain. 

"You’re right. I really apologize, I feel terrible about this." Gregory lamented.

As Nik tried to make sense of everything he had just heard and hoped that Asha would write him or find a way to send him telephone call to the hospital but with the length of time it would take her to get to Chicago from Maine, he had no idea. 

As Nik turned to leave, his mind cleared and suddenly noticed the scratches down Gregory's face.

"What happened here?" 

Gregory stood frozen in his doorway and had to quickly think on his feet.

"That's what I was busy with." He chuckled. "A wild scene at the Siren's Call. Two men fighting and I had to break it up. It was a mess." 

"They look fresh." The young doctor noticed.

"OH! I just washed my face, probably irritated the skin again." Gregory again lied.

Nik nodded, somewhat believing him, but the entire conversation seemed off. He thanked Gregory for the information on Asha and went down the stairwell and back into the lower chamber that was the Constable's office. There were three deputies there and when he looked around the five cells where people were kept before seeing a judge, he noticed they were all empty.

"Say," Nik said to one of the deputies. "Has there been court hearing for the two people fighting at the Pub last night?" 

The deputy looked at Nik strangely. "Fight at the pub?" 

Nik realized his instinct was right -- Gregory was lying.

"Never mind, thanks." Nik said as he looked back up the stairwell to the upstairs apartment with deep suspicion. 

Nik had overheard Asha and Gregory discussing what they had done to Aurora's child and how they had lied about everything that happened the night the baby was born. His heart was brokenhearted knowing that Asha, the woman that he loved, had once again lied to him about something so important in his life. She had promised no more secrets, and this one was the most devastating of them all. But her sudden disappearance, Gregory's odd behavior, and the secret they both shared put Nik in a very suspicious mindset -- and Gregory was the target of that suspicion.

"What have you done, Gregory?" Nik thought to himself. "What have you done?"

Back upstairs, Gregory began to panic. He knew Nik wasn't stupid. He knew that time was limited on Asha being in the secret-room. 

The clock was ticking on poor Asha's fate. 

****

Matthew & Evie meet at Gramercy Café

Down the street from The Constable's station, at a busy Gramercy Cafe, Matthew Winterborn sat alone at a table nervously folding and unfolding a cloth napkin awaiting his guest. It h ad been almost two days since he and Evie reconnected at the bottom of the cliffs on the beach near her new home above the shore. 

Moments later, an equally nervous Evie walked into the cafe in a beautiful blue dress and hat. She scanned the cafe from the door searching for Matthew and from his seat he could see her framed in the doorway with the bright light of the late afternoon busting from behind her.

It was as if his dream of the mysterious woman in his memory had come to life. Now more than ever he knew the mysterious women in his mind was Evie Jordan-Lord.

Then, she spotted him and her face lit up. 

"Please sit, sit!" He said as she approached their table. "I've ordered us some coffee." He added.

"Thank you." She said, unable to release her gaze on the man she thought was lost at sea almost a year ago. "It's amazing that I'm sitting across from you again Matthew. Truly amazing. I never dreamed this could happen." 

"Its a miracle." he answered as a waiter in a finely cut tuxedo brought them their coffee. 

"How did you survive all those months out there?" 

"Shortly after the ship sank I must have drifted on debris for a while until I washed up on shore in the Azores Islands. Do you know of them?" He asked.

"YES!" She exclaimed. "When I first came to Welshport, my ship stopped there to pick up more passengers. They're exquisite. Then what?" She asked.

“A very nice family took me in -- after they found me of course. I wasn't able to speak or anything and they nursed me back to health. It was a man and his mother, in fact Lucas, the man that found, is in Welshport now too. He came with me. He's starting a new life here." 

Evie smiled; her smile was a shining beacon back to Matthew's old life. He saw her sitting right across from him and although his memories slowly came back to him there were still many holes. She was happy he was alive; she was happy that he made it back home, but her heart had since moved away from their relationship after the events when he was presumed dead.

"There is nothing else in this world I want than for you to be here and back to your normal life. How have you been doing?" She asked as she reached for his hand.

He squeezed it. He was in love again. He could feel it. She was the woman he dreamed of. His memory was telling him to return to Welshport and find her, and he did.

"It's been a slow process, to say the least, but Lucas has helped me. Being home has helped me and most of all seeing you has helped me." He answered.

"Oh Matthew." She said sipping her coffee meekly.

"It's true." He said. "When I was away I had several dreams that I now see as memories of a woman who looked just like Evie. She was you. She was telling me in words I could not hear to come back here. I came back and I found you almost instantly, it was meant to be." he said.

A sad expression fell on her face. He sensed it right away a sinking feeling came into his heart and he braced himself for the second shoe to drop.

"A lot has happened since you've been gone. You may not remember everything, but things became very volatile right before you left out to sea and they did not let up after we all thought you were lost. I wish I could go into more details but it's a very long and disturbing story, Matthew, it's too hard to tell you all at once." Evie explained. 

"I know it's' been a while since we've been together but, I do still feel the same for you. That love never left me, I can feel it right now looking at you here. Its very strong." He said.

