Cassandra Cassandra Farrelli: Scarlet Women Book 1

I don’t know how long I slept for, only that when I awoke I was shivering in the cold room and that the girl, Marissa was fast asleep. I watched her sleep, her face so peaceful regardless of the fact that she was here— underground and not in her home with her family, not that she even knew who her family was, considering the bomb that Cassandra had revealed to me whether on purpose or by accident. What could it all mean? How did it all work? What Cassandra had revealed about Marissa being her daughter— how did that work with time? How was Marissa eleven or twelve while Christopher and Mark were thousands of years old? What had happened to time? Something obviously, but perhaps Cassandra herself didn’t even know. I thought of my own family and the secrets that had been kept from me and my mother… my mother and Ray, how I missed them, how I wished that this curse had never corrupted my family. And Acroft— how I wished I had never attended that foul school, even though it probably wouldn’t have made a difference— If Mel had only been honest with me. Oh, Mel— how I missed her, my sister from another mother… my teeth began to chatter. I needed to warm up or I would freeze in this icebox of a room.

I glanced back at the bed and was surprised as a sea of envy surged through me as I watched Marissa slumbering, I don’t know if it was the fact that while she was safe here, and had a way to escape her troubles and have a new start on life or if it was because my life was so close to the end due to this place… Frustrated I quickly and awkwardly pushed myself off the chair, as the demon baby somersaulted in my womb again reminding me that any day I would have to deal with the most trying and painful experience of my life, and that with it— I would die.

“What a life.” I sighed, and Marissa stirred. I froze halfway out of the chair, I didn’t want to wake Marissa, there was no reason to drag her into my trying troubles. A stab of pain shot through my entire being as if the child, if it was a child within me agreed with my thoughts. I grit my chattering teeth— I would not let the pain win, not yet. While I was still me— I would act like myself, I would not bow out again I would face the pain head on. As the pain subsided slowly, I forced my legs to move not knowing when the next stab of pain might start, and not wanting to give into to it while in Marissa’s room. I needed to warm up, besides the glaring pain spreading from my abdomen, the rest of my body was freezing. I waddled quickly out of the room and into the freezing hallway, I stood still for a moment letting even colder air numb my senses— what was it like, death? Was there an afterlife? Was there a heaven? Because there definitely was a hell— and a devil… though he wasn’t trapped in hell like everyone wanted to believe— at least not yet. I would have stood there for a long time, letting the chill steep into my bones as I continued to think about what would happen to me once I died but the pain encompassed me again and reminded me that I was running out of time. I forced myself to walk back down the hall and back into the cavernous room with the fireplace.

“It’s time.”

I collapsed onto the divan as my body shuddered under the strain of a wracking pain. I bit my tongue trying to keep the scream from escaping my lips, I tasted the blood in my mouth, it’s coppery sensation reminding me of what was to come. “Cassandra!” I hissed. No response. “Cassandra please, what do you mean it’s time?” My voice echoed in the room.

“Once it starts, there is no stopping it. Trust now in the plan. I’m sorry— I can’t stay for this, you’ll have to face it on your own. I can’t watch this again. Goodbye.”

“What?” Searing pain rushed through me, and my body shuddered— the pain more intense with each spasm. I closed my eyes, trying to take a deep breath instead of the ragged gasps I was managing when I heard a ripping sound and felt pain I couldn’t explain, I opened my eyes and saw a small fist protruding out of my abdomen and let loose the terror I had been trying to conceal— my screams echoing in the room. I heard the sound of feet rushing as if someone was running toward me and I passed out as the pain continued to increase. I felt my body being lifted and then a sense of weightlessness. For a moment I wondered if Cassandra had taken over for me but I blinked and opened my eyes and realized I was conscious but not in my body, I was floating above it, an observer of the gruesome scene unfolding below.

“Father!”

