Chapter 15
Stokes Family Home
Julia came from the bathroom walked to her dressing table and sat on the stool and looked into the mirror, her eyes were haunted and her mind was filled with what had happened earlier. She knew she would have to face her guilt over what had happened with Dave Woodard, she just had hoped it would not be for a little while. Now it had manifested and he was tormented and she needed to ease his spirit and send him into the light. Reaching for her night cream she began to lather it into her arms and on to her face and she sighed. Elliott sat watching his wife in torment and it tore at his heart. He had only asked one question of her and that was did she have anything to do with Dave's death and she had admitted her part in it along with Barnabas.
He lay in the bed watching her through his half framed glasses with his book opened on his lap. "My dearest Julia do come to bed my darling and let me deal with how to take care of he errant and tormented spirit of Doctor Woodard." He watched her tense at the mention of Dave and she turns on her stool to look at the man that had done nothing but show his devotion to her since and before their marriage.
'You do not understand Elliott; maybe I deserve this torment for my part in his death. He did not realize what Barnabas was doing to protect himself from discovery and I had to do what I could to make it as painless as possible. Barnabas was going to make him into what Barnabas was and I could not allow that to happened." She stood, paused before her side of the bed, slipped her housecoat and shoes off and slid into the bed next to him. She curled over to press her slight body next to her husband's and she inhaled the scent of him, which made her feel safe and secure. The hint of his hair tonic, the light odor of his cigar he had smoked earlier, and the wood scented soap he loved to use to bathe. All this combined together to represent security and a safe haven in her tumultuous life.
Elliott smiled, slid his glasses off and folded then inside his book as a bookmark, closed his book turned slightly to lay it on the bedside table and then slip down next to his wife to gather her into his arms. Kissing the top of her head he smiled and spoke softly tightening his hold on her, "My darling Julia, you will never need to fear or know the guilt of those actions again after tomorrow night I shall put the rest any such apparitions being of a friendly or hostile nature. I am your husband and as such I am here and I will use everything in my power to see you safely through this troubling time."
Julia smiled hearing his deep voice vibrate against her cheek while he spoke of his defense of her against the supernatural. She turned into his hold and this night she would share her time and intimacy with her husband and when she slept this night she would know she was safe in his arms and in his bed. Pressing into Elliott she kissed him deeply which ignited a flame between them booth.
Sorin's cottage by the ocean
Sorin entered his house and found it dark but a coldness that was unnatural and not of this world and he frowned, whispering softly he called, "Gilda show yourself if you are here." He waited and there was a soft light that glowed in the darkest corner of the room, then from the soft light a small lovely child stepped forward. She wore a nightcap and a long white gown. She walked forward to stare with an unsaid accusation upon her face. Her little arms behind her with her hand locked around the upper part of her arm she shifted back and forth rocking on her feet to look at Sorin. 'Oh hello who are you/" Sorin smiled she reminded him of his dear deceased sister when she was at an age of innocence as this one was. He stepped forward to peer down into her angelic innocent face.
"You know whom I am and you are a very bad man." She stepped around him and walked about the room dropping her hold on her upper arm to peer at the items in the room. Taking her fingertips to dance them across various pieces of furniture in the room. "You should not hurt my brother or his wife, she is not for the mean man on the island, she is for my brother and you know it." She turned to lock her accusing stare at him and folded her hands neatly in front of her to study him with a tilt of her head.
Sorin liked her despite the fact she was trying to make him feel guilty as to why he had come to this small fishing town on the east coast of this country. "You are a very sweet child, but you know nothing about why I am here and what has to happen. You being from the netherworld should know more than the rest of us that you are born over and over again. Elizabeta has come back as Victoria and her first husband wants her back."
Sarah Collins with a face as young as the day she died, but with the wisdom of having roamed this earth for many years looked at him with eyes far to wise and old for one so young. "You are wrong she might speak the words and she might look the part, but she is only Miss Winters his and your Elizabeta still roams this side of the world and has not been reborn just as I have not been reborn. There are reasons for this happening and you need to see that for yourself." Sarah turned and walked towards the door and turned and smiled. "However, you are right she does long to be with her Prince." Walking through the door into the wicked night left Sorin to smile and think about what she had said. Had Angelique something to do with Elizabeta's appearing to be a part of Victoria? He felt that would not matter to Vlad he had felt her, seen her and tasted her and to him Victoria Collins was Elizabeta.
