Quentin's Revenge

Part One: The Plan

A severely melancholy Quentin was sitting in the drawing room and was drinking; but, then again, that was nothing new for him. He was always drinking--no matter the time of day--and was usually always melancholy, still, no matter the time of day. He drank to chase the depression away, but he never realized until it was too late that the brandy usually made the depression worse, something he'd forget the next day when he'd hit the bottle again.

"Well," he thought, "I am immortal. Over one hundred years old. I'm gonna live forever. Why not have a moment of depression? And the portrait will get liver problems from the alcohol, not me." Of course, all this being true, Quentin's moments tended to last years, not seconds or minutes. But such was the life of one destined to live forever.

And that was what made him so depressed.

That night, as he was drinking and staring at the fire in the grate, he thought about how he arrived at where he, well, arrived. How it all came about, sorting it out to see who really was responsible. Petofi? Tate? Himself?

Barnabas?

And, in his alcohol induced stupor, he realized that was the answer to his problem. If there were no Barnabas, he'd only be a ghost holding David's life hostage, and not a once-zombie-now-immortal-werewolf-thing. Thing being the appropriate word because he didn't know exactly how to explain what he was.

His eyes gleamed. Yes! That was the ticket! Everything was Barnabas' fault. Heck, if Barnabas just knew that it wasn't good to double-cross a witch and just stayed married to her and forgot his precious Josette, then he'd be dead, and so would Quentin (albeit a ghost). And, not only that, Maggie Evans would never have been abducted, Jason McGuire would probably still be alive and kicking with Loomis as his sidekick, Hoffman would be at Wyndcliffe with her patients--Vicki Winters would still be governess--unless Burke Devlin hadn't died in that plane crash, then she'd be Mrs. Devlin--that whole Leviathan mess--the only part he was really present for, although he did have amnesia for a good bit of it--would never have happened and that stupid parallel room would never have been discovered. Married to Angelique? He shuddered to think about how close he really did come to that hateful she-devil. And Beth? He shrugged his shoulders. Who knew what might've happened if Barnabas hadn't come into the picture.

And then--well, then he drank some more to bolster his courage. 'Cause he was going vampire hunting.

* * * * *

Julia walked into the drawing room to see Quentin drinking--and in amazingly high spirits in recent memory.

"You seem to be doing better," she said as she sat at the desk.

He smirked at her back. "Yes, I guess you could say that," he said, swishing his drink in the tumbler. He gave her a sly, impish grin when she turned around, which surprised her. She hadn't seen that grin in a while.

Quentin knew all about Julia's little crush on Barnabas. Or, he should say, rather large obsession. He knew enough about women to see the signs of infatuation (and, for once, it wasn't an infatuation with him--admittedly, a bit unnerving). But he would liberate Julia from her unrequited relationship, make her free to go back to her life as Doctor.

Quentin the Liberator had a nice ring to it, he thought. He had been called many things: Quentin the Womanizer, Quentin the Werewolf, Quentin the Ghost (though, truthfully, he didn't remember that bit), and, of course, Bastard--but never a liberator. It made him feel better, freer, happier about his long life.

Though, of course, why couldn't he get something out of this? If Julia could cure Barnabas, not once, but twice of vampirism, then why couldn't she cure him? Of course, that would mean destroying the portrait and turning back into a werewolf, but at least he'd have a normal life-span.

He stole a look at Julia, who was writing something down in that damned notebook of hers. Now there was a choice to be made: that disarming, charming smile of his, or a weary melancholy? He tried to figure out which would appeal to her more, and then thought of Barnabas. She was attracted to the tragedy of that walking morgue, whom Quentin never once saw smile, not even when things were going well. Charming smile was out; weary melancholy in.

Quentin poured some more of his alcohol of choice in a tumbler, gave a pitiful sigh, and began. "Julia?" he asked rather morosely as he stared into his drink. "Do you have a moment?"

She turned around, and at that precise moment, he knew she was hooked. "Yes, Quentin, of course."

He patted the space on the couch next to him. "Sit here, Julia. I just need someone to talk to."

She moved to sit next to him, and he was all the while staring into his drink, trying not to smile at his success so far. "I have been depressed, Julia," he said slowly, "but I'm sure you've noticed. You never miss a thing, Julia."

