Blood Bargain by Maria Lima

In this installment, Keira just wants to be left alone to be with her sexy vampire boyfriend, Adam Walker. But her family keeps butting in. And Adam has his own problems – he’s trying to persuade his fellow vampires to give up drinking human blood. And, to add to the mix, her great grandmother just sent Kiera’s 1,200 year old shape shifter brother, Tucker, to watch over her. Kiera’s feeling just a bit stifled – to say the least.

Now, it would seem that Keira wouldn’t need much “watching over” in a little town like Rio Seco, Texas, but trouble just seems to naturally follow her. She’s finally found a man that she loves more than anything, but something weird is happening to Adam; he seems to sleep all of the time. And strange things are happening in town; teenagers and ranch hands are disappearing. On top of this, Keira has been hearing strange whispers.

As we read the book we start to wonder how Kiera will handle so many problems. People are disappearing, her boyfriend won’t wake up - it’s just too much! This is where Kiera’s “network” helps out. Keira has several good friends who help her along and, for once, her family might actually be a help instead of a hindrance. However Keira keeps hearing pesky little whispers from an unknown source which makes her wonder whether her family is responsible for some of the recent problems.

If you like the vampire fantasy genre, then this book is a definite “Next on Your List”. The storyline is wonderfully unpredictable and Maria Lima introduces several different types of supernatural beings which kept me intrigued and entertained. While Adam, Keira’s boyfriend, did not play as big a role in this book as he did in the first one, it didn’t detract from the romantic aspect of the book. Also, there are plenty of interesting characters in this book to keep you captivated and entertained. Definitely take the opportunity to check out Blood Bargain, an engrossing, well constructed sequel by Maria Lima.

Walter and Peter are moving into their new home and Astrid arrives with a housewarming present for Walter and a report on “bizarro” eyes for Peter. The Fringe Team heads out to Seattle to interview the killer, Greg. In the hospital, Olivia talks to the homicidal attacker, Greg, who killed his boss - he says he remembers nothing, only that his office was infiltrated by demons. Then, the man starts to freak out, he ages before our eyes, and he dies. Walter examines the dead ‘quickly aged’ killer who they determine has died from extreme exhaustion. But, this guy, Greg, was lying in a bed at the time of his death, how can he have aged so quickly and died from exhaustion?

Walter panics about being in ‘wet, smelly’ Seattle, it reminds him of the mental instituiton, he wants to go home NOW. Unable to leave in the middle of an investigation, Olivia asks the medical examiner in Seattle for his business card - he’s got on a very obvious red tie. What’s up with the red? They send Walter home with a young FBI Agent to escort him back to Boston. The remaining Fringe Team head out to see Greg’s widow. They find out Greg was a sleep walker. Walter is back in Boston with the body of Greg. Walter sees evidence of surgery on the body on the back of the neck and he asks the new FBI guy to help him remove the scalp. This guy is not having a good day.

Peter visits Olivia in her hotel room. He has read Greg’s dream diary and the guy was dreaming about demons. Peter talks about dreams that he had as a child which Walter helped him out with, Peter says he did not dream from age 8 to 18. Weird. Olivia is called to go visit another homicidal attack incident, finding another murderer, a woman, who has died of ‘exhaustion’. Walter, the ‘newbie’ Agent, and Astird conduct an autopsy on Greg. Walter has found some kind of bio-chip in the mid-brain of this murderer. They find that the woman has the same scar, assuming that she has a chip also.

The man who created the chip, a research doctor, says he has 82 test subjects with the bio-chip. The Fringe team goes to his office to see that it has been ransacked. His data server has been ‘trashed’. But, fortunately, he has backup on a remote server. The doctor’s research assistant appears - looking a bit suspicious to me. As the Fringe Team leaves, Olivia asks the doctor for a business card - yes, hit’s got a bit of red on his left pocket

Peter studies the chip, talks to Water and now they are calling it a mind control chip. Peter adamently tells Walter that he will use ‘No Students’ for testing of any bio-chips. Walter hesitates - looks at the newbie FBI agent - and agrees to Peter’s demand. No students will be tested upon. Peter and Olivia share a moment from the past about Charlie and how much he meant to Olivia. They are interrupted by another homicidal attack and we see the doctor’s assistant accessing the data and feeding it to somebody wearing a wire hair hat. No fashion statement there.