"I love you too." She answered. "But, Matthew so much has changed. I had to really refocus my life in the time you've been gone because of my son. Do you remember my son, Gabriel?" She asked.

Matthew searched his mind and there was an idea of a child but nothing clear. He knew that, obviously, life would go on if everyone believed he had died at sea, but he naively thought that perhaps if they found each other again that maybe their connection would rekindle slowly bur surly. Evie, right there in the cafe, splashed water on the spark he hoped to light. 

"I wish nothing but happiness for you and your son Evie. I would never want to get in the way." Matthew said.

She watched the happiness Matthew first had when he saw her enter the cafe slowly slip away as they chatted. It was true that she loved him, still, but his time away had morphed her into someone else. She had to fight for Gabriel first and foremost. While he was gone, those tragedies and horrors she suffered truly made he push all romantic feelings to the side and she needed to get Gabriel back from Jacob and Celeste more than anything else. 

"This doesn't mean we can't be close like friends." She assured him. 

"I know." He said smiling as he sipped his coffee.

"Matthew, I feel awful, I know that maybe coming home and getting specks of your memory back would make you feel as if you could pick up where you left off, but things didn't stop for me. Not in the slightest." She said.

"No, of course, of course. It was silly of me to think otherwise. The world keeps moving doesn't it." Matthew said, the slight twinge of disappointment still in his voice. 

"I feel awful." Evie replied.

"No, no, no." He attempted to assure her. "I completely understand! Your son comes first and whatever is going on with him, I, as a friend, will absolutely help you. That's really all I want. But the child's father, forgive me for asking, but are you still in love with him? Could that also be something you are grappling with?" Matthew asked.

She took a beat to answer. 

"Matthew I'll always love Sebastian. Our marriage was cut short by heartless, selfish people who could only see dollar signs through their jealousy. We never truly had time to build our little family the way we deserved, at least Gabriel deserves. But yes, I do love him, but that too has changed. It’s a different kind of love now. One that is more symbolic of what was than what is. It’s also a love that, from now on, will be held from a far. That’s where he is, far, far away. And that's how it'll stay. For good." She explained.

"I see." He replied, his face showing his sadness. He had dreamed of her for months while he was lost and now his heart was breaking that he couldn't pick up where they had left off.  "You must think I've been silly thinking we could just start again, I don't know what came over me." he added.

"Not at all. I... Matthew, look at me, I do love you, I truly do. You were the one person I felt most safe with. The one solid person I looked to that I knew would never ever leave me lost to the terrors that this Island can bring. Don't think differently." She said, her heart full to see his handsome face again, and then, she felt it. The passion for him did still exist.

Taking a breath, Evie paused to think. She thought he deserved to know exactly what was going on, the poor man had had enough days of his life in the dark, he had a right to know. 

“They took my son from me." She said her voice shaking as the memory of Gabriel’s absence sunk in. "Jacob and Celeste Lord saw an opportunity to make sure they took whatever they wanted from me in a moment of crisis and did so. They paid off lawyers and a judge and figured out a way to legally take my child from me all the while illegally locking me away in an asylum. Now, I'm fighting to get him back and I'm not letting up. I've seen enough, I've learned enough, and I have no more time to allow this family to rule over me. They forgot that although I married in, I'm one of them too. I'm going to get Gabriel back, Matthew, and I will not let up until they give him back." 

"That's awful! How could anyone take a child from it's mother?" 

Evie nodded in an agreement. "Money, power and greed, that's Jacob's motive. That's always his motive. Sebastian lost his life for it."

As the two continued to reconnect over the past 8 to 10 months of their lives and what Jacob and Celeste had done a group customers at a table near Evie and Matthew were discussing the village's events the coming night celebrating the giant full summer moon to come.

There would be a village picknick in the park, a Moon festival in town square outside of Village Hall with booths and food and dancing and music. Later on in the evening there'd be a moon light parade lit by lamps that went from the edge of the village through town and up end just in front of Village Hall. 

Everyone was excited about the Summer Moon!

But then, startling commotion entered the cafe from a woman who had brought in a newspapers with a truly terrifying headline.

The rest of the customers dropped the exciting moon celebration talk began to surround the woman to read the paper. Another man, the woman's husband, entered with more papers and started giving them out to several people at the cafe so that they too could read the horrible news.

"I can't tell what's going on." Matthew said trying to sneak a peek.

Evie too twisted in her chair to try and read a neighboring paper but couldn't.

Then, as if from out of no where, a paper fell to the table from above. 

Splashed across the top were shocking words.

"TWO FISHERMEN FOUND GUTTED ON WELSHPORT DOCKS"

"Oh my god." Evie gasped.

"That's not god's doing, hon." Then man who dropped the newspaper and said. "It's a monster's mouth!" 

"A monster??" Matthew asked. "What do you mean?" 

The man's face froze. He slowly looked away from Matthew and stared at Evie and said "Ask your friend." 

The man slowly walked back to the group and the rest of the customers in the cafe began to lift their eyes up from their copies of THE WELSHPORT GLOBE and stare are Evie. Everyone began to whisper and point. Everyone began to glare at Evie with eyes of anger and spite. 

"Evie, what's going on?" Matthew asked. 

