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| “Verity” and Mary |
On a blistering warm morning the day after Jacqueline, inside Mary's supernaturally created twin sister Verity, stood in her cell staring out the barred and caged basement window that looked onto a small courtyard that was gated off from the public behind Village Hall. She could see birds fluttering in out and of the Beech trees that cast shadows on Village Hall and wondered just how she'd get out of the mess the Witch Council had put her in.
She turned slightly to the left and saw herself in the reflection of tin slab mirror and it was Mary's face looking back at her. A shiver went up her spin. She was very comfortable with shapeshifting but because this was a shape-shift forced on her by the council, she was unable to change back without their help.
Her punishment, Jacqueline recalled, was to remain as Verity until she was put to death by fire and once flame touched skin, she would change back and the empty body of Verity would be the only thing to die off.
This was a clever rouse by the council to absolve Mary, force Jacqueline to suffer the punishment and save her former coven sister as punishment for being the reason foe Mary’s exposure in the first place.
Jacqueline however, had her doubts it would work.
"OY!" A voice came from beyond the cell bars. Verity looked and it was a guard swinging his nightstick as he walked over to her. "You've got a visitor." he said in his Irish accent.
"Who?" She asked.
"Your sister."
Verity froze in place. She didn't expect Mary to come see her after everything that had happened but there she was, a free woman looking fresh and rested after a long night at Fatima's house.
The two woman, twins to the naked eye, stared at each other almost as if they were looking at a refection, much like the one in the tin mirror on the wall behind Verity. Mary felt uncomfortable with the guard standing there watching. She wanted to speak freely but there was no way she could with him watching.
She lifted her hand in a way that he could not see and brought it close to her chest and made a fist. The fist then hit her chest twice and then a pause then one more time and with this, time suspending in the cell and the guard would never know.
Mary tuned back to see him frozen there and smiled seeing she could still cast a quick spell if she needed to.
"Very good sister." Verity smirked. "Careful with those little white spells. The more you cast them the quicker they turn black."
Mary didnt reply to Verity's obvious attempt to start a fight.
"I only wanted to come here and see you so that I can thank you face to face." Mary said.
"And isn't a beautiful face!" Verity taunted.
"I swear I didn't know this is what they had planned." Mary replied.
Verity’s body language shifted in the cell as if to finally resign herself to her own punishment, one she had to complete per her oath to always obey the council.
"Oh, I know.” Verity replied softly. “I’ve only known for a short time myself. I don't blame you, Mary, not for this." Verity added, sneaking in a quick dig.
Mary rolled her eyes. "What happens next?"
Verity’s jaw clenched at the thought of what did happen next. She slowly turned back to the basement window in her cell, the same basement window just the night before Mary had stared out. Verity put her hands up on the wall and on her tip-toes tried to look out and see if they were making the pyre any where near her eyeline.
"Jacqueline?" Mary whispered, hoping to bring her back into a conversation.
"It's Verity." The double replied. "For now."
"I asked you what will happen?"
"I'll burn. And after that I don't know." She replied.
Mary felt as if her body was holding her breath -- it was as she feared. Fire. She suddenly recalled a horrible nightmare imposed on her by the creature inside Caspian that made her feel the flames of a pyre, a pyre she was tied to. She could still smell the black smoke and taste the sulfur of the thought about it hard enough. It was a cold reminder of their station in the world as sorceresses, one minute basking in the light of magic the other burning in flames.
"They're really going to let you die? For me?" Mary wondered.
Verity tuned back and laughed at Mary's innocent question, a question that came from a place of good and true naiveté in the ways of the coven.
"You still don't understand the ways of world, do you? They didn't force me to become Verity to save you because they like you Mary, and they didn't necessarily force me to do this because they hate me. This isn't about you and I, this is about creatures like us. The people who live in the shadows. I admit I was foolish for trying to go it alone and take Sebastian for myself in very childish ways. It got me in trouble, it caused me to lose my baby. But it has nothing to do with favoring one witch over another. They did for all of us. Every coven. Every secret society. Every creature that lives in a place no one in the mortal realm would want to be come." Verity explained.
"For the greater good." Mary said to herself.
"There you go." Verity said her hands falling down to her side.
"Seriously. Thank you. Regardless of how you came to be you--- or her-- it's saved me and I can go back to my children and Filipe. We can start our lives over again." Mary said.
Verity slowly walked back towards the bars. She stared Mary in the face and smiled but it was a smile that Mary could not read. Was Verity happy for Mary's release? Was she holding back resentment and it manifested in some strange, crooked smile? The urge to back away from the bars washed over Mary and she took one step back.
