Raven Saga 01 - Raven

that made me look ugly. That's what she'd tried to do. She'd wanted to make me look uglier so that she could feel even more beautiful. Me, Mellow Yellow. It had all been done on purpose.
    As she stood there, looking at herself in the mirror waiting for something to happen, I noticed the raven had managed to sneak closer to me. It stared at me and I could see something startlingly familiar in its eyes. Then suddenly, it winked at me and I knew exactly who it was. Jo. She often winked at me. She had finally made the transformation. But how had she known where to find me? Then I thought of the owl. If the owl knew where I was, it would undoubtedly know where Gabriel was. I smiled at her and winked back. Relief flooded through me and I felt as if I could finally make my escape, but before I did, I waited to see what would happen to Vivian.
    She stood smiling at herself in the old mirror on the wall, waiting for her transformation to begin.
    After a few minutes, I could see that it was working. Her saggy skin began to tighten up and the colour of her hair slowly began to change from grey to bright red. Her sallow eyes began to gleam and her lips, and not to mention her breasts, plumped up. All age spots disappeared and I began to see the Vivian that I remembered.
    She breathed in a long happy breath and sighed out in happiness before she began to laugh uncontrollably.
    “I'm back and I'm even more beautiful than before,” she giggled, as she touched her face and her neck and then her breasts and bottom.
    “Why didn't I think of doing this before? I should have used your blood from day one. Instead I wasted years on that father of yours, and before that I wasted years on Walter, when I could have used the blood from his damned daughter. And I let her go. How stupid of me,” she said to herself as she continued to admire herself in the mirror.
    As she said the words, I thought of Rose. How her husband and daughter had disappeared all those years ago, when in fact they had been kidnapped, just like my father and I had been. And they had been used for the one single reason: to achieve her own flawless beauty. It disgusted me.
    But Vivian had just let it slip that she had let the daughter go. Just when I thought I could make my escape, I discovered something new. Something else I needed to find out more about. And I needed to find out the truth for Rose.
    Just as I began to think of ways to investigate what had happened to Walter and his daughter, Lori, Vivian shrieked.
    “What is this?” she cried turning to me, “What is happening to me? Lillian what have you done?”
    I watched, stunned in silence as whiskers began to sprout from her cheeks and out of her ears. Her hands and feet began to mutate and suddenly I knew. She didn't know the truth about my own transformation. She didn't know that I was capable of changing into a mountain lion. The combination of my feline and raven genes must have been affecting her in ways she could never have foreseen.
    I couldn't help but smile at her affliction.
    “How... is this possible?” she sobbed as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Part witch, part cat. Not at all attractive.
    “How could I have been so damn stupid? The girl, your sister. I thought I'd just miscast a spell on her the day I killed her. But I hadn't, had I? She'd really changed into a cat herself. No!” she cried while I nodded, smiling.
    “But that means...” and before she could finish, I transformed myself into a mountain lion, breaking the cage into a hundred pieces right in front of her eyes. I pounced on her and pushed her to the ground, ready to get the revenge I had craved ever since I'd learned the truth.
    “Lilly!” yelled another voice as I saw a very naked Jo had changed back into human form and had managed to throw Charlie to the ground too. He had hit his head on a rock, knocking him unconscious in the process.
    “Lilly... no. Let the Elders deal with her,” she shouted as I held a razor sharp claw close to her jugular vein. “Lilly, you're not like her. You're not a killer,” she said, but I couldn't move. All I could think of was Serena and Neleh, the years I'd spent practically a prisoner in my own home, my poor father and Sammy, Walter, Rose and Lori and what she had put us all through. And Gabriel. Poor Gabriel, wherever he was. She had done all of this damage just so that she could be beautiful and young. I wanted her to die more than anything but, as I looked up at Jo's