Barnabas tried to restart the sports car, but it refused to cooperate, and he quickly gave up on the machine. Observation Point was close by, and the only thing he could think of was getting to Julia without delay. He climbed out of the car and sank into soft snow, but there was nothing that could keep him from what he had journeyed back in time to do. His climb back to the road was difficult, and when he got to the top, his breath made a forceful cloud of steam on the air. The newspaper image of Julia slumped against the window flashed in his mind, and urged him onward.

Barnabas frantically hurried down the winding road, his eyes on the rocky bluffs ahead, straining for any indication that Julia had driven in this direction. He kept slipping off the frozen roadway into the snowdrifts that cushioned the rocky drop to the lake below, his progression slow and frustrating for the slick footing and the moaning wind blowing hard against him. But as he rounded the curve that opened onto Observation Point, the wind suddenly slowed to an eerie, quiet swirling that billowed sparkling snow into a ghostly spout which twinkled in the bright moonlight.

Barnabas squeezed his eyes against the luminescent shape that took form ahead on the road, a glittering, graceful figure of a woman surrounded by a billowing vaporous robe. When he opened his stinging eyes again, the approaching sound of a roaring car engine broke the silence, and he saw the illumination of headlights skitter through the pine trees and swing past him across the road.

Within the seconds that it took him to realize that the car speeding by him was the same dark Mercedes that Julia had driven away from Wyndcliffe, the figure on the road materialized into an image he knew all too well, the image of a blond temptress with the face of an angel and the heart of pitch. The name Angelique froze on his lips, the woman who had claimed to love him and then cursed him to a life of self-loathing and degradation two hundred years ago. While Angelique stood in the middle of the roadway, smiling her Cheshire cat smile of victory, Julia slammed on her brakes in horror, and the Mercedes slid sideways out of control, the squealing of tires was followed by the splintering of the wooden guard rail as Julia's car crashed through and plummeted over the edge of the bluff.

Angelique stood at the edge, watching the car bounce against the rocks until it hit the iced over surface of the water, her gossamer robe billowed as her arms slowly lifted in triumph, and the crystal-like tinkling of her laughter reverberated across the lake, as Barnabas saw the evil behind the beautiful face.

"NOOOO!" Barnabas saw a funnel of water rise and fall as the nose of the car smashed through the thin ice, and the car teetered on the edge of the rocks. Barnabas' scream brought Angelique spinning around in shock to see his hands within arm's length of her throat. At this fragile moment in time, there was no spell for her to cloak the vision he had just seen, no seductions to make him forget -- to turn the hatred she saw in his eyes to adoration.

"Barnabas -- how did you -- " Her eyes widened at the look of pure hatred on his face that burned through her when his strong hands wrapped around her neck.

"Burn in Hell, witch!"

"Barnabas!" she choked out. "You are the master of my heart -- my only love!" Angelique no more than got out the words, than the warm flesh gripped tightly in Barnabas' hands turned to cold stone and burst into a shower of crumbling dust.

The snow pulled heavily at Barnabas' feet as he tried to run toward the car, frequently losing his footing, sliding down the snow laden slope, desperately trying to reach the car before it sank further, but the choking grip of terror tightened in his throat as the headlights of the car quietly inched deeper into the icy water, casting an eerie glow of light around the sinking car before they went dark.

"JULIA, GET OUT!" his voice echoed forcefully against the rock cliffs. He was within a few feet of the car window and could see that water was rising inside, almost to the top of her shoulder. "JULIA!" But she was motionless, the side of her head leaned against the window glass where the seat belt had kept her from falling over. Her auburn hair fell in fiery curls across her pale face and her eyes were closed. Without hesitation Barnabas jumped into the water, and for a heart stopping moment, the unbearable stinging cold forced the very breath from his lungs and the warmth from his limbs, it was only through sheer power of his love for her that his body pushed forward through the thin broken ice floating on the surface of the water. He reached for the car door and yanked it open as the car lurched forward and slipped toward its watery destiny.

The lake began taking Julia for its own, as freezing water caressed her slender neck and slowly licked at her earlobe. "I will not live without you!" Barnabas frantically fumbled with the seatbelt, a modern pitfall that annoyed him at the best of times, but now the aching cold made his fingers clumsy as he felt for the release. The car tipped slightly like an unequally weighted teeter board and began its final descent, and water covered their heads for a moment until Barnabas felt the seatbelt retract through his fingers, and Julia slipped against his chest.

