Episode 5: Two of Three

Episode 05: 

TWO OF THREE

by Toni Walker

Nicholas de Charme was not going to let Sarah Osborne die.


He didn't think as he ran into her tiny house. He couldn't think of anything except saving her. She had been there when Katherine left him sixteen years ago. She had comforted him while he was in a state of grief he didn't know if he could come out of. He didn't know it was possible to feel so much. He didn't know the demon inside him could feel so much.


Sarah had changed all that. She showed him a mercy he wasn't worthy to receive, but she gave it anyway. In all their years together after that, they had never made love. He was constantly afraid that if he succumbed to the passion, he would devour her, sucking all the life force from her body.


Someone had implemented his worst fear. Someone else had drained Sarah of her blood.


"Stay with me," Nicholas insisted. "You're going to be okay." He whispered to her hoping she could hear him and know he was there with her.


Her eyes fluttered open giving him a great sense of relief, if only momentarily.


"No, Nicholas. You don't understand. I'll never make it to the hospital."


"If you've had a vision of your own death, then... then... we can change it!" Nicholas was closer to panic than he had ever been.


Sarah gasped for breath not knowing or even caring that a bright red stained her face and body.


"No!"


Nicholas wouldn't stand for such thinking.


"Nonsense. We'll make it ---- together!"


Nicholas sounded so certain, but Sarah knew it could never be. She was dying. Even if he could make it to the boundary of the Hollow, he could never cross. He must realize this, she thought.


"The boundary," she gasped. "You'll never make it past the boundary."


Her blond head sagged against his shoulder. She was unconscious. He had barely heard her hoarse utterances.


"The border?" he wondered aloud. His mind was racing, full of a complex mix of worry and hope.


He repositioned her in his arms to jump over the brick archway that stamped the area where Hollow Creek began. As he sailed through the air, he hit an invisible barrier. His form bounced back, but the velocity was so great that Sarah flew from his arms up and over the brick gateway.


A cart filled with hay broke her fall. Sarah's body made impact with it. Nicholas only hoped he hadn't killed her.


He pounded against the barrier that separated him from his beloved Sarah. If he couldn't find a way past the barrier, she would surely die.

***

Jack was angry. He hadn't been able to kill the Osborne woman.


This body that he had inhabitated was stronger than he realized. Her will was great.


"Hey! Listen here you creap!" Ella found she could still converse with Jack even if she didn't have total control of her fatalities "I am SO not into this inhabitation thing. And my God," she said as Jack passed a mirror. "What have you done to my hair? And my nails? It will take months to get them back into shape!"


Jack could bear no more of Ella's incessant rumbling. "No more! Silence, you little fool."


Ella did what only Ella could do, she verbally fought back. "Silence? You want silence? Well, then, you don't know me very well bucko!" She continued to taunt him with every song she had ever heard and made up some just to torment him.


It was when she started in on an off key version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" that Jack snapped.


"I warned you I wanted silence!" Jack picked up a knife and laid it against Ella's breast. "Taunt me another time and this body will die. But I will not. I will live on."


The words of the song caught in Ella's throat. "Did you say silence?" she whispered throwing in a nervous laugh. "OH! Silence as in ‘be quiet'. I get it."


"Don't make me warn you again," Jack cautioned.


"Silencing. You won't hear even another peep from me."


Jack pressed the knife into Ella's breast drawing a bead of blood.


"Okay, Jeez, get a life!" Then silently she added, "Somebody elses." 

***

Cora Laskey couldn't believe what she was seeing. The man was a god. A living breathing work of art.


She stood awe-struck as she gaped at his muscles. They were bunching up very nicely in all the places muscles were supposed to bunch up.


He seemed very concentrated on whatever it was he was doing. The look on his face was one of not only high concentration, but grave concern. He was a little older than her, probably by five or ten years. But what was five or ten years? It surely didn't keep Cora from looking.


It was a voice from behind that startled her. She let out a whooping yell that drew the attention of the cute guy from across the room.


"You can put your eyeballs back into their sockets now," Lane Larson said from only feet away.


Cora's eyes narrowed. The jerk was back. She let her gaze hover over to the cute guy. Definitely not the best first impression she had ever made – thanks to jerk-boy. It figured he would be the whisperer. After all, wasn't he the one who got her into this mess in the first place? Okay, maybe the situation wasn't quite as messy as she wanted to make out to be, but it was his fault the midget wizard had poofed her down here. Then she reconsidered, for a second. Why was she mad at him again? Was poofing a high crime in Hollow Creek? Maybe they should consider it.


Logic, it seemed, didn't play a pivotal role in Cora's anger. She was already angry in general because her father had brought her to this town in the first place. But logic didn't stop her from glaring at Lane either. He might have saved her life but that gave him no right to interrupt a perfectly good fantasy!


"Can't I go anywhere in this town without you showing up like a bad penny?"


Lane mocked shock and Lincoln Merlin, the cute one, tried to hold back his laughter.


"Do you have something against an avenging angel who appears out of the night to save a damsel in distress?"


Cora's laugh could not be restrained. "You saved me from a two foot red-headed wizard not death itself. Get over yourself."


