Et tú, Clarissa?

Chapter thirty-four

Present Day (England, Britain)

I disappear before Zac has time to stop me, but the pain does not go away as easily. Before I can take another step, I inhale a deep breath. When I have calmed down, I write a fire message before sending it out to Aurelia, wherever she might be. Let's get this over with.

I know all your games about diversion and beating around the bush, but let us end this. Let us see this out straight. Stop this game and just take what you have always wanted. A second shot at taking my life.

As the words leave, letter by letter into the air I fall down on a bench only waiting for my legs to truckle from beneath me. However, my wait is not long and after a few seconds I hear a swish go through the air right before I catch the paper revealing its letters through the fires licking it up.

The mansion, 30 minutes.

Aurelia's handwriting is just as I remember it and I let my fingers dance over her letters whiles I swallow the lump of worry growing in my throat.

What will happen to everyone if I lose?

A picture of the spear baptized in blood in the hands of Cleopatra enters my mind.

I should not have won last time, what makes me think I even stand a chance after have lost my memory and powers?

"Challenges makes you stronger." I hear a voice through my head say. "I suppose that was what you were thinking about anyways."

I turned around to see the big red deer at the edge of the forest with his majestic crown gleaming in the sunlight. Before I have even thought about it, I raise and walk over to them. A white dove land on my shoulder and the fox strokes against my leg. I extend a hand to his mule and his hot breath warm my cold hand before I caress his soft mule. A calm feeling fills me and the squirrel sitting in the red deer's crown look at me with big eyes.

"You will do fine." she says and her gaze glimmer by hope. "You always do and you have overcome your memory block only to prove it."

"Thank you, but I think overcoming my evil sister might be a bit harder."

"You can count on us to assist you in any way we can." the red deer says and the other animals chatter in agreement.

"I will need all the help I can get, but do you really want to do this? Some of you will be killed."

Something in the red deer's eyes tells me he smiles.

"We know, and as you are ready to die for us, we are ready to die for you."

Present Day (Scotland, Britain)

I step out of the portal and look at the big mansion. It's darker than I remember it and the light-yellow colour that previously adorned the walls, have darkened. The snow-white marble, now in different shades of grey and the well-maintained garden is overgrown. But I can still see us ride up, running around and strolling through the park. Feel his gentle touch. Smell the scent of him. Even hear him calling out for me. As the pain grow inside my chest, I feel tears forming in the corner of my eyes, but I blink them away.

Do not let it get to you! I tell myself and start walking towards the doors.

The white dove has still not left my shoulder as I approach the doors into the big mansion, but as the door opens, she takes to the escape, leaving me alone in the line of fire from a pair of eyes I did not quite expect.

"Miss Saunders?" I ask and as she opens the door a bit more, lighting up the inside, it seems nicer than when she had it only ajar.

I look at the scene behind her, then her, only to take a look over my shoulder, noticing that the garden is carefully arranged with flower pots, raked gravel path and the hedge proudly cut without one twig out of place. And the marble under my feet as good as new.

Did I imagine it all?

She just stands there in the doorway, looking at me with her brown eyes that seem dull, matching the rest of her emotionless face. Her hair just as perfect as the time she came to find Zac and I in his cottage and she's dressed in a pair of jeans and white blouse. Suddenly it's like a scar appears over her left eye, but only fragments of it. Like a hologram not charged enough to project a full picture. I cannot hide it before she understands that I have seen it.

"You, stupid child." she says and I immediately recognise the tone of her voice, but it is a second too late.

Her eyes turn into those of a snake and the grotesque scar over her eye have made everything white in her left eye blood red.

Aurelia...

She sends a blast my way, making me fly over the yard and land in the fountain in the middle of the roundabout. When I look up again the first view of the house and the garden is back. The one where it is all rampant.

"I am tired of playing that brat! Sure, I chose to be her, I do think she matches me, but running around with that boytoy you love so much... Yak!" her voice is just as hollow as I remember and the echo in her voice makes it feel like my eardrum is about to burst.

I wipe some blood from the corner of my mouth, seemingly unaffected by the intensity of her voice.

"So why don't you give him to me then?"

I raise to feet and throw her a force field, but it moves right through her. She laughs.

"Did you really think I would be so stupid to actually come here in person? Please Clarissa, you're making a fool of yourself."

I give off a wry laugh and look around a second or two before turning back to her.

"Perhaps. Or maybe I thought that you might had grown a pair, enough to actually confront me. It has not been me sneaking around in the shadows for the last couple of 2 000 years."

"You forget who our father is, Caitir. We belong in the shadows."

I just look at her for a long time.

"Why are you doing this Aurelia? Why not taking a second chance of life and do something for yourself?"

"Don't you remember what I told you before you killed me? 'If I do not get you, no one will.' I have spent your entire life, planning and destroying everything you have ever cared about. So that you will feel the pain you caused me when you rejected my love."

If I did not know better, I would say it was sadness I heard in her voice, but it most certainly is anger.

"We are sisters, Aurelia. Could you not have shown your love by, I don't know, tease me about boys and tell dear-old-dad if I am out too late?"

Aurelia laughs humourless and let her snake eyes rest on me. The silence fills the air around us and it feels like it is closing in. I somehow know, even though she has not opened her mouth yet, that whatever she is about to say, will not end well for me.

"You always were so naïve. Perhaps even stupid. Leaving him for the second time. Do you not remember how that went the first time?"

'First time'?

A cold shiver goes through my body. Nicholas. I suddenly stumble backwards with my gaze locked on the ground. Zac. My gaze rises to her, finding her grinning widely.

"It was all quite easy really. Nicholas does anything I tell him."

'Does'?

She laughs again.

"There you go again. Your weak spot will always be the ones you love, will it not? Pathetic." she takes a short pause and let her words sink in, whiles the panic grows hard and heavy inside my chest. "If I were you, I would try to forget him, once again. You did not do very well last time if my memory does not fail me. What was it? Four, five attempts on your own life before you isolated to the Arctic?"

I swallow hard and turn around, slowly starting to running.

I have to find Zac. Now.

"Oh, and Clarissa, one last thing." I turn around to look at her as I see how she slowly disappears. "Contra vim mortis non est medicamen in hortis. Experto crede." (Against the powers of death, there is no herb. Trust me)