 |
| Aurora Ashby-Jordan w/Fr. Donavon Ryan |
A cold wind swept across the island of Welshport. It was a frost that signaled the beginning of what would be a very chilling season.
The leaves had changed color and withered away on the dormant trees. Their bright green signs of summer were now golden shades of yellow and orange on what was left of sticks and branches.
At Saint Catherine's Church the corners of the windows, high above the door, had fogged over with condensation. Inside, towards the back of the church, a warm fire warmed the room.
Sitting in the pew facing a rack of glittering candles burning below a large marble stature of the virgin mother was Aurora Ashby-Jordan, whispering prayers to herself while the child inside of her adjusted itself in its warm little world inside of her.
Her child, the one she conceived with Caspian Casador, had grown exponentially in the several early months of her pregnancy. By the date on her calendar, she was only 4 months along, but her body showed 7. Aurora felt that there was an obvious strangeness to this new child inside of her and the fact it was growing so fast made her worry beyond what her imagination would allow.
So, she prayed. Every day.
Hoping for a miracle.
"Mrs. Jordan?" Father Donavon Ryan whispered as he entered the nave of the church.
Aurora opened her eyes from her prayers and stood up to greet him with a soft smile, her mind forgetting why she was there when she saw the friendly father's handsome face.
He immediately noticed her stomach.
"My!" He said as he reached over to touch it.
Her smile quickly turned to a worried look when she suddenly remembered the child.
"He's growing so fast, father." Aurora said. "I don't even know how this could be."
"He?" Father Ryan wondered.
Aurora shrugged. "It can't be a girl. Not at this size." Aurora deduced. "I've been praying. Everyday. I think about how this child was conceived and who it was conceived with. The manner in which it all happened, father, should I worry for this baby? Should I worry about what it'll be once it arrives?"
"What it'll be?" Father Ryan wondered.
"Father, please don't make me say it out loud, not here. Not in this church. We both know who the father is. Even thinking about him makes me physically ill." Aurora reminded.
"Of course," Father Ryan replied, he too didn't want to go back to what happened at Tirymor and with Caspian. "We have to have faith in what God's plan is for this child and for you once it is born. We are all born innocent and this child, no matter who it’s parents are, will be the same. No one is born evil. Not even the child of Caspian Casador." Father Ryan said.
"How can we be sure?" Gregory said, entering the church silently and eavesdropping on their conversation.
Aurora and Donavon turned to Gregory who stood in the center of the church just below the glowing chandelier.
"Caspian isn't a factor anymore, to be honest. He's gone, and all I worry about is the child and what he'll do or be or ... I don't know, I can't even explain it out loud without sounding insane." Aurora said.
"Aurora's safety is my upmost concern, Father. And we both know the type of safety which is most concerning." Gregory added.
"Spiritual." Father Ryan Confirmed.
Gregory nodded.
"I can assure you," Father Ryan continued turn to Aurora "both," He said turning back to Gregory "Caspian is no longer a threat to anyone. That creature that was inside of him is gone. I have no doubts about that. The Caspian that we all knew-- that thing--is dead."
"Dead." Aurora said. "Yes, he's dead, but-- how can a demon die?" She asked. "Now that Caspian left this earth, I dont know if I can sleep at night thinking that maybe that creature left the body of Caspian when he died and entered someone else. Maybe this child?" Aurora added finally saying the evil name out loud, breaking her own pact.
Father Ryan had kept a secret, perhaps for the best of everyone involved. The night of Caspian's exorcism he had said that the creature was gone, dead and gone. But everyone interpreted that as Caspian was dead too, when in truth, the body of the man, the REAL Caspian, was only burned in the strange spontaneous combustion that occurred during the exorcism.
Father Ryan was able to sneak the man out of the mansion and put him at Churchill Green locked away under the protection of the doctors there, including Aurora's own son Nikolas.
Only those few people: Father Ryan, Dr. Ward, Dr. Jordan and Dr. Hoffman, knew the man lived.
The priest hoped the secret would stay that way for everyone's sake.
"You don't have to worry." Father Ryan said again holding Aurora's hand. "Just pray, keep your strength and know that God is watching over you. There is nothing to fear, Aurora. Nothing." Father Ryan added.
Aurora looked over the priest's shoulder to look Gregory in the eyes. He seemed to believe Father Ryan, and she trusted Gregory more than anyone else in all of Welshport. She squeezed Donavon Ryan's hand and turned back to the statute of the Virgin Mary staring down to her followers with her arms stretched wide and her eyes clouded with what seemed like tears.
Aurora knelt on the soft pray bench directly in front of the glowing rack of candles in red glass and Ryan followed her in prayer, kneeling next to her while Gregory stood in the back almost as if he was keeping guard of the pair.
Outside, the wind continued to blow a frosty ice cold across the two little islands of Welshport and Goode.
The edge of Winter was a bitter pill to swallow and harsh in this rural area of the north east, and soon the bitterness would show not only in the acts of nature but in the acts of man.
****
 |
| Sebastian & Jacqueline make love |
That evening, a few hours after the sun went down, the warm hearth in Sebastian’s dark bedroom, at the Goode family cottage, burned warm and bright keeping the small rook a perfect temperature while the air over Goode Island chilled the condensation on the windowsill to frost.
In the bed, Sebastian and Jaqueline made love.
Their two bodies interwoven and joined together connecting over and over mentally and physically. Her mocha skin glistened in the light of the fire as she looked down on Sebastian laying below her and held on to her hands and she felt every bead of sweat trickle down the crease of her spine.
They had fallen in love, a special kind of love that neither had expected — especially being two beings of the shadows. Sebastian, for his part, never thought he’d find love again after Evie and meeting Jacqueline felt like a sign of new life. A life he thought he thought he lost.
Jacqueline fell back down to the bed and lay next to the man she only saw at night. She ran her fingers in the lines of the muscles of his shoulders then ran them up his body and kissed him one more time as her fingers then reached his thick golden hair.
There were candles all around them illuminating the area around the bed casting them a deep orange light.
He sat up and looked deep into her brown eyes that reflecting a candle nearest her dripping with white wax.
“You’re exquisite.” He said, she smiled back shyly. “I have to tell you something.” He said laying back down next to her.
