Subj: Scent of Lilacs No More -- 3
Date: 6/10/99 2:47:32 AM Central Daylight Time
From: beverly lacroix
Chapter 3
Insanity, Sleep, and Prying Eyes
Quentin never made it to the Old House that night over two weeks ago. He had had every intention of going to Barnabas, and telling him about Daphne. He had changed his mind about Roxanne, but every day, he vowed he was going to Barnabas for help, but the addiction to the pleasure Roxanne provided him was too powerful. He knew he was behaving like a drug addict. Briefly in 1950 he had tried heroin, and liked the way it had made him feel, but soon gave it up when one of his best friends died of an overdose. Quentin knew he wouldn't die from it, or even become physically addicted, but he had become addicted to the sensations that it gave him, and it was hard to get over the need for the powerful drug. He had suffered through it as a gift to his dead friend. He didn't try anything like that again. How in the hell had this happened to him? This addiction was 100-fold the heroin addiction.
He looked like hell, felt worse if that were possible. He had been able to avoid his family, and Barnabas and Julia. He heard David and Hallie at his door on several occasions, but had ignored them, and eventually they had stopped coming. Elizabeth and Roger had kept their promise they had made to him, when they asked him to move to Collinwood, and that was to not interfere with his privacy. Julia was to busy with Barnabas to concern herself with him unless Barnabas requested it. He and Barnabas never interfered with each other's personal life. So, fortunately, he had avoided questions about his appearance from prying family members.
The visions were worse in that they were more intense by the day, and were lasting longer. He had figured out that if he had something available, he would be able to eat between the visions. It was getting harder, because they were more often and longer as the days went by. He was starting to have seizures from the powerful inhuman orgasms derived from the visions. And he couldn't control himself enough to keep the seizures at bay, and he had hurt himself on furniture a couple of times. Sometimes he could grab a little sleep, but his sleep was filled with nightmares of death and the smell of blood. The smell of blood was always with him, and he couldn't scrub hard enough to wash it off. He was going to move out of Collinwood, the thought saddened him, but he knew he could not give up Roxanne. He didn't need prying eyes, when something fell to the floor when he was in the grip of a seizure, so he would be leaving tonight. He could feel the beginning of another vision. The shocked feeling was beginning to take over, and also he vaguely smelled the sickening scent of lilacs, and it made him angry, angrier than he had been in a long time.
Controlling himself, he said in a very low even voice, "get out of here, you bitch! Go haunt someone else. I don't give a damn about you, Gerard or the dead kids you've got with you. Take Collinwood. It's yours. And if anyone asks, tell them Quentin Collins gave it to you." Quentin was starting to laugh a mad man's laughter. He was in the embryonic state of madness.
Quentin got up, smiling now, the laughter had left him right along with the scent of lilacs. God, why doesn't she stay away, he thought. Well, at least she's not around as much. Quentin thought about Barnabas, and was glad he didn't sense his presence or see him in Roxanne hardly at all anymore. He never did figure out why, except that maybe they were both vampires, he knew that didn't make a lot of sense, but he didn't care enough to pursue its deep and mysterious meaning. That thought caused Quentin to start laughing again. The laughter stopped as soon as it started he was strangling from the powerful vision that had assaulted him with no warning.
Clutching at his throat he couldn't breathe, it was frightening at first, but the pleasure overtook the fear. Then he slept, while the Portrait regenerated his blood once again.
Roxanne was just as addicted to him as he was to her. His blood was like sparkling sunlight. It was like drinking from a newborn night after night. There was no darkness in his blood. The first time she had taken him, she knew something was different about him. He was no ordinary mortal. Then she found out he was Quentin Collins, Barnabas' cousin, and that made him all the sweeter. She would never let him go. He would be hers forever. Barnabas had made her, and he didn't even remember her. They had loved each other with the aggression of two people who knew their love was doomed. She had told him she would willingly die for him when he had held her in the gazebo. She had wanted him with every fiber of her being, and wanted to be with him forever. She remembered he had lowered her gently to the ground, and spoke to her of death, and told her not to be afraid for after tonight they would be together forever, and he had continued to hold her until he had to leave. Then he was gone, and she had not seen him again until coming back to Collinsport a few months ago. He did not remember her, but she remembered him.
She had been so frightened when she had risen the next night alone, and she couldn't feel him anymore. She hadn't known that Ben had went to Quentin Charles Collins, and his brother Gabriel and told them the "secret," and made them promise to comply with Joshua's wishes and not destroy Barnabas. They promised, and Ben took them to the mausoleum, and they secured the cross to the lid of the coffin, and chained it shut, and it had remained that way as far as anyone knew until Willie had unchained him in 1967.
Barnabas had awoken at sunset that night and saw the crucifix, and felt its power, and he knew what had happened. He thought about Roxanne, and he felt he would go mad in this coffin thinking about her out in the world alone without him, so he had instinctively went into the hybernation sleep of the vampire, and had not become conscious until someone had disturbed his rest. and with that sleep went the memory of Roxanne. It was the mechanism of survival for the vampire when faced with madness, he had automatically blocked Roxanne from his blood, his mind and body, that's why he didn't remember her when he saw her. He only wanted to find the Roxanne he had loved in Parallel Time, and she looked so much like her, Barnabas had taken an interest in her. He never recognizedor guessed she was a vampire. He would not accept that his "Roxanne" would have been an evil creature of the night, so he didn't note that he could not hear her heartbeat, he knew there was something different, and assumed it was her psychic abilities.
As Quentin left through the back way of Collinwood leading from the West Wing, so intent was he to escape and get to Roxanne, he didn't notice the figure watching him or hear the sharp intake of breath at his bedraggled appearance. Dirty, unshaven, tears in his shirt, and no jacket, he looked terrible. That didn't bother David Collins as much as the paleness of Quentin, the gauntness of his face, and the mad look in his eyes scared him, and the low laughter made him want to run. Quentin only had one shoe on, and the other one was ripped at the toe, and no socks. What had happened to him? David wondered. The paleness, he assumed was from not going out in the sun for a long time, but what about his appearance? He only saw someone like that once, and that was when his father had taken him to Boston, and there had been a homeless person on the street they were walking, and he had on clothes that didn't fit correctly, and were dirty and torn, and was talking to himself, and laughing crazily, and he had reached out to grab David, David screamed, and his father hurried him in the restaurant they were going to eat lunch. He never forgot the look in the man's eyes. It was haunting, the eyes of a mad man, with only deadness behind them, no light, nothing. That's what Quentin had looked like. He would go tell his Aunt Elizabeth, no, better not worry her. His father was in Europe, so that left one person he could go to and tell them.
He would go find his cousin, Barnabas!
To be continued...