Series 1/Chapter 7: FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL

A wicked cold wind surged from over the Atlantic sea cooling the late spring air that hovered over the city of Savannah like a veil of air keeping everyone safe from the harsh coming summer. 

At the Hotel St. Filipe, Morgan, the witch the shadow man, Caspian Casador, sent to earth to find his son stared at herself naked in the mirror. She saw every curve of her humanoid body and caressed her skin. She had never felt this human before. She could feel every little bone in her body and the rushing blood in her veins. With the fires of all that she came from she could feel a passion raging in her to find her Caleb, Caspian's son, but not to return him to his father  but to kill him and replace him with a child of her own. 

Morgan was a cunning witch who's ambition was more potent than Caspian had imagined. She was prepared to double cross him and that started now as she set her eyes on Nick Falconer, the man she chose to father the child she'd use to usurp Caleb in the eyes of Caspian.

As Morgan covered her sleek naked body in a trench coat and tied it at the waste and slipped on a pair of dark colored 6 inch heels, the prophecy that drove her desire for power rang over and over in her mind.

"FOR THE WITCH WHO BRINGS THE DARK ONE A CHILD, UNLIMIATED POWERS IS HERS FOR ALL TIME"

Morgan quietly made her way out of her hotel room and walked out into the hall way. She placed her hand on the wall and closed her eyes, a burst of energy filled the palm of her hand and spiraled into her finger tips flowing the energy burst through the walls in search of where Nick was. 

Through walls and pipes and several floors of the hotel room the energy went. Zapping through a century of St. Filipe's old construction until he was found, sitting in his hotel room waiting for Caitlyn to return from her walk.

ROOM 331

Morgan opened her eyes, smiled a Cheshire cat grin, and snapped her fingers instantly transporting herself in a puff of smoke to room. As she stared at the room's number, her eyes suddenly turned white and a bright light began to flow over her. Her face began to chance, her hair began to become brighter, her skin changed from a beautiful pale pink to a darker peach toned. When the white and bright light was done, Morgan had fully transformed into Caitlyn Frost. 

Morgan, in Caitlyn's form, pressed her hand against the electric room lock pad. The heat from her and mimicked the chip in a hotel card key. The door clicked. She was in.

As she walked in, she turned a small corner of the room's entrance she heard Nick in the shower. Morgan slowly stepped out of her heels but kept the trench coat on, then slowly pushed the bathroom door open. 

Behind the clear glass shower doors marked with the wet steam of the hot water was Nick.

Morgan stopped and watched him for a second. He was beautiful. His skin glistened with the natural light from the bathroom window and reflected off the glass doors. Morgan knew then she had picked the perfect mortal to father the child she'd use to gain her powers from Caspian. He was beyond the perfect specimen. Strong. Handsome. Healthy. 

"Oh hey!!" Nick said, startled to see his girlfriend Caitlyn back so soon from her run. "What are you doing??" He asked smiling at her.

Morgan as Caitlyn, only smiled back and removed the pin holding her blond hair up. Her hair fell to her shoulders in thick curls. Then she slowly removed her coat revealing the nude body she had morphed into.

Nick's eyes sparkled at the beautiful women he loved in front of him. She slowly walked over the the shower and slid the glass doors open and stepped in.

The steam surrounded their naked flesh. The water warmed her cold skin. She smiled and lifted herself on her tip-toes and kissed his pouty lips. He kissed her back, then reached around her and pulled her in close. Their wet skin touching like they were about to fuse together as one.

Nick adored Caitlyn. He would do anything for her. He loved her with all his heart and all his soul and would protect her to no end. He made love to her in the shower. His body and hers together. Feeling each other, touching each other, becoming one. 

Morgan's powers in transforming into Caitlyn were strong, so strong that Nick's own supernatural abilities, his psychic connections were blocked. He had no idea who he was really making love to was not Caitlyn but a powerful sorceress who would use his body to create a new life so that she could selfishly gain more and more powers. It was all she wanted. 

He was the perfect choice from the moment that she saw him in the lobby of the St. Filipe Hotel. She knew that as soon as their two bodies connected in the lock of love making and his life force passed into her's that their child would be the key to her gaining Caspian's powers.