Walter knocks out the newbie FBI agent with some concoction in a flask and you expect that this guy will be undergoing brain surgery any minute. Remember, he’s not a student… Sam Weiss calls Olivia and asks if she has the business cards requested from people wearing red. She states that she has eight of them - one for every person wearing red. He tells her to circle one letter on each card. Now he says to do a word jumble - anagrams - to find the thing she is meant to find - not to cryptic there? No wonder she is so irritated with Mr. Weiss.

Broyles calls Olivia and says the doctor’s data backup at the remote site was erased. This leads to hearing that Zack, the doctor’s research assistant, did not come to work. Olivia and Peter visit Zack’s apartment, only to find him dead. At the same time, the doctor finds a note at his office stating that he better stop talking to the feds or he will ‘end up like Zack’.

Walter does have some scruples, he did not put the chip inside the newbie Agent’s head. Instead, he has put it in a metallic net on the outside of the agent’s head. Walter puts a device on his own head to try to control the Agent’s mind. What happens is that Walter starts to see some really weird stuff - like dream stuff. He figures out that the bio-chips are transmitting data, not receiving it - that’s why Walter was seeing purple unicorns, etc., because he as seeing the newbie Agent’s dreams. But, by seeing them, he is stealing them from the dreamer which means the brain never recharges, leading to death by exhaustion.

The Fringe Team determines that they are dealing with an addict who must have everyone’s dreams to get his ‘fix’. The doctor conducting all this bio-chip reseach reveals himself to have two distinct personalities - kind of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One personality wants to help his patients who can’t sleep and one wants to feed off the energy in their dreams. Uh-oh, next we see a pilot - one of the sleep test patients - starting to take off, piloting the plane. The pilot starts to freak out - my worst nightmare - just as they head for a bridge and the plane is taking off. The co-pilot questions the pilot’s actions as we see the Fringe Team bust into the doctor’s house, trying to disable the program and his ‘wire hat’. And, when all else fails, Olivia shoots the data server. The pilot barely misses a boat but the plane is saved. Here is hoping that no pilot I fly with has a research bio-chip implanted in their brain.

Peter and Olivia leave the doctor’s house discussing the addiction to dreams. How can people not dream for years and years? Like Peter? Olivia ends up at Charlie’s grave, wanting to pay her respects. Leaving his grave, in her car, she plays with the anagram letters from the business cards. It end up saying ‘You’re gonna be fine’, and that brings tears to her eyes. Wow, how would you get that off of 8 random business cards Too cool.

This episode of the Fringe TV show ends with Peter having a dream - he calls to his father in it. He wakes up with Walter watching him, who says he heard Peter talking in his sleep. I suspect that the dream was when Peter was pulled form the parallel universe into our world. Walter is grateful that Peter cannot remember any more.

They advertised the next episode in November. I suspect there is a few week hiatus coming up for the Fringe TV series.

As the week passed from the last Fringe episode, Walter has been busy dreaming up a way to get parallel universe memories out of Olivia’s head. He has asked Olivia to come by and suggests he can get to her repressed memories by having her eat flat worms. Yes, EAT THEM – or rather – drink them, since Astrid has made a nice ‘flatworm shake’ for her. In the past, Walter and William Bell (the missing scientist who’s in the parallel universe) had trained flatworms to move toward light. In the early experiment, light-trained flatworms were fed to untrained flatworms and guess what - the newly fed flatworms now responded to light even though they had never been trained. So, now Walter hypothesizes that if worms can transfer their memories, why shouldn’t Olivia be able to transfer her memories by drinking a flatworm shake – she is much like a worm right? Peter tries to stop all of this nonsense but Olivia gobbles the flatworm shake down before he has time to talk sense into anyone. It all becomes a moot point because, just as she gags the worms down, the Fringe Team gets a call to go to the murder scene of the security guards at the cryonics lab.