"Get out of here Mary. Get out before your little time freezing spell wares off and you're caught a witch just as lethal as I am and they decided to burn both of us alive. Go! Get out!" Verity shouted.
Mary could see Jacqueline or Verity... or both... were in no mood to have a quiet moment to burry the hatchet. In face, the hatchet was raised and it very might be buried in someone's back if things didn't cool down in the jail cell.
"Goodbye." Mary said softly and she walked back towards the guard snapping her fingers to bring him back to time.
"This isn't goodbye sister mine!!!" Verity shouted from the cage.
The guard looked around confused as to why Mary was leaving after what he perceived as only seconds.
"THIS ISN'T GOODBYE!!!!!" Verity continued to shout, her face now smashed against the bars as Mary vanished back up into the main halls of Village Hall.
"Alright you! QUIET! Get back to your staring out the window. You've got one big night ahead of ya."
Verity smiled her mind splitting between something created by the witch council and Jacqueline's own psyche. The chaos in her brain was pushing both personalities into a war with each other but she did was she was told and went back to the corner of the cell and sat in itchy covered cot in the corner.
That night -- she'd burn.
****
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| Nik & Danielle become intimate |
Over at Welshport Hope Hospital, Dr. Nik Jordan read over paperwork as he stood in the hall making sure he dotted every I and crossed every T before leaving the chart for Dr. Ward to look over when he took over on the next shift. As he did so, Nurse Danielle Holten spotted him. A few days before they had kissed for the first time near Asha's hospital room where she had opened her eyes to witness it.
But soon she fell asleep again, the medication she was on stronger than her will to stay awake.
Danielle approached Nik shyly.
"Nurse Holten, how are you?" he asked with a sweet grin.
"Fine thank you." She replied as other nurses and doctors walked by.
"It's very good news about Evie, I heard another nurse talking about it. I'm sure your family is ecstatic." She said.
"We are!" He replied glowing. "No one more so than Gabriel. Having his mother home, finally, is going to do a lot of good for him." He added motioning for her to follow him down the hall.
"And has she settled back in?" She asked as they walked together.
Nik nodded yes, with a sly look to his face as he took her by the hand and stepped a few feet over to a stockroom where he turned the copper door knob.
Their attraction to wild to deny now. The kiss they shared lingered on their memories, too filled with passion to forget.
The two entered the stockroom together, he carefully shut the door behind them and locked it. When he turned around she had removed the pin in her hair that was tied up. Her dark locks had fallen over her shoulders like dark chocolate waterfalls cascading down in settling perfectly near naked neck.
Danielle sat herself facing him on the edge of a large wooden table gripping it with both hands.
He rushed to her, moved her hair slowly from her neck and begin to kiss her where her jaw met her ear. She made a slight noise showing how good it felt to have his lips on her skin. She grabbed him by the back of his neck and slowly guided his face to hers.
They stared at each other, hungry.
They kissed, slowly as she removed his white lab coat and unbuttoned his shirt. As he stood between her legs he slowly lifted her skirt higher and higher up her thy. She reached down and unbuttoned his trousers, as he slowly opened her perfect white button up nurses shirt.
In that room, the two new lovers made love for the first time, both relieving a thousand pounds of pressure each had been weighed down by since before they even met.
Her ordeal with Rebecca and Caspian unresolved, his with his sister and Asha still burning holes in his mind. But in that moment, in the small stockroom on the 4th floor, their two bodies became one under in a passionate moment of pure bodily pleasure where nothing in the world seemed to matter.
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| Asha awakens |
Another nurse folded Asha's fresh laundry and was placing it in a wardrobe and suddenly Asha stirred.
"Dr. Hoffman?" The nurse said as she turned to Asha who was waking up.
Asha rubbed her head, the feeling of grogginess form months and months in a coma still lingering.
"Well, well!" The happy nurse said fixing Asha's long black hair. "Welcome back! Dr. Jordan will be happy to see you, won't he!"
"Where's... Nik." Asha said in a hushed scratchy unused voice. "I need to speak to Nik." she added, hoping to see the man she loved who was in another room making love to another woman.
****
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| Matthew & Evie discuss their future |
That afternoon, a warm breeze filtered through the lace curtains at in Evie's home at Bellmore Beach. There was a perfume of sea salt and tea in the air that mixed with the soft sounds of the waves crashing just beyond the front on the pure white sand.