She rolled over to look him in the eyes as their two bodies became tangled in the sheets and awaited what it was.
“Mary told me what happened with Gabriel and, well, I was hoping since it was you who cast the spell on Gabriel you would have been the one to tell me.” Sebastian said.
Jacqueline gulped. Mary had betrayed her, so quickly too. It hadn’t even been a day since she, Mary and Filipe made their pact to keep the truth from Sebastian; the truth of the spell of protection going wrong and rendering the child without his sense of hearing, but Sebastian’s reaction to the truth perplexed Jacqueline.
His son was deaf because of her and he seemed strangely calm. The monster she expected to be released at the disturbing news of his son’s misfortune was no where to be found.
“Sebastian I can explain everything, I really can, I just…” the witch Jacqueline began before her vampire lover interrupted.
“What’s there to explain? It’s a small cabin, we’re bound to overhear other’s conversations on occasion.” Sebastian said revealing he figured she over heard his request to Mary for the spell when she decided to do it for him in Mary’s place. “But what you did was so kind and so good. It made me fall deeper in love with you.” He added.
“But if you just hear me…” she paused when his words finally registered “what did you say?”
He smiled “which part?”
“Well all of it!” She laughed. “But about Gabriel, you said it was a kind thing?”
“Of course! Mary said that you did the protection spell on him in her place. I want to Thank you for that.”
Jacqueline then realized Mary had lied. She got up from the bed, wrapping her nude body in one of the white sheets and went over to the fire. She jabbed a long black poker into the simmering wood breaking free crimson embers that relit the flame again.
“When did you speak to Mary?” Jacqueline asked, her eyes never leaving the reignited fire.
“Just after sundown tonight. She brought me a rabbit.” Sebastian said sitting up. “Jacqueline? What is it? Are you angry she told me before you could?”
“What else did she tell you?” Jacqueline wondered
Her body language seemed off, Sebastian felt something in his body that he hadn’t felt before coming from the new woman he loved. Since becoming the creature of shadows that he was he had learned he had new abilities, senses … almost telepathic powers. They were strong connectors that allowed him to be in touch with someone’s emotions— but only when he was truly connected to them.
He was invested in Jacqueline and could practically smell the fear in her words as she realized that if anything she said differed from Mary’s story Sebastian would instantly know it was all a lie.
He got up from bed and reached for the white linen pants he usually wore to bed that had been flung over a dark chaise and knotted the strings at his slim waist. He went down to the fire and sat crossed legged with Jacqueline who was emitting a wave of nerves as powerful as the heat from the hearth. He grabbed her hand and squeezed.
“Tell me what’s happened.” He asked.
“Nothing! Oh! Nothing has happened, Sebastian, I was just curious as to what Mary said. You’ll have to forgive me. All those years alone in that house in Boston I still have trouble trusting people and having Mary explain what happened — sets me into a bit of a trust panic.” She said giggle nervously. “I’m working on that.” Jacqueline explained covering.
Sebastian wasn’t sure he believed her. What he was sensing from this new woman in his life, the heat, the passion, the lust and now, suddenly, deception. He too had trust issues but felt like he and Jacqueline were kismet. They must have been meant to be together, especially after all they’d been through: Together and apart. And just like that a sudden secret seemed to be afoot.
“If there was something else, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” He asked with an innocent twinge in his vampire voice.
She touched his cool face and felt the strong cheekbones and gave him such a sexy powerful gaze. His lips planted firming in the center of his wide face; she kissed them and from her seat on the floor she scooted to his lap and stat.
“You can trust me.” She whispered into his ear just as the wood crackled and popped in the fire. “There’s nothing more. Gabriel is protected.” She added hiding the fact she made the baby def.
She kissed him again deeply. He let out small moan of delight.
As they made love again, there in front of the roaring fire Sebastian’s mind couldn’t help wonder off into the feelings he was getting just before their second round of passionate love making. He was keen on his senses. He was no longer the young lost vampire unsure of his powers and abilities.
There was no confusion. The new woman he loved, so passionately, was clearly hiding something.
After they made love again, Jacqueline curled up in a fur blanket Sebastian had brought down from the bed and wrapped her in it. He went over to his bedroom window and opened it letting in icy sea air that creeped over Goode Island in salty swooshes.
Drinking the dark red blood of a rabbit from a tin cup he stared out into the woods that surrounded the Goode family cabin. A dribble of blood fell from his mouth as his mind again went into its dark center. His negative thoughts twisted and churned in his mind like a storm brewing off shore. What exactly was Jacqueline hiding? What made things worse — could his cousin Mary be lying too.
“You can trust me.” Sebastian remembered Jacqueline’s voice whispering.
But could he?
Sebastian was having his doubts now on that.
No one, not even a powerful witch, could hide the vibrations of their emotions from him.
Sebastian’s black eyes returned to their cold blue and he wiped the blood from his mouth and watched her sleep.
“Sleeping Like an angel.” He thought. “But even angels fall.” he then whispered.
****
 |
| Evie & Aurora have tea at Tirymor |
In a gas lantern lit sitting room, one of the last rooms at Tirymor without electricity, Evie Jordan-Lord carefully poured a cup of Earl Gray tea for her very pregnant mother Aurora.
The mother and daughter sat facing each other, one a new mother, and the other pregnant with her third child much later in her life than she expected. They discussed the ups and downs of motherhood. Evie, for her part, was very clear that she welcomed any help now that she was a single mother to a child with hearing loss.
"I just wish there was something we could do to help him more as he grows." Aurora said of her grandson Gabriel.
"When I spoke to Dr. Ward, he said that there was a slim chance that with therapies and maybe some medicine in the future or even the advent of prosthetics that he could regain some of his hearing but there just isn't anything to tell us right now that those things would be beneficial to Gabriel. All we can do is hope." Evie explained of her earlier doctor's appointment. "I wish I had been more careful." She added.
"Evie, Gabriel's hearing loss wasn't your fault." Aurora replied. "Is that what you think? That there was something you did that caused this?"
"I don't know! My pregnancy was full of so much turmoil and then the night he was born..." Evie began before she stopped herself from going back to the dark memory of Gabriel's birth parallel to Caspian's exorcism.
