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| Dr. Ward informs Nik of Asha’s departure |
Dr. Nikolas Jordan's life could be described in one word: complicated. He was in love with a woman, Dr. Asha Hoffman, who's deceptive nature had threatened their relationship on several occasions but her most glaring and harmful crime was being open to blackmail by Constable Gregory Reigns which effected Nik and his family directly.
Nik stood at a nurse's station at Welshport Hope Hospital glazing over the words on the pages as his mind drifted off wondering where Asha could really be. She had vanished in the middle of the night only leaving a mysterious note that she had a family emergency. Bur Nik knew the truth, she had vanished because of scheme to hide the child Nik's mother Aurora gave birth to; a scheme cooked up and orchestrated by Aurora's lover Gregory Reigns.
Their confession, secretly overheard by Nik one day at the hospital, left a hole in his heart filled only by anger towards those responsible. Now, he contemplated telling his mother the truth but needed to gather true proof to do so.
"Penny for your thoughts, young Dr. Jordan." Dr. Peter Ward said as he approached Nik handing him a white envelope with the words To Dr. Ward written on the front.
"What's this?" Nik asked.
"Its from Dr. Hoffman. She had this note sent to me. It's her mother, she's ill after all and Asha has returned to her home to care for her." Dr. Ward explained.
Nik opened the envelope and read the note. It was typed.
"A resignation." Nik noted. "She didn't sign it."
Dr. Ward lifted a brow "Exactly."
"This doesn't make any sense, Dr. Ward, she never once mentioned her mother may or may not have been ill. In fact I don't think she had spoken to her family in a very long time. They'd been over sears for a long time. I don't think they were even in America."
"I feel the same way. It's very unlike her not to have said anything to me and even you about anything face to face. A letter, typed, doesn't feel like Dr. Hoffman in the slightest. That being said, what's going on? I can see it in your face now. I've noticed it in your body language here at work since Asha left. What is it you're not telling me." Ward wondered.
Nik shook his head and looked away. He didn't even know where to begin but Dr. Ward had become such a good confidant and mentor that he knew he could trust him -- it also helped the Ward had noticed Nik had his mind floating off into the darkness of his concerns.
"A few weeks ago I came upon Asha and Constable Reigns speaking in private. I didn't mean to eavesdrop but what I heard them speaking about forced me to stay and listen." Nik explained.
Dr. Ward furrowed his brow in worry "What was it?"
Nik looked around and motioned for Dr. Ward to move to a more secluded area of the hospital lobby where they could speak.
"Asha was furiously telling Reigns that she wanted to come clean about something they did but Reigns told her if she did, he'd expose her for something she did that involved him." Nik explained in a strange way.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Jordan, I don't follow."
Nik sighed realizing he'd have to reveal everything he knew and bringing out all of Asha's secrets to the surface.
"Asha once worked for Dr. Andrew Kim, I'm sure you remember him from Windcliff. Apparently Dr. Kim was Asha's biological father's psychiatrist at Windcliff many years ago. Experiments were done on him by Kim and those experiments proved fatal. He was killed. Asha, in return, came to work for Kim years later and somehow convinced Gregory that Kim was responsible for the attack on Jacob Lord and Christian Evans in the park when they were both shot and almost died. Gregory believed whatever bogus evidence Asha brought and although he was a man of many crimes, Kim was innocent of the crime of attempted murder. As time went on Reigns and Asha remained friendly, we all know that. But when it came time for my mother to give birth to the child she conceived with Caspian, Gregory called in a favor with Asha. Gregory wanted nothing to do with my mother's last connection to Caspian Casador. Gregory forced Asha to deliver the baby and together they told my mother her child was dead and Asha had the child adopted out. Somewhere out there, my mother and Caspian's child truly lives. No one knows this. I've been having a hard time with the information myself. Asha wanted to come clean! She wanted to tell my mother the truth but Gregory threatened to expose her for what she did to Kim if she didn't keep their secret."
"Are you saying the Constable of this town may have done something to Asha because she was about to expose what they'd done?" Warn asked finally seeing the full picture.
"I believe so, Doctor. But I can't know for sure without proof. It would make sense. He's been acting strange since Asha left."
"If she even left at all." Ward noted.
Nik tilted his head confused "Do you think she's still in Welshport?"
Ward shrugged "I can't say for sure, but she definitely is not with a sick mother somewhere."
"How can we contact her mother?" Nik wondered.