I was in Mark’s arms and there was blood everywhere— my abdomen was fully ripped open and my body was shuddering as if I was siesing, my eyes rolling up towards the ceiling… and worse was the sight of the extending black wing and small arm from my body. Lucas rushed into the room, the sight of him brought feelings of rage I’d never thought I’d be able to experience, my rage or Cassandra’s rage? He’d ruined my family for generations, I was allowed to be angry. Yet even as my rage ran through me, a sense of completion or joy was also blossoming. This curse would die with me, no more of the women in my family would suffer due to this man, this beast— his evil clutch would forever be lifted from the Pirot family.

“It’s time. Bring her to the laboratory.”

I floated along above them glee and rage siphoning through me as I watched them rush my body out of the room and down several hallways that twisted and turned, each as dark and dusty and cold as the rest of them until at long lost they scurried into a room that was half a laboratory and half a library. Mark was trembling, his body covered in my blood as his father, Lucas, took my limp body from his arms. I felt bad for Mark, he’d been a friend to me, and unlike Christopher he seemed to have a strong sense of humanity. Mark didn’t deserve to watch his mother, or myself die, but I was glad he was the one here with me at the end, regardless of the fact that Cassandra had a plan in place. It was a feeble plan at best. I was dying, even though I didn’t feel the pain as I watched I could see my body expiring.

“This next part won’t be very pretty.” Lucas voice brought my attention back to what was happening in the room. “I’ll need your help, Mark. Now that the womb has been breached we have only a short window of time to remove the child— it needs air. If we don’t move quickly enough your brother will die.”

Mark didn’t move, but instead remained motionless as his horrified face watching his father strap my stressed body to what appeared to me an operating chair from an insane asylum.

“Oh don’t look so shocked. You knew that this was the way of our people. You knew-”

“But I have never witnessed it before father— it is atrocious.”

“Someday you will get over your disgust when you realize it is the only way we can survive. Someday you will take your own wife and then-”

“NEVER.”

“As you wish. Now there is nothing that you can do or say to help her now, you might as well get over yourself and assist me in saving your brother.” Lucas had one foot braced on the chair and the other on the floor as his hands grasped the black wing and the small arm of the spawn protruding from my open abdomen.

I shivered as Mark joined his father and the two of them pulled on the demon spawn until at last the thing broke free from my listless body and let out a blood curling scream. My body on the chair lay open and broken, my eyes open, lifeless, but if I was dead— why was I still here? How could I still see the scene unfolding below me? I looked at Lucas, the baby, for now I could see it, it was indeed a baby but with massive back wings— cradled in Lucas’ arms. The child had my eyes, I hadn’t expected any of me would have come through, I’d expected to see red eyes and chilling white skin.

“Mark, take your brother and wash him up. He’ll need a hot bath and some goat’s milk. I’ll be along shortly.”

“But father…”

“Do as I say, and quickly.”

Mark took the child from his father and with one last glance at me he fled the room, but not before I saw the tears in his eyes.

“Alone at last.” Lucas walked over to me and gently caressed my tear stained cheeks. “How I will miss you my love.”

Bull.

“Parting is always such sweet sorrow, and yet knowing that this time is our last meeting on this earth is even more sorrowful.”

Did the man not know any other words besides ‘sorrow’?

“And yet, at least I have one last child from you to remember you by. Now, sleep my love, be at peace while I enter the knowledge that I shall be in life long torment, for I will never see your beautiful face again.” Lucas closed my eyes and as he did the image of the room faded, as did his voice which continued to drag until I was standing in a sea of back, alone.

“Hello?” My voice echoed across the endless void. “Cassandra?” I looked down and saw my reflection, I appeared to be standing on a sea of glass, which was reflecting the blackness of the void upward to make the space appear even more voluminous. Funny how minutes before I had looked so different than I appeared now. I put my hands on my abdomen, it was flat, there was nothing there to remind me that I had just given birth to the demon spawn. I was wearing red dress, and my hair was in a long braid down my back. “Oh, yes, I’m a scarlet woman.” I sighed. “But where am I?”

“You are in the void— the space between the living world and the after world.”

I jumped, and looked up from my reflection to see an exact copy of myself standing before me. “Cassandra?”

“Yes.”

It was odd to see her standing there in front of me. I’d seen her in my mind, seen her in my memories but to see her standing there in front of me, knowing I could reach out and touch her, we trippy. “Why am I here?”