"Honey, life is full of turmoil all the time. Every day. Granted, Welshport seems to have more than it's fair share of it...but trust me there was absolutely nothing you did or could have done to stop what happen to your beautiful baby. He is perfect no matter what." Aurora said reaching for her daughter's hand over her own large baby bump.
Evie smiled at her mother. She knew Aurora was right. It was an obvious truth that there was nothing Evie had done to cause it. What they didn't know was that they were partly wrong. Gabriel's cause of hearing loss wasn't some sort of natural occurrence or bad luck, it was indeed caused by something--better--someone: Evie's new friend Jaqueline Gray and a spell gone terribly wrong.
Evie looked down under her hand and saw her mother's large belly. She shook her head as if she had just realized she was pregnant but of course had known for a while, the strangeness of the moment was due to the size of Aurora's stomach. So much larger than the day before.
"Mother." Evie said with a slight grin. "Are you sure your timing is right?" Evie asked.
"My timing?"
Evie pointed to her belly.
"Oh! I know, it's like every day I'm one more day closer to birth but...I'm absolutely certain on the timing." Aurora pointed out.
"Ah." Evie giggled reaching for the plate of small lemon cakes she brought in with the tea and moved them away from her mother.
"OH STOP!" Aurora giggled. "I haven't gotten that large either. I don't know what it is."
"What about the decision? A while back you weren't sure if it was a good idea to raise the child yourself being that it was conceived in such a traumatizing way. Caspian shouldn't be known as the father, and of course, you don't have any other explanation." Evie said.
"I don't see how else I would explain this baby without telling the truth to anyone who really asked, and if they heard the truth they'd only think I'd gone mad and take the baby from me to protect me anyway, so, why even go the route of allowing someone else to raise it. I did...I did decide what I wanted to do." Aurora said about keeping or giving the child up for adoption.
Evie waited to hear her decision, but Aurora only sipped from her porcelain teacup with the delicately painted lilies.
"Do you want to tell me?" The daughter asked.
"I do." Aurora said with a long pause. "Evie, I don't know how you and your brother are going to take the news. I decided a week or two ago and wasn't sure when to tell the two of you."
"Mother, we love you. Whatever you decide we'll support. Regardless of this child's father, you're it's mother and something that is a part of you is a part of us. We'll do what we can to help you either way." Evie said.
"Do you really think Nik feels the same way?" Aurora asked.
"Of course!" Evie replied quickly. "You're our mother! We love you!"
Aurora smiled and a tear came to her eye. She put down the lily painted teacup carefully on the table and reached for her daughter's hand again and held it tightly when it all came out of her mouth in the glow of the orange and yellow flicking gas lights of the room.
"I'm going to do my best and raise the child. Whatever happens this baby wasn't asked to be conceived in a way that anyone would assume was normal or fair, but it wouldn't be fair to just try and forget about the baby just because of something it had no control over. I’ll raise the child alone.”
Evie squeezed he mother's hands showing her solidarity. "No, not alone. We'll raise the baby together all as a family and it'll never know it's horrible past--because we're speaking of fairness, we should be fair and let him or her grow up with a clean slate never ever knowing Caspian's name."
"Do you think we can do that? Or should?" Aurora wondered. "Wouldn't it be wrong for the child never know it's true father?"
"Caspian was a monster." Evie replied. "He wanted my child dead for some sacrificial evil thing. No. This baby does not deserve to have that thing known as it's father. One day, when he or she asks..." Evie paused unsure how to finish her sentence.
"We'll cross that bridge when it comes." Aurora replied.
"Yes. When it comes." Evie answered back.
Both were still unsure to speak of the future when all things in their past had proven to be so uncertain. Life in Welshport had taught them never ever plan the future -- life has a funny way of changing those plans for the worse.
As Evie then scooted over on the fluffy and flowery sofa to hug her mother Aurora winched in pain and grabbed at her large baby bump.
The pain felt like knife slitting her skin and going deep inside her stomach. Then, the pain became intense like a burning of her flesh. Evie backed away from the hug and saw her mother suddenly full of sweat.
"Are you ok? What can I do? Do you need me to have a doctor called?" The daughter asked.
Aurora couldn't speak with the pain she reached for the front of the laces of corset that held in her growing tummy under her over shirt. The bodice split open, and Aurora untucked the white nightshirt from the long brown dress and revealed her large belly to Evie --- the image Evie saw shocked her to her core.
There, right in front of both women's eyes under Aurora’s peach-toned skin was the moving baby's visible hand pushing up through the womb and in long swipes from under the skin. The tiny fingers were almost visible as five little bumps pulling and tugging on the skin from inside.
It was an eerie sight, a strange and odd alien-like form under the woman's stomach, even Evie hadn't experienced this when she was pregnant with Gabriel.
Then, as soon as it happened, the baby seemed to roll over and go back to sleep and the pain stopped.
"My goodness!" Evie said.
Aurora only stared at her daughter with sudden thoughts of changing her mind about raising the child herself.
The image of the child seemingly conscious of the conversation that was happening just outside it's warm safe intrauterine home frightened the soon to be 3rd time mother.
But she was resolved her in choice.
She would raise the child of the evil Caspian Casador no matter what.
****
 |
| Nik & Asha at the hospital |
As the night rolled on, Nikolas Jordan and Asha Hoffman had a late night shift at Welshport Hope Hospital. They were still in a close relationship, albeit strained, due to Asha keeping the fact that she discovered Nik former flame Alice Winterborn could be somehow alive somewhere in the world based on the Book of Life found at Alice's brother's house.
The Book of Life listed the names of all the Dænian people, the ancestors of both Matthew and Alice, and the possibilities of their lives being restored as was accustomed in their culture.
None of this, in truth, had been discovered to be true.
Alice had not shown herself, and for that matter neither had Matthew who recently perished in the sinking of his ship.
Nik, for his part, forgave Asha for keeping the secret despite the fact she showed signs of being deceptive. But he did love her. And he found that forgiving was a better virtue than forging a vendetta over someone he cared for so much.
Asha came from around the corner of a hallway into the large open lobby of the hospital. Her footsteps echoed in the air as she clip-clopped across the pale marble floor towards where Nikolas was standing looking over charts with a nurse.
"Busy night." She said with a grin.
