In Tenebras Proferre

A Dark Shadows story by Jean Graham


She hated Nicholas.

    With every nightfall, every awakening, every rise from the casket hidden deep within the House by the Sea, she renewed her vow to avenge the living death with which he had cursed her.

    Angelique and revenge were very old acquaintances.

    She sensed his approach before he opened the door, and turned to face him with carefully schooled innocence, the now-closed coffin between them.

    "I'm glad you're awake," he said in those short, clipped syllables she'd come to loathe so much. "I have an appointment this evening at Collinwood. I shan't be gone long. You're to remain here, in the house, for the night."

    "You know very well that I can't. I need..."

    "Summon Haskell. Bring him here to you."

    "I don't want Joe Haskell. You promised me..."

    "Barnabas Collins. Yes. I know. All in good time, my dear Angelique. All in good time. But meanwhile, until I am ready to permit you that indulgence, you will remain here, and you will summon Haskell. Allow no one else in -- or out. You and Eve are both to remain here. Disobey me, and there will be consequences. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

    She singed him with her eyes in answer, but Nicholas merely smiled in that smug, deprecating way that made her detest him all the more.

    "Well then," he said, and touched the brim of his dress hat in mock deference, "I'll bid you a good evening. Oh, and you needn't wait up for me. I may be quite, quite late."

    And with that, the door clicked shut after him, leaving her alone to brood... the better to plan her revenge. She heard his footsteps reach the front door, listened to it open and close. And then moments later, another set of footsteps, quicker and lighter, descended the stairs, and again the front door opened and closed. Their house guest, it appeared, had departed. "Well," she murmured, "so much for allowing no one out."

    She had no clear idea what Nicholas' plans might be for Eve. But that venomous creature in a woman's guise was integral to whatever it was. And Barnabas, who had helped Julia Hoffman to create Eve, now sought for some reason to destroy her. Why?

    Perhaps, she mused, it didn't really matter why. Barnabas' plan to kill Eve could very well work in her favor. If she set the trap just right...

    She hurried upstairs to the chamber Eve had just vacated, and carefully prepared the bed with pillows and quilts arranged to resemble a sleeping figure. Yes. That was perfect. Now she had only to find some way of luring Barnabas here from the Old House. He mustn't see her until the moment was right, until she could reveal herself and take him for her own once more. But how to do it...

    Perhaps a walk in the night air might clear her head, help her to think.

    Certain that Nicholas was now well away, she left the house by a servant's door, taking a well-traveled path leading to the cliffs above Widow's Hill. She found the crashing roar of waves on the rocks far below and the stinging cold of the salt air both an exhilaration and a comfort. Here, Collinsport's widows had once mourned their husbands, cruelly taken by the sea. Here, doe-eyed Josette had once leaped to her death, fleeing the very curse that Barnabas had recently escaped. The curse Nicholas had now inflicted upon her.

    "Damn you!" She swore the oath against Nicholas Blair aloud, shouting into a wind that snatched up her words and swept them out into the chill, uncaring clouds. It didn't stop her from following the oath with yet another vow. "I will defeat you. I'll find a way. And Barnabas will be mine again. Nothing you can do will ever keep me from him. Nothing!"

    As though in answer, the wind blew colder, surrounding her in an icy embrace. Something in that cold reached into her being and made her newfound vampire senses tingle.

    "We will defeat him," a voice in the wind whispered. "Together."

    The breeze evaporated then. But that voice...

    She turned a complete circle in search of its owner. Nothing. Nothing but the dark woods behind her. No one on the cliffs. No one. Yet the feeling that someone, something was watching her persisted. With a shiver, she turned again, this time to make her way through the trees, on a long-familiar path to the Old House.

    Swollen gray clouds parted just as she came within sight of the mansion, bathing its white columns blue in the moonlight. She knew without seeing that Barnabas was there. Cured of his curse he may be, but he remained hers, a part of her. That he would never escape.

    Something moved between the columns. She saw a slender blond man, a stranger, approach the door, grasp the bar beneath the bronze lion's head and knock. She could hear the sound it made from here, though mortal ears could not have. Her cold heart quickened when Barnabas opened the door – oh, so long since she had last seen him! – but even her heightened senses did not allow her to hear their conversation. She must get closer.

    "They do persist in vexing us, don't they?"

