THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
In the fight, Tempus had shed Ethan's letterman jacket (now devoid of all its buttons). Sarah, instead of immediately answering Coquette, picked up Ethan's letterman jacket, as she knew he loved it. She handed it to him. Ethan awkwardly put it on, though it didn't make him look any more human. He gave Sarah an appreciative (albeit pained) nod, which as a werewolf was the only way he could thank her.
"Now!" said Coquette, who had waited impatiently. "You still must leave before the surete come snooping at the party. It is your good fortune the fire is still roaring where I set it! Now tell me all there is to know!"
"I'm getting to it" Sarah retorted, feeling the need to tap the Lucifractor to remind Coquette who was now boss . . . .
Tempus Mercator Daemonium had been long imprisoned in a coin, and would not be released until someone wished on that coin . . . .
And Sarah, goaded by Erica, had accidentally wished for Ethan to be cool.
"Quel souhait stupide!" laughed Coquette. "I would have wished for the power and the money. But I see, your soul must have been pure and of great power for Tempus to, how you say, mine to grant this wish of yours. But how did wishing for Ethan to be popular lead to all this. He does not have that much power . . . he may remove or alter a few things, but . . . ."
"The bolt" said Erica groggily, opening wide her previously glazed, hypnotized eyes. "One stupid bolt!"
"It is . . . the bolt" said Sarah.
Coquette looked at Ethan, who just shrugged.
"It was" Sarah emphasized "all because Tempus stole one of the bolts that held up the chandelier in Ethan's living room."
The bolt that had held up the chandelier that Rory had swung on during the eventful night while doing wolf howls during the "blue moon" when Benny had accidentally turned Ethan into a werewolf. This has lured Sarah over, who decided to save the day instead of taking the phosphorescent blue "master reversal" potion for herself.
The demon's time meddling and theft of the bolt meant Rory crashed the chandelier instead of swinging from it. Rory may have groaned, he made no wolf howls for Sarah to hear. Sarah instead took the potion and was cured.
Meanwhile Ethan stayed a werewolf. That one night he slaughtered Benny, Rory, Erica and even David Stochowski the weredog. Evelyn gave Ethan a talisman that prevented him from turning into a werewolf on the full moon. But the stress of her grandson's death and covering up the demon-induced catastrophe caused old Mrs. Weir to pass away suddenly, before mixing up the complete cure for Ethan.
This meant Ethan was no longer a seer, but the curse had warped Ethan into the school's star athlete and given him the build of an enforcer on a pro-hockey team.
"If a good enforcer would return la coupe Stanley to Canada I would let him stay a werewolf" said Coquette, "so long as he did not play for the Maple Leafs. Now about the vampires in Whitechapel . . . how did this all affect them? And Jesse? And Anastasia?"
This led to an even longer discourse about Jesse, the cubile animus, Anastasia, the "breath of death", Stern, his secret-order, and, finally, what happened when the Lucifractor was overloaded and destroyed, sending its diffused dark-energy destroying power over all Whitechapel.
At last, Coquette's curiosity was satisfied. So satisfied was Coquette, that she recited the "For the Want of a Nail" en francais:
Faute d'un clou, un fer à cheval a été perdu,
faute d'un fer à cheval, un cheval est devenu boiteux,
faute de cheval qu'un cavalier n'a jamais réussi à traverser,
faute d'un cavalier un message n'est jamais arrivé,
faute de message, une armée n'a jamais été envoyée,
faute d'une armée, une bataille fut perdue,
faute de bataille, une guerre fut perdue,
faute de guerre, un royaume tomba,
et tout cela faute d'un clou.
"Or as you say, all for the want of a bolt" laughed Coquette. "Should you not be able to replace the bolt the infamous marchand démon du temps stole . . . this reality stays. Well, mon petite, I will help you. I . . . Tais toi!"
This last remark was directed to Hodges, still lying on his back on the floor. He had also left his state of hypnotism, but instead of waking up had begun snoring loudly in a drunken slumber.
Hodges, either on his own or via hypnotism, turned over onto his stomach and was less disruptive.
"Bien!" Coquette remarked.
"But why are you going to help us?" asked Erica.