It turns out that this is the third robbery of a cryonics labs in a week and the single thing that has been stolen from all locations has been frozen heads. Naturally, the Fringe Team is called in because it is even weirder than that - one of the bodies (the inside guy) is bleeding some silver-looking substance and Walter cannot wait to get his hands on it. Charlie Francis, Olivia’s former friend who is now a shape shifter, slides in to see what Walter has found. You then see Charlie as he talks to the bad guy who shot all the guards at the cryonics lab. Fake Charlie ’shape-shifter’ looks bad, we’re told he’s dying, due to the fact that he cannot go home until the mission is finished. What mission – still trying to figure that out – but it apparently has something to do with shaving the back of the heads stolen from the cryonics lab as they look for something specific, and they don’t find it. is a step in the right direction even though it appears they have not stolen the right head.

The Fringe team focuses on the immediate problem of why shape shifting soldiers from another universe would want to steal frozen heads. The cryonics lab will not tell them who the stolen heads belong to so they brainstorm a way to get the information. The first idea is to use the machine left behind by the shape shifters in one of the previous Fringe episodes and they decide to let Peter have a crack at it. He realizes the device streams data in a constant mode. Walter has realized that the silver-leaking guard’s body at the lab is not the shape shifter anymore and that the shape shifter is still active and out there. This revelation brings us o a videotape of an experiment with a girl who could see strange glowing men from another universe. Walter sees this girl as someone who can help the Fringe Team find shape-shifters. Olivia naturally calls Charlie to tell him they have an idea of how to find the shape shifter and fake Charlie proceeds to drink some thermometer mercury to keep himself together.

Olivia takes the alien device to Nina at Massive Dynamics and tells her that they believe the streaming data contains the information about the people that the shape shifters copy. Perhaps they can use this to find out what person the shape shifter has copied. Needless to say Nina’s scientists have already theorized this and they think the shape shifter must be trapped here since he lost his alien device. Nina’s nerd scientist attempts to hit on Olivia by giving her access to the device’s data from every possible media platform – server, PC, cell phone – in real-time. How romantic.

Peter and Walter pay a visit to the girl (Rebecca) from the LSD experiments of years before. Walter expected her to be angry, but she welcomes them into her home. Over time, she came to realize that she was seeing people that did not belong in this universe. She considers what Walter has done for her a great gift by opening up her mind. She tells Peter she still has visions of the shape shifters even now and the Fringe Team hopes she can identify the shape shifters by going through the experiment again. She readily offers herself to more hallucinogenic drugs. What a surprise! All the psychedelics you want for free under a “doctors” care. There might be a line at the door for the next round of experiments.

Olivia gives Astrid a secure website address from Massive Dynamics to log in to so she can monitor the progress of decoding the alien device. Astrid logs in to it but she is also monitoring the experiment with the psychedelics as Rebecca begins her “trip”. I especially like it when she starts saying woooooooo. Walter talks her through the trip as Peter helps by ringing a bell nearby. This produces an unexpected consequence of Olivia immediately passing out with the bell tone. She sees William Bell telling her he is so happy to se her after all of these years. Bell tells her that this reunion is something he has been trying to do for a long time but people have been trying to stop it.

In the parallel universe, he tells her how she used to call him William as a little girl and offers her tea. He explains her disorientation from the ‘time slips’ which are due to sliding across universes, commenting that she is lucky to have the talent which enables to her to cross dimensions. She does not feel lucky at all – in fact, she is angry at what they did to her as a child. She lets Bell know that Walter has told her about how they experimented on her and other children and the damage that they caused. He says it is collateral damage from the “search for knowledge” – how convenient – arrogant scientists who always think they know what’s best for everyone. And, he finally he tells her what is truly going on - he created Olivia to be a guardian to protect the gate between universes because a war is coming. About hybrids that Bell’s universe has created which can cross safely into our universe. Olivia lets him know that she will never trust him, she believes it his fault the this cross-universe war is starting and he basically says…”So what? You have to trust me because only I know what is going on.”

William Bell says a storm is coming and Olivia must find the shape shifters who are in our universe. They are looking for the one person who can open the door between the universes. Olivia was especially prepared to fight this battle, William Bell says she was always the strongest. He shows her a special symbol that will be found on the leader of the shape shifters head (now we know why they were shaving heads!) and Olivia must remember a phrase to tell to Peter after she goes back to our universe. He then informs her that the changes he made by taking her out of her universe must be paid back - hence the name of this Fringe Episode - Momentum Deferred - because she was pulled from a moving car and she had to live through the pain of the car wreck when she returned. Another excellent line – the Fringe TV Series is full of them – Physics is a bitch. I love it! Olivia is pulled back into our universe from this latest passing-out episode remembering the car wreck and yelling out that she has to speak to Nina Sharpe.