“This is where we all have been since the beginning, well since we’ve died— cursed to wander, to sleep but never rest until the curse was lifted.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” I looked around the space, Cassandra and I were the only ounces visible in the void.

“I mean we.” Cassandra made a wide swoop of her arms, gesturing at the void, and as she did, more and more versions of myself lit up and began walking towards us.

I shivered as the void revealed more and more versions of the original Cassandra, in what seemed like minutes we were surrounded in a sea of red dresses— until I was so claustrophobic I could barely breathe.

“Hello.” I whispered to the masses.

There was a murmuring of replies.

“Thanks to you, we’re free.”

All I could see were smiling faces, nodding in agreement to Cassandra’s statement.

“Wonderful. Well, go now in peace.” I muttered. My words had a strange effect— one by one the women began to disappear until I was standing with Cassandra and a woman who didn’t look like me, but I’d have known her anywhere. “Grandma?” I blinked and watched Cassandra look from my grandmother to me. “What is going on?”

“It’s time for us to move on, and I thought who better to move on with than my beautiful grandchild who broke the curse of the daughter of Eve.”

“But Cassandra, what of your plan to save me?”

My grandmother walked to my side and took my hand. “That plan is working, but not for you.”

“What? What is she talking about Cassandra?”

“Time is shifting, ancient powers are awakening and soon very soon there will be another war all over the world like the last one-” My grandmother pulled me into her arms. “And they will need to be convinced that it is upon them, but there is only one woman who can bring them all together, isn’t that right?”

No one spoke.

“The original Cassandra must take your place, and you my love must come with me.”

“No! It’s not fair!” I broke from my grandmother’s arms and took a step towards Cassandra. “I never even got to live! My friends, my family-”

“All think you’re dead.” Cassandra said quietly.

“She’s right.” My grandmother chimed in. “You can’t go back to them. And the life that you will have when you return? Tell her Cassandra.”

“You planned this from the beginning didn’t you? Some plan— get me killed and then return in my place?”

“No, it wasn’t my plan, not originally.”

“Then why?” I hissed.

“Because you were meant to die— and I am meant to live.”

I wanted to hit her, but I was suddenly so tired that it was all I could do to sink to my knees on the hard glass surface. “Why?”

“It’s not much of a life she’s returning to. Don’t envy her of her half life.”

“Half life?”

“Yes, it’s true, when I return I will not be returning as a human— but as a vampire.”

I shivered, I couldn’t do it, live that way… on the blood of others. I cringed as I thought of the sludge like blood Cassandra had made me drink only hours earlier.

“I’ll have all of your memories and all of my own. I’ll need both if I am to survive.”

“So what, this is like my end?”

“No, rather this is the beginning of your journey— but right now, I must bid you both farewell.”

My grandmother took my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Yes, it is time.”

“But I still have so many questions.”

“Don’t we all?” Cassandra laughed. “But I will do my best to answer them in the time I have been given. Go now and rest, you’ve done well my little copycat. Someday we will meet again, and I promise to tell you the whole story then.”

The crazy scene before me faded, and my copycat and her grandmother disappeared from the void into a white light. I was alone, all my copycat children at rest, all finally entering into the pearly white gates which I was again being denied, for I was being sent back again— to fulfill the prophecies that had been spoken of thousands of years earlier. I had spent years in this quiet chasm as it slowly filled with women who were me, but not me… thinking that this was the end, for who could break the curse? There had always been another heir, until Cassandra Pirot, and now the curse which I had inflicted on this family was broken, we were free of my love, of the devil— Lucifer. Now I could focus on my children… my children. Something had gone wrong with time, something that was dark and hidden— corrupting the world of my parents, for yes, I was a daughter of Eve. We had been told to steward the world and all that was in it— but I knew that mandate had been corrupted, anyone could have seen that the world Cassandra Pirot lived in was not the world I had lived in.

“Mother, it’s time.”

Yes, it was time— time to leave the void, time to put the past in the past, time to face the future and whatever it held. I closed my eyes for the last time in the void, I was done being dead, it was time to live.