 |
| The Fire |
Smoke.
Fire.
A hellscape.
The fire at the police station had engulfed the entire building from the third floor down. Under smoldering rubble Nikolas Jordan frantically pulled burning debris off of a mound that had accumulated on top of Asha Hoffman.
"ASHA! ASHA!!!!" Nik Screamed, burning his hands but never wavering on his search.
He kept digging and digging, the smoke got thicker and thicker all around him.
He quickly peeked at the back door he had opened right at the moment the ceiling caved in. He looked back down at the burning beams of wood and dug more.
Finally, Asha's hand
He leaped into action and uncovered her body. Miraculously she had only superficial burns and was mostly covered in ash and soot with minor cuts and bruises.
She was alive but had breathed in too much smoke.
Nik grabbed Asha's unconscious body and propped her up. Begged her to answer him and lightly tapped on her cheeks.
She did not.
Time was wasting and the fire was intensifying. He took her into his arms and quickly ran out the back door and down the back stairs that lead into an alleyway where Nik could safely, and secretly, take Asha to Hope Hospital.
As he ran like he had never run before with Asha in his arms, it was as if he was superhuman. The weight of her body never once stressing his joints. As he looked back towards the Constable's office and home, he saw it completely engulfed in the reddest flames he had seen since the night Alice Winterborn died at a fire at Lockwood Thicket.
It brought back flashes of that night and that fire. His heart Ached or Alice who died. It was like his life had two book ends of terrible awful fires surrounding two women he loved dearly.
But he had to save Asha now. He didn't want her to end up like Alice.
Nik's heart was broken. He loved Asha very much and in this frightening moment nothing she did, not even the horrible thing he overheard her confess to Gregory about taking his mother's newborn child and lying to her about its death, could make him fail at saving her life.
****
 |
| Mayor Churchill receives terrible news from an aide |
The crowds in Village Park began to swell. The clock was minutes from Midnight, and the full moon was in it's grandest, brightest faze on a clear night sky.
Mayor Timothy Churchill got to the mainstage of the event and grabbed hold of the silver circular microphone with it's wiry progs. He flicked the center blasting a loud thud across the park that echoed back into the village. The music stopped. Everyone happily awaited the mayor's welcoming speech.
"Ladies and Gentleman, it has been a very tough few days with the loss of our fellow villagers on the docks. But today, we celebrate life in the shape of a beautiful full moon. Tonight, when you gaze up and see this celestial orb celebrate the world around you tonight. The clock has stuck, my friends, look up! The moon shines down on us all and we----"
As the mayor continued to speak, an aide came over and whispered in his ear. Just as this happened, everyone in the Park began to smell the unmistakable scent of burning wood.
"What?" the mayor asked in shock. "Are you sure?"
The crowd began to whisper among themselves.
"What's he saying?" One woman asked her husband.
A wolf howled in the distance.
More whispers from the crowd, this time more frantic.
"Something's burnin'!" A man shouted.
"I smell it too." Aurora said under her breath answering the man.
"What's happening?" Evie asked Matthew as he held her and Garbriel.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the mayor again began to speak. "I ask you to please stay calm, there have been reports of two more deaths in town and .... and shockingly, the Constable's office has been set ablaze. We are handling the situation now and I want to reassure everyone that everything is fine."
"Two more dead? Sebastian Lord's got TWO MORE bodies on his list!!" A man screamed.
"Sebastian?" Rebecca whispered to Caspian. "Why do they keep thinking its Sebatian?"
The crowd started pointing and leering at the Lord family. First at Rebecca and Jacob and then at Evie and Celeste.
There was a sudden bitterness in the air. Angry stares of people who were fed up with the island's so-called royal family and all their secrets, all their mystery, all of the death that surrounded them. Real and Fictional.
Cora's heart sank. She knew why it was happening: she was the reason why. She was the one who told Baxter that Evie was adamite that she was saved from her grave somehow by the supposed dead Sebastian Lord. The story morphed from there with Baxter's poison pen. He crafted the story of a murderer, a killer monster that was alive and yet dead. His passion for the sensational and the hyperbole made the story that was untrue suddenly true with Filipe's tragic transition into the true monster in the village.