Evie didn't know. She grabbed the paper from Matthew, and he came over and read it with her. In the article, written by Baxter Murphey, the murders were blamed on a rumor that Baxter had heard that would shock the small island Village. The murders were blamed on Evie's supposedly dead husband Sebastian Lord whom everyone believed dead, but Evie was quoted via a third party source as saying he wasn’t dead. 

The salacious sub-headline then listed Sebastian as alive and sick; ill with a disease that made him murder and that the Lord family had been hiding this secret for years with lies of Sebastian's many disappearances and deaths. 

“Sebastian Lord ALIVE! His ravenous mystery illness is of the homicidal nature!”

And the article continued Baxter’s fictional tale of what happened with murky truths, rumors working as narrative and pointing the finger squarely at the most powerful family on the island— the same family that owned that very paper. They, the article said, was hiding the creature Sebastian away somewhere and that he was let out at might to prey on the vulnerable. 

"...these unlucky fishermen of our community were the first victims and by what this reporter believes won’t be the last. The Lords MUST answer for this." Baxter wrote in the article.

"Oh my god, no." Evie said again, her gloved hand over her mouth.

"This isn't true, is it?" Matthew asked. 

"I have to go!" She said, dodging the darts of villager's sharp stares.

"Evie WAIT!" Matthew shouted.

Evie looked at him but did not answer. She tossed the paper bac on the table and quickly left to find the Lord family, hoping they hadn't read the article yet.

"I'd let her go lad." A man said as the rest of the cafe murmured in agreement. "They're nothing there in that girl that won't kill you in the end. Just look at these two on the docks. Ripped from stem to stern." 

Matthew looked back down at the open page and read more of the article. Then more flashes of memories came to his mind. A fire. A giant blaze. A face of a man with vicious teeth, blood. A woman screaming. More fire. An explosion. Crying. Pain. 

Matthew was having a memory of the night where his sister Alice tried to save them all from the monstrous vampire Sebastian. The article, to Matthew was beginning to ring true.

"Vampire." Matthew whispered. "The vampire." 

                

B6/Ch5: TREACHERY

Lear & Lucas discover a common connection  

A warm summer morning sent the wind off to the west in warm streams. The village streets were busy with horse and buggies, small puttering cars and pedestrians all sharing the cobblestone streets hurriedly rushing to their appointments. 

In one corner of the village, off a small ally around Main Street, new-comer Lucas Mural walked into an office that was messy and unkept due to the new tenant still unpacking several boxes.

The frosted glass of the office door read LEAR LOCKWOOD ESQ.

Lucas had traveled all the way from the Portuguese islands of the Azores with Matthew Winterborn just a month earlier and his intensions were to make a better life in America. All of his paperwork was back in the islands, and word of mouth in town was that the new attorney in the village, Lear Lockwood, was a brilliant legal mind and would help.

Luckas held the door open slightly and knocked on glass announcing his entrance, Lear popped out of a mountain of boxes and turned to see the handsome face of Lucas Mural.

"Oh! Uhh, hello, can I help you?" Lear asked, dusting his hands off on his white shirt rolled at the sleeves that was tucked in perfectly to a pair of black trousers and matching suspenders. 

"Hello, are you Mr. Lockwood? The solicitor?" Lucas asked shyly.

"I am." Lear replied smiling. "What can I do for you Mr.....?" 

"Mural, Lucas. May I?" Lucas replied motioning with this hand for permission to enter the small office.

"Of course, of course. Please excuse the mess. I've just moved into this office and still have a lot to unpack." Lear explained.

Lucas nodded "Thats a bit of what I wanted to seek your help on."

Lear furrowed his brow confused. "You wanted to seek help on my unpacking?"

"No, no!" Lucas replied with a chuckle, his olive toned cheeks blushing. "I'm sorry, my English is still rather confused. I also just moved here. I am from Europe, Portugal, and people here in the village say you may help me become more of a permanent resident. I need to work. But I also need to be permanent here." 

"Oh! I See! You've immigrated here! Well, Mr. Mural, welcome. You'll find that most of everyone in this village and perhaps this state have roots from other countries. It's certainly part of what makes the fabric of America so unique around the globe. Please, sit!' Lear said, dusting off a side chair and pushing over to his overflowing desk.

Lucas said, his body tight with nerves. 

"Now, when did you arrive?" Lear asked, grabbing a note pad and pen.

"Almost a month now." 

"Very good. And do you have a residence?" 

Lucas nodded. "I am staying with a friend. My friend lives here in the village."

"Well, that's a step ahead. You have someone who is American in the village who may vouch for you as a sponsor while your paperwork with the Immigration processes through. This is good." Lear said smiling. 

They looked at each other while the discussed the process and it was almost as if they knew each other from another life or had been friends for years. Lear, for all his faults, was incredibly welcoming and kind. He was a person of long-lasting pain due to what his aunt Rebecca did to his father decades ago, but this was only a part of who Lear was. In reality, his heart was good and he wanted to help where he could with his profession. Lucas' immigration status and desire to stay and work in America was a perfect example of why he loved to help people in a legal way.

"And is there a Mrs. Mural that we'd call back from Portugal to come too?" Lear asked.

