Chapter 13
He had to go back. Roxanne needed him.
He knew that Iris was mad at him for refusing to see her... Iris was mad at everything lately... but that could wait. Yes, Edmund and Buffy needed him, but between Vicky and Phillip they could manage. Buffy had accepted them at last, even if she sometimes looked at them in strange ways, and she was helping Edmund understand that he could trust them.
He could not leave Roxanne there. Not in a place where death sentences were executed by strangulation with a piano wire, hanging from a meat hook.
He moved into the room. It was different from the last time, when he was forced in by Sabrina... he was alone, without George to give him some earth and wish him good luck.
There was one thing that he had not discussed with George. That confession he had made just a few days before Sabrina got to him. He wondered if he would ever confront George with it... It brought too many unpleasant memories back, and not all of them with his guilt about Dave...
He stepped into the room and waited for it to change.
Something was wrong. He had barely arrived at the other room in the Parallel Universe that Barnabas felt the sense of dread hanging around.
Collinwood seemed deserted... and it looked like a search had taken place.
Was he too late? Did Roxanne...? He shivered at the thought. To see Roxanne like he had seen Victoria, or those men he had killed in the cells...
He should be able to make contact with her, painful as it might be. The link with her was still fresh...
There was something strange about the link. Not as it should be... But strange or not, it was Roxanne.
And she was not in pain.
There was much sadness in her, but not the screams that Victoria had sent. There was anger, a grim determination...
And she was at the Old House.
He arrived there, just in time to see the uniformed men reach it.
He had to get Roxanne out before they found her.
"Yes." Haskell was explaining. "It is very likely that Collins kept the papers here. And then he put out these stories about this place being haunted."
"Too bad that Quentin Collins himself can't tell us where the papers are." a man commented.
Haskell grumbled. He did not like to be reminded how easily Collins had tricked him with that cyanide pill. And too bad about the girl, Roxanne. Just when they were going to grab her, she had jumped off Widow's Hill. No one survived that drop. And to top it both the housekeeper and the Collins child, Edmund, had disappeared. They were without any leads...
Barnabas moved into the house. He could find Roxanne faster than they could. And if worse came to worse, he could try fighting them off... and then take the escape route that Maggie had once taken, since this house had the same secret passage. He could get Roxanne out that way.
Will's face loomed above him.
"Where's she" Barnabas asked anxiously I have to get her out. They are searching the place."
"Are they?" Will laughed "They don't believe this place is haunted. Want to teach them otherwise?"
The simplicity of the idea was enough to make Barnabas laugh. Yes, between him and Will, they could make them run and never come back. And also he might be able to get his hands on Haskell.
"Look upstairs" Haskell ordered his men.
Will typed furiously, making as much noise as he could. From his corner, Barnabas studied the situation wondering how best to make his entrance.
The men barged into the room, guns in hand.
Will got up, laughing and moved towards them. He came to them and then passed through them.
Among their scrams, Barnabas dissolved into mists and slipped downstairs, letting the ones in the way feel his presence, in a way that made they shiver.
He noticed his portrait on the wall. No, his counterpart's portrait. It would do.
The soldiers upstairs screamed again. Will was certainly having fun.
He drifted in front of the portrait and materialized slowly, making it seem as he was coming out of it.
"Who are you?" He asked in his bests ominous voice.
The man backed off, screaming, but Haskell was made of sterner stuff. He took his gun and shot Barnabas several times.
Barnabas just laughed unpleasantly, moving closer to Haskell. "You do not belong here. None of you belong here." He caught Haskell and lifted him by the scruff of the neck, like kitten, and threw him across the room.
"Get out! All of you!" he screamed, then dematerialized with a laugh.
A chair came flying through the window. Will again.
"It is a trick! A trick!" Haskell hollered, trying to convince himself.
"A trick you say?" Barnabas appeared next to Haskell and put his hands on his throat. "I am not a trick."
"Leave him to me!"
Barnabas turned. It was Quentin, his skin blue, cyanotic, and with an ugly smile on his face.
"He belongs to me." Quentin repeated.
Haskell screamed. It could not be. Quentin was dead...
Quentin's hands closed on Haskell. They went into his flesh as easily as if it was water. But not as painlessly. They searched until they found Haskell's heart and began squeezing it.
"Scream, Haskell" Quentin said. "I want to hear you scream."