"This is just too good." Baxter whispered to his photographer. "Go on, keep photographing all of this."
Then suddenly screams from the other end of the park near the entrance, blood curdling heinous screams, broke the concentration on the Lord family.
"Mayor! WHAT IS IT?" A man shouted pointing in the direction of the entrance.
The crowed continued to gasp in horror at the mouth of the open gates of Village Park. there frothing at the mouth hungry for more human flesh in hideous werewolf form was Filipe Braga howling into the night revealing himself from the shadowy streets.
True horror was about to ensue.
Panic from the crowd began to emanate in front of the mayor. "Please, please everyone stay calm, the authorities are going to take care of everything. We need calm heads here. Please, stay calm."
But the calm would not come.
Screams sounded. People began to scatter from the front gate. Women grabbed their children. Men held on to their wives. A crush of people began to push forward towards the stage. A police office went into action, but the wolf whipped it's head around and threw him to the floor breaking his neck on impact.
"What the devil is it, I want it shot on the spot!" The mayor ordered from his vantage point seeing the creature.
"Jesus Christ!" The aide exclaimed.
"My God, Nik! Nik is in the fire." Ward suddenly remembered.
"Nik?!" Aurora screeched, her face puzzled at Ward's realization.
Gregory's face went pale, frozen. He realized Asha was done for, and with her possible Nik who was snooping around.
"Nikolas is there!" Ward confessed.
"Nikolas?" Laural asked confused.
"What do you mean?" Aurora shouted as she and Gregory both snapped back to look at Ward. "Nik is where?"
Dr. Peter Ward now had to explain it all. He stepped up to Gregory as people ran past screaming from the wolf in the chaos. He revealed in a shocking turn of events that Nikolas had gone to find Asha at Gregory's house because they both felt Gregory was hiding her there.
"You know why." Peter Ward added.
"Gregory, what in the world is he talking about?" Aurora asked.
A police man suddenly came over "Sir, you'll have to ask everyone with you move out of the park, a wild animal is on the prowl and there is significant danger."
"Everyone move! LETS MOVE!" Gregory shouted attempting to move past the shocking reveal.
"GREGORY WHAT IS GOING ON!?" Aurora screamed as she turned to Gregory and tilted her head in confusion. Laural too, both women were being ushered off by their significant others with giant question marks over the entire situation.
Gregory's mind raced his took a breath and continued to order Aurora out of the park for her safety.
"Wait! Where are you going? What is Dr. Ward talking about???" Aurora shouted again, Laurel too attempting to pull more information from Peter.
Gregory ignored her and rushed off towards the wolf and the exit, to salvage whatever was left of his secret from his apartment.
***
 |
| Chaos in the park |
The wolf meantime snapped his jaws at anything that passed him. His thick gray fur looked like silver strands of iron under a muscular physic that twisted and contorted at every movement. His paws, thick with power left giant marks in the park's muddy paths. His bite, snarling and withering at a glance could slice through any bone, any stone, and any attempt to block him from getting his prey.
More police showed up and pushed people back. A strong of lights suddenly was yanked down to the ground on the east side of the park where wolf was now blackening that area of the park in shadows. A woman fell to the floor and was trampled on. Filipe leaped on her and big her in the side and ripped her in half.
People screamed. More running. Aurora, Peter and Laurel rushed for their lives.
Matthew grabbed Evie who scooped up little Garbiel.
"HURRY!" Matthew shouted, holding tight to Evie's hand.
"It's ok, its ok!!!" Evie kept saying to a hysterically crying Gabreil who could only see the chaos around him and not hear a single thing.
Lucas began running to the other exit of the park leaping over bodies and screaming people. Lear saw him and grabbed his hand. "COME WITH ME!" Lear shouted, and together they searched for safety.
at the other exit of the park, a crush of people trying to escape. The large iron gates that held everyone in, trapped like rats as the wolf continued to tear into people as it passed.