Lucas gulped, a question that haunted his 36-year-old life "Uh, no. No wife." 

Lear wrote it down and looked a Lucas. 

"Oh. Have you ever been married?" the lawyer asked sensing hesitation on the topic of marriage.

"Never." Lucas answered with a quiet voice.

"Neither have I." Lear said, hoping this similarity would put Lucas' sudden nerves at ease.

"They say I should finally find someone. Maybe here, maybe an American." The handsome Lucas chuckled.

"Well, we're probably around the same age, so I've heard the same thing. People don't really know that sometimes, maybe, there are people who have, I don't know, a different idea of what they want for themselves." Lear said.

"Yes, that is a good way of putting it, a different idea of what they want." 

Lear smiled at Lucas, again their eyes connecting. 

"Mr. Mural, aside from the idea wanting to be an American what else is it that you want?" 

Lucas knew what Lear was asking. He could feel it all over his skin, the small little hairs on his arm lift as if a cold breeze had slowly rushed over him. This wasn't a new feeling; it was something he'd felt before when he lived in Lisbon. It was the feeling of someone knowing him, truly knowing him, without exactly having ever really met or saying the secret words out loud.

The two of them had a link, a secret language that only they and others like them understood. They were like rare pink flowers growing in a garden of all white daisies. They saw each other for what they were in this small bit of conversation and realized that the private connection they shared was something they didn't even realize could be found in another person in such a small place like Welshport. Lucas cardinally never expected it. But there it was... a silent bond that the two handsome young men could feel in their heart, in their mind and in their bones. 

"You know, I don't really have many friends here yet. A bit of family that I'd rather not be around too much, would you ever like to have a beer with me over at the Siren's Call Pub sometime? We could discuss the next steps to your immigration status." Lear sad as he finished his notes for Lucas legal paperwork.

"Oh! That would be wonderful, yes. I have even less here, just me and my friend Matthew." Lucas replied.

"Matthew." Lear repeated, the name hitting him like a bit of a brick wall to the face. 

"Yes, he's the one I'm living with..... For now." Lucas reiterated.

"I see. And would this friend come with you to the Siren's Call?" Lear wondered, thinking that perhaps the man called Matthew wasn't just a friend.

"No, no, he has a lot to deal with. He's been searching for the woman in his life and I believe he's found her. Its a long story, I could tell you over the drink." Lucas said smiling.

Relief! Lear soon realized that Lucas was, for lack of a better word, alone and free to have drinks with him at any time. 

Just the two of them.

To discuss whatever, they wanted as long as they were together. 

"To new friendships!" Lear said reaching over to shake Lucas' hand.

As their skin touched Lucas felt more of the little bumps on his skin rise. Lear too.

The chill in the air wasn't a weather front, it was a connection linking two men who suddenly saw a bright light in their rather dimming lives. 

"To new friends." Lucas said with a sparkle in his eye. 

****

Jacqueline & Johnathon reconnect

A scattered pattern of shadows blanketed the front façade of the small cottage deep in the Tirymor Forest known as Lockwood Thicket. Sitting behind a window watching the pattern of shadows flicker in different shapes through a window was Jacqueline Gray. She sat there in the small bedroom, mid-day, nude and wrapped in a white sheet, her lover Johnathon De Viana lay just as nude on his stomach in the bed behind her.

They had entered into a passionate love affair, and after the last few months Jacqueline had plagued his mind with a spell, a spell to keep him infatuated with her thus keeping her safe from hard under the protection of a member of the Lord family. With this connection, she felt, no one would try anything to destroy her.  She worried that time was running out and that Evie would somehow come and get her revenge for what Jacqueline did to her.

Jacqueline's mind was in constant rewind of the cruelty she inflicted; how she taunted Evie in her grave from the surface. How she was so obsessed with Sebastian that she'd stop at nothing to rid him of Evie so that she could have him all to herself. 

Jacqueline turned in the chair away from the window and watched Johnathon sleep. His chocolate skin was so sensual in her white sheets. His body perfect. She lusted for Johnathon, the perfect man, but she loved Sebastian. 

How could she have such strong feelings for both of them, even knowing that the man in her bed was the same man she saw in a vision doing something heinous to Sebastian -- that still remained a mystery to her -- what did Johnathon do to Sebastian and where was the man she really loved now?

Jacqueline slithered back over to her bed wrapped in the white sheet and cuddled next to Johnathon. The motion of her reentering the bed awoke him. His eyes fixated on the beautiful woman he had so quickly fallen in love with. He reached over and pulled her in close to his naked body. Their warmth uniting like to candles touching wicks. 

"Why are you awake?" He asked.

"It's the middle of the day. We can't lay here and make love all day, can we? Don't you have to be in the village?" Jacqueline asked. 

"I do. I'll get up in a minute." He said smiling. 

She looked at him with soft eyes but a burning mind. She wanted to reach in and grab his heart and squeeze it in her hand until it burst. She wanted to know what he had done to Sebastian, she wanted to find the man she truly loved and free herself of Welshport once and for all.

