Raven

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Three days later, we were ready to set off home but there was one thing I needed to do before I left. I asked Carmelo if I could see Vivian. Although he wasn't keen, he did understand that I needed some kind of closure. And since coming to Canada, I had changed. Not only was I becoming a young woman, but I had also become much stronger and I felt the need to stand up to her once more.

  “It is very cold where she is being held beneath the mountains. You will need a cape or a coat to keep you warm,” said Carmelo.

  “Here, have mine, Lilly. I'll wait for you up here,” said Jo as she removed the coat she had put on in readiness for our departure.

  I took it and wrapped it around my shoulders before I followed Carmelo and a few others deep down into the mountain where she and Charlie were being held until their trial.

  “What will happen to Charlie?” I asked him.

  “Some of our witches are working on a spell to try and undo the curse she has placed on him. If we can do so, we will return him to his original self and he will be set free, although he will have no memory of what happened to him.”

  I wasn't sure I liked the idea. He was responsible for seriously injuring my grand-father after all.

  “Lilly, please remember that this poor man was not really responsible. He has been changed at the hands of one of the most evil witches we have ever seen. If we change him back, he will be a different man. However, if we cannot reverse the curse, we will have no choice but to hold him accountable with his mistress, Vivian.”

  Charlie was being held in a cell beneath the mountain. It was clean and comfortable and he was being fed and looked after. As I peered through the tight bars, I tried to see him as the man he used to be. An Englishman who had been kidnapped and cursed and forced to do the most evil things. I suddenly had a vision of London all those months before when my father and Vivian had vanished, I had a flash of a newspaper headline, 'Entrepreneur Charles Austen Missing'. I wondered if this could be the same man.

  “Charles? Charles Austen?” I said gingerly, hoping for a response.

  Charlie looked up and for a second there was recognition in his eyes.

  I explained this to Carmelo, who assured me that it might help the witches return him to his former self and I felt some relief. I knew I couldn't lay the blame with the poor man. Full responsibility was with the witch who was being held even deeper into the mountain. Even with Jo's coat enveloping me, I felt chilly and shivered as we approached another cell which was smaller and not quite as comfortable as Charlie's. There were several people outside on guard, but from what I could see, there was little need. Vivian was still pining for her beauty. The looks that would never return, thanks to me.

  She sat curled up on the floor in the corner, even though there was a perfectly comfortable bed. As she looked up, I saw that the scar had returned to her face. The scar given to her years ago by my brave sister just seconds before her death.

  She sat rocking backwards and forwards like a child, repeating the same words over and over again.

  “I am beautiful, I am beautiful, I am beautiful...”

  “No, Vivian, you're not beautiful. Not at all,” I said, wanting to inflict more pain. “You will never be beautiful again. I've seen to that. You will spend the rest of your life ugly. You have whiskers on your face, hair on your hands and a scar that will never disappear. You deserve even more suffering for what you have done. You deserve to rot in hell.”

  In what seemed like less than a split second, Vivian was standing inches from me. Her fingers had poked through the bars of the cell and she had seemingly picked something from the coat I was wearing. I looked at her face and saw that her eyes had turned red. She was whispering something, something incomprehensible. A spell.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Carmelo moved like the speed of light towards us, he opened the cell quickly and grabbed her, holding her by her neck up against the wall. She could barely speak and I feared that it was too late. What spell was she trying to cast?

  He loosened his grip for just a second and she began to laugh, an evil sound that echoed throughout the mountain.

  “Too late,” were her final words before he tightened his grip. I heard a crack and her head flopped to one side. She was dead.

  But it was not over. A scream was heard from the top of the steps and a desperate voice shouted, “Carmelo, Lilly, hurry!”

  Running as fast as I could, I dreaded to think what we would see when we reached the top. But I knew that it must be Jo. She had been standing there waiting for us. She had given me her own coat and Vivian had removed something. A hair.

  Tabitha was crouching down, holding Jo's body in her arms, “She just collapsed. She said she couldn't breathe and she collapsed. Do something. Quick. She's dying!” she cried.

  I couldn't see straight. The image before me made me feel physically sick. Jo was going to die. It was Vivian's ultimate revenge. The death of a loved one. Perhaps she had thought that I would die. She probably thought it was my hair she had taken. She was wrong. It was Jo. My lovely cousin Jo was on her deathbed.

  I cried, sobbing loudly while Carmelo held her in his arms as the life slowly drifted from her body.

  “Carmelo!” shouted a familiar voice. Gabriel. “Carmelo, you must save her. You know what to do. It's the only way. Carmelo... you must. It is meant to be.”

  I was confused, how could she be saved? She was on the brink of death. Seconds until Jo no longer existed in this world.

  Carmelo turned to look at me, “I'm sorry,” he whispered before he leaned forward and lifted his own arm, slicing into the skin with his talon-like nail. Blood appeared to the surface and he carefully placed it to Jo's lips.

  “Swallow, Jo. You must swallow the blood to survive.”

  I couldn't take in what was happening and before I knew what was going on, my vision blurred and I fell to the ground.