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Bitter End
By Kay Kelly
Rating: M | Status:
Completed | Genre: Drama | Series:
Prequel to Thorns Along
The Way
Summary: Original Series. A werewolf has been killed... but just who
was he?
Warnings: This story is for mature
audiences only. Do not read if you are under 16 years of age.
1955
Dr. Julian Hoffman had been nodding over his records. But he snapped
to attention as Jamison Collins burst into his office, wearing a
stricken look. The head of the Collins family fumbled in his pocket for
a newspaper clipping, shoved it across the desk, and collapsed in a
chair.
"Werewolf Report," Julian read aloud. "Marseilles.
Authorities in the remote village of Charlebois are sticking to their
story that villagers using...using silver bullets...that villagers using
silver bullets...killed a werewolf during the last full moon."
He choked over the words. Stole a glance at Jamison, then resumed
reading. "After the creature died, its body was allegedly
transformed into that of a man, probably in his late twenties. The body
was burned by superstitious locals. But the man is said to have been
white, well over six feet tall, and quite handsome, with coal-black hair
and blue eyes. Further investigation has established that he carried a
forged U.S. passport identifying him as Barry Kendall, undoubtedly an
alias."
Julian looked up, ashen-faced. "My God, Jim. This was...your son?
Gavin?"
"I'm not sure," Jamison said miserably. "I don't know
what name he's been using. But the description fits."
"I can't believe there are many werewolves in this day and
age." The elderly doctor shuddered. "Even after all these
years of dealing with the problem, the idea still strikes me as
medieval."
"If Gavin is dead, it's my fault." Jamison's voice was tight,
strained. "He left Collinsport because he knew both of us couldn't
get away with slipping into Windcliff during every full moon. Not
indefinitely. He probably never found a doctor to help him as you've
helped me."
"It does require...quite a commitment. No pun intended. The doctor
has to control a facility with secure, padded cells. And be willing to
do some very unpleasant things." Julian's stomach churned, as
always, when he thought of the countless dogs and cats sacrificed to the
werewolf-Jamison over the years. But how nightmarish might those years
have been, if he had not realized early on that confinement during the
full moon was not enough? Realized that unless the wolf were allowed to
vent its fury on living beings, attempts to cheat the curse would fail,
and the timing of the transformations become unpredictable.
Jamison leaned across the desk and gripped his friend's hands.
"Julian! You have to help me again." He was struggling to keep
his voice steady, but tears welled in his eyes. "If Gavin is dead,
I don't know whether the curse will pass to my younger son. No one has
ever fully understood this curse, even the Gypsy who started it."
Gypsy. The first hint he had dropped, in all these years,
regarding the origin of the curse.
"Please, Julian! Find an excuse to be with Roger during the next
full moon. You know I can't do it myself."
Julian forced the image of the mysterious Gypsy out of his mind.
"Of course, Jim, I'll do it. Wearing a pentagram, as I always do
around you. I haven't forgotten I helped your wife persuade you to
father children, in the belief I could find a cure before they came of
age.
"But, Jim--all I can do, that first night, is observe. I can't make
Roger spend the night in a cell without telling him why. And he may not
be destined to become a werewolf."
Jamison nodded. "I understand. I killed a dozen people, years back,
and the law wouldn't look kindly on your having covered it up. I can't
ask you to share the secret with anyone, even my son, unless we're absolutely
sure he won't talk. Can't afford to talk."
"Hear me out, Jim! If I thought Roger was likely to become a
werewolf, I'd be in favor of trusting him with the secret. But I've done
a lot of research into lycanthropy. I can't speak with certainty--there
may be more than one type of curse--but all my research indicates that
if the eldest son in an afflicted family lives to adulthood and becomes
a werewolf, the curse won't pass to a younger brother on his
death."
"Oh. Th-that's a relief," Jamison said in a small voice.