And as soon as it was proven she was pregnant she'd kill Caleb. He was her only last obstacle. 

In the shower, finished after what seemed like the most passionate time together ever, the two came back for air, so to speak. 

The water rained down from the shower head washing away all their endorphins. They faced each other and he smiled at her, his eyes gleaming with love.

"What brought this on?" He asked holding her close to his naked body after they made love.

She smiled, unsure how her voice sound.

"You ok?" He asked her, as the warm water rushed over his strong shoulders.

She nodded and then laid her head on his thick chest.

He rested his head on hers and they hugged under the water. She closed her eyes and listened to his heart beat. Although she had a whole plan to become pregnant by Nick, she started to feel something she did not expect. In Caitlyn's body she felt a person loving her back. Morgan felt real love and it was strange for her, she had not known the love of a man like Nick loved Caitlyn in what felt like centuries. 

"I love you." Morgan said. She was happy to hear Caitlyn's voice, but the words were hers.

"I love you too. Are you ready to get out?" He joked as their two bodies began to show signs of being waterlogged.

She smiled and agreed. The two held hands and stepped out of the shower. He looked here again, her bright skin slick and wet, then pulled her close and kissed her. They began to make love one more time on the fluffy rugs on the bathroom floor. 

Morgan had a plan, but little by little, in the arms of Nick, it began to change. She knew that ever since she became Caspian's pawn and vector to produce an heir that she had to do what she had to do, but she never expected to sense the love of a man, true love. 

And that was intoxicating. Nick's love was like a drug to her. She wanted more of it. She wanted it again and again.

As they made love and kissed and then both got up to change, Morgan knew she had to leave before Caitlyn returned from her run. She grabbed her jacket and told Nick she'd be back in a few minutes hoping she wouldn't run into the real Caitlyn outside. He was confused but shrugged it off.

Morgan exited Nick's hotel room and while in the hallway quickly morphed back into herself and transported herself directly back into her own hotel room three floors up.

She looked in the mirror. Her beautiful face had returned. Her dark hair back from blonde. Her ice blue eyes back from Caitlyn's lush green. She stood in the mirror still naked and although she had completed her mission to sleep with Nick and get pregnant, she felt empty.

She wanted more of him. She wanted his child and she wanted him.

And as the reality set in that she now was feeling something she didn't expect to feel saw a slow moving tear roll down her face. 

"I think I love you." She said of Nick as she looked at herself in the mirror. 

Love is a drug. And Morgan was a quick addict, but Caleb's death still was on her list of things to do. Morgan quickly dried her tears and remembered the witches she saw at Mae's funeral: Cressida and Gabrielle. She needed to find their home, find Caleb and kill him to make room for the child she'd soon be pregnant with.

****

In the depths of nowhere. In a place that felt that it existed below the globe. Below the seas. Where darkness and shadows reigned. Where the screams of the damned meant nothing, Caspian Casador lay on a granite slab absorbing the energies of all the souls the filled his relm.

Suddenly, the energies in the room shifted. A chill blew into his veins. Cold. Ice cold.

His eyes flipped open.

He knew. Morgan, the witch he sent to find Caleb had truly betrayed him. His intuitions to send  Pascal after her were right---he could sense her body already changing, molecularly. The forces of nature above, on the surface were fusing together Morgana and Nick's DNA...a child. A child was being formed. 

Caspian leaped off his slap fully awake from his demonic sleep. His eyes glowed red like the hellish light the welcomed the damned souls that came to his world. 

He roared a deep angry roar that filtered through the blackness in all around him up through all the matter and space and coldness that made up his layer. 

It was like an explosion of fury and anger. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to destroy her for proving him right, that he should never had trusted a witch to find Caleb, his true heir. And Pascal---the pathetic Pascal who was failing on trailing Morgan and keeping tabs on her. He too would pay. Both the witch and the minion from hell that Caspian sent to the surface world to do his bidding needed to pay with their lives. 

Caspian was breathing heavy. His evil heart pounded in his chest. He started to breath in and out in and out, allow pure oxygen to fill his his withered lungs and push through his veins and into his body. His skin started to turn from an ash gray to pink. He was coming back to life. He was coming back to his human form of centuries ago. His heart turned black to blood red, his collapsed veins plumped on his skin filling with flowing red blood. His eyes cooled to a chestnut brown.

