Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

by Lara Parker

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  This book is dedicated to my larger family, the Dark Shadows fans, who—with their undying devotion—keep the flame burning. Whether you raced home from school to miss not a moment, or discovered the DVDs only yesterday, if you fell under the spell, this book is for you.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to those who encouraged me to write this book and graced my efforts with their many talents. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jim Pierson, the liaison between all those who love Dark Shadows and the outside world. He has championed the show for more than forty years, organized the yearly conventions, and coordinated the release of hundreds of DVDs. He also initiated my Dark Shadows novels, thereby providing the opportunity for me to become a writer.

  I thank my editor, Stacy Hill, for her many fine suggestions, and my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, for her faith in me, and her enthusiastic support of all three of my books.

  I often turned to the keepers of the Dark Shadows archives, Marcy Robin and Kathleen Resch, who together founded and have edited ShadowGram, the Dark Shadows newsletter, for forty years. They were always willing to share their encyclopedic knowledge of the television show, make suggestions, and remind me of all the story lines I couldn’t possibly remember.

  No companion can replace a fellow writer in the long journey toward a novel’s completion, and I was blessed with several. My friend and talented TV writer Debbie Smith graciously helped shape many turns of the plot.

  Because the role of Elizabeth Stoddard on the television series was played by movie actress Joan Bennett, I sought out the wonderful biography of Joan and her sister, Constance, The Bennetts, by Brian Kellow. His book was a great help in developing the character of Flapper Liz in the 1920s, a character whose story idea was suggested by radio host and devoted fan Tony Blass. In addition, I often reached for the delightful and multifaceted books on Dark Shadows published by Kathryn Leigh Scott, especially her latest, Return to Collinwood, coauthored with Jim Pierson, for facts and details I had forgotten.

  Last of all, my affection goes to my husband, Jim Hawkins, and my son and daughter-in-law, Andy and Celia Parker, who shared their provocative ideas around the dinner table; and my daughter, Caiti Hawkins, who was pressed into reading the entire manuscript only to shame me with her originality and her free-flowing instincts in the horror genre. All of these deserve, and receive, my deepest appreciation.

  So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

  —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  Man is in love and loves what vanishes,

  What more is there to say?

  —W. B. YEATS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Cast of Characters

  Locations

  Also by Lara Parker

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  The trees draw in their shadows, a violet stain seeps over the sky, and beneath the stone walls of a hundred-year-old mansion, the vampire stirs. Encased in a smothering blackness that smells faintly of blood, Barnabas can feel an unfamiliar surge of strength, but where he lies there is no space, no air, only his foul breath, and demon memories crawling beneath his eyelids like maggots. Panicked, he gasps to breathe, claws above his head. His fingernails rip his silken shroud, and wooden splinters dig into the quick.

  Then, in the midst of his struggling, a wave of sorrow washes over him and he lies back in what he knows is a coffin. Once again, he has died forever. Had he been royalty in the Elizabethan age, an effigy would have been carved to adorn his tomb. He is that figure of veined and polished marble, hands fixed; face motionless; and buried within, a scarred and blackened soul.

  High in an upstairs bedroom of the Great House, another anguished immortal paces the floor, restless and loose-limbed as a caged carnivore. Head pounding from too much brandy, Quentin lurches toward the mirror of his bureau and grimaces at his loathsome reflection. He lifts a furred hand to blot it out, and a low growl rumbles in his chest.

  He is powerfully built, but the flood of urges that now consume him has sapped his potency. Whom will he kill? What innocent? He can sense a shift in his temperament, an exhaustion of tenderness, and flowing through his body a hideous craving. Across the snowy vista that falls to the sea, his old tormentor rises out of the water, drawing the tide in his blood. What cleaver sliced this moon in half so perfectly, exposing the opalescence within, then buried its hidden side away in some celestial cavern?

  Just down the hall—in the third-story tower room that looks out over the sea—a young man dreams of sailing over water. The sails swell, his boat heels, and his bow slips through the waves. David approaches an island where a young girl waits for him, her tangled hair lifted by the wind and her eyes the color of stars. She runs across the sand as he draws nearer, her arms outstretched, and then she is folded against him. Again and again he draws her to him only to have her dissolve in a mist. His body throbs with pulses so intense he wakes gasping for air. He hears her cry out before she disappears, turning to spray and salty foam, and leaving only the scent of roses on his hands.

  Down the sea road stands a ghostly mansion the moon has wrapped in a silver shroud. The milky columns shudder from the storm within, the windows rattle. A woman searches the rooms for a lost portrait, looking where she has looked before. High on the weed she smokes, Antoinette slams doors, overturns chests, drags clothes from armoires, blankets from shelves. She sobs and sinks to the floor, the world spinning. Where could it be? Impossible for it to be missing. Who could have taken it? She is afraid of Quentin. She had thought she loved him but now she knows how violent he can be. Why did she always make such bad choices in men? Jackie must have put the painting somewhere. In a storage room. Under a bed. In the basement. As she rakes her face with her fingers, she can feel the synapses ripping in her brain.