Olivia contacts Nina by phone as she races to Massive Dynamic to give her the message from William Bell. Walter’s experiment is over but he still want to escort Rebecca home. Peter gets a strange look from Rebecca (Fringe spoiler - remember, she spots people from the parallel universe) but she does not explain it. Fake Charlie shows up at the lab and sees that the information from his device is being transformed into a face, you see it’s soon to be his face. At the same time, Olivia is asking Nina about Bell’s symbol. Nina claims no knowledge of it. Olivia also mentions Bell’s statement about the impending storm. Nina quickly recognizes this phrase as something Bell used to speak about when discussing the idea of universes colliding and the consequences of that happening. The last great storm as he put it. Just as she makes this revelation to Nina, Olivia gets a message from Fake Charlie telling her that Nina is the shape shifter. Charlie is waiting outside for her but as they start to discuss his plan to capture Nina, she gets another message from Astrid showing her that Charlie is the shape shifter. The next scene is Charlie throwing Olivia into a wall and basically kicking the crap out of her. She pulls her gun but Charlie overpowers her. A stranger tries to help her and gets shot got for his trouble, but it gives Olivia a chance to shoot Charlie the shape shifter, and shoot him, and shoot him. He finally goes down.

There is a little bit of happiness in the episode when we see Rebecca and Walter starting to fall for each other but he leaves and its back to reality. Or the reality of the Fringe TV Show anyway. For Olivia, shooting the shape shifter was like shooting her good friend, she is guilt-ridden. Broyles tries to alleviate some of her guilt, she is so angry that the shape shifters are destroying everything for no understandable reason. Broyles tells her that the last cryonic lab was hit fifteen minutes before the Fringe Team got there and now the bad guys have the head with the critical symbol on it. This Fringe episode ends with the shape shifter who shot up the cryonics lab in the opening scene putting the symbol-branded head on a body. We see it start to repair itself and his eyes open and…..that’s it, we will all need to see next week’s fringe episode to get our next fix!

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Enjoy!

Elena doesn’t know that Stefan is at home keeping tabs on Damon in his jail cell; she just knows he’s not called her in four days. She tells Jenna that she is not worried about it and that she won’t let any relationship rule her life. Which translates to “I can’t believe he hasn’t called and I’m so mad.”

We then see Vicki brushing her teeth in Elena’s house as well as Jenna planning a date with Logan, a local reporter. Is everybody finding their man tonight in the Vampire Diaries show?

Bonnie and Caroline are in the hall at school talking about the violent situation between Damon and Caroline when it becomes obvious that Caroline is in major denial about Damon’s abuse.

Stefan finds Elena at school after his disappearing act, asking for a chance to explain. He makes a date to meet her at The Grill but not before Caroline shows up to ask Stefan about Damon. Stefan informs Caroline that Damon will not be back, ever, and once again mysteriously avoids any kind of questions about what he’s been doing. Later, we see Caroline and Bonnie at Caroline’s house where Caroline reveals that she’s been suffering from serious memory loss. Bonnie knows something is not quite right with Caroline’s story but she just listens and plays with a candle trying to recreate last week’s Vampire Diaries episode fire starter trick.

This whole time we are still wondering what is going on with Damon so we happily return to him trapped in the jail cell talking to his “uncle” Zack who plans to leave town rather than have to deal with his evil “nephew”. Damon (the snake) makes a last ditch attempt to kill his uncle but Stefan is there just in time to stop him and tells Damon to “keep it up, the more energy you expend, the faster you will go”.
Stefan then leaves to meet Elena at The Grill. She’s eager to begin her “grill” session. Stefan shows up an hour late but at least she had Matt there to keep her company and listen to her boyfriend problems. Matt seems like a pretty nice guy. He swallows his pride and tells Elena that Stefan is actually not so bad; we all know that Matt really wants Elena all for himself but for now he’s putting his feelings aside.