Fatima and Father Ryan ran in the other direction, towards Filipe.
Gregory too ran towards the monster dodging villagers left and right like an obstacle course.
"COME! COME!!!" Caspian said to a panicked Rebecca.
"Where's Gabriel? Where's Fabian? Where're are the children???!?" She replied in a panic as she was dragged along as fast as Caspian could take her.
At the crush of villagers attempting to escape the park, Jacob, Celeste and Fabien zig-zagged through the pushing and shoving.
"Order!! Have order!!" A policeman said, shoving people out as best he could as the squeezing and pushing was making it very difficult. "Order! WE NEED ORDER!!!! One by one, but hurry!"
"Jacob, what is that thing?" Celeste asked holding tightly to her 4-year-old boy-- both terrified. She began to look back not realizing it was the man she once loved, Filipe, ravaging villagers in a bloody massacre. "Is it Sebastian like Baxter said???"
Jacob grabbed Celeste's arm and held tight. "That thing is not my nephew." He answered.
Celest turned her head, Jacob's big hand softly pushed her cheek pushing her eyes away from the carnage behind them.
"DON'T LOOK BACK!" Jacob said, moving her face forward. "Come, we have to push through, hold my hand. DO NOT LET GO!" He ordered.
Jacob's cruelty and selfishness was a way of life. It was his currency in a world that took from him so very early on in his youth, but the very idea that his own nephew would be this creature murdering so indiscriminately was impossible to him. Jacob knew what Sebastian was, he knew and saw what he could be capable of as one of the undead, everyone in the family knew. It was their secret to keep.
But this, whatever this monster was, Jacob knew was not the nephew he loved to hate.
The real monster of the Lord family, was Jacob -- and he knew it.
***
The panic in the park sent people scattering to every corner. Huddled together under trees trying to break the iron bars of the large fence that surrounded the lush gardens and grassy areas.
Johnathon and Jacqueline too went off to find shelter.
"What the hell is going on, what is that thing?" Johnathon said as the two held hands in a giant group of people pushing towards the exit.
Jacqueline didn't know what to say, she kept looking back towards the carnage of the wolf's rage. She closed her eyes and hoped to enter it's mind, this was obviously no ordinary forest dwelling wolf.
As her powers began to search for the wolf's telepathic energy to enter it's mind she heard people around her in the massive group saying that Baxter's theory that the creature was some sort of hideous version of the Lord's family secret, Sebastian Lord, her eyes snapped open.
"THAT'S NOT SEBASTIAN LORD!" She shouted.
The two people stared at her as if she had three heads.
"And 'ow doya know that?" The woman said, her accident straight out of Manchester, England.
"I know." Jacqueline replied.
"How?" Johnaton asked, his mind slowly slipping free of the spell she had him under. He suddenly felt a bit of jealously, she was so forceful and sure that the wolf was not Johnathon's nephew Sebastian, even though Johnathon himself could have told the gossipers that.
"I just do.” Jacqueline replied feeling uneasy as Johnathon expression showed distrust.
But Jacqueline knew the man she truly loved was no Lycan. He was a vampire.
"Well, what I know is that as soon as we're outta here, I'm leaving this god damn town. The Lord's have a lot of control ov'r these parts and now look what happenin'." The woman said. "OY COPPA! LET US OUT!!" She screamed at the police trying his best to keep order as two by two and three by three were filtering out of the small exit to the iron fenced park.
"You know him, don't you? You know Sebastian. How? How do you him?" Johnathon asked, his suspicions now on full display.
Jacqueline's eyes narrowed. She did not need her current husband questioning her past lovers, not at this time.
She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers directly in his eyes. The sound clicked in his brain and the spell she placed on him, a spell the left her in total control of his mind and emptions, quickly regenerated as if an oil lamp had been refilled and a dimming flame took back the wick.
Jacqueline tuned back once more and saw the wolf on it's hind legs howling a deep monstrous sound.
"That was not Sebastian.", she thought. "But who the devil is it?"