She had other plans for Johnathon. He would be her husband, and being his wife she would be untouchable. By cloaking herself in shield that came along with being married into the Lord family no one, not even Evie, could come for her. 

All this was of course dependent on when and if Sebastian would come back to her. She look into Johnathon’s eyes and see only Sebastian’s face, a face of true love that not even her powerful sorcery could return. 

Until Sebastian’s return — protection came first.  

"Have you thought about what we discussed? Our marriage?" Jacqueline asked.

The talk of marriage made Johnathon’s mind foggy. He could feel himself recoil at the idea. It was too soon, he thought. It didn't make sense that he'd want to marry someone he'd only met a short while back. But then, he could feel words form in his mouth to say "yes, let's get married." 

And just as those words, those lyrical betrayals of words were to drip from his mouth like a leaky faucet, he stopped and shrugged to her surprise. 

"Don't you think we should get to know each other more?" He asked.

Jacqueline's brow lifted. Her spell wasn't as tightly wound around him as she thought. 

She smiled and lifted her right leg and looped it around his left. Again, their bodies burning when they touched. She could feel him hesitate towards her when the talk of marriage came up. She began to run her fingers through his hair, and she looked deeply into his eyes.

"Now, now, we already talked about it. We both love each other, and this would be the best thing for us. We could do it today!" She said as she slowly leaned down and kissed his full lips.

He was beginning to wish he didn't have to go into the office. 

He pulled her in close and rolled her over. Now on top of her she gazed up at his hungry eyes and when they locked in gaze, she put both hands behind his head and focused and zeroed into his mind telepathically:

"Obsecro te intro, et mens es. Simul inter se. Simul in tempore."

"I ... I feel..." he began as her words continued to fill his mind. "What is that?" 

"Obsecro te intro, et mens es. Simul inter se. Simul in tempore." She repeated. 

"Can you hear that?" He asked, her words sounding as if they were floating in the air rather than just in his head.

"Hear what?" She asked softly as she nibbled his ear.

"I, I hear...." he said, she repeated the spell. 

"Obsecro te intro, et mens es. Simul inter se. Simul in tempore; "Obsecro te intro, et mens es. Simul inter se. Simul in tempore." 

He closed his eyes; the room began to spin. His heart felt as it were pounding a mile a minute. He lowered his head and rested it on her shoulder, she put her arms around him and scratched on both sides of his back leaving six long lines from her fingernails going from one side to the other. Her mark was made, he was now hers for the taking.

He lifted his head, and his eyers were different; almost sleeping but yet they were open.

"I want to marry you." She said to him in a breathy voice.

He looked at her and at first said nothing, she wondered if her spell had correctly reattached, a spell that would link her with him and no one else. Noone and nothing could break the spell she had just placed on him. Another desperate act of a woman who saw the writing on the wall should she not have the protection of the newest member of the Lord family. 

She couldn't marry Sebastian Lord, the man she truly loved, and to protect her from the fires of whatever fresh Hell of revenge she believed Evie was planning, Johnathon as her husband would be her shield, it was a plan full of holes, but Jacqueline felt it was first and best step forward. 

"Ok." He replied.

"Really?" She asked gleefully.

"Ok." he replied, his mind foggy as a Welshport morning.

Jacqueline scooted out from under her love and jumped to the middle of the room, again wrapped in the white sheet that now seemed more like a wedding dress billowing in white fabric at her feet.

"We'll go now! We'll go today off to the courthouse just before you go to work, and we'll be married. I'll be your wife and you can tell me everything and anything you want. I'll keep every secret you'll ever need to me to keep." 

He chuckled at her girlish attitude to the marriage not knowing it was all a farce, a performance for his own gain.

"Come to back to bed and show your husband how happy you are." He replied extending his hand to pull her back into his arms.

She smiled and trotted back over into the bed where he pulled her in. They began to make love, a deep passionate love. 

Jacqueline felt safe, in his arms. In her skin. And now, in Life. 

Johnathon's name and family connections would buy her time to do so much, including find Sebastian and be sure that Evie never had a chance to get her back for all the evil she had done. 

Yes, Jacqueline was safe, but for how long. 

A good spell was only worth it's words if a witch knew how to control her reckless behaviors, and Jacqueline was prone to being a reck. 

****

Jacob gets a surprise visitor at the office 

In the busy offices of Lord Publishing that afternoon, a wave of shock and surprise rushed over the several literary agents, assistants and editors and other staffers that formed LPH (Lord Publishing House). The reason for this was the buzz that Rebecca Lockwood-Lord, their storied and scandal ridden boss was actually in the building, something that almost never happened.

Indeed, Rebecca was making her way through the corridors floor by floor of the 5-story building making her presence known. She wanted to reiterate that she had returned to form as the company's chief and that Jacob would return to his post as her under-publisher where he belonged. This visit of course was all a surprise to Jacob who sat alone in his 5th floor penthouse office. 

When Rebecca made it to the 5th floor, in a cloud of dark taffeta and silks, some of the editors and agents applauded her and shook her hand, one secretary even curtsied as if this were some sort of royal visits, a gesture Rebecca chuckled at. 

"What the devil?" Jacob said under his breath listening to the commotion outside his office.