"Yes, Quentin, I have noticed that you've been depressed lately," she said, adding to herself, who hasn't noticed? Even Roger started complaining about it, saying that the amount of money they spent on alcohol, while already exorbitant, was absolutely ludicrous now. The Collins men were never ones to drink in public, and always drank at home, but Roger was near charging a tax on poor Quentin on the alcohol he consumed. Roger had never really liked the Collins money going to anyone but a Collins, and he had always suspected that Quentin was an imposter. If only he knew that Quentin had just as much a right to Collinwood as Roger did.

Still staring into his drink, Quentin continued. "Well, you see, Julia, it's been bothering me for a long, long time." Try some seventy years, he thought sourly. "But now--now it has come to a head, Julia." He turned his Baby Blues to her. "Can you cure me, Julia? Like you cured Barnabas, twice?"

Next to Barnabas, Julia had an obsession for Frank Sinatra, old Blue Eyes himself, the Chairman of the Board. Like a teenager, she wrote letters to him religiously, every week. And before she came to Collinsport a few years before, she was president of the Wyndcliffe Hospital Frank Sinatra Fan Club. She regretted having to give it up, but she would never meet Frank, while she had her own Prince Charming at the Old House, even if he did sleep in a coffin during the day and was still pretty much infatuated with a girl who had been dead for nearly two centuries.

Quentin knew she was thinking about Barnabas, and as much as Julia prided herself on keeping a poker face, it never really worked on Quentin. He could see the thoughts in her head, first about Barnabas, and then the jealousy for Josette. Yes, he thought, she had been dead for two centuries, Julia, but then, so had Barnabas.

But the point was that Quentin's eyes were what caught her attention, what dragged her in, hook, line, and sinker. He saw the sympathy in her eyes. She knew how he felt; after all, she had been dealing with a rather tempermental vampire who felt exactly the same way. (Then again, the Collins had always been a rather tempermental lot.) But the question was--would she help him? His eyes pleaded with hers, they oozed, rather hypnotically, of Old Blue Eyes, charm, pleading, hurt, and tragedy.

She pulled her eyes away from his gaze and looked down at her hands, which were sitting in her lap. "Well, Quentin, with, Barnabas, it was different. You see, he had this destructive cell in his blood, but with you, it was a curse."

His gaze turned intense, and he knew it made her uncomfortable. "Barnabas was a curse, too, Julia." And what was it that Stokes told him? Oh, yes. "And remember, Julia, vampirism isn't a disease, vampires are the living dead."

Julia glared at him, always hating it when others threw Professor Stokes words at her. It was always bad enough the first time out of Stokes himself, but when someone else repeated it....She didn't know exactly why she didn't want to cure Quentin, but she did want to cure Barnabas, desperately. She tried to deny that it had anything to do with the feelings she harbored for that impossible man.

"Think of it, Julia," Quentin continueed, still intently staring at her. "Think of how widely read your work would become. I don't know what stopped you from publishing the results of Barnabas's cure--because it worked twice--but if you published this--and I really wouldn't mind, not at all. Think of the noteriety."

Julia sighed and looked up at his face. "It didn't work twice."

Quentin's eyes turned cold. "It didn't?" he asked. "Do go on, Julia."

"The first time I tried the injections, it was in the weeks before the seance which sent Victoria Winters back in time. He was so impatient to be human again that he asked me to speed up the injections. I--I didn't want to, but I did. He suddenly began to age at an exponential rate."

He could sense her jealousy. She obviously wasn't the reason he was impatient to see the light of day again. Was it this Miss Winters he heard about from time to time? Oh, this was getting interesting.

Julia continued. "The only way to stop aging was if he fed again. He did, and fully reverted back to his former state. After the seance, he and Vicki were in a car accident, after which he met Dr. Eric Lang, who was able to cure him. That brought up the whole Adam mess. I don't want to talk about that."

"So, the only time you cured Barnabas was in 1897, with Angelique's help?" Quentin asked

"No. It didn't even work once. Science had nothing to due with Angelique's help in curing Barnabas back in 1897." Julia suddenly looked weary. "Why did you ask me to cure you? I mean, immortality, Quentin...something others only wish to achieve! Eternal youth."