"Nikolas, if Gregory Reigns is involved as you say he is, we may not have time to find her mother and prove Asha not with her. Gregory is the key. He may have been the last one to see her, besides you." Ward said.
"He's done something to her, I can feel it. There was this odd sound coming from the walls in his room. I... I just feel it in my heart, Dr. Ward, she was back there. She was behind his walls. If not Asha someone was." Nik recalled.
"Behind his walls???"
"There was a banging, rhythmic almost. Like someone behind the closet wall or inside the wall, was trying to make themsleves known. Gregory said it was old pipes but it was a clearly a lie. If Asha is still in Welshport he's got her hidden."
"Nikolas this is beginning to sound quite dangerous. I don't know Gregory to be irrational and violent but if he feels like he is being cornered over something awful that he's done to your mother and your family and decided the only way out was to eliminate the one person who knew the secret he may lash out in a way that... well... I don't want to even imagine. We have to tread lightly here." Ward said.
Nikolas looked down at the supposed note from Asha. He folded it and put in his pants pocket.
"I have to find Asha. She's the only one who can truly tell us what happened." Nik said.
"How are you going to do that?" Ward wondered.
"I'm going to find her-- at Gregroy's apartment. I'll find her, free her, and we'll get it all out in the open. As soon as Gregory is out of the house, perhaps during the Full Moon Celebrations where he'll need to be in town, is when I'll sneak in."
"You must be very careful Nikolas." Ward warned.
"I will." Nik replied then removed the note in his pocket and looked at it again noticing that every time the letter "a" was typed, it was lifted slightly above the other letters in the word. This meant the "a" key on the typewriter had been bend or twisted in a way that made the typewriter distinctive.
"If Reigns has a typewriter and this key is bent the same this could be our proof!" Nik noted. "Keep it Dr. Ward, if anything happens to me, you'll have this letter as the first stich of proof of the culprit."
Ward took back the letter and agreed to hide it from everyone. Nik then went off to complete his patient rounds and prepare for the night when he'd break into Reigns' apartment to hopefully find Asha live and well and willing to finally tell the truth.
****
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| Father Ryan & Fatima discuss the danger |
The villagers of Welshport all began to gather in the center of town as the sun began to dip into deep purple sky. Mothers and fathers brought picnic blankets, warm thermoses of tea, small sandwiches and metal lawn chairs that sunk slightly into the fresh summer grass.
Binocular lenses were wiped clean of little smudges. Little boys and girls bend their necks back and gazed up into the darkening sky hoping for a first glimpse of the coming full moon.
The town had decorated all over Village Park by stringing banners along long roped light bulbs that burned deep orange inside their little glass orbs. There was an excitement in the evening air as the time ticked away closer and closer to when the moon would be at it's peak above the village and island of Welshport when the summer festivities would finally begin -- a celebration of a harvest moon.
Cars began to drop off people from all corners of the island.
The cool night air, not uncommon in early summer, swept across the park swaying the trees back and forth, and standing at the distance at her small little parlor door where she had for many years told the fortunes of supernaturally curious villagers was a deeply concerned Fatima Braga in a midnight black dress with her head covered in a finely knitted shawl.
She stared off into the distance towards the park of happy town's people still so eager to see the moon's high rise.
"Sister Inez, you look concerned." A friendly voice said off to Fatima’s peripheral.
She turned to see Father Donavon Ryan who always called her by her name when she was a catholic nun.
"I'm glad you've come." She sighed, revealing she'd actually sent for him. "Tonight is the night." She added standing to one side and motioning for the priest to enter her home.
"I don't know if I can go in, Sister. When Sister Claudia told me you’d sent a note for me to meet you here, I had this feeling … and frankly, I've done enough damage here in this town dealing with beasts that come in the night."
"Padre," Fatima began using the Portuguese word for priest, "this is no time for you step away from your duties as a man of God. We need you. We need God." She replied.
Father Ryan seemed surprised of his reluctance, of course they needed God. And for what it was worth, inside, Donavon realized they may need more than God himself to quell the darkness growing inside of Filipe.
"He rests comfortably, I've been able to keep him that way for many days, except now in the coming hours of the full moon, I won't be able to keep him from a full transition. You see, the other night, during the quarter moon, he escaped." Fatima explained closing the front door behind her and removing the shawl from her head. "He was the killer of the fisherman, not this nonsense the papers are spewing."