"You too huh?" He answered. "And it's just going to get busier. I have a shift at Churchill Green with Rebecca and ... the other patient." Nik added carefully hiding the identity of Caspian to whom ever was listening.
Nikolas handed over the charts to the nurse who scurried away to her own rounds, and Asha pulled Nikolas aside. She was worried for them. They'd been through a very rough patch together and Nik had promised her in the late summer that he had indeed forgiven her, but she could tell things were different between the two. She, feeling a bit embarrassed to talk about something so personal at work, told Nik what she was sensing from him: a wall.
"I know. I know. I should've been more open with you about everything, but I just need time to deal with it all. I mean not only did I have to deal with Matthew's sudden death, and my nephew's hearing condition and Caspian and my mother -- I had to take another hit closer to home. The idea that you'd keep something from me, even as insignificant as that Book really affected me." Nik explained.
"Its all understandable, Nik, your family is very important to you, but you said you forgave me. How can we move on with each other if you keep holding that over my head?" She wondered.
"It's not fair to you, I know."
"What can we do then? How can I prove to you that that was just a slight of conscious and I would never hide something from you like that again, in fact, I told you about it quite quickly." Asha replied.
Nik looked at her with a tilt to his head and his eyes narrowed to her pecular choice of words.
"Does that mean?...." He paused "What does that mean? Were you thinking of actually keeping it from me longer or never telling me?"
"No! I mean of course I would have told you." She said.
"Eventually." He answered.
"Nikolas you're putting words in my mouth. What I did was a mistake. And I only held off telling you because I needed to understand it myself. I don't think that's too hard to understand from your end." She replied.
Nik put his hands up. It was over. He didn't want to rehash it anymore. He reiterated that he forgave her even though in the back of his mind he decided to be much more cautious with things around Asha as he wanted to be sure there was no more deception on anyone's part-- but especially hers.
He had other worries, much more dangerous ones to deal with.
"Let's just take a break from this. Everything is fine." He said.
"We're good?" She asked, cautiously.
"We're good." He replied, then giving her peck on the lips. "I've gotta run, I have Rebecca Lord to deal with now."
"How is she?"
"There are days where she's back in the saddle of that sharp mind of hers then there are days where I can't figure out if she's lucid enough to even speak to. Dr. Ward wants me to keep medicating her, but I don't see that as a proper way to deal with someone who I know for a fact has a mind as clear as a bell. There's something that interferes with the way she deals with her life on a day-to-day basis. And it has to be the man in the next room." Nik explained.
Asha looked around the lobby then whispered the secret patient's name "Caspian."
Nik nodded. "He's powerless now. I can tell. I don't know who the man is or where he came from, but he's not what he was when we all first met him. The only problem is, he still holds some kind of psychological control over Rebecca, not supernatural. That's the bond I need to break." Nik offered.
"Should you separate them? If he's the cause of her backtracking or regressions after your therapies, why not take him out of the equation?" Asha asked.
Nik took a breath and nodded. He knew that was the logical explanation, but he wanted to try something, he wanted to push Rebecca in a way that perhaps she had never pushed before. To Nik, removing Caspian might be the easy way out and Rebecca would fall back into a pattern of allowing herself to eventually be taken over by someone else, some other charlatan man or woman who comes along promising supernatural solutions to Rebecca's real-world problems.
That was bridge of Rebecca's mind Nik wanted to burn down with his therapy sessions.
"I think I'm going to do the opposite." Nik replied to Asha's surprise. "I'm going to keep Caspian there, push her to her limits so that when her mind finally does heal from the trauma, she's endured she'll stop fearing him. She'll see him, face to face, and know that man is nothing to her. She'll no longer fear him or hold him on some kind of pedestal meant for deities. It's going to be a long push, but I think if anyone can overcome it, its Rebecca Lockwood-Lord."
Nik smiled, and leaned down and kissed Asha goodbye and told her he'd see her in the morning.
She smiled back, still feeling his plump lips on hers even though they'd lifted seconds earlier and watch the man she loved so much go off to Churchill Green, the Mental Ward of Welshport Hope.
**
 |
| Caspian visits Rebecca again |
Standing at her hospital bed window staring out into the increasingly darkening cold night, Rebecca breathed on the ice-like glass of her window pushing out a puff of warm air. The warm air on cold glass formed a blurry circled where Rebecca carefully scrolled the word "Freedom" into in perfect cursive handwriting.
She wanted out of her Churchill Green hospital room. She wanted her freedom.
She missed her family. She missed her life outside the heavy stone walls of the old hospital ward where patients barley slept. Where medication was tossed out like candy and where the ghost of those patients' past were alive and well and haunted them every chance they got.
At least, the last part was true for Rebecca.
As she stood there at the window and watched her writing slowly disappear as it cooled she saw something flicker in the distance in the garden beyond her room. She put her face to the glass and covered both sides of her eyes with her hands blocking any light from her room...it was snow.
The first snow fall of the year was slowly coming down and falling onto the lingering summer green grass.
She smiled, a snowfall to her, seemed hopeful and special no matter where she was.
"It's fleece was white as snow..." a voice said from Rebecca's room door.
She turned and found once again, her real life--living-- ghost Caspian. Her hospital-mate.
"Get out." She replied coldly. "You're not here. You're not in this room with me."
Caspian, still healing from the burns over his body from spontaneous combustion of his exorcism, wheeled himself over to Rebecca still standing at her room window.
"Now, now, we know that this isn't true, Rebecca. I am here. I am alive albeit only in pieces." Caspian replied.
"I want you to leave this room and stop bothering me. Do you understand? I don't want anything to do with you anymore, ever again." Rebecca told him quickly rushing around his chair and landing on her bed.
"From what I understand, from the notes Dr. Ward and Dr. Jordan have shared with me in my own sessions with them, you and I are very close, and have truly went through something terrible. I only want to end the terrors in your own mind." Caspian replied.
Rebecca, who tried as best she could to keep herself from looking at him perked up. She wasn't sure if he was being deceptive or truthful with what he was saying, did he truly not remember what happened? Who he was at the time of their acquaintance?
She finally turned her face to meet his eyes and saw the man again there in front of her. His burn scars were healing, he was disfigured but there he was still, again just as he was from the day they found each other in the Hospital garden. The same eyes. The same voice
But ... dare she think of it... different. New.