So, she wasn't going to go along with his plan, not even attempt to find a cure for him. Did she give Chris Jennings this same spiel? Chris Jennings, though, probably wasn't privy to the same information Quentin was. That her cure for Barnabas worked until he became a bit impatient meant that it was possible for her to cure supernatural beings. For Julia, not helping Quentin meant no help for her when she lost the only thing she never had. He stood up angrily and stalked over to the window. "Immortality, Julia, is not all you imagine it to be," he spat out. "I have lived for nearly one hundred years--seventy of them as you see me now. I have tried numerous times to kill myself. Did you know I was on the Titanic?"

"No, I didn't," Julia said, expecting a story. She knew Quentin when he got like this; he spouted verbose stories about his life, which sounded embellished, but she knew they probably weren't.

"Yes, I survived, as you can see." He had not anticipated this, this unbearing of his soul to her. But, he was caught up in the moment, and tended to get a bit emotional after a severe bought of melancholy. "I was hoping to drown, but I didn't. I came up and saw lifeboats, debris littering the water that glittered in the moonlight--water littered with the bodies of dead people, whom I envied. And what should pop up next to me, but that portrait"--this last part was said with much bitterness--"which, although it should have appeared water-damaged, only had my blue face on it. I held onto it until I was picked up a few hours later, none the worse for the wear."

He looked at Julia. She was appropriately shocked. "But I have more where those came from, Julia dear. World War One, World War Two--both saw me severely injured. Didn't kill me, though. Just gave my portrait two more wounds, along with a yellow cast from when I had jaundice." Back still to her, his eyes still looking at the window, he had to stifle a smile when he realized that between the blue and the yellow, his portrait would have a green face, almost like that alien he saw on that new sci-fi thriller the other night. Just no pointy ears, he thought, and then sobered. No pointy ears yet.

"I'm sorry, Quentin," Julia said quietly. "I just wouldn't know where to begin. With Barnabas, I had something. But with you...with you, I have nothing. I have looked at the possibilities, Quentin, but your blood is normal and you're as healthy as a horse." She didn't finish what she wanted to say, but thought it would be cruel to tell him to find an exorcist or a fortune teller, or a witch.

He turned back to her and refilled his drink. The entire time he was talking he was drinking, and he needed some more alcohol. "My life has been one tragedy after another. I can't live a normal life. I can't fall in love, because then I'd want to get married, and what am I going to tell her? 'Gee, honey, I'm immortal or a werewolf, take your pick.' Or, how about this one? 'You don't look that much older than me.' Besides, Julia, the only person I would want to marry is the one person I can't have because she's dead. And the only way I can join her is if I die." At least I'm not thinking that every dark-haired young woman I see is Josette, he thought. Now, that was desperation.

Quentin walked back over to the window, looked out at the always overcast moon--which, for understandable reasons, he never liked--finished the last bit of his drink, and sighed, acting all the while like a depressed man ready to commit suicide.

Julia, already forgetting what she had said earlier about his being in better spirits, was useasy as she watched this farce (though she didn't know that yet). And, as Barnabas was the Collins family leader in anything and everything supernatural, spiritual and unreal, she knew that she had to go speak to him, as she did with everything she found out. She quietly gathered her purse, gloves, and coat and stood up to make a hasty retreat.

"Oh, and Julia?" Quentin asked, turning back from his reverie.

"Yes, Quentin?" Julia asked as she pulled her gloves on.

"Promise me that you won't tell Barnabas what went on today. I'd rather he didn't know," he asked of her. He stared at her intently as she faltered in her loyalty--between a vampire and blue eyes.

"Julia, you must promise me," he pushed.

She nodded her lie. "I won't mention this to Barnabas, Quentin." And she left, missing the large grin that spread over Quentin's face moments later. She was off to tell Barnabas.

* * * * *

The rest of his plan had to wait until the next afternoon; to implement it at night might make Barnabas aware of it, what with his heightened, superior senses and his suspicious nature. No, it was much better to work during the day, while the future victim was in his coffin and his keeper--that is, Julia--at the Old House, guarding him and the house from intruders, such as pesky little boys or curious governesses. That way, he could make his stake, sneak into the cellar via one of the many alternate routes, and BAM! Kill Barnabas. That his plan was so simple didn't bother him; he was too pleased with his cunning.

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