Fighting the numbness that had spread through his limbs, he pulled her from the submerging car, picked her up in his strong arms and carried her limp form to the embankment. The cold seemed to have penetrated into his brain, and he was merely acting on his last cognizant thought, his stiffening arms held Julia tightly as he stumbled through the snow toward the small shack ahead at the water's edge.

There was no sign of life about, though he had expected as much, and Barnabas stood motionless in front of the door for a moment before landing a forceful kick in the area of the door knob. There was a loud cracking sound as the door jamb splintered and the door swung open. Barnabas moved as if in slow motion, carrying Julia through the doorway, and he stopped to look around the unoccupied shack with stinging, watery eyes. It was dirty and rather spartan of furniture, but it was dry, and the jumbled pile of split wood he'd passed outside by the door would help warm them when he got a fire going in the fireplace. He saw a pile of canvas on the floor and gently laid Julia on top of it. Barnabas shivered violently and became aware that his clothing had frozen stiff on him. He'd have to get warm soon or he'd be of no use to Julia or himself, so he forced his uncooperative body to carry in enough dry wood to start a fire, and thank God there were matches on the mantle and enough kindling to coax body thawing heat out of the split wood to warm the small shack.

With shaking hands, Barnabas fumbled with the buttons on his Inverness, which was heavy with ice, and dropped it across a chair that was leaning against the fireplace, before he began laying the wood. When he had the fire roaring, Barnabas stripped down to his undergarments and found they were his only clothing that didn't have crystals of ice trapped in the fabric. Nevertheless, they were soaking wet from his plunge into the lake, and he knew he wasn't going to warm up until he removed them and was dry. His sight fell on a narrow cupboard that offered hope of clothing or blankets, something to wrap up in while his clothes dried before the fire, but after quickly rummaging through it, all he found was a pair of old, cut off blue jeans on the floor that looked like they might fit him. But there was no other clothing, no blankets, nothing.

As he finished undressing, he looked over at Julia lying on the floor unconscious, bathed in the pale silver light of the moon that shone through a window overlooking the lake, her hair and clothes sparkling with ice crystals. He would have to hurry and do the same for her. He touched her cheek and felt the familiar cold of near death there. She had been in the freezing water longer than he had, and with the frozen clothing still clinging to her body, she was almost literally encased in ice. He gently slid his arm under her shoulders and removed her lab coat, then her knit dress, and his eyes softened with admiration.

She was so young that it made his heart ache, so young that the horrors of Collinwood had not yet touched her life or made her alert for the dangers that come with being a Collins. But this was still HIS Julia, and beneath the young woman's clothing, was hidden the sensuous satin and lace lingerie she enjoyed wearing against her own silky skin in THEIR time. He brushed a curly lock of copper hair from her forehead and wondered how many times he had been aroused by quietly watching her walk through their bedroom wearing only the glowing shimmer of satin clinging to her softly curved body. He cherished her startling contrasts and secrets about herself that she allowed only him to share with her. He wondered if fate had brought them together sooner, how different his life could have been.

He deftly unhooked the closure in the back of the lacy undergarment and slid the thin satin straps off of her delicate shoulders before exposing her to the warming air, then he cradled her protectively against his chest, tilting her face to his with a finger. She was his beloved, the woman who years from now would pull him out of his stagnant, self-pitying reverie and replace it with a fulfilling, rich life more passionate and insatiably arousing than he could have ever imagined possible.

Julia was so still that he couldn't see her breathing, and her fair skin was not warming up, she wasn't even shivering. Barnabas became frightened and placed his ear against the soft mound of her breast, listening for her heartbeat. It was weak from the shock of the cold, but to his relief her heart was beating gently with the familiar rhythm of sleep that he knew intimately.