Old House
Victoria sat before Radu who walked around her in the center of the room watching her sitting prim and properly straight in her chair and her gaze fixed ahead. When Radu circled her, his image was in her view for only half the time he was doing his mocking smile. Coming up behind her quickly he sniffed her neck and her hair and sighed. "You smell so sweet, so deliciously sweet. She was sweet, deliciously sweet, just like you and you smell like her and she smelled like you. . . Sweet." She jumped when she felt him behind her. It had been his mouth that had held no breath when he spoke. He had laughed and she stiffened her body.
"I do not know what you want or why you are doing this to me. I have done nothing to you or your Prince to warrant this kind of attention." She tried to shrink herself down more so that he did not affect her in the way he seemed be affecting her now. She just wanted him to leave he alone. She vaguely remembered him when Vlad had taken her. That had been a time she had tried desperately to put out of her mind and her memory. Now he was here and he was just revisiting horrible times that were soon best forgotten and for some reason he was taking great pleasure in trying to evoke fear in her. "Why have you brought me here?"
"Gilda my pet come out and introduce your self to Elizabeta or as she wishes to be called Victoria." From the depths of the shadows the very beautiful voluptuous blond glided into view. Her piercing blue eyes that glowed with a hint of red then ice blue. When she smiled Victoria felt revulsion wash over her, her very beautiful white teeth were not normal. There were two long protrusive teeth that were elongated canine teeth. "Gilda is a present for your dear Barnabas. She has been given permission to 'taste' him. It would seem my master feels your husband betrayed us all by becoming human again." Gilda deep throaty laugh filled Victoria with fear.
She glided forward took her fingertips and danced them over Victoria's cheek. "Do not fret so my dear, I shall treat him well and he will not be neglected for long." Gilda brushed Victoria's hair from her shoulder and smiled. "You are right Radu ma love, she is sweet, she moved in and with a lustful desire to taste Victoria she sniffed her and brushed her tongue up her neck and stepped back. "Almost too sweet for the master but he will be pleased she is a rare find with her blood and her innocence even after a married she has only had one lover."
Victoria's face crumpled up in disgust when Gilda had licked her throat and she tried not to recoil from her brushing her hair from her shoulder. "Please don't hurt my husband. " Victoria ignored Gilda and laid her pleading gaze upon Radu. "If you need to take someone than take me but don't hurt my husband." Her words were said with a timorous voice that held the right amount of sincerity that for a moment Radu was given pause to look at her to really look at her and to admire her for her love she held for a man that did not deserve it.
Bracing up his reserve he had to admit she had affected him with her genuine sweet nature and that oh so innocent pleading stare it would not be easy to forget that particular voice or look. He knew she would change once she was with Vlad; he would corrupt her nature into something foul and disgusting like Gilda. He never like Gilda, she did have a body that was desirable and in demand by most males. But deep down when Vlad had first taken her and brought her over, she had a nature as pure and sweet as Victoria. It had not taken long for him to corrupt Gilda as it would eventually do to Victoria. Radu was not sure how he felt about this happening but then again Vlad was his Prince. He thought perhaps she might be the exception to the rule and she would not be corrupted.
"It is not for us to decide the fate of your husband my dear, it will be up to the Prince to decide his fate. When he stormed his castle bringing with him the death and destruction he had to our Prince who was there to plead for mercy for him?" This helped Radu to get refocused. "Who was there to help him through one of the most horrendous un-death that any of his standing could face? Your Doctor Hoffman mad sure he felt not only the loss of his love but he very existence was placed in jeopardy. Who was there to plead for his resurrection?" Radu had grown passionate in his appear to state what he felt his Prince had a right to be heard.
"Let me tell you what he did while he was waiting for his body to regrow and to become strong enough to emerge back into his life." Radu had moved in close to Victoria's face and now he was nose to nose with her, his eyes wide and his mouth speaking the horrors that must have gone through his Prince while he waited to be reborn. Victoria had lifted her hands placing her palms over her ears. She did not want to hear this she did not want to see the hate that boiled just beneath the surface of his gaze.