He was alive. Turley alive, and would do the job himself. 

"I will find my son myself. I will finally complete the prophecy that has long alluded me and when I do, the two of us will control every living soul and kill every dissenting one for all time." He said to himself as his face became more and more human and warm.

Caspian was through with waiting. He was done with having fools do the job he should have done all along himself.

And in a flash of all the powers of hell, he was gone from his dark layer and on the surface on the darkening evening streets of Savannah dressed in all black looking like a normal handsome man in search of his son and those that betrayed him. 

****

As the clouds over-head began to take shape and cover the bright blue sky as the evening soon approached, Caitlyn made her way to Forsyth Park to rest after her run. She sat on a bench and watched as a mother and her baby girl played together over by the giant fountain in the center of the park It reminded of her adopted mother. How kind and loving she was. How much she adored Caitlyn and how much they both meant to each other.

It also reminded her of the reason she was in Savannah in the first place. To find her truth and to find who she really was. And again the flood of memories of her past came in almost as if her own mind was taunting her.

As she got up from the bench and the breeze filled the air rustling the leaves above her head she walked casually around the the circle walk way that surrounded the fountain. She put her hand in the water and ran her finger in it as she walked watching the small bits of sun that peeked through the trees above reflect its light on the thousands of silver and copper coins at the bottom.

As she walked and reminisced about her life, the man in black soon made his way to the edge of Forsyth Park...the man from the depths of darkness. Caspian Casador. It was as if her energy had brought him here. To this place to see her. Exactly where she was.

They did not make eye contact. She did not see him. But he watched her. Trasnfixed.

She continued to walked slowly around the circular fountain allowing the cool water kiss her finger. 

Over at Cressida Craine's home, Caitlyn's secret twin brother Caleb remained in his locked sleep. He was a prisoner of his mother's sleep spell. It was for his protection, she thought. But he sensed and heard and felt everything around him. He could feel his twin's arrival. He had been the whole time Caitlyn was back in Savannah. He could feel her. And now that Caspian was strangely near her too at the park in the center of town, Caleb felt all three of their powers almost instantaneously joining. 

This was their moment of reconnection. The family they should have been all along.

Caleb's eye lids began to flutter. His heart rate began to spike. His brain activity began to mark sparks all over the monitors in his room causing the machines to beep and record every little second of this reaction.

At the park, Caitlyn too began to feel warmer. She looked up at the sky but it was overcast and cool. She felt her head it was hot. Fever hot. She began to sweat. His heart was pounding in her chest. She felt her pulse and it was racing.

"Whats happening?" She whispered to herself suddenly feeling quite ill.

And she she looked down at her finger, still in the water she saw something that would change her life forever.

The water of the fountain was boiling. Her body, the heat that was radiating from her was literally making the water she was touching boil like a pot on a stove.

She screamed and pulled her hand out of the water and fell backwards. Her heart was throbbing now. She was drenched in her own sweat. The iris' of her eyes flashed an amber glow then normal, then again to amber then normal.

The mother with her daughter rushed to Caitlyn's side.

"Miss??? Are you ok Miss?" The mother asked.

Caspian watched from the shade of a willow, curiously and patiently noting everything he witnessed.

"I......I..." Caitlyn said feeling disoriented and confused.

"Oh my god, miss! Your eyes! Are you ok??" The woman said again as she grabbed at Caitlyn's wrist.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Caitlyn growled snatching her wrist from the woman.

Caleb's heart rate was now creating loud noises in his room. Cressida rushed in along with her house-guest, the newly back from the dead Ashe Evans.

"What's wrong with him?" Ashe asked as he and Cressida flanked Caleb's bed as he was twitching in his bed like a fish out water.

"I don't know. I've never see him do this before." Cressida answered the worry splashed across her face.

"What do we do?" 

Cressida rushed over to a drawer where Gabrielle kept syringes filled with a medication that would sedate Caleb if their spell and magic suddenly stopped working. It was a drawer filled of something that acted as like an insurance policy. 