    Startled at the intrusion, she wheeled to answer with an angry retort – that died on her lips. The owner of that soft, half-whispered voice stood not two feet behind her, a tall, pale man with glacier-blue eyes and sensuously red lips. She'd never seen him before, yet something within her vibrated with both recognition and an overwhelming sense of awe. Not only was this another of her kind, the emanations told her it was also a vampire of immense age – and considerable power.

    "Who...?" No anger in her voice now, merely an intense curiosity.

    "I am called Lucius," he said. "And by unfortunate coincidence, Mademoiselle Angelique, you and I have problems that happen to share a name. Nicholas."

    She glanced back toward the Old House, where the visitor had just been ushered inside. "The young man with Barnabas?"

    "Yes. My persistently errant son, who for more than seven centuries has sought to be rid of the gift I have given him. He believes that Barnabas Collins may be the key to accomplishing that ambition."

    Curiosity now gave way to genuine puzzlement. "How can either of you possibly know so much about Barnabas? And about Nicholas Blair?"

    His reptilian smile sent shivers through her. "Ohhhh." He all but purred the word. "When it comes to my Nicholas, I make it my business to know. But he must not be permitted to gain access to this cure your Barnabas Collins has achieved. And you are going to assist me in seeing that he does not."

    The presumption took her aback for a moment. How could she, who now bore the very curse Barnabas had escaped, possibly prevent another from learning his secret?

    "It's quite straightforward, really," he said, for all the world as though he'd read her thoughts. "In tebnebras proferre. To bring darkness. That is a goal it seems we share. Help me to retain control of my Nicholas, and I will help you to be free of yours."

    Oh, now this was intriguing. She had to know more. "So tell me, Lucius. Just how would you go about accomplishing that? If you know anything about him at all, then you know that Nicholas Blair is not an adversary to be taken lightly."

    Again, that lethal, humorless smile. "Nor," he rasped, "am I. I shall see to it that Blair will find himself hopelessly smitten by a member of the fairer sex. A mortal member called Maggie Evans. Once he is ensnared, you have only to exploit that weakness, and you will defeat him."

    Nicholas in love with Maggie? What would their Master have to say about that? A weakness indeed...

    But she couldn't quite hide the raw hint of suspicion in her voice. "And what precisely must I do to earn this favor?"

    The wind seemed to blow colder when he took a single step toward her, yet it disturbed nothing of his black clothing, nor his closely-cropped blond hair. "A momentary distraction," he said, "is all that I require. Something to preclude my Nicholas sensing the nature of my intervention."

    "But how can I...?"

    She never finished the question. One pale hand reached out, slender fingers coming to rest with the lightest of touches on her forehead.

    Angelique gasped.

    At once, her senses were overwhelmed with flashes of a life spanning an incredible two millennia. She saw Vesuvius obliterate Pompeii. Roman armies marched into Britain. The Black Death ravaged Europe, peasants stormed the Bastille, and war upon war upon war littered battlefields the world over with legions of the dead. Through it all, a crimson haze overshadowed the faces of thousands more – thousands who had died by Lucius' own hand. Among these were a few who had returned from that death, to the darkness of an unlife. Two in particular stood out from the rest: a lovely, raven-haired woman, and a young man with fair hair and pale eyes. Daughter. Son.

    "Janette and Nicholas," she said, speaking their names with familiarity, as though she had always known them. "Your children. Your family."

    "Yes. And mine they shall remain – with your able assistance."

    "What can I do?"

    "My Nicholas has an affliction suffered by most men throughout the ages. A weakness for beautiful women. Simply do what comes naturally to your sex, mon cherie. Waylay and seduce my Nicholas, and I promise you that I shall deal with yours."

    The darkness seemed all at once to swallow him then. With the final word of his statement, he was simply no longer there. But while she could not have explained why, Angelique had no doubt whatsoever that Lucius was a man – a vampire, she amended mentally – who would keep his word.

    Encouraged, she quickly made her way down to the Old House. Well-concealed in the shadows, she peered through the window into a fire-lit drawing room, where Barnabas and the young blond Nicholas stood on either side of the mantel, Josette's portrait forming a ghostly white image between them.

    "Believe me," she heard Barnabas say, "I wish I could tell you there was an easy answer, a simple cure. But I can't."