"You are evil." She said softly.
"No." He replied just as softly. "I don't know what I was, but I, the real me, isn't that monster. I don't know what or how and when ... but somewhere in my life something happened that the person you met took over. I'm not him Rebecca. I'm not."
"Once everyone discovers you're here they'll come and take you away. That's it, that's what I have to do. I have to make people aware that you're here!" Rebecca exclaimed.
"Rebecca, listen to me: no one knows I am alive. The doctors and Father Ryan have all agreed to protect that information and if you were to tell anyone they wouldn't believe you. It's only fair, don't you think, that I get a fair shot at healing without any interference."
"Jacob knows, yes! My son knows! Jacob will tell everyone, and they'll come or you and take you from here, from this place --- constantly in my face!" Rebecca replied.
"Jacob thinks you're mad." Caspian replied. "He wouldn't tell anyone anything you say. Not the words of a mad woman."
There it was, Caspian's glimmer of wickedness rising to the surface. She knew it was in him, she could tell but just as soon as it appeared, the cruel intentions of the man she once knew became swept up again in the kindness of the person he said he had become post-exorcism.
"I just want a shot -- a new lease on life and I think that we could both use that. We've both hurt people and we both need to start over."
"Caspian for what you did to me and to my family the only thing you deserve is to lay at the bottom of a grave and leave me alone. Forever." Rebecca replied.
"When will you finally see, Rebecca, that the powers that overtook me where not of my doing, but at the same time, they brought us together. You and I --- we are a pair. We're here together. It was meant for us to cross paths again. At least I think so." Caspian said to Rebecca's disgust.
"Together? You and I? What are you talking about? YOU TRIED TO HAVE ME KILL MY GREAT-GRAND SON!!!" She screamed.
"NO!" Caspian shouted from his wheelchair. "IT WAS NOT ME!"
"ENOUGH!!!" Nik yelled as he entered the room.
Rebecca jumped form her bed and grabbed hold the collar of Nik's white doctor's coat. She pulled Nik close and began to ramble something feverish. Her mind slipping deeper into a strange world that she couldnt get out of. She saw the man the monster that changed her life forever in front of her wanting to mend fences, and this is what Nik wanted, for the two of them to sort things out to heal together but it was making Rebecca spiral even deeper into her psychosis.
"You need to remove him Dr. Jordan, you need to remove him far from me. Drown him. Burn him. Inject him with poison, something anything get rid of him. He's going to kill me. I don't see the light passed the sun, passed the moon. Every time I turn, he's there. He listens to me. He watches me. He talks to me like as if he is someone new or something kind but I can sense his evil side, Nik, I can feel it like the fire in a hearth like the waves of the ocean splashing across my body! The power is there, his power is STILL OVER ME!!!"
"Medicate her." Caspian said with an eyebrow life. "Do us all a favor."
"Enough." Nik said to him "Rebecca, Mrs. Lord, sit down. Please just sit down here and breath. Just breath in slowly and breath out slowly. You have to get a hold of yourself, or things will not get better for you. Do you understand me?" Nik asked, carefully touching a hypodermic needle in his coat pocket he was prepared to use as a plan B.
"If you do not remove him, I will kill him." Rebecca said, her mind clearly splitting over Caspian's presance.
"Please leave." Nik said turning to Caspian who wheeled himself out of the room but stay just beyond the door.
"Do you want something to help you sleep?" Nik asked Rebecca.
"I want something to make him go away, forever. Do you have that?" She asked.
Nik smiled "I need you to try, Mrs. Lord. Learning to face your fears will be good for you. Caspian cannot hurt you anymore. I promise you this." Nik replied.
Rebecca looked at Nik, a young doctor, so calm and so confident in the same presance as Caspian, the man who ordered Rebecca to kill Nik's own nephew Gabriel by Rebecca's hand. How, she wondered, could he be so easy around that man, that person, that burned and scarred monster?
She couldn't figure it out but agreed that perhaps something to help her sleep would let it pass.
"You'll feel a pinch." Nik said pricking Rebecca with the needle that carried the medication that would render Rebecca in a deep sleep in just minutes.
She fell back on her bed. Her eyes slowly blinked until they closed for the night. The medication had worked. Nik waited just in case she woke again... he was second guessing himself. The pushing for Rebecca to face Caspian without medication. Perhaps it was too soon, perhaps Asha was right, and they should be separated. Then, he came back to himself and thought he'd give it a few more days. The process was important to him and to form a powerful wall in Rebecca's mind for her to understand that the supernatural events in her past were long gone.
Caspian was truly no longer a powerful threat in the way that he once was. In fact, the man in the wheelchair, burned and charred from his demonic exorcism, was now just a regular man that perhaps was still a bit too creative with his manipulative ways, but those ways were not the sign of the devil only that of a man who knew how to twist his way through life with deception and cunning ways.
Stepping out into the hall, there was Caspian once again to face Dr. Nik Jordan.
"Facing Rebecca is good for you too Mr. Casador, but I think we need to reconfigure your approach. Do not meet her in her room anymore. Only in common areas. She needs to feel safe in this space." Nik ordered.
"I don't understand why you'd want this. I don't remember anything from my time at Tirymor or even before that. I have very little memories of anything-- of who I am. Of who I came from. I just have what you and Dr. Ward and Father Ryan have told me. How is pushing me and Rebecca together going to help either of us?" Caspian wondered.
"It'll push the two of you to realize that there are no easy ways out of this... you're both bound by your recent histories and the only way to come to terms with the terrible things the two of you have done is to face them together and discuss them. Render them out of your own systems and atone for them. Medication or any kind of spiritual salvation from a priest will not do that. It is you and Rebecca that have to do it for yourselves. It sounds strange, I understand but I stand by it. I think it'll change you both for the good."
As Nik slowly turned to leave the man there in the hall Caspian suddenly surprised him next.
"How's your mother?" Caspian asked.
Nik turned slowly to look him in the face. "My Mother?" Uncomfortable with the idea Caspian was thinking of Aurora, the mother of Caspian's unborn child.
"Dr. Ward told me." Caspian said. "How is my child?"
Nik's eyes narrowed with anger.