He leaped to his cherrywood door and when he opened it his mother was standing there fist up ready to knock.

"Surprise." She said. 

Jacob stood aside and allowed his mother to enter, Aaron Hamstead, the Lord family's trusted driver, stood just outside awaiting his mistress.

"And to what do I owe this visit?" Jacob wondered.

"You're not owed anything son, this is my company, I'm here to see how things are going. For once." She replied.

"Mother, you know this is very unorthodox of you. You've never needed to come down the office for anything. We take things to you when they need your approval or for whatever other reason." Her son replied annoyed.

"Perhaps that is the error of the old way of doing things, I've come to understand that the employees want to see their boss in the workplace too. It makes them feel as if I care." She replied.

"They do see their boss in the workplace. I'm here every day." 

"Me, Jacob. They want to see me." Rebecca shot back coldly. "And I want to see them. This is the first of many visits I'll make to LPH. I intend on turning the page and showing my face much more. For moral, of course." 

"Again, mother, It's unnecessary."

Rebecca's lips pursed. "You're not going to run me out again, Jacob. Are you following? It's never going to happen. What you did: trying to push me out of the company I helped your father build bigger and better than his father left it so that you could hoard our family's hard-earned fortune is on a level of greed I don't think I ever expected -- even for you." 

"Mother please, this is a place of --- "

Rebecca interrupted 

"Money! Money has always been your obsession; to have it all! Well, I should have raised you knowing that sometimes you can't have it all-- especially not while I'm still alive and David is still out there. I'll be sure things here work like the well-oiled machine as they always have and that you are kept on a tight leash."

"David? Please! David is long gone; you know it and I know it!" Jacob shouted.

"You saw to that, didn't you." She replied recalling how she knew he was the who was behind David's disappearance after Sabrina's murder. 

Jacob did not respond with words, only a cold look to his mother's equally fridged face. 

"Where's Johnathon?" She asked out of nowhere.

"What?" Jacob asked, caught off guard again.

"Your half-brother, and oddly, brother in-law, where is he? He's been promised a high-level position here and I'd like to see how he's doing?" She asked. 

"And why would you have promoted him? I already gave him a job here." the disgruntled son asked.

"And I promoted him. That's my prerogative. He's Albert's son, and deservedly so, he should be more involved in the company. It was an agreement he and I made. Simple as that." 

"My! Your stint in the loony bin has surly warmed you up to your husband's bastard son, what happened in there? What made you change? I fully expected you to ice him out of the family all together when you were finally told." Jacob wondered as he poured himself a drink.

Rebecca rolled her eyes "It's not Johnathon's fault, it's not my fault. But it's reality."

"Yes, and you are so up-to-speed on what is reality and what is not? Maybe one your psychic friends told you this." Jacob snarled. 

"Like the ones you hired to keep me feeling frightened and locked away in our home far, far away from the family business all these years, like the one buried under the Gazebo? Gaspar Du---" Rebecca replied before Jacob shushed her. 

"Alright, now! Alright. No need to dig up old bones." he said without the slightest bit of irony in his voice. "You've made your point."

"Good." 

"Johnathon isn't here yet. He's late and frankly, I don't care." 

Rebecca furrowed her brow. "Interesting. Well, I'll wait for him, I know that'll be here soon I'll take your father's office in the meantime." 

"Father's office? But... but no one has taken that office since he died." 

Rebecca turned back to Jacob as she was opening his office door and smiled. 

"It's mine now." 

She walked out with those last words and Jacob felt the uncomfortable feeling of the tables finally being turned on him. His heart sank, he hated being under his mother's thumb, all his life was he was and now he'd once again felt the tiny little woman's powerful stamp on his face. 

As Rebecca and Aaron made their way to the other side of the penthouse where a second large office had been locked up since Albert's death, Baxter Murphy stepped into Jacob's office grinning from ear to ear.

"Well, now THAT is how you return to work." the reporter replied.

Jacob's eyes narrowed at the sight of The Welshport Globe's dirtiest reporter. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" 

"I heard it through the grapevine that Lady Lockwood-Lord-Casador was going to be in house, I had to see it for myself." Baxter said.

"Now you've seen her, go back to your newsroom." 

"Have a quote for me, Jacob? Anything to say on the return of the great Rebecca to the offices?" Baxter wondered again smirking ear to ear with the very juicy family story he knew irked Jacob to his core. 

As Jacob's mouth began to form the word No, his mind quickly switched and decided to play the game the way he knew his mother was dirty: "Actually yes, I do have a word or two for you and the faithful readers of our paper. Quote me here in my office saying 'Although My mother has had her personal ups and downs, and the family has been under my watchful, caring and most of all protective eye over so many painful and person trials, I welcome her. This is my father's legacy, this company, and I will continue to watch over it the way he would. My mother understands her place, and I do too. She needs no reminding from me how my father would feel having her here working so many long strenuous hours after all she's been through.'"

Baxter looked at Jacob strangely as he scribbled the quote down on his pad. "You make her sound like a simple figure head; an old symbol of times gone by. She's obviously more than that here."

Jacob smiled back "Yes. A figure head."

"But she's more than that." Baxter reminded him. "Obviously." He added gesturing to the office workers who were so happy to see her face to face.