"I figured as much." Donavon replied turning to the basement door where Filipe was being held. "There’s nothing I believe about Sebastian Lord being alive and a killer, some kind of ripper from the unknown. I’ve seen evil head on, and it’s not Sebastian.” He added turning to the basement door. “What should we expect? I don't quite know what I’ll find."
"Neither do I, to be honest."
Father Ryan sighed "I'm afraid I don't know what I can do here, this is a much more complicated situation than Caspian Casador was. I know nothing of what controls Filipe now. The demon inside of Caspian at least was known to us because of where it came from. This situation seems... like a warping of nature more than a dissolution of a spirt."
"Whatever we can do together will help, I'm sure of it."
They both began to make their way to the basement when suddenly, loud noises came from deep below the floorboards under their feet. The energy of the sound was so intense both Faitma and Donavon could feel the vibrations on the bottoms of their feet through their shoes.
Father Ryan crossed himself and removed a rosary from his pocket.
"The clock....." Fatima noticed.
The clock on her wall, a large wooden clock from Portugal and a golden face with thin brass hands that marked the hour. The pendulum was a golden stick with a hummingbird on the tip that swayed back and forth but now, at the hour the full moon was set to rise it had completely stopped swaying and the hour and minute hands of the clock wound backwards then forwards in opposite of each other--- round and round making no sense of marking the time.
Fatima walked closer to the clock to get a better look but suddenly was stopped in her tracks by the ungodly sound coming from the basement. Her nephew --- or the son she gave up to her brother and his wife to raise as her nephew-- screamed in pain as the bones in his body began to once again stretch and bend to compensate for the creature the moon ordered him to turn in to.
The hair on his body once again thickened and gathered all over. His law stretched longer creating the snout of a wolf. The irises of his eyes depend in color and the pupil went from black round marble to a slid in the center of a yellow sea.
Filipe roared a deep roar that Fatima and Donavon could feel shake their guts.
Fatima backed away from the basement door and reached for Father Ryna's hand.
"It's early. It's too early. The moon hasn't even hit it's peak yet!" Fatima explained.
After several minutes of loud rumblings and things being thrown in the basement Fatima felt confident that her restraints would hold. The beast was somehow changing Filipe earlier than she had expected and it was forcing the man's body to bend in twist while tide up by chains.
As Fatima and Father Ryan stood in the center of her living room only 10 feet from the basement door praying the chain restraints would hold there came a silence in the entire house.
Fatima and Ryan lifted their heads while in prayer and remained in silence.
It was deadly quiet.
Nothing moved. Fatima and Father Ryan stood frozen hand in hand too frightened to make a move hoping the monster was asleep and that the most dangerous moment had already passed.
Silence.
The clock began to click again correcting it's time.
More silence.
Fatima released her hand from Father Ryan's and slowly made her way towards the basement door. One foot after the other careful not to make too much noise over the wooden floors of her small house and fortune telling parlor. The hem of her skirt skidded across the floor making a scratching sound that almost matched the cadence of the ticking clock.
She reached for the doorknob.
Closer and closer she got and when she was only an inch from the golden doorknob that led downstairs to the sleeping monster the door burst open banging Fatima in the face throwing her backwards and the monster leapt up from the basement stairwell snarling and foaming at the mouth.
He was massive, his muscles huge. His fangs long and ready to rip the flesh from the bone of anything it came in contact with. Fatima was out cold, thrown to the other side of the room, her forehead bleeding from flying debris from the broken door.
Father Ryan stood in the room like a statue. His breathing shallow. Her mouth and eyes wide open, he had no ability to scream -- the fear was that deep. He thought to himself "Don't make a single move."
Filipe, the wolf, walked on all fours but it looked like no animal Father Ryan had ever seen. The body was like a giant wolf, but it bent and hunched over with a large thick spink poking through a hairy back. The ears were smaller and resembled those of a wolf but still somewhat human in shape with a small, elongated tip.
The creature sniffed around. Slowly walked to Father Ryan who stood in fear and did not make a move. But the terror made him drop this rosary beads to the hard wood floors. The wolf turned to look and what made the sound, and in a flash, he turned in and went to Ryan and howled a horrible sound that blew spit and hot air all over Father Ryna's face and head.
The clock struck 9:00pm and the now complete hairy beast of a wolf dashed through the house and into the kitchen and burst through the back door, as if he were flying, sped into the night devoured by the shadowy evening.
Filipe in full wolf-form escaped into the thickets of surrounding forest and vanished.