"Thank you. Do you know anything about the next generation? Whether
the curse will affect only Gavin's eldest son--if any--or Elizabeth's
and Roger's as well?"
"Sorry, I have no idea. But Liz only has a daughter, and she hasn't
looked at another man since Stoddard's disappearance, right? And Roger
is shaping up as a loner without much interest in women. So we may never
have to cross that bridge."
"That puts me in the curious position of hoping I never have
grandsons."
When Julian found himself at a loss for words to fill the silence that
followed, Jamison said softly, "I never should have married."
And then, after a longer silence: "I never should have been born.
It's all my fault, everything that's happened to Gavin and...and the
Collins family. I never should have been born!" He buried
his face in his hands, and the tears came at last, gut-wrenching sobs.
Julian groped awkwardly for words of comfort. "Jim, it may not have
been Gavin who was killed. Who am I to say how many werewolves there are
in the world?" Idiot! Six-foot-plus American werewolves, with
black hair and blue eyes?
Jamison struggled to compose himself. "I know there aren't
many." He seemed on the verge of saying more...and suddenly, he
blurted it out. "There is one other possibility. That I know of.
But that...wouldn't make me feel any better. If it wasn't my son who was
killed, it was my father!" He broke down again.
"Your father?" Julian rocked back in his chair, stunned. Was
Jim losing his grip on reality? "Jim," he said urgently,
"Edward Collins has been dead over thirty years! And he never would
have fit the description in this paper.
"I...I assume you mean someone else was your real father. But to be
a possibility in this French case... Jim, you're seventy. And being a
werewolf hasn't kept you from aging. How could your father appear to be
in his twenties?"
"Through magic, of course." Calmer now, a man reasoning with a
slow child. "If you can believe in the existence of werewolves, you
should be willing to believe this, too.
"I haven't actually seen him since I was twelve. But the Gypsy told
me--"
"The Gypsy? The one you said was responsible for all this?"
"Yes." Jamison sighed, running a hand over his eyes. "I
suppose, having said this much, I should tell you everything. I know you
won't repeat it. And the Gypsy--the person I originally wanted to
protect--has been dead almost as long as Edward Collins. Secrets have a
way of taking on a life of their own..."
He settled back in his chair. "You already know some details of my
bizarre childhood. That my mother, Laura, was an evil supernatural
creature. A Phoenix, who tried to kill my little sister Nora and me. She
was defeated and destroyed in 1897."
"Yes, I know," Julian murmured. He'd fought long and hard
against believing that. It was no wonder Jim hadn't dared tell him more.
"I don't know whether that had any connection with my father's
problems. But please, in judging him, bear in mind what Laura Collins
was. The powers she had.
"The man I now know was my father was supposedly my uncle. Edward
Collins' youngest brother, Quentin. We were very close when I was a
child, and I adored him. He was only fifteen years older than I."
Julian pursed his lips, but said nothing.
"Where to begin... Perhaps with the origin of the werewolf curse.
I've already aroused your curiosity about that Gypsy.
"Magda Rakosi was a Gypsy fortune-teller, with a smattering of real
occult knowledge. Just enough, it turned out, to make her extremely
dangerous.
"When Quentin was in his mid-twenties, he married Magda's younger
sister Jenny. Three years into the marriage, she had become hopelessly
insane. Quentin bore some responsibility for that, but by no means all.
"The insane Jenny found him in the arms of another woman--not my
mother, one of the servants--and attacked them with a butcher knife.
Quentin had to fight her off, but he panicked and accidentally choked
her to death. It was definitely an accident. Quentin had his faults, but
he wouldn't have harmed Jenny deliberately, if only because he was
already terrified of her sister.
"In the heat of anger, Magda put a werewolf curse on him and--as
she thought--all his male descendants. Later, she realized the killing
had been accidental. She reconciled with Quentin, and tried desperately
to remove her curse. But she couldn't.
