Chapter 20
'No, Barnabas, it is time for us to meet our destiny, together.' Those words kept echoing in his mind.
'You don't know what you are saying, Max,' Barnabas paused, 'please dear, help me. We must not play this 'game' anymore,' Barnabas pleaded. The urge for blood leaped into his chest and his heart started to pound irregularly. "Maeve!" he managed to shout aloud.
Maeve opened her eyes just at the moment Barnabas started to feel the blood lust. She looked at the two on the bed and tried to stand up. It felt like someone or something was holding her down in the chair. Her eyes roamed to the table next to the bed and she saw the clock but the second hand was not moving. Then she heard Barnabas shout for her.
'Please let me go to them,' Maeve pleaded with the 'Powers-to-be'. Trying to reason with them, she added, 'Aren't I part of the blood destiny too?' While she waited for an answer, she closed her eyes in hopes of witnessing more between Barnabas and Max.
Thoughts ran through Barnabas' mind. When he first connected to Maeve while playing the "truth or consequence game" months ago, he realized the only way he would get answers from her was to bite her. Could this be the message the 'Powers-to-be' were conveying to him now? The idea of biting his own flesh and blood was repulsing to him. He didn't want Max's fate to be what he had become.
When he accepted Maeve's blood earlier today, his need for blood should not have started again so soon. This puzzled him. Lately, he had been experiencing the effects of his vampirism more frequently with blinding, uncontrollable force. He wondered if it related to Maeve's blood mixing with his blood. Remembering their conversation weeks ago, she did tell him he was changing inside but he never knew how much or in what way. Now he worried what these changes in him were doing and if he bit Max, what would happen to her.
'Is this what you want me to understand?' Barnabas wondered. As though some force waited for him to ask the question, the silence ended.
'It is time,' the voices echoed in their minds, 'for the blood destiny to be completed.'
Maeve listened to Barnabas' thoughts as he went over reasons for his blood lust intensifying so rapidly over the last few months. It could be true that their blood mixture had caused an adverse effect on him, increasing his lust for more blood. But what would happen to Max AND Barnabas, if Barnabas did bite his daughter? Then Maeve heard the voices echoing in her mind at the same time as Max and Barnabas. 'It is time for the blood destiny to be completed,' Maeve's mind shouted out 'NO, not without me. You told me I am also a part of this.'
Ignoring the muffling sounds of a voice in his head screaming 'NO', Barnabas' fangs elongated and his body acted automatically. As Max voluntarily moved her head to one side, he slowly and meticulously opened his mouth and placed it gently on Max's neck. Surprised by her willingness, he bit into her skin. The blood rushed out of her vein under the intense pressure. He savored her blood and continued to drink, 'but how much' he wondered not knowing when to stop.
As Barnabas drank, Max witnessed every detail of his life from the moment he was born, to the wedding proposal with the lovely French woman, Josette du Pres, to the wretched curse by the witch, Angelique Bouchard, his transformation into a vampire and the continuing saga of Barnabas' long blood-tingling and monstrous life. All the people involved in his life flashed before Max including the involvement of Barnabas and Julia Hoffman. The vision of earlier days of Julia's entanglement with Barnabas intrigued Max. She even witnessed the meeting and connection with Maeve over the few months they had been together. With the help of the 'Powers-to-be' through the blood sharing, Max observed Maeve's origin and her connection with Julia. Max's blood raced through her veins and her breathing increased without Barnabas bearing witness to any of these visions.
Maeve sat quietly but quite agitated by the visions Max witnessed. 'I must be with them. Something is wrong with Barnabas,' she sensed.
Barnabas felt his strength weakening the more he drew Max's blood. 'There's something wrong, I must stop.' Although he tried to stop the flow of blood, nothing worked. He realized that with the removal of Max's blood into him, his blood was entering her through the same veins. 'NO, I'm going to infect her!' It was at that moment Barnabas lost consciousness.
Max was feeling stronger as Barnabas withdrew her blood. She started to feel his weakening state and worried about him. 'He must not die. After all I've been through I will not loose him.' At the same moment Barnabas lost consciousness, so did Max. Both of their bodies collapsed on the bed as Barnabas released Max's body and throat. They both fell back lying next to each other.
Maeve opened her eyes and saw the clock's second hand move again. She leaped up and approached the bed. Immediately with both hands, she checked their pulses at the same time. Max's pulse was very weak but Barnabas had no pulse. 'That's understandable, since he is legally dead,' Maeve thought. However, she suddenly realized that she was unable to drop their wrists.
'You are right, you are part of this,' the voices echoed.
'What must I do?' Maeve asked them.
'Keep holding their wrists and you will complete the "Blood Destiny" that had been set in motion for eons.'
'But,' Maeve started to think but stopped, realizing the 'Powers-to-be' were gone. She looked down at Max's throat and saw the puncture wounds. Then Maeve looked at Barnabas and tried to reach his mind with hers. She found she couldn't reach him. While holding their wrists, Maeve started to feel a sensation run from Barnabas' arm to hers and through her body to Max. As she looked at Max's neck, the holes started to close up and the bleeding stopped. Max's pulse started to increase and then Maeve felt something she never expected. It was very weak and hardly noticeable but she felt it nevertheless. 'How can that be?' she wondered. 'Could it be my imagination?'
At the moment time started again, the people of Collinwood continued to eat their meal unaware time had stopped.
"I wonder if Barnabas is ok," Carolyn asked looking across the table at the empty seats.
"Oh, I'm sure he is," David replied looking down at his wristwatch, "it's only been a few minutes since he went upstairs. What I can't' figure out is why Max and Maeve left the room. I'm sure Barnabas knows how to dress himself."
Roger was moving his food around the plate, not eating. Carolyn scowled and he laughed out loud. "Oh pumpkin, calm down, I'm ok." Roger thought, 'something very familiar is going on around here. Thirty-six years ago our cousin Barnabas Collins arrived from England looking just like our ancestor in the portrait. Now we find out our cousin, who left here thirty years ago, has a son who looks just like the others. Strange, very strange.' As he ate small bites of food, Roger thought about Maeve and Max, the two strangers in Collinwood. 'I swear I've met Maeve before. She looks just like that nurse from the hospital that cared for Julia those nights I visited her. And Max looks a lot,' his mind chews on the idea, 'like Maeve but something else is strange about this woman who works for his son. Something very similar I can't put my finger on. Did it have anything to do with Julia or Barnabas?'
Anita and William returned to see if they were needed. "Will the others be returning, sir?" Anita asked. Unconsciously, she scratched her neck where the two puncture wounds use to be. That area still itched but she couldn't remember how she got those wounds.
William watched Anita's movements very closely and had his own rambling thoughts about the new strangers in the house. He felt some odd connection to Barnabas but didn't know what it could be. Could it be because William also had an unusual condition of light sensitivity? Since William was born with this problem, he had become accustom to adjusting his career and personal life. Ever since he met Barnabas Collins and shook his hand, William believed something changed inside of him. Maybe it was just his imagination but he began to doubt it. That phone call from his father was peculiar also. What was that all about?
"I believe so, Anita, just keep things ready for when they return," David replied breaking through everyone daydreaming.
"Yes, sir," Anita said and turned towards the kitchen doorway. As William followed her, he looked back over his shoulder at his employer and saw a puzzled look on David's face.