Sitting on the wrap-around veranda, Matthew took in the fresh air happy his life had finally turned around since being locked away in the jail cell for several weeks. But his heart still ached at losing Evie again. This would be his last day at Bellmore Beach, he'd soon go back to his own home and start his life over again, this time without Evie.
As he watched the ocean Evie came out to the veranda dressed in a soft yellow dress. Her hair was pinned up showing off her elegant long neck. She saw Matthew lost in his thoughts and watched him for a beat unsure if she should interrupt him, but he could sense her there. He turned and smiled.
"You didn't say much after breakfast." Evie said, lowering the tray of iced tea down on the small circular table between two white painted wooden deck chairs.
"Oh?" He replied, not recalling being quiet. "I guess I just have a lot on mind."
"You don't have to leave right away Matthew; we've been through so much. I think you should stay here for a while to rest, don't go rushing off back to the village and live alone." Evie said, her heart aching for the man she still loved but had decided not to be in a relationship with anymore.
"I really think that I should go back to my apartment." Matt replied. "Besides, I don't think Sebastian would really appreciate me hanging around."
"Matt, don't do that." Evie said sadly. "I didn't chose him over you. I haven't chosen anyone except for my son. But I do want Sebastian to come around when he can to be there for Gabriel. He is his father."
"Evie can I ask you something?" Matthew asked quickly changing the tone of the conversation.
"Of course."
"Why doesn't he just leave like the two of you talked about before you decided to hide him at the caves? Why does he have to stay now?"
Evie took a breath "Matt, things are different now. Jacqueline was a big reason we decided he'd hide away, but Gabriel was the reason why we kept him close. Jacqueline doesn't seem to be a problem now for anyone, most of all Sebastian. And now that she's gone, Gabriel can have his dad around more. It'll be better for him. That's all I want, for my son to have his father and mother in his life. He's never had us both around at the same time."
"But do you really think it'll be safe to have someone like Sebastian around a little boy?" Matthew wondered knowing how Sebastian's behaviors were unpredictable at times since he became a vampire.
Evie's body language quickly changed, she became stiff and somewhat offended that Matthew would even assume that Sebastian would do anything to put their son in danger. She lifted a brow and turned out to watch the sea. She took a breathe, she took a second to reply.
Matthew noticed his words might have offended her. He got up from his deck chair and stood behind her. The little fly-aways from the back of her head danced in the breeze.
"I'm sorry. I, I don't like the way that came out." He said.
"I need you to know something." Evie replied without looking at him. "Sebastian is my son's father and I don't know where things will go with him just as I don't know where things will go with you." She said now turning to him. "What I do know is that I want Gabriel to have Sebastian close and in his life. That's all there is to it. I'm not going back into anything --- with anyone. I would never let Sebastian do anything to put Gabriel in danger. I know how Sebastian can be, and he's promised me he's changed. I have to give him a chance. For Gabriel."
"You're absolutely right. Your son is the most important person in your life and I overstepped. But now I need you to know something." He answered.
Evie braced herself.
He took a breath "I will always love you Evie. I truly believe we are meant to be together, maybe not now, I can understand that. I'll wait for you. When you are ready, when you finally see me how I see you, I'll be here for you."
Evie didn't know what to say, and she didn't have much time to even think before he leaned in and kissed her. The wind blew all around them hugging them. She let his arms close in all around her. The kiss warmed her but after a few seconds of passion she pulled back.
"Evie, I..." Before he could finish Aurora came out onto the veranda.
"I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?" Aurora asked sensing the tension.
"No. No, not at all." Evie said. "Where's the baby?"
"Napping." Aurora replied. "Have the two of you settled in? She asked, her light blue dress with a matching vest flowing all around her like the waves out on the sea.
"So far so good. Getting better by the hour." Matthew replied.
"After all that time in that jail cell, I can imagine how good it must feel to be back in the real world." Aurora said, sipping on the iced tea.
"Even though we're out, it's like things will never be the same." Matthew added, his sentence stinging Evie.
"Have either of you spoken to Mary?" Aurora asked.
"No. Not yet. I'm sure she's just reconnecting with everyone in her orbit like we have. Imagine, a secret twin sister!" Evie replied neglecting to tell everyone Mary told her Verity Spencer was really Jacqueline Gray.
"I'm sure her little boy must be ecstatic to see her! Caleb is... what? A year younger than Gabriel?" Aurora asked, not knowing Mary's adopted son was actually her own child that Asha kidnapped and gave away.
"About, yes." Evie said.
"Poor thing." Aurora replied thinking of the little boy so alone without his mother.
"I should be off." Matthew said.
"Off?" Aurora asked.