"However...several months later, a powerful sorcerer, Count
Petofi--undoubtedly acting from some ulterior motive--gave Quentin a
portrait that freed him from the effects of the curse. From then on,
during the full moon, the portrait changed harmlessly into a portrait of
a werewolf--and nothing happened to Quentin."
"Amazing," Julian muttered.
"That's not all. It was known, somehow, that Quentin's aging
process would also be deflected onto the portrait! But someone stole it.
That placed him in constant, terrible jeopardy. He was afraid to be near
his loved ones. So he left Collinsport, went in search of the
portrait--and was never heard of again. He may have died before the turn
if the century. Or he may be alive today, still with the appearance of a
twenty-seven-year-old.
"It's unclear what would have happened if someone destroyed the
portrait, not in the 1890s, but many years later. Quentin might have
aged horribly, all at once. But he might simply have begun to
age normally--and, of course, fallen victim to the curse again."
Julian saw where this was leading. "And a description of Gavin
Collins would also fit Quentin?"
"That's right."
Julian stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Coming from you, of course,
I can believe all this...fantastic though it sounds. And if you know it
to be true, I can understand your concluding Quentin must have been your
father. With a fifteen-year age difference, it is biologically possible.
"But, Jim, from your account of what happened, there's no way it
could have been your fault!"
Jamison moaned. "It was...
"Julian, I didn't just conclude Quentin must have been my father
because he was a werewolf. I hadn't known about his problem. In fact,
when he left, I imagined it was because of me. Because I, narrow-minded
fool of a child, had condemned his behavior in a personal matter that
was none of my business. The choice of one woman over another.
"Magda found me crying over it, and assured me that wasn't why he
had gone away. She said it was a grown-up problem she couldn't tell me
about. But Quentin still loved me, and wouldn't want me to be upset.
"The werewolf curse struck me nine years later. I never would have
made a connection with Quentin. But Magda was there again, there to hide
me and clean me up, already prepared with a pentagram medallion for her
own protection.
"She had been waiting, all those years, to learn whether the curse
would affect me. When it did, she was devastated. I remember her wailing
and sobbing, trying to take all the blame on herself.
"That was when she told me the whole story. And told me about a
talk she had with Quentin, before he left. A talk that broke her heart.
"I should explain that Quentin was born when his parents were in
their forties. They may have loved and wanted him, but they were dead by
the time he was six. His brothers and sister--ten to seventeen years
older--resented him from the start, as an unexpected rival for part of
the damned fortune. Not that they were that fond of one another, either!
Their grandmother controlled the purse-strings, and they were all
hell-bent on currying favor with the old lady."
"Charming family," Julian said dryly.
"Yes, wasn't it? Tragedy later brought them together. By the time
you knew them, Carl was dead, and Edward and Judith were good friends. I
often heard them speak fondly of Quentin--say they wished him well,
wherever he was. But the atmosphere in which he grew up was nothing like
that. Any of them would have gone to any length to discredit one of the
others.
"Quentin was ten years old when Edward married Laura. And in
addition to her other vices, Laura was a pedophile.
She seduced Quentin when he was ten. If 'seduced' is the right word.
From what he told Magda, it was...closer to rape. Much closer to
rape."
"I see." Julian's face darkened. "As a doctor, I know
there's more of this than we like to think, Jim. Go on."
"He told Magda he honestly believed that he could only have stopped
her, then or on later occasions, by screaming for help. If he'd done
that, she would have turned the whole thing around, accused him of
luring her to his room and setting her up. Edward would have believed
her. Never mind that Quentin had no motive for doing such a thing.
Edward would have jumped at the chance to tell Grandma Edith his brat of
a brother was inventing monstrous lies about Laura.
"Quentin told Magda he cried all the time. And he...hit the bottle.
He was a heavy drinker before he turned eleven. It should have been
obvious something was very wrong. But in that family, no one gave a
damn. Laura continued having her way with him.
"He was fourteen when Laura became pregnant, and he was terrified.
