Wolf Moon Rising (25 page)

several—”

She blurted out, “You want to move in? In order to defend

me from an attack?”

“Oh, you would not be in danger during the day, and that is

when I would be searching the woods for his lair. On the other

hand, during the night, my presence would certainly discourage

his coming round.”

Th

is was too much. Barnabas could not imagine a worse idea.

Having this horrid man in the same house? He tried climbing

further up the stairs, but he was too weak. Nothing to do but alter his form. Humiliating, but necessary. He would be small and

vulnerable, but at least he would get a good look at his opponent.

Th

inking he might even attack if he got the chance, he shrunk

his body into a small rodent and spread his cape into wings. Th

en

he soared into the room.

But his transformation did not cure him. He was no more

agile as a bat than he had been as a wounded vampire. Crashing

into the wall, he clutched the door to the hallway and hung

upside down on the frame. Fluttering helplessly, he managed to

fl y toward the light.

“What was that?” Blair suddenly cried out. “Did you hear

that strange fl apping? I think something fl ew into this room!”

Antoinette looked around. “It sounded like a bird, but that

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would be weird this time of night—”

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Lara Parker

“Th

ere it is! Blair cried, “It’s hanging from the chandelier.

It’s— I think it’s a bat!” Blair ran to the window and threw open

the casement, then grabbed the poker from beside the fi re and

began to wave it about.

Barnabas could have sworn it was Nicholas Blair. Th

e resem-

blance was startling— the fl at face, the widow’s peak, the same

cold nasal voice when Blair snarled, “Get away, you fi lthy crea-

ture!” He managed to land a clumsy blow that knocked Barnabas

to the fl oor. Hunching over, his face contorted, Blair raised a

booted foot to stomp the life out of what he thought was little

more than an oversized mole.

Panicked, Barnabas fl apped onto Blair’s leg. Th

en, while the

foolish man hollered in disgust, he dove for Blair’s eyes, brush-

ing his face with his wings, before he fl ung himself out the win-

dow into the dark.

Sweating and shaking from his eff orts, Blair closed the case-

ment, replaced the poker, and tried to resume his conversation

with Antoinette. However, Barnabas had seen enough. Flutter-

ing back through the basement window, he fl ew to the stairs and

hovered there, waiting. Th

en, growing impatient, he reached for

Antoinette with his mind, calling to her, demanding that she

break away and come to him. When she fi nally spoke, her voice

was faltering.

“Th

is has all been fascinating,” she said. “However, I am

not feeling well. Perhaps you could come back another time.”

Th

e weakness in her tone was obvious, but she seemed to main-

tain her poise as she led him to the door. Th

ankfully, it closed

with a resounding shudder, and he heard her going up the stairs

to her bedroom.

She did not return to him that night. Perhaps she was em-

barrassed by her angry outburst, or she might be considering

Blair’s off er. He wondered whether she thought the conversation

had been overheard and did not want to discuss it. What ever her

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intentions, he now had a new determination. As soon as he had

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recovered, he must track down this Blair and destroy him.

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

Dragging his feet, he made his way back to the table where

Antoinette had been reading the tarot. Th

e cards littered the

fl oor, all but one, left face up where she had been sitting. It was the last card she had drawn. Had it been meant for her or for

him, he wondered?

It was a picture of a grinning skeleton in a full suit of armor,

riding a white horse and carry ing a banner. At the top of the

card was written xiii, and at the bottom—death.

No wonder she had begged again for her freedom.

With great eff ort, he returned to his casket and managed to

pull himself inside. His mind was a blur of confl icting conjecture.

Th

e outer walls of his sanctuary had been breached. He was in

grave danger. And what must he do to save himself from his true

adversary whose ire would be unleashed again the next full moon?

Th

at night Barnabas recognized the power of a curse very

much like his own. Until Quentin had become his rival for An-

toinette’s aff ection, they had been friends, and now, as he fell

into a stupor and fought a loss of consciousness, Barnabas knew

he must track him down once he had recovered, reassure him

that the painting was safe. He told himself that even though

Quentin had meant to destroy him, it had not been Quentin but

a monster that had attacked him. And that same monster would

come for him again. Quentin in his beastly form was capable of

killing anyone in the family, and every full moon a werewolf

would threaten all of Collinsport. If Quentin’s curse had re-

turned, then he, Barnabas, was responsible. Th

e portrait of the

werewolf kept him human. But Barnabas had ripped it in half

and left it in the cemetery.

Suddenly frantic, Barnabas struggled to sit up but immedi-

ately he became so dizzy he collapsed back in his casket. Th

ere

was no way he could make his way to the graveyard, and once

again, as had happened hourly since he had been attacked, he

thought of Julia. How reckless he had been to chain her in her

coffi

n. She alone possessed the power to cure him, and he needed

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her now more than ever.

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Lara Parker

All through the day as he slept, his brain was in turmoil.

What had he done? What would happen when the full moon

came again? And what irony— just as he had been prepared to

relinquish all human emotions and to embrace his vampire’s

nature, he was encumbered by decisions made when had been

human, decisions that now required moral resolve. He must

fi nd a way to save Quentin in order to save those he loved, and

also to save himself.