    "Please." The desperation in young Nicholas' voice was plain, even in a single word. "I'll do anything, give anything, to be free of this, to be human again. If you've found a way, then surely there's hope..."

    "I'm sorry." Barnabas cut the plea off with a peremptory tone Angelique knew only too well. "I have no idea how you came by this information. But you must understand that to speak of it at all may endanger others – others whose lives I value very highly. This cure was a fluke, Mr. Thomas. The accidental side effect of an experiment that cannot – will not – be repeated."

    No, it mustn't be. Angelique directed the emphatic thought toward Barnabas, delighted when she sensed a tenuous connection, too faint for him to recognize her, but definitely there. And to be certain that it is not, to be certain that Nicholas Blair's plan is ruined, you must destroy Eve! You will find her in the House by the Sea!

    Somehow, without knowing how, she knew that he had heard her. When young Nicholas asked why, he hesitated at length before saying, "I will not risk the lives of the Collins family. It's as simple as that."

    Though his back was to her, Angelique could easily imagine Barnabas' face: stern, uncompromising, dismissive. A Collins family trait, that look. Joshua and Jeremiah had worn it as well.

    Nicholas Thomas (not the surname he had borne in Lucius' vision), was, however, not so easily deterred.

    "I'm more than capable of maintaining secrecy, Mr. Collins. And I'm well able to fund any necessary..."

    Again, Barnabas interrupted him. "It's out of the question," he said curtly. And now came another familiar inflection – one clearly implying threat. "For your own sake, I must insist that you pursue this no further."

    "I won't stop trying," came the equally adamant reply. "I can't."

    Angelique knew the words before they were spoken. Barnabas' final dismissal. "Then I'm afraid there's really nothing more to say. Good night, Mr. Thomas."

    The candles flickered as though some chill and unseen breeze had invaded the drawing room. Young Nicholas turned to go.

    Angelique moved away from the window, into the darker shadows of the nearby trees, and waited there until Lucius' son, his face a study in disappointment, came out onto the broad, pillared porch. The door had no sooner clicked shut than she sensed Barnabas' heartbeat retreating, heard the opening and closing of the east door followed by his footsteps swiftly vanishing into the woods. Angelique smiled. She knew precisely where he was going and how long it would take to walk there on mortal feet. But while he made his way to the House by the Sea, she had a bargain to fulfill here, beside the Old House, with Lucius' disobedient son.

    Moonlight dyed both the white columns and his blond hair a deep indigo blue. He was quite beautiful in that light, this deceptively "young" vampire. At his sire's touch, she had seen flashes of his mortal life: nobleman, crusader, chevalier. A knight of the Holy See of Brabant and a sworn disciple of Christ – at least until the dual temptations of immortality and a beautiful woman's charms had impelled his deadly fall from grace.

    Beautiful women, Lucius had said, were this one's weakness. Well then...

    She stepped out of the shadows the moment he left the porch, though even before she revealed herself, a throbbing vibration deep within told her he'd already sensed her presence.

    "Who...?"

    He had no time to finish the question. The moment she came near him, Angelique found herself overtaken by a blood lust so powerful that nothing on Earth could have kept her from him. They embraced with the ardor of long-parted lovers, their kiss brushing lips for only a moment before straying at once to the rich bounty of the veins nearby.

    Fangs pierced flesh simultaneously. From the start, Angelique felt sheer, unparalleled ecstasy, a state somehow enhanced all the more by the giving of her own blood in return. In an instant, they became one, her life of but a few short centuries co-mingled with nearly eight hundred years of his own. Her life in Martinique, her passion for Barnabas Collins, their marriage, his betrayal of that bond and all that came after flowed freely from her veins. Into her own she drew the life of a nobleman's son conscripted to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem. She felt the agony of a sword wound, saw the dark horrors of a Moorish prison, and felt the bitter, disillusioned emptiness that had ultimately led him to Paris, Janette, Lucius – and the darkness of the undead.

    She wanted this euphoria to go on forever, but something had already begun to intrude. That same vibration she'd first felt at Lucius' presence sang in his son's blood as well. In it, she saw a clear vision of Nicholas Blair as she had never seen him, his eyes devoid of guile and staring vacantly at a pale hand held out before him.

    Lucius' hand.