"You ungrateful little wench! I might not have super powers and shout ‘here I come to save the day' but a little appreciation would be in order here." Lane had been saving damsels and misters and anyone in need of saving for a long time now. He knew when people needed saving. What he didn't expect was ungratefulness from a rude little sixteen year old.


"Appreciation? Ha! I haven't made it all the way into town yet and I've already been attacked by a wild thing-a-mabob that turned into a wizard that somehow transported me here." Her anger was swirling above her like steam. "Needless to say, I'm not having a good day!"
Linc Merlin stood not far away from the two quibbling fools and regarded them in the dim light of his laboratory. Cora wasn't exactly like he pictured, but then enchanted ones never were.


He cleared his throat letting Lane and Cora know he was indeed in the room and watching them.


Lane ran a nervous hand through his dark hair. "Hi Linc."


Linc put his attention on Cora. "It took you long enough to get here. Where is your brother? David, isn't it?"


Cora nodded.


"Hurry, there isn't much time left."


Cora gave him a perplexed stare. "What in the heck are you talking about?"
"Your powers."


He said it like she should know what he was talking about.


"They have to be invoked before the waning of the moon. If we don't time this precisely, we'll have to repeat the process one year from now." Merlin gathered objects from his table and placed them in a dark purple velvet bag.


Lane was used to strange lingo in Hollow Creek. No where else were there vampires, halflings, werewolves and strange creatures that walked the streets at night like normal citizens. So talk of supernatural powers wasn't new to him, but he could bet that Cora Laskey didn't believe in such things.


Cora let out a fake laugh.


"You're really funny, you know that? The two of you should go on tour and start a comedy team." Cora patted Linc on the back. "I hate to break this to you, but ..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I, surprisingly, don't have nor do I believe in super powers."


Linc finally had the decency to look shocked. "You mother didn't tell you? Prepare you for the change?"


"Change? Mister my mother is the reason we came to this one horse town to begin with, and that's because she's been missing for six months!"


"Missing? No, this isn't good. This isn't good at all. We'll need both you, your mother and your brother for the transference ceremony. You are evil's one great hope. If we don't protect you, all will be lost."

***

David couldn't breathe. Little by little the oxygen was being taken from him.
What had he ever done to deserve this?


Okay, so maybe he had put a frog in Mrs. Henderson's toilet and short sheeted Cora's bed every other Friday, but that didn't warrant death, did it?


He could still see what was going on around him even if he couldn't move from the statue-like pose he had frozen into. He could tell his skin was getting gray and the color of his clothes were also fading.


"This is a dream," he thought. "It has to be a very, very bad dream."


"No," said a voice farther down than he could see. "Dreams aren't usually this graphic. Or maybe they are depending on how graphical your dreams usually are."


"You can hear me?" David said inside his own head.


"Sure. I may be of the feline persuasion, but I still have a few powers in my magical arsenal."
"What do you mean feline persuasion?" David's heart leaped inside his chest when an orange tabby cat jumped up onto his arm.


"I mean cat. C-A-T." Maurice nudged David with his nose. "You're getting pretty hard there. I can't tell you how many times I've found helpless strangers encased in Morgan's spellbound prison." The cat mewled. "And I'm talking about the prison called statue that you currently find yourself in. You know, big large gray thing that will kill a mere mortal?"


"Kill a mere mortal?" Panic had definitely set in. And why wouldn't it? He was, after all, talking to a cat.


"Yup. In a few minutes, if you don't get yourself out of there, you're dead."


If Maurice was was anything, he was the king of understatement.

***

Katherine Laskey hadn't been herself in quite a while. The change started slowly. An unusual occurrence here. A strange feeling there. Until one day when she woke up, she was no longer completely in control of her body.


The part of her that remained Katherine hid away from the identity that had come to reside in her body. The identity was evil and dark and she didn't want to have anything to do with it.
If only she had warned Cora and David sooner about their birthright.


***


Richard Laskey found the Black Rose easily enough. He knew what he had to do. He had to bargain for his wife's life. He knew who was responsible for taking her away from him. He knew A.W. Larson had the power to rule even beyond the border of Hollow Creek. If he had only listened to Katherine and never taken up with A.W. to begin with. Then this all would have never happened and the four of them could be a normal family.


Now, as it stood, his two children, the pride and hope of his life, were about to be overwhelmed with a danger even he could not comprehend.


"Ah, Mr. Laskey. So, good of you to join us." An Irish brogue greeted him but menace tainted his welcome.


A.W. Larson sat at a booth in the back of the Black Rose. Bobo, the owner, stood not far away. Richard doubted he would ever leave the Black Rose night club alive.


"You have to leave them alone," Richard begged. "They're only children."


"And they are two pieces of a key that will open the gates of Hollow Creek forever. I can't leave them alone."


Bobo came up behind Richard and grabbed him by the collar.


"I hope you understand. It's not that I want to harm them." A.W. paused. "I have to. And not just for me, but for all my loyal subjects in the Hollow."


Richard's fear choked his throat. He knew he should never come here. Now Cora and David were surely dead.


"I'm afraid you'll have to leave now, it's time for dinner." A.W.'s face contorted into a mask of demonic evil and he bared his fangs to drink the blood of the man who had betrayed him. "Nothing personal, Richie."


The scream from inside the Black Rose didn't draw the attention of the patrons.