He realized he could be the father of the baby she was carrying--me--and
guilt over what he'd done to his brother drove him to consider suicide.
He had no way of knowing whether he or Edward was actually my father.
Edward, in his stuffy way, was delighted when I was born--so it was
clear he had been having sex with Laura, and had no doubts about my
paternity.
"Quentin was so conscience-stricken that he vowed never to let the
situation occur again--and he found the strength, finally, to resist
Laura and refuse her sex. In case you've been wondering, my sister was
definitely not his child.
"But Laura anticipated that he couldn't be swayed, and found
another way of tormenting him. When he said no, she acted as if
that was all he would ever have had to say to discourage her. Just to
make him feel worse, more guilty about it. And in later years she was
always giving him evil little smirks, as if they shared a dirty secret.
"I think Laura did a great deal of damage to Quentin,
psychologically. In his teens, he became a notorious womanizer--and he
treated his women badly. In that last, long conversation with Magda, he
told her he had come to understand why. He had been angry and humiliated
over the things Laura had done to him. But he hadn't dared retaliate
against her. So he took it out on other women, women he could dominate.
Punished them."
"Yes, that's understandable." Julian was staring into the
distance, lost in sympathy for a wounded, disturbed teenager he had
never known. He brought himself back to the present with difficulty.
"But, Jim, something doesn't jibe. Everyone has heard rumors about
your family. I've heard it whispered Quentin Collins had an affair with
Edward's wife as an adult, and was disinherited--"
"That's true. I'll get to that part of it." Jamison’s eyes
misted. "God, I can still see Magda, sobbing and almost
incoherent... I had to pry the story out of her bit by bit.
"Quentin only confided in her because he knew he had to tell
someone, before he left town, that there was a fifty-fifty chance I was
his son. He knew enough about werewolves to realize I was in no danger
until I grew up. And he'd hoped, desperately, that Magda or someone else
would find a way to lift the curse, so he'd never have to tell her what
she...might inadvertently have done.
"But in the end, he did have to tell her, and beg her to watch over
me. She became distraught, they both wound up weeping
uncontrollably--and once the floodgates had been opened, he told her all
his secrets.
"He told Magda he had really loved Jenny when he married her--loved
her for her wild, free spirit. I had always known that, as a child. No
other explanation made sense. He didn't stand to gain anything,
financially or socially. Jenny wasn't pregnant. And if he had married
her while he was drunk, and regretted it later, he could have gotten an
annulment.
"But something had always puzzled me. From the day Quentin brought
Jenny to Collinwood, Edward made her feel inferior and out of place. I
think he took sadistic pleasure in it. He shattered her confidence,
crushed her spirit--and Jenny deteriorated rapidly.
"Quentin couldn't cope. He wasn't well enough adjusted, himself, to
be able to give his wife the emotional support she needed to survive at
Collinwood. When she... ceased to be the person he'd fallen in love
with, he left her to flounder, and reverted to his carousing, womanizing
ways. Jenny's condition worsened.
"But Quentin must have seen that coming, within days after they
moved in! Why didn't he take his wife and move out? Get her out of
Edward's reach? Most people assumed he valued his place in Grandma
Edith's will above all else, and was determined to remain at home so
he'd be in her sight, in her thoughts, every day.
"But I knew that wasn't it. I had heard Grandma herself urge him to
set up housekeeping in either the Old House or the House by the Sea. So
he wouldn't have had to go far. Moving that little distance, out from
under the same roof as Edward, would have made a world of
difference--probably saved his marriage, and his wife's sanity. And
Grandma would have thought more highly of him for wanting that degree of
independence.
"So why didn't he do it? I finally learned the reason from
Magda..." Jamison had to pause, battling his emotions. At last he
said, unsteadily, "It was because... he felt...a responsibility...
toward me. The child who might be his.