Father Ryan quickly made his way over to Fatima and tapped her cheeks to wake her.
"He's gone, Inez, he's gone!!" Father Ryan said again referring to her as her former Nun's name.
"What? What?" Fatima said, trying to come to. "Filipe? He's gone?" She asked finally making eye contact with Father Ryan.
The priest nodded his head and pointed towards the destroyed back door in the kitchen that led into a dark night.
Fatime stood up and rushed to the back door trampling over broken wood and shards of glass. She looked out into the night and right before she screamed his name realized it was futile.
"He's gone." She said, almost identically as Father Ryan did.
"What do we do now?"
Fatima turned to her parish priest and walked back over with solemn face. She saw his rosary beads on the floor and reached for them. She balled them up in the palm of her hand and gave them back to Father Ryan and answered with "Pray, Padre Ryan, we pray."
"My God!" Father Ryan said looking passed Fatima and out the window towards Village Park where families and town's people were continuing to gather in the night.
"The festival, he's out during the festival!"
Fatima gasped and grabbed the shawl from the floor and wrapped again around her head and neck.
"Come!" She said grabbing Father's Ryan's hand and quickly making their way out of Fatima's house and out into the night under the orange burning bulbs of town's square in hopes to thwart and deaths Filipe's cursed wolf mind had instore for all in Village Square.
****
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| Gregory and Asha in the secret room |
Further down the street, across from Village Hall inside the apartment above the Constable's Office, Gregory Reigns kneeled next to Asha Hoffman who had been tied and gagged to a bed inside a tiny secret room hidden in the walls.
He contemplated ending her -- her guilty conscious for what they did to Aurora's child weighed on her far more than anything she had ever done. The liability in keeping Asha alive was treacherous.
"They all think you've gone away know." Reigns said in a hushed voice. "I've made sure that they think you won't return. Nik, Peter... everyone. It's all buttoned up now."
A single tear fell from Asha's eye. She could feel it was the end. It was too painful to allow herself to go into that emotion but there it was staring her in the face.
"I just want you to know that this wasn't what I had in mind. I never, and would never, hurt anyone. Those days are behind me. I learned my lesson. Being with Aurora really taught me how to love and hurting people as I did in my past -- well, I want it to stay there. In my past." Gregory explained, hinting at his past life as a witch hunter, the same one that hunted Eliza Goode for decades.
Asha mumbled something which the gag prevented from being understood.
"If I remove this, and you scream, the end will come faster than it needs to, do you understand?" Gregory warned.
She nodded; he removed the gag slowly.
"Gregory, listen to me." She began in a soft voice. "This does not have to be this way. We can change what has happened!"
Gregory scoffed. "We can't."
"But we can! What if we came up with a different plan. Maybe we can come up with something that makes Aurora believe we too were mixed up in something and that someone else did this. Whatever it takes. I'll do anything." Asha begged.
"That's just it, Asha, you will do anything. I've seen it for myself. What you did to Andrew Kim was my first inclination that you would do just about anything to seek retribution for a wrong that was done. That's why I kept your secret. Don't you see? I knew all along you lied about Andrew being the one who shot Jacob and Christian. But I didn't care. Jacob is a monster. Christian had lost his mind and as for Andrew, well, he got what he deserved for what he did to all those patients at Windcliff. Justice came to him in a different form. And so here we are. I scratched your back and you scratched mine."
Asha felt at a loss. Gregory was so far gone from his true self. She had no idea why he was doing it, why he would risk his own freedom by destroying her. But then, like a flash to her mind, she realized the power of love and how it could overtake even the kindness person and draw them into a place so dark that not a single ray of light could touch if someone should threaten it.
She'd been there too. Her love for Nik made her keep secrets. Her love for Nik made her lie to him. Her love for Nik made her forget right from wrong at times and now she was paying the price for her own misguided attempts to keep the truth from Nik -- and keep him for herself. Her karma now, was being handed out in a way she almost couldn't have planned herself.
"We can change everything." She said again softly.
"No." He said without missing a beat of thought. "It's too far gone. I can't trust you not telling Nikolas or Aurora what we did to her son. That child holds too much power in her heart and a connection to Caspian that I just can't live with, and deep down inside she couldn't either. I saved all of us from more heartache. That's the end of it. And soon," he paused.
"Soon what?" She asked.
"You'll meet your end too." He replied sadly.