"You may find me, how you say, of the mercurial temperament?" said Coquette. "But, you must know by now that the truly wonderful immortals are above all of not only of elevated status but of the pragmatic mind in matters of importance. Sarah has caused me the great embarrassment here in this small town of Whitechapel. My friends have been lucifracted, and they are of my clique. I have lost my faithful servant and companion Andre, and through this . . . reset, this retuning of time, I will have all that restored. True, I will lose Anastasia's treasures, but in return I will still be the last great powerful vampire in the northern climes of Le Nouveau Monde! For, in own your time, Anastasia and Jesse are both dead and by such an enjoyable means as their painfully aging to death. It would be a beauty for me to behold"
"Don't you even care about Whitechapel?" asked Sarah. "The other vampires always . . ."
"Je crache sur Whitechapel!" Coquette exclaimed. "Cela a toujours été une horrible ville anglaise provinciale. Again I say it. Whitechapel? I spit on her! The only thing I have in common with Colby is the wonderment that this, this, hamlet de carrefour . . . this crossroads hamlet should ever have become the home of our council! As for les autres, Jesse and Anastasia each had their followers . . . J'ai mes propres amis."
"You can always dig up the Cubile Animus to get your friends back without working with us" Erica added.
"ERICA!" Sarah exclaimed. "In case you're thinking of running off, I should remind you that . . . ."
"You have the Lucifractor" laughed Coquette. "I know that my position here is forfeit if I try to do the betrayal! Even if it were not, if I can convince you to make a deal, I would sooner have mes amis restored than playing with the Cubile Animus and waiting for the right moon and the right souls to make the exchange. C'est trop difficile! Je n'ai pas la patience! To tell you the honest truth, the only one I truly value and now miss in my undeath is my faithful Andre. But, now I will finally tell you what exactly to do! I only ask one thing in exchange!"
"What's that?" asked Sarah.
"You must promise not to tell Ethan about me" said Coquette. "I will have nothing to do with you or yours. You may tell the old lady, this Evelyn, to assuage your conscience and relate your adventure. She is past her prime and has not sought me out yet. But the knowledge must go no further than her!"
"It's a promise!" said Erica.
"Wait a minute . . . ." argued Sarah.
"What's there not to promise" said Erica, looking at Sarah, and glancing at Ethan (who looked as if he wanted to say something, but of course couldn't). We get everyone who died in this reality but was alive in ours, back . . . ."
"It will be true" said Coquette. "And un-cursed, and, how you say, un-undead too."
"And we let her continue doing what's she been doing for the last few hundred years" Sarah observed, looking at Ethan.
Ethan shook his head.
"I can't believe you two" said Erica impatiently. "I know you first had that kill-all-vampires besides you, me and Rory right after Ethan killed Jesse for the first time. Even them, you made a deal with the vampire nurses. When you, Ethan and Benny found out the town was full of vampires, you gave up on that."
Erica turned toward the huge black-furred wolf in the letterman jacket.
"In our timeline, you had Sarah and Benny team up with Jesse against Stern. Jesse warned you that Stern could use the Lucifractor to destroy Sarah. It was Sarah that bothered you most, not Rory, definitely not me! You read about in the notes you made in our timeline and Sarah sent you"
This made an impression on Ethan, who remembered reading about this team-up. Ethan looked embarrassed, and, unwillingly, his wolf ears folded-over.
"I guess your Team Sabre is back to killing all the vampires again" Erica said.
"Only evil vampires" said Sarah with great emphasis. "It just happens that good vampires aren't usually a thing.
"They are not supposed to be" said Coquette coldly. "I can tell why you were Jesse's undoing, and no doubt Anastasia wished severely to be rid of you while not shaking her traditions of vampire bretherenship. But that is tre unimportant! I see you are agreed."
"Agreed" said Sarah reluctantly.
Ethan, for his part, nodded. He started signaling with his paws. He held out his left paw flat, and used his right paw to tap it.
"Here's my smartphone" said Sarah. "Try not to scratch it up?"
"I have a stylus pen" Erica volunteered reluctantly. "Be careful with it."
The stylus pen was Dusk themed.
Ethan carefully left a message; it wasn't easy. A werewolf's paws aren't meant to hold a pen or a phone. But still, he didn't scratch anything and even managed to carefully back to Sarah.
"Man, am I hungry" said Sarah, reading her phone. "My head still hurts from that sledgehammer! I can't wait for daylight to turn back! I hate being a werewolf! Sorry Sarah had to get that off my chest!"
"You had to put all that it?" asked Erica, looking scornfully at Ethan.
"He also wrote I was right about Jesse" Sarah added, as she continued to read the message. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We've got to listen to her."