Barnabas slid among the men, picking them up, and throwing them around. He moved to Will's side and helped him hurl furniture around.
"I don't need a knife as you do" Quentin said "I don't need fancy tricks. My hands are enough/"
Haskell screamed. And again. And again... and then no more.
Silently Quentin retreated into the wall and vanished. Will also vanished. Taking his cue from them, Barnabas let them men run away screaming, and dematerialized too.
He knew that Roxanne was in the tunnel that came out of the cellar. he went there and found her packing papers.
"Barnabas !" she said, stunned.
"Will and I scared them away. You are safe " then he added., "Quentin was there... He is dead, isn't he?"
"Yes. He took a cyanide pill when they came for him. I escaped " she didn't explain further about her fall from Widow's Hill. It had been painful as she did not had mastered dematerialization properly. Not all of the blood on the rocks had come from when Blair had reopened her wounds.
"Did they get anyone else? Blair?"
"No. They only wanted Quentin, to satisfy Chris. They did not hunt anyone else. Look, we have to move these papers from here."
"Are you sure? After what happened here, this might be a very safe place.
"I know one even safer. But you are right. They can stay here. Close the entrance to the tunnels"
"These are Quentin's papers, aren't then?"
"They should go to Quentin's second in command" Roxanne bit her lip. She was the second in command. But she could not face up to Barnabas.
Unreasoning anger took hold of her. Why couldn't she go with Barnabas? Why should she stay behind and shoulder this burden? Quentin hadn't loved her. Not as Barnabas loved her. Not as she wanted to be loved...She was fanged now. But that would not keep her from happiness with Barnabas... if she could only put all this behind... to go to a place where you didn't wait in fear for the knock on the door at four AM.
"Your coffin is where you left it." she told him "You better go to it, as it is getting close to the dawn"
"Will you be all right?"
"Yes, I will. Go take care of yourself."
She saw him go. Better this way... she could not tell him yet what she had done... what she had become...
There was a decision to make, and she did not want to make it yet.
As she laid herself down on her own coffin, she felt this voice in her...You could have him, you could have a new life... it is not too late for you...
But her duty...
Duty! Duty! What did duty get you? All your life you have been used. Claude, Stokes, Quentin... For the first time someone loves you without wanting to use you. Should you let him go out of blind loyalty to someone who thought of you as a convenience?
But how could she abandon her people? Or Blair? He wanted to leave as much as she did, but he hung on, bearing up with the help of liquor.. and whatever personal faults Quentin had, he was her superior officer. And she was a soldier.
Still, it would be so easy...
Lord, it did take time to make this place clean and habitable again " Chris laid down exhausted after straightening up as best he could his new property. Did they have to make such a thorough search? They had left a frightful mess behind.
Well, it was almost done. And the rest would not take much longer. The important thing was that Collinwood was now his.
His Collinwood. He finally had it. His great-great-grandfather's portrait was now on the wall. Soon he would have his own portrait painted, to go over the mantelpiece.
Why did he feel so... empty?
No, not empty. Just nervous. The news of what had happened to Haskell had shaken him.
But it was better with Haskell out of the way. He would never be able to trust that crazy completely.
Soon he would marry again. He should not have married Victoria in the first place. A bad investment, that was all. His new wife would be socially impeccable. Tall, delicate, refined...
Too bad that Angelique had been what she was, because she had been the perfect mistress for Collinwood...
It was getting dark...
He sort of missed Victoria. A strange emptiness, a lack of someone to trade insults with.
"I warned you about him, Victoria" he said, mockingly "Did it hurt much? I bet it did. I bet you screamed for a long time."
He poured himself a drink, sipped it.
Getting dark... ominously dark.
He forbade himself to think on those terms. Collinwood was his. Quentin was dead. Edmund disappeared, and if Edmund ever showed up, he would dispose of him. No one would ever hear about Edmund Collins again.
"Welcome to the new master of Collinwood."
He turned, surprised, towards that venomous voice.
Roxanne Drew was there.
But she was dead...
His eyes were caught in hers. Burning, strong eyes that robbed him of his will.
"You will be very useful to us" she said with malice "very useful"
Her lips parted and Chris saw her fangs.
"Please," he begged, knowing it would be useless. "...don't"
She fell on him, biting him cruelly, sucking greedily at his throat.
It was only after he let him go that she was Barnabas standing at a short distance from her.