"Mr. Murphy, every queen has her dawn and her dusk, we're waiting in the twilight hour of Rebecca Lockwood-Lord." 

"I see." Baxter said lifting a brow. "Can I quote you there too?" 

Jacob shrugged. "I'll let you use your own writer's discretion. Is that why you were here? To get a good quote from me on my mother's return?" 

Baxter bit his lip, almost attempting to hide the glee he was feeling after the messy family dispute he was so happily now tangled in.

"Actually, no, it wasn't. A source of mine dropped by and told me something very interesting about a member of your family." Baxter said.

Jacob shrugged. "Which member?" 

"Sebastian. Apparently his very lucky wife says he's the one the saved her form certain suffocation in that grave of hers." 

Jacob, knowing Sebastian's true nature as a vampire, narrowed his eyes at the idea of someone in the household exposing their family secret in such a way. 

"That's ridiculous. Evangeline was hallucinating. You know as I do that Sebastian died over a year ago in a fire at my mother's family's cottage in the forest where he'd been staying since his kidnapping. What she saw were the visions of bereaved woman finding herself on the brink of her own death. Nothing more." Jacob explained.

"My source is a good one. They say Evie was adamite." 

"Murphy, are you really saying you'd believe this bizarre gossip about Sebastian being alive after an explosion? Please." 

"I do believe them. This is a very close source that knows more than you actually know, perhaps. But if you say this was nothing more than a simple hallucination, I'll quote you on that." Baxter said.

"NO!" Jacob shouted shooting up from his chair as Baxter turned back. "This can't be in the paper."

"Why not? If its not true, why not?" 

"You can have the story about my mother and me at odds here at LPH but nothing else. Nothing about Sebastian and Evie." Jacob ordered realizing the damage another scandal about death in the family would cause. 

"Its only a hallucination, Jacob." Baxter said. "And I quote, 'Nothing more'. So why the secrecy?" 

"Your smugness is eclipsing the reality of who pays your wage, Murphy. The story about my mother and me, ONLY...hands off this Sebastian fairytale." 

Seeing in real-time Jacob Lord squirm about something he honestly did believe was something Evie had dreamed up made Baxter even more curious. Viciously so. He could tell now that there was something to what his sister Coraline had reported to him about Evie's claims. It peeked Baxter's nefarious curiosity, and he'd soon become like a dog with a bone. Sebastian was alive. Somewhere. Somehow. Why else would Jacob fight so hard to kill the story. 

For now, he'd let Jacob plant the seed of Rebecca's supposed irrelevance by putting down in print the acknowledgment of her very public mental breakdown only a year before. The mother/son battled good for now. 

Jacob knew very well how attached the reigns of society were in Rebecca's hands and this slight in the paper by her own son would be a small bruise to many, but to Rebecca it was salt in the wound of one of her darkest most shameful times in her life. 

Jacob knew she'd feel the sting reading it herself. 

Baxter tapped his pen on the pad seeing as Jacob was done and turned to walk out realizing this would be a long game of who was on top of the Lord family heap. A heap Baxter couldn't wait to watch burn from the top down with Rebecca's fall, and eventually the exposure of what was going on with the golden boy Sebastian Lord's mysterious whereabouts. 

****

Fatima & Donavon seek divine intervention 

Later that evening, in the Village as the sun began to dip below the horizon, Fatima Braga knelt in one of the oak pews of Saint Catherine's Church. The shimming light of the setting sun rained down a kaleidoscope of shapes in various colors through the church's rose window and painted Fatima's back like a jigsaw puzzle in ornate shapes of triangles. 

She held tightly to her rosary and whispered private prayers as Father Donavon Ryan walked into the church surprised to see the few congregants there in quiet mediation; then he noticed Fatima Braga. 

His stomach sank remembering their last conversation. He walked over to the woman, her eyes tightly shut continuing her prayers over and over again she mouthed the words in whispers.

"Fatima." Father Ryan said softly and placed his hand on her shoulder.

She slowly opened her eyes and looked up, their eyes locked and he could instantly see she was unwell. 

"What's happened? Is it Filipe? Did... did something happen?" Father Ryan worried.

"Padre, tonight's quarter moon is the final warning of what is to come. There is only death on the horizon." She said as a nervous nun lighting candles to the side of the conversation overheard. 

Father Ryan, noticing the nosey nun, took Fatima by the hand and lead her into a small chapel where they could speak in private.

"Is there nothing we can do?" He asked still holding her hand.

"Pray." She said. 

"I've been doing that. Every night. It's invaded my sleep the idea of what is to come. Nothing seems to lull me away. I can't grasp in my mind how much danger we are truly in." Father Ryan said.

"I too have slept only hours a night. Filipe has yet to show any signs of what is to come but tonight will be the first test. The beginning of the end." She said.

"What if you're wrong? What if the wolf attack was just that, an animal attacking a human, and nothing more. There isn't always an answer to these terrible events that leads back to some supernatural reasoning." Ryan said.

"I know what I know, Padre. I see the hunger in my son's eyes." Fatima said, suddenly realizing she confessed a secret.