She quickly opened the drawer with such velocity that the syringes bounced up and some even fell out. Cressida quickly grabbed one, unwrapped it from it's plastic container and removed the top with her mouth. 

"What's that?" Ashe asked.

Cressida did not answer.

"Cressida what is it?" He asked again.

Cressida looked at Ashe then at her son who was minutes from waking up from his spell like sleep and she realized that time was up. This was a sign that Caspian was there. In town. Where they were. 

She then grabbed her son's arm and injected the medication into his arm and watched as it quickly filled his blood stream and began to knock him back into a deep, deep sleep.

The machines began to stop making noises. Everything seemed now to be calmer in the room except for Cressida's nerves.

She was sweating and worried. She knew she didn't have time to think or react and that Caspian was too close for her comfort and that Ashe had to act fast. He was now the only person that could kill Caspian without any repercussion because of his life force being that of a person back from the dead. He was a soul made up of energy that was synthetic and created. Caspian could not kill him. 

Back at the Forsyth Park Caitlyn had suddenly felt the cool breeze again. Her heart rate slowed to normal. Her breathing was back to regular in and out. She was shaking with fear and the woman her daughter only stared at her. 

"Miss do you need help? Should I call an ambulance? It was like you were on fire." The woman said gripping tightly to the her young daughter's hand. 

"No, no. I'm ok. Thank you. I think that I just over did it on my run. I'm sorry I yelled at you." Caitlyn said looking at her wrist and noticing that when the woman touched her it left an imprint as if she had been burned. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, I think I was just over-heated. It scared me." She added.

"Not at all. But if you're sure you don't need anything..." the woman began before being interrupted by Caitlyn. 

"Not at all. I'm staying at the hotel across the street, I'll just head back." Caitlyn replied as she smiled nervously and rushed back to the hotel jogging briskly passed Caspian who watched in amazement.

What Caspian saw was something that he had not expected. He knew that he had just witnessed a sign, something was telling him that that young woman, the woman who's hand seemed to boil the water of the fountain of Forsyth Park was someone he needed to know. She was someone he needed to find and watch and perhaps was yet another key to finding his coin, Caleb.

Little did Caspian truly know SHE was his Coin too...his other child. The Twin Sister of Caleb who had sent Caitlyn an overt amount of power through telepathy so that Caspian would notice her.

Caspian watched as Caitlyn entered the hotel lobby and he slowly made his way out of the shadow of the Park's willow tree and followed her. 

At Cressida's house, she grabbed a tumbler and filled it with Bourbon and downed it. 

"Tell me what just happened in there?" Ashe asked.

"You don't remember?" She asked.

"I.... don't know." Ashe replied, unsure of what his undead brain knew and didn't know.

"It's Caspian. He's here Ashe. Caleb is sensing him and for the first time in all my time hiding here, I'm frightened. I don't know what to do next. If he was still in his layer away from the surface we could send you and you could destroy him but if Caleb is sensing him herein Savannah, I don't know what else I can do. His powers are too great." She explained.

"What about Mae? Maybe she knows of a way. She has to know." Ashe said.

"I can't depend on her. It has to be Me ...and it has to be you. The two of us have to take control of this and when Caspian finally does come here for Caleb we have to destroy him once and for all. It may cost us our lives....at least it may cost me mine. But I have to. I can't hide anymore." Cressida said pouring herself another drink.

"And Gabrielle? What about her?" He asked concerned about his one time love. 

"I want to protect her. She's still young and this was all my fault. I'm the one Caspian chose and I'm the one that gave him the children he wanted. She doesn't deserve to die for my sins. She's scheduled for a house call with Caleb tomorrow and you have to hide. She cannot see you. It has to be just you and me, no one else. If she sees you she'll be devastated that I lied to her and brought you back to help. But I need you and I know you'll be safe." 

Ashe looked sad. He loved Gabrielle and wished things were different and that he could talk to her and touch her again. But it was not to be.

"Ashe..." Cressida said as she handed him his own tumbler of Bourbon. "Caspian Casador will die, and we're going to kill him." 

Ashe took the tumbler, nodded his head in a serious manner. He knew that Cressida was terrified of what was ahead but if that she was counting on him to help her. He took the one shot of Bourbon and swallowed it quickly they made eye contact.

The war was coming.