***
"CHRIST!!" Baxter shouted with glee of the wolf he assumed was a monster-formed Sebastian. "GET A PHOTO! GET A PHOTO!!! This is what we've been waiting for." He told his photographer.
As they stood among the rushing villagers, the wolf approached. The lights in the park began to flicker. The photographer stood their feet from the wolf in pole position to snap the most amazing and lucrative photo of the thing they thought was Sebastian Lord, the vicious killer.
"NOW! NOW!!" Baxter shouted.
"Bax," Cora exclaimed the behind. "ENOUGH!"
The photographer stood frozen, the wolf lunged and bit off his arm.
Cora screamed at the site of the blood and fainted. Baxter looked over at his sister, then over at the camera and the dying photographer. He grabbed the camera, and the lightbulb flash had been broken, but he tilted the camera and snapped a photo of the wolf running off. Baxter looked back down and the photographer was dead.
"Cora. Cora, are you ok? Cora?" Baxter asked, kneeling next to Gabriel's teacher and nanny.
Cora came too, dizzy and flustered. She opened her eyes to see her brother Baxter hunched over her. With all the energy she had, she slapped him across the face. She saw him as the problem. He was the reason so much had gone wrong. He was the true villain of it all. Had she not told him anything he would have never put anything in the paper and made the whole city had Sebastian.
Baxter only looked at her, a single tear rolled down her face. Baxter stood up and left her there on the grass only to be helped up by a stranger. Cora, still dizzy slowly rushed off to the exit.
Nik too was burned on his hands and has the black smoke marks all over his face from the fire.
"SOMEONE! HELP!" He shouted.
Two nurses and a doctor at the front desk rushed over and helped Nik as they lay Asha on the marble hospital floor for a quick examination before another two men rushed over with a gurney.
The doctor leaned over Asha and listened to her breathing with this ear. He chekced her pulse.
"It's weak." Nik advised.
"Get her to a room, we have to watch her breathing. Her breaths are shallow. She's struggling." The doctor explained.
The two men helped by the two nurses placed Asha on the gurney and rolled her off into a room where they'd watch her and care for her wounds.
"Are you ok Doctor?" The doctor asked Nik.
"Just a bit burned here and there." Nik replied.
"What happened?"
Nik took a breath, and a single tear rolled down his check. "A nightmare on earth." He answered.
 |
| Charlotte’s powers ignite Mary’s |
Mary looked up, the moon was huge, glaring down at her in a glow of creamy grey light.
"Oh Filipe, no." She said to herself.
Back on Goode Island, Morgan entered the living room after checking on little Caleb who was fast asleep in his crip. He saw Charlotte sitting on a sofa facing the window. Her back was towards him.
She was sitting so straight up, so stiff to his eye. It was odd to see her that way.
"Charlotte? Are you alright?" He asked walking towards her.
She did not answer.
As he came around the sofa to face her, her eyes had turned completley white and were gloing.
Her mouth was moving as if words were to be coming out but not a word was audible. Her eyes were glazed over staring out into the distance. Morgan shook her. She didn’t not break her gaze or her train of thought. He kept trying but it was as if she were in a trance, her mind locked in a vice so trapping she could not come out of it.
"Charlotte?? Charlotte??? What’s the matter? Wake up! Look at me! Look at me!”
She would not answer Morgan.
“CHARLOTTE! WHAT'S WRONG!? CHARLOTTE!!" Morgan begged.
On Welshport, Mary's eyes had done the same. The two were connected telepathically. Mary and Charlotte had once again joined their powers together. Mary's strength was only as strong as Charlotte's but together they could fight off the darkest of forces.
Mary began to levitate in the middle of the quiet street. She raised her arms and turned her hands so that her palms were towards the white moon.
In her seated position in the cabin on Goode Island, Charlotte did the same.
With a snap, Mary's arms came together, her hands clapped, and the iron gates of Village Park fell all around allowing the frightened Villagers to have other ways to escape the Wolf's wrath rather than struggled to exit through the one opening where the crush of people was about to cause a stampede trying to escape.