  Meanwhile, in an adjoining bedroom, her daughter, Jacqueline, is painting by moonlight. Her concentration is such that she floats off her chair and hovers above her canvas, her brush lifting an image out of the shadows. But it is not a painting of the boy who dreamed of her, or the portrait of Quentin her tortured mother must find. The br
ush moves by itself; something is guiding her hand. Sparks fly out of the tip as it rolls on deep maroons and magentas. A vision emerges of a brooding man she does not recognize. Coal black hair combed into curving spikes across the forehead, bloodshot eyes dark as chestnut seeds with a tiny flame in each iris. Craggy jaws and a large Romanesque nose, and faintly glimmering just inside blood-tinged lips, two enlarged incisors. With a sharp cry, Jackie throws down her brush and pulls back from the canvas. Something malevolent has risen out of her subconscious. She has painted the vampire!

  One

  Anxious to fly the night, Barnabas listened for some sound before raising the lid of his casket. Fully awake now, he assessed his predicament: this place was dangerous, too easily discovered, and if he were to survive, he would need to return to his coffin in the Old House. Antoinette lived there now, all the more reason she should become his slave.

  Antoinette! Her face floated across his mind—her mouth blossoming, her eyes hypnotic. Already, he could taste her, and—as he had done every evening since his transformation—he renewed his plan. He would draw her to him, bend her reluctant body to his, and he would force her to look into his eyes, all the while dazzling her with a power she had never imagined. Ignoring her struggles, he would find her heartbeat, and at that moment possess all that she was, all that she had been before. His pulse raced at the thought. The mystery of her past would be revealed to him—the moment he took her blood—and he would know at long last whether or not she was Angelique. Many things die, but desire is not one of them.

  His memory of her indifference when he was still a human was painful—that night at the Blue Whale when Antoinette told him she would not marry him, that she did not love him. Humiliation in courtship was a common experience for mortals, but the sting of dismissal lay outside the vampire’s range of emotions. Now that he had regained his powers, he vowed that she would come to regret her cruel rejection.

  He reached across the width of his casket—so lovingly chosen for its breadth: providing room enough for two—and was relieved to find Julia gone. Julia, his savior and his guardian. Ever since his return—had it been a month?—he had been forced to lie with her, submitting to her embrace. This after a year of agony, her fiendish elixir, the painful injections, the curative that tamed the vampire’s hungers. He could still hear the tinkle of the syringe, see her blood pumping into the tube, and feel the infernal heat when the concoction entered his veins. She made him human again, but infected herself in the process. That dark December night when she drained him and fed him and returned him to this monstrous form, he shuddered to think of it.

  He pushed open the lid of his coffin and gazed at the rafters above his head. The basement room was suffused with the odor of lilies—white lilies Christian mortals bought to celebrate Easter. Although he could not see them, Barnabas knew the walls were hung with tapestries, scenes of Elizabethan hunters on horseback chasing a unicorn. In one tapestry, the snow white beast was cornered and fenced within brambles, and the hunters hoisting spears and bows stood around in plumed hats—their shapely legs encased in striped tights.

  All these decorative efforts would be Julia’s doing. Ridiculous how a woman must adorn her nest—even a vampire’s nest—and Julia mistakenly believed lilies and candlelight would sway his crippled heart. But she was shrewd; he would have to admit that. He must never underestimate her cleverness. And oddly enough, even though they were reproductions, he rather liked the tapestries.

  Still lying in his coffin, he adjusted his silken shirt, pulled the cuffs into the sleeves of his jacket, and carefully tied his cravat, all the time considering his troubling companion. What drove her to devote her life—my God, her own blood—to this last misadventure, to this trifling with the dead? Even after they had both gone over to the dark side, she had insisted that it was love. Barnabas uttered a dry chuckle. A living death, Julia, is not what you dreamed it would be.

  He sighed, now reluctant to embark upon his night’s vile quest. What drove her, he had come to realize, was that old worn-out engine: age. She was no longer young, and now, if life were to brim, it must brim with the juice of others. For a brief period, as a human of her making, he had succumbed to a limp sense of loyalty. But now, and this was the final irony, she had terminated the treatment, given him back his powers, and—without realizing it—created a monster incapable of gratitude. As he gazed up at the ceiling of his basement prison, and at the giant floor beams of the mansion where his family resided, he resolved to be rid of her. The thought of spending eternity with her was an abomination.

  A voice floated out of the gloom. “Good evening, Barnabas, my love. I was waiting for you to wake.” Ah, she was there. Rising up, he turned to look at her.