"He wasn't afraid for me sexually, not then. He couldn't believe
even Laura would molest her own child. But he knew she was an unfit
mother, a bad influence. And Edward, with the best of intentions, was
incapable of showing the affection I needed--and had a blind spot about her.
"So Quentin stayed. Regardless of the cost. He wasn't a very strong
man, in terms of will power, and he knew it. But whatever strength he
had, he channeled toward his number one priority. Which was...protecting
me."
"I... I see. Thus far." Julian found his own voice shaking.
"But the affair with Laura--"
"Ah yes, the affair with Laura. People had an explanation for that,
too. They thought Quentin had seduced Edward's wife for revenge, because
of the damage Edward had done to his wife.
"And once again, even as a child, I could see that didn't make
sense. If Edward had never found out, what satisfaction would there have
been in the revenge? And when he did find out, Quentin stood to be
disinherited! Grandma might tut-tut at Edward's behavior, but it was
Quentin's she found totally unacceptable. And he knew her well enough to
have foreseen that.
"Magda gave me the real answer. Ten years had passed without
Laura's showing any sexual interest in Quentin. But that changed when he
married. His being someone else's husband made my perverse mother want
him more than ever.
"He was determined to resist her, even after he had resumed
sleeping with other women. And he did resist. Until"--Jamison
swallowed hard, blinking back tears--"he saw her looking lustfully
at me. She might never have used me that way, it might have been
an act for his benefit, he knew that. But he wasn't willing to take the
chance. He let her have him instead.
"Then he let Edward catch them! He didn't want to be
disinherited, but he still...had his priorities. He hoped Edward would
divorce Laura and never allow her near us children again.
"But Edward kicked him out, with Grandma's blessing, and
was prepared to forgive Laura. So Quentin wooed her, told her he'd
fallen in love with her, and induced her to run off with him. He
deserted Jenny--and although he didn't know it at the time, that caused
her mind to snap. But he achieved his objective. Got Laura away from me.
"Several months later, in Egypt, he actually plotted to have her
killed--and thought he succeeded. But later still, they both came back
to Collinwood. Separately, as bitter enemies.
"Quentin had written to me from England, and I had interceded for
him with Grandma. She let him come home, but never did reinstate him in
her will. Laura's reappearance was a surprise. She was destroyed soon
afterward, and when Quentin left for the last time, he had no worries on
that score.
"But...but if I...hadn't existed, none of it... Don't you see,
Julian? Quentin began his married life at Collinwood, despite the risk
to the woman he loved--to protect me. Resumed a sexual
relationship with Laura--to protect me. Convinced her to run away
with him--again, to protect me.
"All those actions contributed to Jenny's madness. And her
madness led inexorably to the werewolf curse."
"So you blame yourself."
"How could I not? Remember the incident I mentioned, just before
Quentin left Collinwood, when I condemned him for choosing one woman
over another?"
"Yes."
"I won't go into the details, which aren't relevant. But even then,
I later learned, he had been making a sacrifice for my sake. And I
told him I hated him! He may have gone through his whole life
believing that."
"I'm sure he knew you too well to take that childish outburst
seriously." At least I hope he did. "Jim, no one asks
to be born! We all have to play the hand we're dealt.
"And you've done a remarkably good job. You fought the werewolf
curse, didn't let it destroy you. You killed several people before we
found a way to stop the killings -- but you used the Collins wealth to
aid your victims' families, even though I warned you there was no
guarantee the funds couldn't be traced. And later, you financed a dozen
medical breakthroughs while we searched for the cure we never found.
"As for the young Quentin Collins... Jim, your existence gave
meaning to his life! Because of you, he found a strength and heroism
within himself that he might never have found otherwise. That's no less
valuable because it was a heroism no one else could appreciate."
Jamison tried to smile. "Thank you, old friend." He closed his
eyes wearily. "I think we both know... the real reason I've been
talking so much."
"Why is that?"
"To postpone dealing with this. Perhaps even to create the illusion
that by talking, I'm doing something.