"Bien!" smiled Coquette. "He is the reasonable one, Ethan. So, the first thing you must know is that this marchand démon du temps has fooled you all quite thoroughly. His schemes are like the layer cake. The ones you have foiled, they are the frosting on top. But below are two much richer schemes. Let us say it is la riche gateau Dacquoise of France. But . . . I meander."
"What's in these layers?" asked Sarah.
"The frosting, those are, as I say, the marchand démon du temps offers and threats to get you to keep this altered time in place. But the first layer underneath, he tricked you into thinking that to undo his mischief would be much harder . . . you do not need the special power of the Lucifractor. He does not alter time through the natural or the fiction scientific means. This is an evil being meddling in time. He leaves a, how you say, invisible miasma, a slime, an ectoplasme in the, how you say, point d'inflexion. Anything holy, anything deadly to my kind, would have been enough to remove the spell around where the bolt was removed."
"That doesn't really help us" scoffed Erica.
"But hear now the deepest layer of la gateau Dacquois!" insisted Coquette. "You do not, how you say, aim the Lucifractor at the bolt! It will destroy your bolt! You would have been, how you say, marooned here"
Sarah, Erica and Ethan looked at Coquette in shock.
"Bien!" said Coquette. "You aim at where the bolt should be. That will set things to the way you wish. You may say a few words to revoke this accidental wish. But once you begin, the world will, as they say, right itself on its axis."
"But what words?" asked Sarah.
"It does not matter so much" said Coquette. "I can tell you now, you will know. Once the, how-you-say, empreintes digitales . . . fingerprints of the demon are removed, standing near that place you will know how to restore the march of time.
"But how can we believe you?" asked Erica.
"I will give you the assurance" said Coquette. "So confident am I that I say now to Lucifract me. I have no interest in living my final hours in this world in disgrace."
"I don't think . . . ." started Sarah.
"Is this not proof of the truth of my statement?" asked Coquette. "I am interested in restoring Andre and my clique. I give you the ultimate assurance! I know that revitalizing the timeline will restore me to my old scenes!"
"You're the only one in town who know anything about . . . ."
But before she could finish, Erica grabbed the Lucifractor from Sarah's hand.
"In fangs we trust, Sarah" said Erica gleefully. "But now . . . BEHOLD . . . THE POWER OF THE LUCIFRACTOR"
A zap of light and Coquette was a few pieces of diamond jewelry atop a pile of dust.
Erica began to laugh manically as she continued to hold the Lucifractor.
"That's enough of that" said Sarah, roughly taking the Lucifractor back and putting it in her pocket.
Erica's laugher subsided to giggles. Finally, she caught her breath.
Erica felt embarrassed, and went red in the face.
"That's . . . powerful" said Erica awkwardly. "But I think I was right to do it. You'll have to watch her every minutes, even if she meant what she said."
Sarah considered her brief experience with the dangerous vampire. Coquette wasn't someone who could be trusted. And she was, in spite of her denials, of the "mercurial temperament".
"You're right" said Sarah. "Do you think so, Ethan?"
Ethan nodded.
"Now that's done, let's get Ethan and Hodges out of here" said Erica. "I want to go home . . . and I can't believe that the way home is through Ethan's living room!"
"You're right" Sarah agreed. "Let's unchain Ethan and get him and Hodges home."
"Ethan probably has enough beef jerky to get him to sunrise" said Erica. "And . . . ."
Erica was interrupted as the side-door opened once again.
It was Trixie. She was untidily dressed in a misbuttoned coat thrown hastily over her tight jeans and low-cut blouse. That didn't
"Not her" sighed Sarah, looking at Erica.
"How do we explain . . . ." started Erica, but she was interrupted by Trixie's high and slightly slurred voice.
"Ssarah!" said Trixie, stumbling against the BMW. "Ssomeone here said you were here. The party ended and everybody went outside and they've gone. They thought that the cops would raid the partees. Where's Ethan? I know he let me ssleep, he's so swweeeeeeet, but I need him to take me home now. It doesn't matter if he's a little drunk. But . . . ."
Trixie caught sight of Ethan. The very large wolf in a letterman jacket, and chained to a beam in the middle of the room.
Trixie stared at him. Then she screamed. Then she fainted, fell on his knees, and finally arm-first sideways to the floor.
"She'll be okay, Ethan" said Sarah looking at the faint girl.
Ethan looked upset, but tied up and a werewolf, he couldn't do a thing.
"OK" said Erica with an exasperated sigh. "Let's get Ethan, Hodges and her out of here!"