He glanced at his thawed out Inverness now dripping before the fireplace and wished he had taken it off before jumping into the lake, then he could at least have a dry covering to place over her, but even then, she was so cold that there was no body heat to be reflected back to her from his coat of wool. "I almost lost you forever, my love." he whispered into her damp red hair. His brain reeled from having almost lost her, and he pulled her even closer, as if in doing so he could keep her safe from all of the evil that had and would touch their lives. Evil that had always appeared to him disguised in beauty and desire while it damned the very existance of the ones he loved most. He could not bear the thought of ever losing Julia, of ever again sleeping without her beside him. He hastily pulled some of the canvas over them and hoped that the warmth from his own body would bring her temperature up. As Barnabas held her in his arms, their bodies touching full length, her soft bare skin against his bare skin, his rich baritone breathed words of love between kissing her lips and caressing her curves, hoping to give her back the warm tingling sensations that the sight and feel of her body were stirring in him.

"Julia," he murmured tenderly against her ear, as if saying her name would restore the color to her cheeks. He wished that her eyelids would flutter open and her enticing green eyes would gaze up at him with that seductive look which never failed to arouse him. He longed to hear her respond to him in the smokey whisper that spoke of her desire for him. But in this time, they were not yet married, she didn't even know his name, and he sadly doubted that she would allow him the liberties he was taking, much less encourage them.

"My love for you goes beyond any I have ever known, in ways that I have never shared with another." He brushed his warm lips along familiar stretches of skin from her ear to her collar bone before burying his face against her neck. "It was always you who was my destiny." he whispered against her flesh -- "my salvation. I thank the God who made us both that I finally realized it before it was too late. I can not imagine what my life would be like now without you. You changed it forever, changed me forever."

His hand lingered feather light on one of her breasts before sliding down to her flat stomach, briefly stirring the memory of the birth of their son, the event he would forever think of as 'the miracle'. To say the least it had been a shock to both of them when they found out she was pregnant. It was something they had not bothered to discuss, not only because he had believed that vampires were incapable of reproducing, and he had assumed that part of the curse would leave him sterile and forever childless even after the cure, but because she was in her mid-40's and had never conceived a child before, he had wrongly assumed she was unable to do so. How little he had known then, overwhelmed that she was sharing his life, but not yet realizing how much fuller still she was going to make his existence. It WAS a miracle that she had given him a healthy, and thank God normal son, and he could not now bear the thought of them never being a part of him. He closed his eyes and faintly smiled at the memory of the sweetness of her milk as he gently cupped one of her breasts and brushed his lips across the exquisite softness that even in her deep sleep responded to his touch.

Barnabas became lost in a state of pure emotion, conscious only of the tightening in his groin and the rising of his desire, as he pulled her tighter against him, wanting once more the joy of their bond -- until Julia softly gasped from within the dark haze that enveloped her.

Barnabas' head jerked up in panic with a sudden rush of guilt that made him feel like a loathsome, lecherous monster taking advantage of a defenseless young woman. He reminded himself, "She doesn't know me, we are not married here -- I have no right to her." A pained look crossed his face, and a tortured groan rose from his depths as he reluctantly twisted away from her and got up quickly to relieve his frustration outside.

When Barnabas returned to Julia, he donned the cut off jeans, and threw more wood onto the fire, before lying down alongside her under the canvas once again. He pulled her into the curve of his body and kissed the nape of her neck, whispering, "Draw warmth from me, beloved -- warmth and life. You are safe with me." Barnabas gradually became drowsy, and spent the rest of the night dozing off and on with Julia encircled by his arms.

______________________

At the same time, Angelique found herself materialized in one of the great halls of Hell, standing before the throne of Diabolos alongside Nicholas. The sudden transformation from crumbling dust to beautiful spirit was unexpected, and left Angelique momentarily confused. She looked to her brother for an explanation, but Nicholas only gave her a wicked grin that turned up the curling ends of his moustaches and lit a feral light in his eyes when he whispered, "Did I fail to mention that the Master also monitors the past? You shouldn't have used the 'L' word!"

Angelique's ears rang with the Master's hissing voice, "You are to forfeit that which you value most above all else."

She swallowed hard and felt her most prized possession evaporate into the high vaulted ceilings of Hell.

"Nicholas-s-s-s -- the demon voice slithered around the rock walls. "Did you trick Angelique into disobeying my command?"

Nicholas bowed deeply with reverence, "Yes, Master."

Diabolos' laugh was monstrous and produced the taste of bile in Angelique's throat when he commanded, "Nicholas, come take your place beside my throne."

to be continued.

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