"Let me tell you what he felt, his skin melting from his body as he quickly aged over 500 hundred years, his eye sight going to nothing, the screams of feeling the pain of growing that old so quickly and the breaking of his bones which eventually began to crumble . . . " He watched her slump over her hands over her ears her eyes tightly closed and shaking back and forth.
"Please, please stop this . . . Please stop!" She begged him as she fought the tears that burned her eyes.
"If that was not enough he had to lay there in a body that no longer was much of a body, and know that he was being carried to a crypt where he would lie in a vat of sacrificial blood. His minds alert his body no long his. He had to wait and wonder what his life would be from that point on because the one thing that had given him hope to live was gone from his life. Yes, he had to watch the very thing that was a part of his heart taken from him. Those that took her… and it was you Elizabeta, it was you that was taken. Those that took her left behind a joke a saboteur that would destroy him. That mockery jabbed the needle into him and then disappeared. We all were devastated by the loss of our Prince." Radu paused and saw she was bent over crying for the fate his Prince had suffered.
"Now you cry for him, while all the long you were here continuing on with your life and marrying the very man that orchestrated his supposed death. Now you plead for mercy from the very man that had been known in his time as Vlad he Impaler?" Radu stepped back and turned dramatically to Gilda, "Go do what the master asked you to do." He watched Gilda smile with a dispassionate glance to the trembling sobbing figure of what would be the Princess some day. A part of her thought her weak and unworthy to share the bed of her master. Floating back into the shadows she was gone in a matter of seconds. He heard her speak in soft sobs.
"I did not know. I was not told, I had no idea how horrible it might have been for him. All I wanted was to live with the man I loved, not Elizabeta's love but mine and he was threatening to hold my family hostage what was I to do?" She laid her head over bent to her lap. Her shoulders shook with the pain she was feeling for what the man who had frightened her and threatened her family had suffered. A wicked as he was she would not have wished that on him. Radu took enough pity on her to take a kerchief and dangle it between his two fingers under her nose. She reached for the kerchief and used it to dry her eyes and sniff, then gently blew her nose into the clean clothe. "Thank you." she spoke through an emotional laden voice.
Radu could almost pity her. He sighed and turned to look at the entrance they had taken to come to this hidden room. "In one weeks time, if you do as you are told I will keep Gilda from harming your husband. Our master has your mother, your two sisters, your friend Daphne and your friend Maggie Evans. It will be a matter of time that we procure Dr. Hoffman she will have the most to fear out of all of you for she was the one that made the formula that sent our master into his grave to wait and plan what he would do to all of you to get his Princess back." Radu had stepped close to her and towered over her bent form. "You think on this I shall let you know when you are to meet me here in this room in one week's time. We need your family to realize that we have the power to take every thing they held dear to their hearts."
Victoria sat up and looked into the hate filled gaze of the man before her that had just detailed what happened to his Prince and she had found it horrific and barbaric. She did reason the man had killed thousands in a sadistic way and perhaps that was what he had deserved but obviously he was not dead and he had time to think, to plan and to carry out his horrible retaliation to her and her family. She just had not expected him to target her family this way, Daphne had nothing to do with it and neither had Lydia or Carolyn or her Mother. She was beyond her grief at the thought that they might become a creature like that Gilda person that was now trying to find Barnabas and hurt him. "Please I will do whatever you need me to do just don't hurt my family. Let them alone they had nothing to do with this. I would not wish to see any of them done harm because of me. Please I am begging you to leave them alone!"
Victoria pushed up to face him only to have him slam her back on the chair and get in her face and growled. "Too late, they should have thought about soft targets before they did what they did to our Prince and his revenge is usually horrific. History has recorded his deeds and even today in your time they speak of Vlad the Impaler!" Victoria was horrified and frightened. She swallowed hard and lowered her chin.