Mary's eyes returned to normal, and she came back down to the street.
Charlotte's eyes returned to normal, and she saw Morgan standing there in shock.
"What happened, tell me!" He shouted.
"It's Filipe." Charlotte replied her eyes welling up with tear. "He's gone...gone to the moon. He's killing people."
"No." Morgan said, covering his mouth with this hand. "How many?"
Charlotte shook her head. "I don't know. I could only see people falling but not getting up. Too many to count. Screaming. And running. My mother is there. She'll help. She'll find Sebastian and together they'll turn this around. I know they will. I can feel it Morgan."
"What if you're wrong? What if Filipe never turns back?'
Charlotte worried he was right. Filipe was something now that she had never seen before. She had no idea if Mary's idea of using Sebatian's blood to revive Filipe into his normal self would work. It was a shot in the dark, a hail-Mary, something that was an idea and never tested but to Mary it was the most logical way. The two men were connected supernaturally and could heal each other if the right spell and blood from both were used. It was the way of the vampire spell Eliza put on Sebastian, and it had to be the way back from Filipe the terrors of lycanthropy.
"It has to work." Charlotte said. "There is no other option."
 |
| Gregory confronts Filipe the wolf |
Back at Village Park, Filipe's wild rage continued. He was snapping and biting and clawing his way through the crown that was finally dispersing from the dropped gates thanks to Mary and Charlotte's powers.
Running towards him, was his biological mother Fatima, the woman he always believed to be his Aunt. She stood center of the park directly in front of a large fountain and statue that depicted one of the cherished matriarchs of the first families of the island, a symbol of the growth of Welshport Settlement: Isabella Hayden-Churchill holding her infant son Phillip, the first settler child born in the 1600s.
Fatima stood directly below Isabella and Phillip, coincidentally in a similar stance.
"Filipe, filho", Fatima said using the Portuguese word for son to Filipe's wolf form. "You must stop this. You must run away from here before its too late." she added holding out her arms to stop him.
Filipe snarled and growled. He stared his yellow vicious eyes directly at Fatima as if he was about to kill and yet --- the creature seemed to stop and think and see her for who she was. The beast calmed in a way he hadn't the entire night long.
"He's going to kill you." Father Ryan said was he slowly walked backwards.
"No. He is listening." Fatima began.
"FILIPE! STOP!" Mary shouted from the other side of the park at an entrance below the last remaining strong of lights.
The wolf to her voice and growled and when he turned back he saw Gregory running towards him.
It all happened in slow motion to those who saw it.
The fast motion of Gregory running towards the monster, the pulling at his waist where he held his firearm, the leaping over an injured villager was a call to action to Filipe.
The wolf met him in equal measure running towards him. Fatima screamed. Ryan fell backwards on to the park lawn.
Mary started to rush towards them all.
Aurora too came out of the last remaining villagers and ran towards the wolf and the constable.
Filipe leaped with all the strength of his hindlegs into the air and Gregory shot once.
The wolf's mouth landed on Gregory's neck ripping it open.
Gregroy bled on the grass. Aurora arrived, lifted his head into her lap. Blood poured from his mouth.
She screamed in agony.
The wolf lay with a bullet in his right shoulder.
Mary leaned down plugged the wound with her fingers.
"Quickly, quickly!!" Fatima said, as she and Ryan took one end of the Filipe's wolf body, with Mary helping, and rushed him out of the park quickly into the night, miraculous with no one seeing.
Officers arrived.
The huddled around Aurora and Gregory.
"Greg, stay awake. Stay awake!!" She shouted.
"There's so much blood." One officer said.
"Sir, stay awake, we've got a call into the hospital. Stay awake sir." Another policeman begged.
"He's so cold. He's so pale." Aurora noticed. "Darling, stay awake, stay..." She added before pausing.
His eyes froze on her. His lips a pale blue.
"Gregory? Gregory??? GREGORY???" She screamed her hands so covered in his blood looked as if she had on crimson colored opera gloves.
Then one little puff of air and...it was done.
Constable Gregory Reigns was dead.