"As much as I respect Dr. Ward, he made an error. You shouldn't be reminded of that part of your ex-life. My mother is off limits. She has suffered enough and this experiment with Rebecca is only about what you and Rebecca did together. It has nothing to do with my mother. So stay away from her.” Nik said.
"Yes, but in a way it does. I made her pregnant, didn't I? At the same time as Rebecca and I plotted to kill a child? I believe its all-related doctor." Caspian replied.
Nik's blood began to boil, Caspian again was showing his dark side. His cunning wit, with a twinge of snark to make anyone around him feel like their skin was crawling. Capsian raped Aurora in a way that was so purely evil that Nik wanted to never think of it again.
"I will tell you once more, Mr. Casador, never speak of my mother again. That part of your life-- pretend it never happened. No matter what Dr. Ward says. And as for the child that was conceived…” Nik paused, “it's gone. Take it out of your mind." Nik ordered.
Nik waited for an answer from Caspian, but Caspian did not respond in words, he only nodded his head in agreement. As Nik began to walk away to check on other patients, Caspian wondered about the child. Nik said it was gone, did he mean forever? Did the child die?
Caspian, hospital patient with partial amnesia or not, needed to know. The child was apart of him and somehow, some way, he was going to get an answer about Aurora and the baby if Nik liked it or not.
 |
| Evie shows Jacqueline around Tirymor |
The next day, the snow had fallen significantly across Maine and blanketed Welshport and Goode Islands masking the green grass and turning it grey with frost and all of the terracotta shingled roof tops of the village to icy slabs.
The survival of Jacqueline's budding relationship with the vampire sleeping on the frosted over Goode Island depending on whether or not Evie was truly done with him despite her not knowing Sebastian was even truly alive.
"And this is the library." Evie said sliding open the doors to the library from an enteral entrance of an adjoining room.
Jacqueline's eyes widened. She had never seen so many books. There could have been thousands of them. Shelves upon shelves upon selves, stacked so high only the latter attached to a rail that swung around the room could reach them.
"So many stories." Jacqueline whispered just in earshot of Evie.
"You'd have to live forever to read them all." Jacqueline, a strange hint at Sebastian's everlasting life.
"No one would want that, not even to read all the fabulous books in the world." Evie replied ushering Jacqueline over to the sofa's in the center of the library.
"Not even if they were on art?" Jacqueline smiled, touching on Evie's favorite topic.
Evie bit her lip "Maybe for art books!" She giggled.
"How did you get so interested in art? When we met you said that it you loved it." Jacqueline wondered.
"I don't really know. I've always just gravitated towards amazing paintings and artists, and the museums in London are truly great places to sit for hours and learn. It also helped me sort of escape things." Evie said.
Evie wasn't sure how to reply without giving away too much of her past but this was a new friend, someone she wanted to like and be liked by in return. She had no idea Jacqueline was only pulling for information only to use it for her own gain---the trust bond is the strongest of all bonds that goes beyond just family ties, it's also including in the connection of friends. Jacqueline, a manipulative person by nature, knew this, she knew she needed Evie to trust her. And Evie too, innocently, knew she wanted Jacqueline to like her and feel like they were true friends.
Tirymor and the life of a Lord woman was lonely enough. Jacqueline was a breath of fresh air, so, Evie revealed herself.
"My father worked a lot. And I mean A LOT. He wasn't always successful at his work, and we were affluent and were comfortable in our lives there as a family, but it always seemed so fragile. I never knew if things were fine or not fine because my father was always out working to make sure we couldn't tell the difference. But we noticed. We could tell there was a nervousness about losing everything. It put a strain on my parents, and thus, a strain on my brother and me. Unspoken of course."
Evie nodded.
"Well, its certainly better than my own life."
Evie sipped her tea that Jane the maid left for her "Tell me, what makes you, You?" She asked.
"I was born in Boston. I lived there all my life in a small area, a neighborhood called Highgrove. Life was difficult --- no escape though. I had to work. Hard. My parents died when I was just 12 and I had to live the best way I could the only way I could. Vicariously through others. I survived a lot of cold and dark nights back then." Jacqueline revealed.
"We're both survivors." Evie said. "I know that my parent shielded me from a lot when I was growing up but I could feel it. I never saw it, I never really was exposed to the hardships that we were facing off and on, but the strain the stress the anxiety was there. All my life. And then it happened." Evie said.
"What happened?" Jacqueline asked.
"I was 12. I was just 12, when my husband was chosen for me. Fifteen years later I was sent here to take up that promise and hopefully the money from my marriage would take my family out of destitution. It did. It helped. Slightly." Evie said.
"Did you love him?" Jacqueline asked carefully as the small teacup covered her mouth allowing the hot liquid to seep down her throat.
"Sebatian?"
Jacqueline confirmed. "Sebastian."
Jacqueline sat there frozen hoping she would have said the opposite.
Jacqueline sensed Evie's passion. She could see why Sebatian adored her. She could see why Matthew adored her. There was a pureness of Evie, something that came from the heart and that most people lost when they grew up. It was a childlike pureness that died and withered as we grew like the green grass outside was withering in the new cold snow of the winter.
This trait, this pure whole soul was what Sebatian loved and craved and what Jacqueline lacked.
But not Evie. She was a ray of light that never dimmed, and this pure heart was dangerous to the jaded one beating inside of Jacqueline, and if Evie knew Sebastian was truly alive, everything Jacqueline was building could crumble like castle made of sand.
"Here he is." Evie said reaching for her baby who snuggled in her arms. "He's my new love."
"Thank you Jane, will you joining us?" She asked the maid, something Evie did always, was to ask the staff to join them at the table. Never treating them as workers, but as friends and family.
Jane smiled "Not today Miss, lots of work ahead of me. I'll have mine shortly before the family, but thank you."
Evie cuddled her baby, kissed his pink cheeks and Jacqueline could see it there again, the shining sun inside Evie, the bright light the Sebatian adored so much, and... the one thing that would and could quite possibly bring them back together and leave Jacqueline out in the cold, their child.
"Would you stay for lunch?" Evie asked her new friend Jacqueline who smiled back peculiarly.
"I would love to." Jacqueline said.
 |
| Genevieve & Morgan Thorne next to David’s portrait |
The truth could come out, once David had returned to the island he was born on and so that he could face his brother Jacob, the true killer.