Looking at the crumpled kerchief in her hand she closed her eyes and said softly. "I wish I were any where else but here." The room grew cold even Radu felt it and he watched amazed as Victoria's form began to shimmer and disappear. A soft voice of a very young child floated around Radu,
"You should not harm or frightened my sister in law she has done nothing to you or to your prince and now you will do good to find her. She is no longer with you here in this time but she has transcended time and now she hides form you all." Sarah walked into the room and glared definitely at Radu. "Now its your job to try and find her and bring her back, if you can. For now she is safe from all of those that wish her harm." Sarah smiled and faded from view. Radu growled slammed his fist to the small table in the room.
"SORIN! APPEAR NOW!" He yelled out and waited.
In a small cottage by the sea the subject heard the supernatural call and sighed softly closing his eyes, moving his hand with a simple gesture he disappeared and appeared in front of Radu. "You called me and this had better be good." He glared at the Captain of Vlad's guard whose only job had been to protect and guard the Princess. "I thought you were to tell Victoria of all that has been done so far and tell her what her role would be. Where is she? I thought you were going to bring her here at this appointed time to complete this part of your mission" He looked around and again he said "Where is she?" He waved his arm through the air and around the room for an indication of where was Victoria.
Radu growled, "The brat sent her back in time again; she has hidden her from us. Can you undo what she has done?" Sorin frowned and closed his eyes and sighed. This was more complicated than he had realized and he had just started the next phase of the terrorizing Julia Hoffman Stokes. He could feel her essence but he could not get an exact sense of where the child had sent Victoria to protect her.
"I will deal with this problem once I have completed my next assignment, until then you will go to Vlad and tell him what has happened and pray he does not want your head on a pike." Sorin closed his eyes and disappeared with a softly uttered word of 'teleport'.
Radu was not at all happy he did not want to go to Vlad to tell him that the ghosts of the Old House had once again attempted to foil the plans of his master. Sighing softly he shifted to mist form and floated from the room and then in bat form he would fly in this dreadful weather to his master's castle to inform him of the set of unfortunate circumstances they now found themselves enmeshed in regarding the love of his life.
Stoke's Home
Elliott was lucky to have a passionate woman such as his dear Julia and now after a very hearty work out and exchange of heart felt words of love he lay with Julia in his arms sleeping lightly, know they both had filled a need that was unspoken between them. Elliott closed his eyes and began to drift off when he first heard the soft anguished voice of the dearly departed Dave Woodard. "Julia…. Julia… why? Why? I was your friend, I meant you no harm….. How could you do this to me!"
Elliott had felt her tense in his arms and she hugged closer to his body and spoke softly. "Is he there?" She was pale and trembling against him, he had to admit the room had grown cold and the voice was David Woodard. Lifting his chin to peer at the apparition it certainly did look like Dave Woodard.
"My darling I need you to stay still and let me deal with this." Elliott rolled from the bed and approached the problem. "Be gone spirit of the past, you are no longer welcome here or any where." Professor Elliott T Stokes had dealt with the dead filled with unrest this had a different feel to it. The spirit of Dave Woodard completely ignored Elliott's command which was the first clue that this was not a true apparition but perhaps an illusion.
"Elliott! Make it go away!" Julia was in tear again and she was hugging the blanket close to her body. She watched her beloved husband approach the spirit and wave his hand thorough the apparition.
Once again the horrific image of Dave Woodard stood bedside to her and began to lament. "Julia! Why? Why? I was your friend? I loved you Julia!"
Elliott smiled lifted his two fingers on his right hand and uttered "El Librium Vanquish!" The image shimmered and then disappeared. The room began to warm again and he smiled. "Well my dear I think I have figured out what is going on now. You have nothing to fear. Whomever is projecting this is image is feeding off of your deepest fears and using it against you. It is just a matter of putting a warding spell on you and you will not see this again. But my dear it does seem we have an enemy in our camp. We need to draw our resources in closer."
Walking back to the bed he slid in next to Julia and pulled her close to his body to comfort and hold her tight. "No one shall harm one hair of your head my dearest Julia. You are my life and my wife and I will do whatever it takes to protect you."
Julia leaned up to kiss him lightly on his lips and laid protectively in his arms and spoke with her gratitude. "I love you Elliott and I know you will protect me and for that I am so grateful and will cherish you until my dying day."
Sorin watched the two and he smiled. "You may have a short wait my dear Doctor, Professor Stokes I did not realize how powerful you were. I must keep my eye on you a little longer I see."