Then, Asha heard voices coming from downstairs in the Constables office. It was the night watchmen chatting about the Full Moon Celebrations happening down the street at the park. A split-second decision of a scream for help from Asha made Reigns leap on top of her and cover her mouth.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." He said in a whisper. "I knew it. Snake!"
He replaced the gag and stood up and stared at her.
"I'm going now. I have to be in the square for the festival. I'll be home later tonight. You'll eat and then.... well, we'll see where that takes us."
She didn't understand. Why didn't he just kill her. Why was he torturing her like this. If he wanted her dead, if he felt she was too dangerous to keep around why wouldn't he just finish her off.
Asha sobbed in her secret room cell as she watched him slide the door closed and sneak out through his closet.
He grabbed his coat and pinned his Constable Sheild to the lapel and stared at himself in the mirror half disgusted. Half proud.
Before leaving he turned back and saw the darkness of the front room. He had had enough darkness this night, he did not want to return home late in the evening to shadows and blackness. He quickly rushed over and lit an oil lantern that hung from a silver pole over a reading chair. The yellow glow warmed his face just before he dashed out to continue his duties at the Festival of the Full Moon.
****
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| Christopher & Genevieve onboard the Iberia |
Across the large open Atlantic Sea, on the deck of a steamer ship called The Iberia docked at Port in Liverpool, England, Christopher Wesley stared off onto the horizon towards the west where he and Geneveive Thorne were headed -- back to Welshport.
He's green eyes sparkled as the afternoon sun danced on the waves below. He wondered what it was going to be like arriving at Welshport. What his feelings and emotions seeing that tiny little island would stir up. There was a lot locked away in his heart and mind, but Christopher felt whatever was going to happen, he was going to do it not only for Genevieve but for the people whose lives were changed forever after Jacob's vicious and murderous scheme.
He thought about his own life and what had brought him to England from American in the first place all those years ago. He thought about the shattered family he had created and subsequently sabotaged while he was in England. The woman he was to marry. The daughter they had together. How so many families were destroyed on both sides of the Atlantic and how he was stuck in the middle of both.
He thought about Geneveive and her own son and how she had come so far. She had risked so much. She had given up her life just to help finally free the David Lord of Sabrina's murder.
Christopher wondered about David and Sabrina's son Sebastian too -- the tragic life he led after not only his mother's death but his father's disappearance. He hoped that whatever Genevieve's plans were would not tarnish his son's memories of his beloved parents. This plan would be specifically crafted to finally bring Jacob Lord to justice. Once and for all.
"Here you are." Geneveive said walked up from behind as the two met at the very tip of the ship's nose.
Christopher smiled.
"Are you going to miss jolly ol'England?" She asked in a bad pretend English accent.
He shrugged "Maybe. I miss America too. Its been so long since I've been home. I was just standing here thinking about that."
"I want you to know that what you're doing for me, helping me get justice for David and Sabrina, is really selfless. It's going to be difficult and strange and it's going to take a lot of out of you but its the right thing to do. Jacob has played everyone for fools and now we're going to give him a taste of his own medicine." Genevieve said before turning to face the western waters of the sea. "We've got a long journey ahead of us."
"For what it's worth I'm, not doing it for you or Sabrina or David." Christopher said. "I'm doing it for Sebastian."
Genevieve turned back and saw Christopher's eyes watering after speaking Sebastian's name.
"What is it about Sebastian that made you decide to help me?" Genevieve wondered.
Christopher wasn't sure how to answer, he paused and thought for a second letting a seagull swirl above and speak for him first. A breeze caught Christopher's tears and dried them and he said "He never asked for any of this. He was just a kid. He deserved his father at home with him in the days and months after his mother died and look what happened? He was practically abandoned, left to live out the rest of his own days with the very man who took his mother's life and framed his father."
Geneveive stared at Christopher. The way he was speaking felt odd to her, it was as if he was speaking from experience as if he were there in those days of Sabrina's murder as if he were there when Jacob began the campaign to frame Christopher.
"You feel very strongly about this, don't you." Genevieve said.
"It's just unfair, that's all." Christ replied.
Geneveive nodded. "It is. Yes." She felt a quiet come over him and she allowed them both to sit in the silence together. His words were poignant and sad. She wondered what had happened in the last few days that made him reach into his emotions and speak about the Lords this way--- people he said he didn't know. People he said he'd never met. She wondered just who Christopher Wesley was - really.
The water began to swish and stir below as the ship pulled out of its docked space in Liverpool and the large horn sounded alerting the friends and family on dock to wave goodbye.