"Matthew has decided to go back to his apartment in the village." Evie answered.
Aurora stood up and looked at Matthew who was clearly upset about something. She glanced at her daughter Evie and saw her eyes welling up with tears. She understood then, that the two of them were no longer together the way they were when they both were locked in the jail cells. Something had happened. Something that ended their relationship. And it broke Aurora's heart, not only for Evie but for Matthew too, a man she had grown to care for deeply.
"Well then, Matthew, you can't leave back home without taking something with you to have for dinner later. I'll put something together for you so you can have tonight. I would have for you to be home alone and not have enough to eat for the night." Aurora said.
Matthew and Evie smiled; Aurora's care warmed their hearts.
Then Evie went back to the small table between the white deck chairs and picked up the day's newspaper that was carefully folded near the pitcher of tea and saw the headline splashed across the front.
"FIRST PERSON IN OVER 200 YEARS TO BE EXUCUTED AS A WITCH"
"Oh my god." Evie said. "It's really going to happen."
Matthew furrowed his brow and took the paper from Evie.
"Jesus Christ."
Verity was set to die at sundown.
****
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| Verity and the pyre |
That evening, as the sun set in the center of the village a large crowd was beginning to assemble. They were all there that night to watch something that had not happened in over 200 years: the burning of a witch.
The idea was shocking and everyone in town had known this would happen at the end of the trial but now that the moment had finally arrived, there were a nervous energy all around.
Forty people, then sixty, then eighty than more and more until the entire square just in front of St. Catherine's Church had swelled to more than 500. Practically the entire town.
In the center of the crowd, a large pyre had been built with a thick wooden pole sticking out of the center of a all the wood that would soon be lit and where Verity would soon burn to death.
"This is the most insane thing I have ever witnessed." Baxter said to his photographer.
"Do you think they'll really...you know, burn her up?" The photographer asked.
Baxter turned to his photographer and extended his arms, "Um, what does it look like to you? What's going to stop them? Churchill is determined to make this his big moment. He's the man that caught the Welshport Witch, put her on trial and got her executed. Maybe he'll run for governor on that!" The reporter joked.
"Do you ... you know, ever think that maybe this has gone too far? I mean so much happened because of what we put in the paper. It all started from, you know, us." The photog said.
"HEY!" Baxter shot back with a twinge of his own guilt seeping in "we're only telling the stories in our community. I didn't create what's happening here. But it’s happening. So I'm reporting it. All of it. Warts and all."
After Baxter shut down his photographer's guilty conscious, and perhaps his own, Father Donavon Ryan made his way out of St. Catherine's Church dressed in his white robe and bible. He was quiet, serene and deathly unhappy. He was horrified by what the town had turned into and to have a human burned alive only 200 to 300 feet from the front door to the house of God felt like an abomination.
"Father Ryan! Any sage holy words of advice for the crowds?" Baxter asked as the energy and crowd suddenly fell silent awaiting something good from the parish priest.
"Kyrie Eleison." Father Donavon said, Latin for Lord Have Mercy.
"Gotcha!" Baxter replied with a wink.
As Father Ryan blessed the crowd and the wooden pyre in front of him, Mary, Filipe and Fatima arrived. The crowds parted as they entered the main area where Churchill was already standing with Nathan Cramer.
"This is not a place for us." Fatima whispered.
"We have to be here for Ja---Verity." Mary said. "She saved us."
"I don't know how I am going to be able to stand here and watch this, it's your face. It's... you! that's you that’s going to be tied up." Filipe added.
"We have to remember what the Council told me, the body we are witnessing burn isn't made like you and I, we have to hold true and pray that Verity really doesn't feel a thing. This is theatre." Mary recalled.
"A theatre of the grotesque. I don't feel safe, I don't feel right about any of this." Fatima said, as she crossed herself.
Filipe held grabbed his mother's hand. "I think we should leave."
"Wait, here she comes." Mary said.
Off in the distance, a group of guards encircled Verity as they walked from down the street at Village Hall. They came closer and closer, Verity's hands were tied behind her back and with Mary's face in a new body she was stoic and strong in the face of her destiny to save the truth of what was really happening in the village. Verity would be the martyr that would never be sainted, at least not in the eyes of Father Ryan who only saw all of this as heresy and a disgusting display of inhuman cruelty even to an admitted witch.
Once the guards and Verity arrived at the pyre, Father Ryan approached her. She smiled kindly and he blessed her by smearing on her forehead with anointed oils a cross.
"Merci." She replied in French for some reason.
"This is insane." Filipe said.
"Shhh." Mary replied.
