MADE

~ Drowning ~

Clair and I were facing one another. She looked as if she was about to throw up. I could feel her pulse from across the dock, her heart beating erratically in her chest like an off-tempo drum. 

Elijah and Alaric stood back from us, each on either end of the dock. We had specific instructions on what to do and I needed to get this perfectly right. Clair was worried, mostly for her life but that was only because Alaric explains things like a douche bag.

"If I die, I'm coming back from the dead just to kill you," Clair snarled at Alaric. She pointed a finger at him, a promise. Her little face was screwed up into an angry glare. To anyone else, she would look ferocious, tiny but ferocious. I knew better. I could see the fear just under her skin. 

"Ha, I'm an immortal god!" Alaric clapped. "You can try."

"Can we just get this over with?" I asked wining slightly.

"Waiting on you," Alaric said, chastising me.

I spit on his shoes.

I looked down into the water and with my hand, I pulled a rolling wave out of the mass of water. Clair gaped as the water hovered beside me, her mouth making an impressive hole in her face. 

I circled it around Clair's body. Slowly, I worked it into a tunnel that held Clair prisoner inside. A vortex of water in midair, glittering in the sunlight. I spun it faster and faster and just as Alaric said, it began to glow. Bright vibrant blue light blazed from the spinning tornado of water.

It was starting and I fought to keep my eyes open. 

Elijah had explained that if the water didn't illuminate Clair wouldn't be able to survive. If that didn't happen I was instructed to stop. I knew what would happen then. Alaric would use whatever strange power he had to slip inside her head and he would pluck these memories from her like grapes on a vine. She wouldn't even remember me. 

Alaric said we couldn't risk it. Seeing me might just start to confuse her, muddling her mind and warp some of her replaced memories. Something about me stumped him, something about what I was stumped his gifts. The normal rules didn't apply to me. 

Clair gasped.

"Clair, are you okay?" Elijah asked from the boat he had moved out into the water and was now standing in. 

"Yeah," she yelled back, "its kind of... cool in here."

I smiled but kept my concentration on the spinning sea in front of me. The light emitting from it only got stronger. There was no one spot that gleamed brighter than the others, but rather it beat. Beat like that at which my heartbeat.

When the light was almost too bright to bear Alaric yelled to Clair in the circle. "Now!"

I could almost see Clair stretch out her hand and reach for the water. As soon as her fingers touched the edge of her prison, the water it stopped its motion. Well not entirely. It still spun in that whirlpool of water but as if it had been put into slow motion. Clair's fingers glided along the water. The light now seeming to gather at her fingertips.

"Mare, drop your hands," Alaric said.

I half expected the water to fall with my hands back into the lake, but it stayed moving around Clair. It had a new master. 

Then I felt something in my gut snap. A cold sweat broke out, so so cold. I fell to my knees clutching my stomach and my insides clenched again. And then it was moving, up my throat, clawing its way out like a cornered animal. My mouth gaped, trying to struggle with my breath. That thing in my throat was too large. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't do anything by silently scream as my fingers clawed at my neck.