There was a roar of cries and waves from the other side of the ship. Genevieve and Chris went over and waved back to people they didn't know.
They were coming home.
Both of them. With a very important mission that was 18 years in the making.
Justice for Sabrina. Justice for David. Justice for Sebastian.
****
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| Charlotte & Morgan discuss Filipe |
Back at the Goode Family cottage on Goode Island, Charlotte sat at the front room window watching as the sky darkened off in the distance over the larger Welshport Island. The moon slowly crept over the horizon, in full face. The inevitable was to come. The wolf that haunted her dreams was set to turn all of their lives inside out.
She was worried. But Morgan Thorne worried more.
He entered the room and saw his best friend Charlotte silently watch the night progress from the window. His mind flashed back to the night he watched Filipe be attached by the wolf in the forest. The blood. The sound of the beast rip through Filipe's flesh. The heart-pounding moments he believed his own life was in danger.
It was all too much for him.
Charlotte sensed she was being watched and turned to see Morgan standing off towards back of the room with a fearful expression on his face.
"Are you alright?" She asked.
"I don't know how much more I can take of this place." he replied in a shaky voice.
"Morgan, we're going to be ok. We're going to find a way to get Filipe back to who he was before all of this. You have to believe that." Charlotte stated. "We've made it through worse." She added squeezing his hand.
"Do you really believe that? How can we? Look at the newspaper! They all think it was Sebastian. Its like a snowball. Everything is getting worse by the day, and we have yet to find a way to save Filipe. If Filipe is discovered to be this monster, what does that mean for him? They aren't going to leave him alone. It's going to get worse Charlotte, I can feel it. This is going to get much worse."
Charlotte had never heard Morgan speak this way. He had always been shy and soft spoken when the talked in private over their friendship about the terrible things their families had put them through: Charlotte's parents' destructive behaviors and Morgan's parent's messy divorce. Their bond was solid and they couldn't be any closer than they were.
But something had changed in him over the last few days. His fears were beginning to twist and churn in his body forcing the young man to finally see that there may be less hope than he originally believed.
"We have to believe it Morgan." Charlotte said hoping her calming tone would influence Morgan's seemingly spiraling one. "If we don't believe we can all survive this, then what is it all for?" She added.
"I should just pack up and get myself on train back to my Grandmother Sybil's home in San Francisco. I was safer there. My mother isn't coming back, she's far away on her own wild goose chase in London and I'm here in the middle of a hellscape of death and destruction. I don't know how much more I can take Charlotte, I really can't. Why is this happening? Why did this have to happen!?"
Charlotte clung to a crumbling Morgan hugging him tightly. His head fell on her shoulder, and he sobbed in her arms. He was terrified. It was so clear he wasn't like the others in Welshport. The darkness he saw in the short time he'd been in town had totally overcome his normal happy demeanor. This new life of shadows was so incredibly foreign to him that living them felt as if he'd become plunged into a never-ending rabbit hole of horror and fear.
Morgan then began to tell Charlotte of his night terrors: Flashes of Filipe's wolf attack and everything else he'd experienced the night of Filipe's attack were constant. It was as if every time Morgan closed his eyes another dark force filtered into his mind and showed him all the terrible things he'd seen over and over and over again. The constant barrage of pain was unbearable for the 15-year-old Morgan.
"Morgan, look at me," Charlotte said tilting his face upward so that they were now eye-to-eye. "We have to have hope that my mother will find something in the spell book that can save Filipe. She's been going through it page by page every single night since we came home from Fatima's house, and I have faith she'll find the solution. We will not lose Filipe to this, and we certainly won't lose ourselves to it either."
"How can you be so sure?" He asked. "Can't you see into the future and tell me? Can't you tell us all if we're going to make it Charlotte?"
Charlotte wasn't sure. Her psychic abilities did not work that way. She wasn't a fortune teller, she could only see what her mind chose to show her, nothing worked on demand for her. were
She smiled, hoping to ease his nerves and squeezed his hands in hers once more.
"I trust my mother." She said confidently, bringing him into a hug.
Then as the two youngers consoled each other they broke from their hug and stared deep into each other's eyes. They were seeing each other now in a different light. Two versions of themselves were slowing fading away and breaking into something else entirely.
They were friends who were slowly becoming much more than that.
Morgan leaned in and his lips slowly coming closer to Charlotte's.