    She heard the same chill voice that had spoken to her on Widow's Hill now tell Nicholas Blair that he would fall in love with Maggie Evans, that this mortal would mean more to him than life itself, and that he would do anything, sacrifice anything, to make her his own.

    The new light in Nicholas Blair's eyes was one with which Angelique was intimately acquainted. He would know now, as she had known, what it was to love a mortal.

    "No..."

    Young Nicholas' exclamation severed the blood bond so abruptly that she cried out, anguished at its sudden loss. In the next moment, his strong hands had grasped her shoulders and forced her away to arms' length, gold fire burning in his eyes.

    "What is he doing? What is LaCroix doing?" When she gave no immediate answer, he shook her with a fury that made those terrible eyes glow brighter still. "Tell me!"

    She wrenched free and stepped back to meet his gaze with all the defiance she could summon. "It's very simple, really," she said coldly. "You belong to him. And Barnabas Collins belongs to me."

    "Why?" he demanded in a voice that vibrated within her just as Lucius' had done. "What does this Evans woman have to do with the cure that freed Barnabas? You know the answer, don't you?" That voice wrapped chill claws around her heart while the flaming eyes burned a pathway into her mind, seeking to bend her will to his own. "You know," he said, "and you will tell me."

    So very tempting to succumb to the sheer power of his command. And in truth, she'd have done almost anything to return to the rapture of the blood bond. Anything except surrender her hold over Barnabas Collins.

    "No." Her forceful reply clearly surprised him. He promptly released her, the fire in his eyes rapidly fading to a frosty blue rife with profound disappointment.

    "I won't stop looking for a cure," he said. "Not now, not ever. If this... distraction... was his means of destroying Barnabas Collins' cure, then I'll find another. He won't stop me. And neither will you."

    She laughed, and that too seemed to surprise him. "I have no interest in your conflict with Lucius," she told him. "He's made it possible for me to restore Barnabas' curse and in the process, defeat Nicholas Blair. Those are my only concerns."

    "Oh, but you do have another," he said. "You want to be free of this curse as much as I do. You can't deny that."

    "No. But I will find my own way back, with a petition to my own Master. It is a way you cannot share, down a path you cannot follow. Good-bye, Young Nicholas. I wish you well in your quest. But now I must return to mine."

    He opened his mouth to voice yet another objection, but she walked away from him then, and his words died unspoken. She had no more patience for the problems of others: she was far too close to achieving her own goal to care about another's. Barnabas, so near to becoming hers again, was by now arriving at the House by the Sea. Thanks to Lucius, she would have him now without any fear of reprisal from Nicholas Blair. All for distracting Young Nicholas for just these last few moments.

    A worthy exchange.

    But she put both of them out of mind as she slipped into the trees and fairly flew back to the House by the Sea. She entered through the same servant's door by which she'd left, and hurried up the stairs, her cold heart pounding in anticipation.

    She reached Eve's room just as he threw back the coverlet, fully prepared to kill the monstrous creation so vital to Nicholas' plans. But the bed, of course, contained only lifeless pillows. A trick.

    For the briefest of moments, she savored his shocked expression. Then slowly, deliberately, she stepped from the shadows into the light.

    "Hello, Barnabas."

    Shock was now compounded by disbelief. "Angelique," he murmured. "Impossible!"

    She allowed herself the faintest of smiles. "You thought you were rid of me, didn't you? Well, you were wrong."

    His brow furrowed. "But you're gone. Nicholas Blair destroyed you!"
    "And he allowed me to live again."

    "No."

    "Frightened, aren't you?" She reveled now in twisting the knife: anything to inflict the pain he had once caused her. "Ohhh, I like seeing that expression on your face. I've been waiting for this moment for a long time."

    When she moved closer, he warily retreated, shouting, "Get away from me!"

    But she kept coming closer, imprisoning him with a gaze that would never allow him to escape her again. "Aren't you curious to know why I'm alive? How Nicholas allowed me to live?" She reached to embrace him, her fangs now fully revealed. "This is what I am. This is what Nicholas has made me."

    His cry of pain at her attack sent sheer, unbridled joy coursing through her, along with the first delectable taste of his blood. Lucius‘ words returned to her as she fed.

    "In tenebras proferre. To bring darkness."

    Tonight, I bring that darkness, Barnabas. Tonight, you are mine again, as you have always been and always will be.

    Mine!