Part Five

I raised an eyebrow, confused. Both of us had stopped to stare curiously at this...this thing before us.
"Then what are you?" I asked, albeit tentatively.
She giggled, holding a delicate white hand to her mouth. "What fun is a mystery when you already know the answer?" She pointed out, winking at us. I almost shuddered. Something about the way she talked made me think this was not funny in the slightest. "Now be good little children and hand over the box."
"Why should I?" I shot back, regaining my defense. "If you aren't my sister, I owe you nothing!"
Angelica's eyes grew dark, like the sky before a storm. With the same lightening speed she had displayed back in the hut, she was up in my face. Well, more of my neck. Despite her terror, I felt comfort in her vertically challenged condition.
"You owe me your life, Scarlett!" She hissed, her pupils dilating with every word. "You have no idea the things I do for you!" She backed away, and started into her maniacal giggling again. "Of course, who would have told you?"
James backed away slightly, and held out his hand for me to take. "We need to get out of here," he murmured as Angelica curled over in her fit of hysterics. I merely nodded, and snatched his hand in mine. Once again we were on the run.
"No! Get back here! I did not tell you to leave!" Angelica's screams of fury hurt my ears, but we kept running, stumbling only once on a particularly large rock. I could hear her bare feet slapping against the leaf-coated earth as well, slowly gaining on us. As we passed a rotting piece of fence, I heard her gasp as if the air had been punched out of her, like she had run into a wall. I stopped, and turned to see her stuck behind the rotting fencepost.
"Come back and give me what I require!" She screeched. Her voice was starting to fade, almost as if she were the end of a bad horror movie. "You owe me your lives! My life flows in your veins, Scarlett! And yours too, James! Come back and give me what I require!" Her voice began to crack and rasp, like an old lady, and I watched with slight fascination as her features began to decay, as if she were aging too fast.
"We need to get away, Scarlett. No time for freak-watching!" James chastised me, tugging on my arm. I ripped my gaze from the wasting-away Angelica, and turned to run again.
If I hadn't known better, I would have said that was the end of our troubles. Of course, living as I did, I knew things only got worse before the journey was over.