  The room was small and the hard stone walls were burnished by the glow of candlelight. Julia was sitting among the lilies on a step that led up into the basement, and he was shocked again to see that she was not the aging woman he remembered but a vampire of shameless splendor. She wore a dress of wine dark velvet, and her arms were shapely, as were her surprisingly round breasts just glimpsed within her décolleté. He had immediate qualms when he thought of trying to overpower her, for he could see her body was as strong as a lioness’s.

  She had already ventured into the night. Her victim was reclining on her skirts, a young girl with bleached hair and a smudged face, still breathing, and the terror frozen in her eyes. Her threadbare coat was muddy—or were those bloodstains? And her bare legs were scratched. She wore no shoes and her feet were filthy, perhaps black with frostbite. Where had Julia found such a miserable wharf rat?

  Behind her, the tapestries gleamed with life. One was a scene from an elfin forest where delicate flowers and small animals surrounded a medieval lady as she looked down demurely and rested her hand on the unicorn’s long and slender horn. Barnabas imagined the three of them as a theatrical staging for his amusement—a triptych of womanhood: the goddess, the vampire, and the dying girl. Which would he choose?

  Julia smiled, lifted the girl up into her arms, and the bright head fell against her breast. “You see what I have brought you?”

  Even though he was hungry, Barnabas recoiled. “Like a house cat brings a dead mouse to her master?”

  A shadow crossed Julia’s face. She pursed her lips and spoke in a voice edged with sarcasm. “Can I do nothing to please you?”

  Julia was a new vampire, still taken with the thrill of the hunt, not aware that there was far more to feeding. After more than a hundred years, one’s victim was a delicate choice, and he had awakened this night with his selection already in mind. It was to be Antoinette, and only Antoinette. As he slid from his coffin and rose to his feet, he was conscious of his body’s new tensile strength. Once again it surprised and even pleased him.

  “I am perfectly capable of finding my own, in fact, I would prefer to—”

  “But why, when it is my joy to serve you?”

  He combed his thick, black hair with his fingers. “Julia, you must respect my wishes.”

  She rose—thoughtlessly allowing the girl to tumble among the flowers—and, floating as vampires do, drew close and placed a finger across his lips.

  “Wait. Don’t speak. I want to tell you the thoughts I had this evening as I wandered the streets.” Her skin was flushed, and he could smell blood, a not unpleasant aroma, on her breath. “I am still amazed at this new existence that I now share with you, and each discovery brings me closer to … to those complexities of your mind I have always found so bewildering.” He turned away, but she caught his arm. “Please, Barnabas, listen to me! I understand your hungers, and your remorse. And now that I am with you, you need not worry. Because I will protect you from guilt or shame. I will hunt for you.”

  He sighed. Like a good little wife.

  Vampires, if nothing else, were beautiful, and Julia’s beauty was blinding. Gone were the sunken cheeks and thrust-out chin of her middle-age years. Her amber eyes were soft, her skin glowed, and her hair had grown
long and brushed with bronze. Was that why she was able to wander Collinsport in the evening without being recognized?

  When she leaned against him and took his hands, he could see beneath the glittering facade the same needy and manipulative woman she had always been. Sensing his prying thoughts, she glanced back at the dying girl.

  “Don’t you want her?”

  Still breathing, the girl stared past him, and then her eyes locked on his. She seemed unable to move; perhaps her back was broken.

  “Please, help me,” she whispered. A pink bubble formed on her lips. Yes, he could share her with Julia, and they could bond on that feast. Fill their veins from the same source. He imagined himself bent over the young body, his mouth pressed against her throat.

  “No, I’m not interested,” he said, and moved away as he began his preparations for the night.

  Julia’s copper eyes narrowed while he smoothed his black suit jacket over his scarlet vest and reached for his cape. As he adjusted its dark folds across his shoulders, it skimmed the floor of his prison and the candle flames danced. Then he reached back into his casket for his cane. The silver head of a wolf molded to his hand.

  She became agitated in the old way and took hold of the back of his cloak. “Where are you going, Barnabas? Don’t go without me.”

  Vile juices rose in his throat. Perhaps the moment had come. His hands twitched and his fingers curled on the cane’s handle as if they were grabbing her by the neck, forcing her down. But her vigorous energy restrained him, and he was distracted by another lady in the tapestry, the one with the flowing hair. The unicorn had risen up and placed his feet in her lap. She wore a golden crown and had a wicked glance that reminded him of Antoinette—or was it Angelique? Recalling his night’s mission, he longed to flee, but he stopped beside the flowers, the sweet odor rising to his nostrils, and turning back to his waiting companion, spoke with as much control as possible.

  “My dear Julia, we are not involved in a love affair. Much less a marriage. Did you believe that we were? I don’t have to explain where I am going.”