"Son? Filipe is your nephew." Ryan answered. "He is your nephew, isn't he?" 

"There more to our relationship Padre, I've said too much." She answered.

Father Ryan felt his mind spinning. Too many times has he fallen prey to the villagers many secrets and lies. Sometimes it felt overwhelming to be the brunt of all their burdens and penances, but it was his job, to be the beacon of hope in the village, but Fatima's cross too heavy to bear for him. This predicament wasn't anything like the situation with Caspian. The demon in Caspian could be cast out, could be torn from his body with fierce prayer and the power of the light Father Ryan held in his golden cross. 

"I don't know where to begin." Father Ryan replied.

"Its a long story and I hope that someday I can tell you so that you understand but now we have to find a way to keep this world safe from my son's burgeoning transition into something that is ungodly and monstrous."

"Where is he now?" The priest asked.

"Home. With me." She replied.

"Go to him. Keep him restrained as best you can, if what you believe is true and he is going to be this, thing, that you keep describing then he must be kept out of streets just as you say. We've all seen enough death and destruction to last us a lifetime."

Fatima agreed, but her heart told her she may not be able to control it forever. Why Filipe was chosen, why his body was the one to suffer such a terrible fate was a mystery but for now, the only way they could keep the world safe was to keep him locked away, far away, deep in the basement of Fatima's house. 

As Fatima took her leave from Saint Catherine's church, she passed a small window at towards the church door and saw the sky had darkened significantly since she arrived to pray. Up in the dark blue air was the quarter moon hovering above Welshport along without a cloud in cover it's gray facade. The starts twinkled around making it such a beautiful sight to see, yet it was all only a reminder of what was coming. 

And coming soon. 

Safley tied by chains to his bed in Fatima's basement her son lay asleep. The moon light peeked in through a window near the ceiling and framed his face like a light blue halo. His arms became tense. The muscles in his body began to tighten and flex painfully. Filipe awoke in immeasurable pain as if his limbs were tearing from his body. He could feel his bones snap and become larger. His own DNA was beginning to change in second. His heart raced. His skin sweated. His eyes, although strained with pain never changed their deep brown color. 

"Its happening, it's happening." He thought to himself. "I can't be here. I have to get out. I have to get out!!!" 

Filipe yanked on the chains. They slammed him back to the bed as they were attached by iron nails to the wall. Filipe knew that if he stayed through the very next night and became this monster Fatima was fearing he would easily escape the chains, escape the house and kill anything in his way. He could feel the hunger in his body growing for flesh. He could taste it already without ever knowing the taste.

The wounds on his chest from the wolf attack suddenly began to heal in front his eyes as if they were never there in the first place. The pain of the skin binding together over the bloody scabs made him wale in pain. His rib expanded, his chest enlarged. His voice deepened. 

His already large feet and big legs became larger and bigger. 

The wolf of the full moon was coming, and the clock was ticking to full destruction. 

****

Asha has an unexpected guest in the dark

On another street in town, Asha Hoffman was coming home from a long day at the Hospital. She opened her door and entered the darkened living room. She was alone. Nikolas was staying with Evie at the Beach House Rebecca had given her helping her move in.

Asha reached for the drawer of a side table where she kept matches for the small oil lamp. She lit the match, a bright flicker of light brightened her face and showed her the face of Gregory Reigns on her sofa across from her sitting in the dark.

She screamed and the match fell to the ground burning a small hole in the rug.

"GREGROY!!!" 

Gregory got up from the sofa. He came over to the lamp and lit it himself with his own matches. Asha, her hands shaking like leaves on a withering autumn tree, said nothing only watched him.

"We have to take care of something." Gregory said with a strange almost alien voice to her.

"Take care of what?" She asked nervously.

He turned to her, the flickering flame of the oil lamp cast a strange shadow on his face. Gregory was here to nip Asha's guilty conscious in the bud. She was a liability now, his coconspirator. The idea that she'd break and tell Nikolas, or worse Aurora herself, what the two of them did to the child Aurora gave birth to would rain hell on Gregory's relationship and career. 

"Gregory we can make things better if we're just honest with what we did." She said to him.

He furrowed his brow sadly knowing what he was about to do next.

"It's too late for that." he said again in this alien voice.

"What do you mean?" She asked, as she stepped backwards one step.

"You are too good and maybe I never was. I need Aurora, I love her and you want to make sure that that ends, but it can't end. We are forever." Gregory answered.

"No! No Gregory, I don't want anything like that. I would never want to be the reason you and Aurora become a thing of the past, but she needs to know. She DESERVES to know her child is alive! You understand, don't you?" Asha pleaded.

But Gregroy, lost in his own pain and frustration with this one-time friend Asha did not reply. He walked towards her as she walked backwards. He put on leather gloves and lunged for her. Just when she was about to scream his gloved hand covered her mouth. He pulled her close to his body squeezing her tightly until the air left her lungs. The lack of oxygen made her faint in his arms. Her limp body, breathing but out cold, was now in Gregory's treacherous hands. 

"I'm sorry." He whispered to her.

And from there, he took her away from her home in the dark of night, leaving the flickering flame of the oil lamp alone in her home.