"I wish I could take you, honey, but this is something I have to do." Genevieve said.
"But why?" He asked.
Geneveive truly didn't know the answer to that. She was a woman obsessed. A woman who had come to Welshport with a man she loved, Johnathon, but that love had soured, and now she was moving on to someone new, a person she didn't know personally and if he was even alive. Although Sabrina was adamite he was.
"Sit down, honey." Genevieve said as she patted the empty sofa cushion next to her. Her son complied. "Do you remember when a boy at school in San Francisco stole a toy from a friend of yours and the boy who stole lied and blamed you?"
Morgan nodded yes.
"Do you remember how horrible it felt to be accused of something you didn't do, and how all you wanted to do was to show everyone and tell everyone who'd listen that it was not you and that you were innocent?"
"The three of us?" Morgan asked.
Genevieve smiled. "I think he might want to join our little family. What do you think?"
Genevieve grabbed her son's shaking hands. He was cold, he was feeling terribly lonely and what was worse, he was feeling like his mother was abandoning him -- in truth she was -- it didn't matter the reason, as righteous or ridiculous as it was to them respectively.
"Morgan, this is what I have to do." She said softly to her son, his eyes watering.
"I don't know, I don't know if I can forgive you for this. I want to go with you. Take me! TAKE ME!" He begged.
"Promise?" he asked through a sniffly nose.
"Where will you go? Where will you search for David Lord?" Morgan asked.
Sabrina, inside of Geneveive knew. She had always known. She had always felt David's energy alive, hiding, secluded, secretly in one place. A City. Overseas. A city, of fog and salty air much like Welshport Village. A place where David felt at home because of those similarities, and now was Sabria's only and last opportunity to finally find him and bring him back to face Jacob. Finally!
Sabrina replied to Geneveive's young son with one word though her new lips, Genevieve's lips: "London."
 |
| Snow covered Goode Island |
Across the narrow icy channel that separated Welshport Island from the now snow-covered satellite island known as Goode Island sat an oddly shaped cabin of 6 rooms.
In the front room, Mary Goode sat staring into the roaring fire that had burned the night away. The clock continued to tick away the hours of the frosty new winter night when the moon would soon dip below the sea welcoming the new turn of the Sun.
But Mary's eyes were fixed on the fire, her heart lost in despair over what had happened to her Cousin's child when Jacqueline's spell went array making him deaf.
"You're lost in thought again." Mary's beloved Filipe said, handing her a hot mug of tea as he sat with her on the fluffy carpet in front of the hearth.
"I feel so guilty." She whispered.
He slipped a thick strand of her bright blond hair behind her ear and cuddled her face in his large hand then lifted her chin so that their eyes met in the glowing flames of orange light.
"You didn't do anything wrong, Mary. I've told you that over and over again. We'll figure it all out soon. Gabriel will be fine, we just have to keep looking for an answer." Filipe said.
"I just feel that it's more than just what happened with the spell. What if it was all a mistake? What if bring Jacqueline here was a mistake? Maybe my mother was apart from her coven sisters for a reason." Mary whispered again so no one in the house would hear.
"If that was true she would have told you, right?" Filipe asked.
"I don't know. For years she and I were somewhat estranged. I mean we never went without speaking but I didn't live here for many, many years, and I was very disconnected from all of her abilities. I didn't want to deal with any of it no matter how many times she wanted to teach me as I grew up. It just wasn't for me. And now, I sit here, in her place, knowing what happened to my cousin's little child and I'm hiding it from him. It's killing me. What if it happened to Charlotte, or even worse, this little baby growing inside of me?" Mary explained.
"Mary, again, listen to me. I would never steer you wrong. We have to wait. We have to continue to find some other way to reverse what Jacqueline did and then it'll be fine. There has to be a way." Filipe replied optimistically.
"I don't know. She doesn't seem like she wants it, you know? I don't know what it is, but something tells me she's sort of off doing her own thing. When she told me she's befriended Evie I was horrified! We told her to stay away, we told her to just stay clear of Tirymor and anything connecting her to Gabriel, and she went ahead and befriended her. Doesn't that make you wonder? She could be a weak link and if Sebastian is as volatile as I know he can be, she can get us all killed." Mary said
Filipe lifted a brow. It did make him wonder. He was always suspicious of new people in the village, it was something that he carried with him from being from such a small village, but in this particular instant, he never vocalized it.
"We just have to watch her." Filipe replied. "We have to watch her and make sure that she continues to listen to us and do what we ask and also keep our secret. Sebatian can never know what happened to Gabriel. It's important that she knows that, and we'll keep explaning that its in her own best interest to do that." Filipe said.
"She has to know that even without us tell her right?" Mary asked.
"I don't know." Filipe replied.
"She has to, Filipe. Sebastian can never know what we did. We'll lose him and Evie will forever lose the father of her child." Mary said.
"Your right, and no matter what happens, she is connected to him. Their love was iron clad and, just like our little baby coming soon, they made their own. That love needs to be protected, even Jacqueline will understand that. We can't be any kind of good force here if we're doing things for our own good. It's always for the good of all of us."
"But how do we know she understands that? She tells us she does, but we don't really know anything about her and here she is living in our house and in love with Sebastian! Even that, her relationship with him, it seems so dangerous, so fragile. He is fragile. What happens if he finds out or...my god, I don't even want to think about." Mary replied, her heart pounding in her chest at the very thought of Sebatian. discovering what they had done.
"Listen, in the morning, we'll talk to Jacqueline, it's as simple as that. We will just tell her again, what we need to do for the good of us all, and she has to agree." Filipe answered.
"And if she doesn't?" Mary wondered as she sipped the tea Filipe brought her.
Filipe didn't answer. He had no answer. He was only hoping for Jacqueline's sake she would agree to leave anyone related to Sebatian's life at Tirymor alone. No more visits with Evie, no more seeing Garbriel. No more.
But in the shadows, Jacqueline listened. She was not asleep as Filipe and Mary believed. She saw that their holding of the secret of what happened wasn't about their own safety as much as it was preserving the strong bond between Sebatian and Evie.
A bond that so clearly excluded Jacqueline. This did not sit well with the new witch in town.