Off in the shadows in an alley between to building Sebastian hid. He was sick to his stomach at what he was witnessing. The murder of someone just like him, someone of the shadows. Someone from the realm of the supernatural. Even though he knew it wasn't really his cousin Mary there being tied to the pole, it looked like her. He did not know it was Jacqueline inside Verity.
Sebastian held on to the wall of one of the buildings bracing himself for something horrible. It was a sick darkness that fell over the town that he loved so much and even though he too had done terrible things he could not understand how everyone else would just agree that this was something natural and just. He felt, now, that he was not safe. He could not come back to town with some miraculous lie about how he was alive somehow to be with his son Garbiel.
If Welshport was willing to tie a woman to a pyre and burn her alive, what would they do to him? A vampire? What would they do to his son, the son of a vampire?
Sebatsian knew then, even before the first flame flickered below Verity's feet that he could no longer stay in Welshport. He decided then, that his family had to flee, and soon. He could not risk being discovered by the foaming at the mouth town's people and having something horrible happen to him, Evie and Gabriel.
The world as he knew was gone -- it had changed. And he and his family were in the most danger they had ever been in.
As Sebastian, Filipe, Fatima and Mary braced for a horror show, Mayor Timothy Churchill stood on the small stage below Verity who was now being tied up on the pole by two of the guards.
"We are here tonight to end the curse this witch has placed on this small island, on this small village on our people. For those of you who wonder why we have reached this point, it may seem foriegn and it may seem archaic but it is the way of the law that is written in our city charter. The end is here for Verity Spencer, the Welshport witch!"
The crowd, minus Sebatsian, Filipe, Fatima and Mary, roared with approval.
"LIGHT THIS PYRE!!!"
On Churchill's order, the fire was lit, and it went fast.
Smoke billowed up into the air. Thick and black.
Verity, her hands tied by thick rope behind her around a poke, coughed and choked on the thick clouds consuming every inch of space around her. She could not see. She could not speak. All she could do was breath in the smoke and hear the cracking burning fire below her feet. As it grew, she watched the red flames eat away at the wood quickly. The dry wood was no match for the hungry fire that would soon begin to since Verity's dress and melt her shoes.
She began to scream. The heat was intense. Mary covered her mouth as glimpses of Verity, with her own face. were visible as flames began to flicker golden light in her twin's eyes.
Fatima closed her eyes and began to pray her rosary in Portuguese.
Sebastian backed away further into the alleyway and its dark shadows.
Mary gasped hearing a voice that sounded like her own coming from Verity who begged for a quick death.
"Jesus, Christ." Filipe said as he gripped both Mary and Fatima's hands.
Father Ryan bowed his head and began to pray in Latin "Pater sancte, defende nos a nobis. ab hoc horrore nos defendat."
The fire consumed the entire wooden pyre in front of the town and in moments, Verity could no longer be seen. The smoke was intense. The fire was like a portion of hell had lifted up from the ground and appeared in the middle of Welshport. It was hot, like the sun, intense, overwhelming and soon, it was over.
Verity's body lay on top of singed pieces of wood seated in soot and blackness.
There were screams and cries. The village soon seeing the ugly truth of what they'd done.
A woman was dead.
Burned alive.
The crowed was soon dispurpsed as a crew began to clean.
As The Mayor, Nathan and a few other town officials began to walk back to Village Hall to officially record the ugly scene, they passed Sebastian hiding in in the alley.
Sebastian closed his eyes and transported himself into Churchill's mind.
Churchill felt a coldness go up his spine once Sebastian was in his head, he stopped in his tracks.
"What is it sir?" Nathan asked, his eyes still watery from the emotional scene of Verity's death.
"Did you feel that?" Churchill asked.
"Feel what sir?" Another aide asked.
"That cold wind."
The group looked at each other. Their skin was still warm from the giant fire they had just seen. No one felt anything cool or cold. "No sir." Nathan said.
"You'll soon feel the fire too, but it won't be one set by the town, it'll be in the depths of hell for all you've done." Sebastian's voice echoed in Churchill's mind.
"Who said that... WHO SAID THAT!!???" Churchill shouted.
Churchill's mind was telling him the truth but his eyes were lying to him. There was someone talking to him, warning him of what was to come, but he was unseen.
"Hell is waiting for you." Sebastian's voice once again said in Churchill's mind.
Churchill eyes were as wide as saucers. His heart was beating a mile a minute. "I ... I have to go. I have to go home. I can't be here. I have to!!!!"
Churchill's job was done, Verity was done.
But Sebastian's was just about to begin.