Needless to say, Elena’s not in the best of moods for the next round of excuses from Stefan. Elena still wants to believe there is a logical explanation for all of this. She starts to listen to him explain his confusing and chaotic life when a stranger walks by, turns around to face Stefan and says “I know you. You’ve not aged at all.”

Uh oh.

Stefan brushes it off as nothing but Elena is tired is his excuses and his unwillingness to confide in her. She leaves him standing in The Grill wondering how he’s going to salvage their relationship.

Finally we get back to that new story thread started in last week’s Vampire Diaries on the CW episode. The Sheriff and Logan are plotting their vampire hunt when Jenna shows up for her date with him. He seems happy to see her but we all know there is an ulterior motive behind their date and you are left wondering - is he going to hurt her again? After a brief moment with Jenna and Logan, we jump back to Elena who is still is mad at Stefan for being so secretive. At Jeremy’s prompting, she goes down to the kitchen to make something to eat. Surprise! Stefan is there, cooking a homemade meal. She is more than happy to let him cook as he talks about himself – telling her about Katherine, her looks, her laugh, her temperament plus his reading preferences, his favorite TV shows and his taste in music. Unfortunately Elena cuts her finger while he’s talking and Stefan’s face goes all vamp when he sees her blood. She puts his new vampire look down to her imagination (is she in denial or what?) and he lies and says he had something in his eye. They move one from that moment and end up engaging in their favorite pastime: smoochie, smoochie. Their happiness is likely to be short lived because you next see Damon in the jail cell calling Caroline with his vampire lure – it’s probably a done deal that he will be out before very long.

There is a “sexy” car wash fundraiser underway – hot bodies everywhere. Stefan and Elena have a mutual strip-off with Matt sadly looking on. At this event Bonnie mistakenly uses her psychic powers to soak a mean girl who makes fun of a guy with an old car. Jenna and Logan hook up in the parking lot, reminiscing about their make-out session in the good old days. Caroline, who is running the car wash, is being constantly stalked by Damon’s special raven, working to get her alone so he can compel her to to come help him out of his vervain predicament.

Out of nowhere comes the stranger from The Grill to have his car washed. Elena grills him (ha ha) about why he thinks he knows Stefan. He tells her that he knew Stefan and Damon in 1953 and he mentions remembering their rings - the ones that protect them from the sunlight. Elena doesn’t let Stefan know about her suspicions but asks Logan to let her look at old news archives – leading to the requirement for a dinner date between Jenna and Logan to allow Elena access to the archives. Elena definitely suspects something is up – but does she think Stefan and Damon are vampires?

Caroline walks up to the front of the Salvatore house where Damon is locked up, lured in by his power. She is worried about Damon and she stupidly opens his cell door even as she accuses him of biting her. Zack runs in - just in time - to tell her to RUN as Damon kills him. You pretty much think her goose is cooked as Damon chases her through the house, looking for a meal after his lock-up, and she races out the front door, into the sun when . . . oops . . . Stefan took Damon’s ring so he starts to burn. At this point he’s one very angry vamp.

Could things get any worse? Of course they could.

Back at the car wash Bonnie sets a car on fire and Stefan - who momentarily stopped paying attention to his captive in the mansion - stops Bonnie from burning down the town. We only see somebody’s car go up in flames.

Jeremy and Vicki are in the local cemetery getting high when Jeremy realizes that she’s stolen Elena’s pills, confronts her about her loser friends and stalks away in anger and disgust.

Meanwhile Elena researches the town archives for facts on Stefan’s past and finds old video footage from 1953 about an animal mauling of a Salvatore boarding house resident. In the video the nephew of the victim is seen standing in the shadows looking remarkably (or perhaps, exactly) like Stefan. Elena starts putting two and two together. She recalls his reaction when she cut her hand.

We end this installment of the Vampire Diaries episodes with Damon finally finishing his “unfinished” business with Vicki. Not a pretty ending – there’s no seductive blood-taking here. I suspect she dies since she survived an earlier attack.

And lastly, Elena confronts Stefan with the all important question:

“What are you?”

What will he tell her? Will she freak out if she learns the truth? You’ll need to watch the next episode of The Vampire Diaries to find out…..