A first kiss for each of them in the face of terrible darkness.
As they slowly made their way to connect in the light of the room Charlotte's mother Mary entered the room interrupting them before their lips could touch.
She had with her the now notorious edition of The Welshport Globe under one arm, and her new son Caleb on the other. She carefully placed little Caleb in a wooden highchair at the breakfast nook table and walked over to the burning fire in the hearth that had lit the almost kiss so perfectly.
Mary then defiantly threw the newspaper into the flames not noticing the moment she innocently interrupted.
"You don't believe it either, do you?" Charlotte asked Mary with a nervous tone in her voice thinking Mary saw the two teenagers almost share a first kiss.
"Of course not." Mary replied walking back over to a laughing baby Caleb who did see them almost kiss.
"What about Filipe?" Morgan asked just as nervous as Charlotte was.
"I've scoured the book my mother left me. It's unclear about anything dealing with lycanism. There are spells that hint vaguely but nothing I can decern would revert our beloved Filipe back to his normal self." Mary explained.
Charlotte turned to Morgan as they shared a disappointed facial expression.
"Charlotte says we have to have hope, but I'm having trouble." Morgan revealed.
Mary sighed and went over to Morgan who had become practically her foster son since Geneveive vanished to London in search of David.
She put her arms around him and held him. "She's right." Mary answered.
"Is she?"
"We cannot abandon hope yet. There has to be something in that old book that I'm just not understanding. It's written in a way that takes years and years of teaching and practice in the craft to understand, I'm only learning these ways-- and I have no guide. My mother never had the chance to be that." Mary reminded them.
"We know." Charlotte replied. "Why would they think it was Sebastian? Where would that even come from?"
Mary signed realizing that Sebastian's whole life was upended because of her. She's the one that shot him at his wedding to Evie. She's the one that begged her mother Eliza to bring him back to life. Mary is the reason Sebastian is the vampire that he is and she's at fault for Sebastian and Evie and the entire Lord family having to create the lies surrounding his strange disappearances and reappearances.
"None of this would have happened if it weren't for me. None of it." Mary said to herself.
Charlotte cocked her head confused. She knew nothing of truth. "Why would you think that? You've done all you could to help Sebastian and Filipe."
Mary turned to Morgan and Charlotte who were standing directly in front of her like a wall of truth closing in on Mary when she finally decided to bring it all out.
"Charlotte, I was different then -- and your father dangled access to you in front of me like a carrot on a string and I did something that caused this whole thing to begin. I shot Sebastian dead, and my mother brought him back to life but in a way that I had no control over. He became something that could live in life like us but also in the shadows of death, behind the veil. She did so using Filipe's blood -- it was a spell that felt so dark and so horrible, but it brought him back to us correcting my horrible error. I just wish I hadn't shot him in the first place. But I was given such a prize, you, you were my everything. You've always been my everything." Mary explained.
Charlotte sat in a chair as if everything she had ever known were snuffed out in a single second, and although she knew what Sebatian was this whole time, but Charlotte had no idea her mother and late Grandmother Eliza were directly responsible. She felt horrible for Sebastian all this time, that had never changed, but she never realized she too was in a way involved in why he was the way he was.
And now Sebastian's life -- or lack thereof-- was doomed to live in the shadows forever.
"I wish we could just go back and make it all better." Charlotte whispered.
Mary rushed over to her daughter and knelt next to her "I'm so sorry. Please don't hate me. I did it because your father promised me you, and of course it was all a lie. He only wanted me to kill Sebastian for him."
"I remember Sebastian's funeral. Aunt Sabrina always warned me his death was not to last, but I never understood." Charlotte reflected. "This is what it meant; he was to live but live in a different way."
Mary nodded "But he's suffered. We've suffered. All the lies that surrounded him all these years to protect his secret are now being printed up in the paper by Baxter Murphy and his ridiculous speculation that he's some kind of monstruous killer. And although Sebastian has done terrible things, he's fought hard to not give in to those sensations. It cannot be easy." Mary added.
"Where could he be?" Morgan asked.
"No one knows. When he supposedly died in the fire, he returned here to Goode Island and took off with Jacqueline. He hasn't been heard from since we told him about Gabriel's accident and how he lost his hearing." Mary remembered.
"In the paper, it says that Evie said he saved her." Morgan added.
"If that's true, then he's still somewhere in Welshport." Charlotte added.
"It doesn't matter. We can't help him. We have to focus on Filipe and finding a way to help him!" Mary added.