But did he truly wish salvation? Perhaps the werewolf was

meant to write the fi nal act of his miserable life. He did not desire goodness, only freedom from guilt. He was sick of the world, and

a second werewolf ’s attack could be the culmination of his fate,

the last scene in the tragedy. He had wandered the stage too long.

In the dark before dawn, Barnabas received another visitor.

A girl stood in the doorway of the cellar, her silhouette against

the brightening sky and an eerie refl ection in her gray eyes. She

had come before, in the twilight just before his awakening, and

she had lifted the lid of his coffi

n and looked down on him. Her

hair was long and dark and her eyes were pale blue, huge and

questioning. He longed to speak to her but she always vanished

before he woke. At times she murmured words he failed to un-

derstand, or he was not certain, but he thought she spoke his

name before she touched his face where her tears had fallen.

Slowly he came to realize who she was, and he began to

look forward to her visits, if only to sense her presence while he

lay in a state of dreaming. She was Antoinette’s young daughter,

Jacqueline, the taciturn girl with the mysterious nature. It was

she who had found him in the snow. Did she come to see if he

were still alive?

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E l e v e n

How would you get an old car started, one that had been sit-

ting for a long time?” David had discovered Willie working

on his dilapidated truck back behind the kitchen, and this

seemed to present a rare opportunity.

“What you want to know for?” said Willie, already suspicious.

“Oh, no reason, I just wish I knew about stuff like that. My

father never taught me anything— not even how to change a

tire.”

“Naaah, Mr. Roger ain’t a mechanic, that’s for sure.”

“But you know a lot about cars, don’t you, Willie?”

“You’re still too young to be driving a car. Bad enough you

tearing around on that old snowmobile.”

David was determined to win Willie over. “I know, but you

seem to keep this truck running.”

“Piece of junk.”

“I’ve always thought you

were so smart in that way,

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Willie.”

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Willie stretched his back to relive the ache. “It’s a lot of

work.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Pullin’ out the spark plugs and regappin’ ’em.”

“Hmmm . . . What does that do?” David thought he knew,

but he pretended to be ignorant.

“Makes the engine fi re right up!”

“Is that the carburetor?”

“Naaaah, that’s the battery. Th

is here’s the carburetor.”

“Say you found a truck like yours sitting out in a fi eld and it

had been left there for a long time—”

“All the gas in the tank, that would be evaporated. You’d

also be lucky if the water left in the radiator, or the rain, didn’t rust out the engine.”

“But could you start it up?”

He had been stung by Jackie’s words, “Too bad you can’t

get it running,” as if he were incapable of such a thing, a boy

with no skills. She had tied her gauntlet to his wrist. All he

could do now was daydream of taking her riding in the Due-

senberg, their own private chariot, down the road in the dark,

the powerful engine humming like the lowest pipes on a church

organ.

Willie was under the hood tinkering with the carburetor,

an odorous mist rising off his thick jacket. “I donno about noth-

ing like that,” he said.

David was cold, standing with his hands in his pockets,

watching Willie work. He wondered whether Willie even knew

about the old car in the stables, and just in case, he was afraid to say too much. Willie stopped to take a breath and, rising up,

wiped his hands on an oily rag, which reeked of gasoline, before

he muttered, “You ain’t seen Mr. Barnabas around, have you?”

David was caught off guard, and he didn’t know how to

answer. Willie had always been Barnabas’s only servant. He had

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often seen Willie running errands for Barnabas and Julia, but

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he had never stopped to think about it.

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

“No, I guess I haven’t,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound like a

lie. “Why?”

“Well, it’s just seems like I seen him and Miss Julia most

every day and lately they seem to be gone off somewhere.”

“Maybe they went on a vacation.”

Willie shook his head. “I don’t think Mr. Barnabas would

leave without telling me. Th

ere’s certain things I take care of for

him.”

“Really? Such as what?”

“Well, I can’t really say. Private matters you wouldn’t be

interested in.”

David hesitated, then said, “I have always thought that

Barnabas was an enigma.”

“Was a what?”

“You know, a mystery. Strange. Diff erent. Don’t you agree?”

Willie selected a wrench from a cluttered toolbox and de-

scended beneath the hood once more. His voice was muffl

ed. “I

wouldn’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Especially lately. We never seem to see him during the day,

and his car, for instance. He never seems to drive it anymore.”

“Now you stay away from that car, Mr. David. It ain’t your

business—”

“Oh, come on, Willie. I just mean— Okay, tell me the truth.

Do you really think Barnabas is like the rest of us in this family?

As you just said, you do special things for him. You’ve known

him a long time, haven’t you?”

Willie grunted from the eff ort of removing something. “I

guess about as long as he’s been here at Collinwood.”

“So what do you really think of him?”

“Well, if you want my opinion, the whole family is
diff erent
, as you say. You, fer instance, askin’ about lost paintings and old

cars.”

“But Barnabas most of all, right?”

Willie came out from under the hood again, and he stood

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up and looked David in the eye.

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“It seems to me, that you and I both know something is up

and neither of us wants to say what it is.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for instance, I know that Dr. Blair is planning on

having one of them séances with Mr. Quentin.”