Chapter 4

"Barnabas is gone? Just like that?" Maggie paced in the library of the Old House, unwilling to let Urien calm her. "How could it happen?"

"Edmund vanished first. He went looking for him." Urien had called Julia on the phone, hoping that she could calm Maggie down, as he was unable to do so. He had been given reassurances, but he knew that he could not make himself heard by the very agitated Maggie.

"You don't even know when he will be back?"

"He just stepped into the I Ch'ing maze. So it is difficult to tell. I understand that time moves differently there."

"And you stay there so calmly."

Urien shrugged. "I have got the habitude of weird things happening. And somehow things manage to end up OK. If they need me, they will let me know. As it is" he shrugged" all I can do is keep to a normal routine."

"Or you just don't care."

Urien sighed "You've been too long away from town. You forget how things are here."

The arrival of Julia interrupted the exchange. Urien left gratefully, as Maggie's intensity disconcerted him. Why would she want to come back? Last time she had been turned to stone. Why risk any more incidents here?

"Well, Julia, what can you tell me where Barnabas is?"

"He was summoned by Amy Jennings, who is now a Sybil. He is in some mission, and he is supposed to be alone there."

"And you left him all alone?"

"I was warned not to follow. I take such warnings seriously. Why are you back? Do you think that he needs more punishment? Because I would think that he has paid in full by now."

"I have been thinking... I know that I cannot deal with him as I have all these years... I kept wondering if we could ever be friends..."

"Maggie, with your history, the safest way for you two to be friends would be over the phone. If you asked me my professional opinion."

"I would never ask you your professional opinion. No offense, Julia, but I could never fully trust you.."

"I guess I deserve that."

"Julia, that I am big enough to forgive you does not mean that I am fool enough to trust you again. You betrayed a patient once - me. You can do it again. That is a fact that neither of us can change."

"Then, if you do not want my opinion, all I can tell you is that Barnabas is gone, and that I do not know when he will come back, and you will have to start managing your life without him and your twisted relationship. How I will not presume to tell you."

"I just wanted to tell him that I did not hate him anymore."

"I think that he will be glad to know it. When and if he comes back."

"And you do not know when that will be."

"No. And badgering Urien will not help, so why don't you leave here and do whatever else you have planned for your stay?"

Sabrina was impossible. Quentin wondered how Chris could have loved her once... At one time she must have been a nice person enough, he guessed, but she had soured out. First bitterness at what she saw as Chris' betrayal, when he had got a vasectomy without telling her, and then too many years of doing Maggie's dirty work.

And now... Now when he had wanted to see Maggie she had submitted to a full third degree interrogation, as if he was a member of the PLO instead of a constituent. a taxpayer, and a person who had a project to offer.

Of course, his own irresponsible past told against him... but still, in the past years he had shown them what Quentin Collins, once grown up was capable of doing. The housing he was building was getting off the ground, (with feeding privileges for Megan, who helped with the financing). He was someone that Maggie should be glad to meet.

"I can recall what happened the last time you two met." Sabrina said, coldly.

"When we last met, I was minding my own business, with Barnabas, taking care of a friend. It was she who barged in, tried to seduce me, and then brained me. I do not see how that was my fault."

Her eyes told him that she still saw him as the spoiled child he had been, as Louella's seducer, Carolyn's husband, the short-lived evangelist, the one man VD epidemic, the habitual betrayer, the feckless one... Never the serious, thoughtful person he had become...

But he had to try. And if he could not approach Maggie one way, there could be others...

Nicholas felt tired, unbelievably tired. He thought that by now he would have recovered from being in touch with Dr. Blair's despair, but it had affected him more than he thought.

Because he was his counterpart? Because he could not hurt the man without, somehow hurting himself?

Or maybe because his new master did not fully trust him with his power, that he only gave him so much, and once he used up a considerable amount, he had to rebuild it?

Why would the man do that? Didn't he know that he would be more effective if he was more powerful?

Well, considering the amount of double dealing and betrayal among sorcerers, it did not surprise him. He was to be kept on a short leash.

And rewarded at the end? Or disposed of? Betrayal was second nature to sorcerers such as he...

"He does not suspect us." Amy said to Edmund "Instruct Dr. Blair to make him doubt his master even more."

It was ironic, Barnabas thought, that after the innumerable years that he had cringed in fear of the cross, that he would now use one to protect himself.

But the situation was not one to savor ironies. Those guardians responded to the cross as he had once. Why the Petofis had chosen that symbol to control them was a mystery, but they might have had their reasons. Now he would make use of it.

He had to set the creatures on the bottles free, but prevent them from getting the head. Once without the head, they would die, and there would be no more power to them.

But if he did not do it right, then he would have unleashed an ancient evil on the world. As great or greater than what he tried to prevent

"I shall set them free and hold them at bay." he said to Roxanne. "You just grab the head and take it to Amy."

The head stared at them with both malice and forlorn hope. They were, those two, his only chance to rest, to die and escape his centuries old servitude. But he despised them and what they stood for. Had he been able to hold a whip, had he a hand to hold a whip, he would show them indeed that ghosts only came when summoned, and that vampires were meant to be slaves, and nothing else.

Still... he remembered the prophecy that the first Petofi had made when he had set him on the table to serve him and his progeny. That he would remain there until a creature of darkness holding in his hands a symbol of the power of Light would be the one to end his torment? Petofi had laughed, because what creature of darkness could abide the power of the Light? Might well ask water to run uphill...

Except that with sorcerers anything is possible given enough time and power... and now his deliverance was at hand. From one who should have been a slave and never presume to look upon his face.

Barnabas, moving closer to the bottles brought the wizard back from his reverie.

"Ready?" he asked Roxanne.

"Yes. I am ready,"

He swung his cane in a lethal arc, shattering all the bottles with one blow.

A cold gush of air hit him, and blue-grey smoke rose from the ground. Smoke that molded itself into shapes, which converged greedily over the severed head.

Barnabas swung the cross in their direction, wondering if it would hold them at bay long enough... they had been men, once, all of them, yet their shapes were now the stuff of nightmares...

The smoke parted as he swung his arm. The creatures balked a bit, leaving just enough space for Roxanne to enter.

She was so slight, so ethereal, enveloped in a light that seemed to be a white garment. It shielded her somehow from the smoke. Her hands moved through the head, and then acquired solidity.

"I have it" she said, lifting it.

A howl rose from the smoke creatures, who now found themselves cheated of their prize, and facing dissolution.

They threw themselves at Roxanne, but Barnabas barred them again. Roxanne clutched the head to her bosom, and vanished with it.

The smoke creatures then fell on Barnabas...