Jacqueline quietly let herself back into Sebastian's room where he was adjusting the shirt in his black thick jacket with a high collar. She came from behind and hugged him tightly. She could feel every strong muscle in his body. His arms were like marble, his chest like the statue of David's.
"It's going to be cold out there." Jacqueline said, knowing Sebatian was ready to go out into the night to feed.
"Animal blood is the only safe thing I can drink. The alternative is ..." Sebatian paused. "I'd rather be in the cold searching for a poor rabbit than ... the alternative." Sebastian explained.
"I was thinking, what if...what if we went back to Boston? It's a big city. We could hide there; I still have my family's house. We could live there the rest of our lives, and no one would ever care about who or what disappeared in the middle of the night." Jacqueline half joked.
"Go to Boston and eat the people?" Sebastian said chuckling.
"Sure!" She giggled back kissing his cold neck.
Sebatian shook his head. "What is this? Why are you still awake? It's getting late."
"I don't know," She said, her heart worried about what Filipe and Mary were planning. "I've just been thinking so much about the future and how it's been so good with you so far, I just think we'd be happier father away from here." She said hoping he'd suddenly agree to her spontaneous request.
"No, no, I couldn't leave. Not now." He answered standing up and buttoning his jacket.
"But why!?" She replied like a spoiled child.
"Jacqueline, I have a son now and even thought I can't raise him, or see him, I can at least stay close. Sometimes I can see him, you know, when he sleeps. Or if he's out in the evening with his mother. No one can see me when I hide. I can always raise him from a far. I have to be there for Evie too." Sebastian smiled proudly as he thought of Gabriel and the mother of his child.
Jacqueline frowned.
"What is it?" He asked her.
"I think that it would be better if we left." She replied her tone of voice now lacking the childlike glimmer from just moments ago. Her eyes, the deep brown looked darker to him when she was in this mood. He hadn't seen this side of her yet and at the mention of Gebriel and Evie, it was clear that it was because of them she wanted to leave. But Sebatian would not budge. He would never leave them no matter how far away he had to stand, he would stand there, but not leave.
"You're being silly. A child. You know how important my son is to me." Sebastian replied.
"And Evie?" She asked.
"She's the mother of my child." He said back quickly. "And now that he's protected by your spell, then I don't really have to worry all that much, so you don't have to worry about me being more occupied with them and not with you. Maybe that is what your worry is. But the spell of protection will be there for me when I cannot."
Jacqueline gulped knowing the truth. "Sebastian I have to tell you something." She said.
Sebastian who had turned from her after his last few words to reach for hat slowly turned back when her voice was clearly now in a third tone: serious.
He sat down on the edge of their unmade bed "What." He replied coldly.
"It's about the spell, the spell you wanted Mary to carry out to protect your son. It's ... it's not...." She paused.
"TELL ME!" He shouted.
"It didn't work. Mary lied. It's a lie. She failed. She failed and it backfired on us and she has been lying to you." Jacqueline heard the words come from her mouth but couldn't believe it was her. She couldn't believe she had just lied, and for what?
For protection. She knew that Filipe and Mary were somewhat on to her, she knew that there was trouble brewing for her, she knew that if she were to continue to keep the lie going that the child was fine that he would eventually find out that she was a part of the lie and she'd lose everything and probably reveal himself to Evie as being alive and that they'd reunite.
She wanted to expose the lie, reveal the truth and force him to only trust her. She wanted Sebastian to think SHE was the truthful one, she wanted to Sebatian to ONLY want her to help, ONLY seek HER.
But in the moment, Sebatian's cold blood turned to ice. He threw the hat in his hand across the room, he leaped off the bed almost as if he were to leap out of a window. She stared at his eyes that turned black, he fell back to the ground of the bedroom and snarked in her face, inches away from each other, so close she could feel his breath on her lips.
"What do you mean backfired?" He snarled.
"The spell was meant for Gabriel to hear no evil, to protect him from any outer evil spell that would touch is ears. But instead, it became interrupted by Mary, and I was only able to say out loud for the boy not to hear.... Sebatian, this made the boy deaf. He can't hear. She's taken away his hearing." Jacqueline explained.
Sebastian hissed at her, but his anger was confused. Should be angry and Jacqueline or Mary?
Which one cast the spell. Which one did it. He couldn't make heads or tails but was furious to understand that the lie had been spread, and they were covering up something terrible that happened to his little baby boy.
"Un-do it." he snarled again.
"I cannot be." She replied.
"LIAR!" He yelled.
She bowed her head. "It cannot be undone, Sebatian. I've tried. But... Mary, she wanted me to never tell you. She wanted you to never know. I wanted to tell you, I did, but I didn't want to betray anyone. She made me, she made be not tell you. This is her fault. She interrupted me. She wanted me to never tell you what she did and what happened to Gabriel because, Sebastian, it was her fault. Mary!" Jacqueline said exposing her new-found coven sister.
Sebatian's felt his heart crack. He was furious. He was going to kill them. He was going to rip their throats out, both Filipe and Mary. They lied; they forced Jacqueline to lie.
He was hungry. His fangs begged for flesh to pierce.
He paced the room like a tiger trapped in cage. He removed his coat. Threw it into the corner of his room. The candles flickered back and forth following the air that surrounding his body.
He wanted to kill them all. Jacqueline too, who sat straight up in her chair, wondering what he'd do next.
But she felt safe. She thwarted Mary and Filipe's plan to contain her and to protect the connection between Sebastian and his ex-wife. She would NOT be contained, and she would not allow for her relationship with Sebastian to be pushed aside as Filipe and Mary were clearly attempting to do by keeping the secret of what happened with Garbriel, for Sebastian's sake, and Evie's .
Jacqueline would not be controlled by any of them.
Exposing the truth, albeit putting her in a bad light too, put her two steps ahead of Mary and Filipe's plans.
Sebastian snarled and hissed, he looked as if he was about to attack her with the fury of a thousand hurricanes but suddenly just before she thought he was going to come at her throat he pulled down the wooden panels concealing his windows and opened the shutters and jumped out into the wild windy night with snow swirling around him in icy bursts of cold wind and sleet.
Jacqueline rushed the window and searched for the angry Sebastian, but he was gone in the dark.
In the front room Mary and Filipe heard the commotion from the bedroom and their hearts skipped a beat not knowing what fresh hell was coming with the winter winds.