"But the truth is, there's nothing I can do. Either my son or my
father has been hunted down and shot like an animal"--his voice
quavered--"and with millions at my disposal, there's not a damn
thing I can do about it. I can't hold him in my arms one last time.
Can't give him decent burial. Can't even learn which one it was!
"I'll confess something. In the absence of information like this, I
had never--never!--let myself think of either of them as possibly
being dead.
"And now I have to face it, don't I? One of them--either my
firstborn son, or a man I idolized, who turned out, beyond my wildest
hopes, to be my father--one or the other is really, truly
dead."
"Yes." Probably both, Gavin dead a week and Quentin a
half-century or more.
Jamison sagged in his chair, looking old and tired. "Funny,"
he said.
"What?"
"All these years I've hoped, for Quentin's sake, that he never
learned whether I was or wasn't his son. Never knew what I've been going
through.
"And now I'm starting to realize...uncertainty can be the worst
torment of all."
At that moment, in a hotel suite in
Marseilles, two men clinked their glasses and drank deeply.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," said Gavin Collins. "The
resemblance is--was--remarkable. I can understand Count Petofi's
mistake." He chuckled. "Poor old Petofi. He must have gotten
the shock of his life when he found himself turning into a
werewolf."
"He was one," mused Quentin, "back in the eighteenth
century. He came full circle.
"I wonder if he ever realized he wasn't in my body? I doubt it. He
probably thought I'd had the portrait all along, and destroyed it for
spite."
"Would you have done that, if you had it?"
"No. At least, not for years...not until I'd exhausted all hope of
reversing the mind-switch. I don't give up easily." He grimaced.
"But under the circumstances, there's no hope of recovering your
body. I'm sorry, Gavin. You were a completely innocent victim. I'd
willingly trade bodies with you, if I had the power."
"I'll be all right, Quentin." Gavin ran still-tentative
fingers through his beard. "I won't deny I was horrified at first.
This body is so much older than mine. And I can't get around
well..."
He hobbled over to the mirror, studied his reflection. "But I'm
getting used to it. I'm at the point where I can say that if I'd been
given a choice, I would have accepted this as the price of being rid of
the werewolf curse.
"After all, this body is only--what, mid or late forties? That's
not really twenty years lost from my life, because I probably wouldn't
have survived long as a werewolf. Even the wooden leg will be less of a
handicap when I've had time to practice with it.
"And whoever this guy was--the original owner of the body--he
wasn't bad-looking, for a forty-year-old!"
Quentin laughed softly. "I know who he was. Fellow name of Garth
Blackwood. I met him once, in a graveyard, and he tried to strangle me.
Believe me, his body looks better on you than it did on him."
"Thank you, I think. I get the impression I wouldn't want to know
much about him."
"You'll want to know this. That incident in the graveyard took
place over fifty years ago--and Blackwood's body hasn't aged a
day."
Gavin turned, awkwardly, to face him. Hope flared in his eyes, then
dimmed. "Because of Petofi's powers?"
"Indirectly, yes. But the spell wasn't completely under his
control. It required his powers, and someone else's inborn talent.
"Petofi hadn't been able to halt the aging of his own body till he
was about seventy-five. And he never could turn the clock backward. He
apparently claimed this body in 1897, and kept it ever since--wooden leg
and all--because it wouldn't age further. Acting alone, he couldn't
reproduce the spell in another one. And I feel sure he couldn't remove
it from the Garth Blackwood body, even if he wanted to."
A smile spread slowly across Gavin's face. "You mean...even
allowing for the fact I'm really only twenty-seven, I may have a longer
than normal life ahead of me?"
"In that body, I'd guess much longer. Wear it in good health!
"And, Gavin... one more thing." Quentin’s blue eyes
twinkled, but there was a hint of pain in their depths. "I don't
want to sound like a meddlesome grandparent. But, please...call your
father!"
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