As the words left her lips she suddenly had an idea. Filipe. Sebastian. Sebastian. Filipe. They two were connected supernaturally since the night Eliza used Filipe blood to revive the body of Sebastian from his grave and turn him into a vampire. The two men were linked, bonded by blood forever.
"Could there... no..." Mary said out loud in thought.
"What is it mother?" Charlotte asked.
"Filipe and Sebastian. They're, they're blood is linked. Their life forces are linked togehter as one. Perhaps if we find Sebastian he can somehow reverse this thing that has taken hold of Filipe and bring him back to his normal self or close to it. Back to us too!"
"But how?" Charlotte wondered as Morgan vanished into the bedrooms.
"I have to think, I have to think." Mary said pacing the room back and forth as baby Caleb cooed in his highchair at the table.
"Here." Morgan said returning into the room with Eliza's book. "I believe." he said.
Charlotte looked at him and smiled.
"I have faith in you Mary. Find it here, this book has to tell you the answer you're looking for. It's here, it has to be. Save Filipe. Find Sebastian and Save Filipe!" Morgan said.
Mary's heart warned. He believed in her. Charlotte believed in her.
Mary quickly got to work and flipped the pages of the leather-bound, gold laced, pages of the ancient spell book and then, as if a sudden gust of wind came into the room, the pages began to flip without a single touch of a finger.
"Look." Mary said quietly.
"They're moving." Morgan added.
"Maybe we did it, maybe we've unlocked it." Charlotte said.
The blook began to float above the table. It's pages frantically turning to an unknown chapter. Page by page flew passed and when it finally rested on a page the book fell back in a loud thund to the hardwood floors of the cabin open to a chapter of blood links and bonds.
"The healing power of a linked kin of blood and bond." read the chapter.
"That's it. THIS IS IT!!!" Mary shouted, the baby laughing at his mother's funny reaction.
"Is it? ARE YOU SURE??" Charlotte asked.
"Yes! YES! Its all here!! THIS IS IT! Why didn't I think of this before! Look, 'when the blood of one is used to heal and revive another they are bound for life and afterlife. One shall protect the other and the other shall protect the one. Interchanging this most sacred of life-forces reverses the source of an unknown curse, one not of thine own creation, and shall lift the veil of the curse once and for all.'"
"An Unknown curse, like the one Filipe received from the wolf!" Morgan realized. "Would Filipe's blood then change Sebastian back too?" Morgan asked.
Mary shook her head sadly. "No, that curse is not an unknown. It cannot be returned. Sebastian is what Sebastian is. However, like you said, the wolf moon curse is from an unknown source. Sebastian's blood should reverse anything that hits his blood-brother Filipe."
"We have to find Sebastian." Charlotte said.
"We have to get to Welshport and find Evie, only she knows where Sebastian truly is." Mary added. "Before it's too late."
She went over and grabbed little Caleb and clutched him in her arms. She realized she couldn't take the baby with her; it would be too dangerous -- especially not knowing what the status of Filipe and his transformation was.
She decided she'd go alone.
Mary turned to Morgan and Charlotte and noticed they were consoling each other. It was a sweet moment between to friends, two young teenagers, both now 14, dealing with so much adult pain and suffering. It was unfair, Mary realized, to have them trapped in the web they were in. They deserved to be felt free and to grow up without the fear of the darkness that surrounded them -- all created through no fault of their own.
"You'll both stay here and watch Caleb." Mary ordered.
"NO! We have to go, we have to make sure that-- " Charlotte began.
"Charlotte, this is no longer a team effort, do you understand. That was my mistake I brought you both along with me before to dangerous places and I should never have done that. Stay here, you'll be protected and safe. Keep Caleb safe too. I started all of this with a gunshot to my own Cousin Sebastian and I need to fix it now."
Morgan hugged his foster mother. "Be careful." He said. "I'll watch over Charlotte and the baby."
Mary smiled "I know you will, my brave boy."
"Please, mother, please let me go along." Charlotte asked.
"Darling, I made up my mind. You stay here. Protect the boys. I'll return with Filipe; I promise you this." Mary said kissing Charlotte on the forehead.
Mary grabbed her a coat and set out once again to Welshport Island to save Filipe from the curse of the full moon that was already setting up for a night of bloodshed and disaster. The children closed and locked the cabin door behind her unsure of what they'd find when the sun finally made it's way into the sky after the moon's full face finally went away again
