BloodRose

13. Mnemosyne

The knife never touches my skin. In as many seconds as it took to bind me to the chair, I am free from it. The woman standing over me lowers her mask and she seems vaguely familiar, though I can't put my finger on why. She holds her hand out to me. For a second, I'm completely speechless. A wave of fatigue rushes over me. I feel numbness again. I was about to die and I'm not entirely sure this isn't a dream after death or the effect of some hallucinogenic drug.

A hand moves in front of my face, waving to get my attention. I look up at her face and see she's pulled her mask down.

"Well?" the woman asks, "You want out or not? I only have so long to kill you and send your body down the shoot. If they come in and you're still alive, we'll both be dead."

Gulping down my emotions or rather, my lack there of, I grasp her hand. She pulls me from the chair with so much force that I almost lose my balance.

"Easy there..." she begins then, hesitates.

"Calliope," I finish for her.

"Calliope," she says. Her lips purse. "Right," she says, "This way." I don't know how long it's been since the guards left, but they'll probably be back any minute and if they find me standing here, The Augur will see to it personally that the half-life I'm living now becomes a no-life.

I take a deep breath and follow her to one of the walls. The girl's hand presses against the middle of the wall and a panel moves away to reveal a small indentation. Underneath the panel is a keypad, but instead of having numbers, each button has a strange symbol on it. The girl presses eight of them in rapid succession and when another, larger panel slides sideways, I am left staring at a pitch black chute.

"Okay," the girl says, "Down the rabbit hole, Alice." I grimace at the dark slide before me. I've never been a huge fan of slides even when they didn't lead to a vampire morgue dump. They always give me the feeling that I'm not in control.

A sound clicks from the side of the room that holds the door and both of us jump nearly out of our skin.

"Now! Go!" The girl stage whispers and hauls me onto the slide. As I begin my descent, I feel a scream rise in my throat and clamp my hand over my mouth to suppress the sound. I'm not entirely sure anyone will hear me, but most corpses don't scream. Any chance that my still being alive could be discovered scares me more than my fear of slides. Suddenly the floor drops out from under me and a small shout does escape my lips. I land in a heap on a concrete floor and hard rocks digs into my back. I move to get up, but my right arm won't support my weight. I think it's broken. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but since I haven't had blood in who knows how long, my healing won't be as speedy as normal.

Before I am fully on my feet, hands reach under my arms from behind me to help me stand. As soon as I am completely upright, I'm turned around and engulfed in Kyle's hug. He releases me almost as quickly and grabs my arm to lead me somewhere.

"Come on-" he starts, but my quick intake of breath stops him. He grabbed my right arm. He turns back and even in the dim light, I can see the concern on his face, "What's wrong?"

"I think I broke my arm when I fell. No blood lately so, my speed healing's down. It's nothing," I say. I nod in the direction he was going before and he hesitates for another second before turning and leading me onward.

We come to a fork in the tunnels and he goes right.

"Alias is this way," he says, "Just...uh...hold on." He turns back to me and takes in a couple breaths before he speaks again, "He's pretty torn up. He blames himself for losing you and then there's..." He trails off.

"It's fine," I say, "I'll talk to him." Kyle nods, but purses his lips. He has more to say.

"Yeah, I'm sure that'll help a little, just..." When his voice dies for the second time in this conversation, I scrunch my eyebrows together.

"What?" I ask.

He licks his lips and looks around a little before finally meeting my eyes and speaking, "The girl in the room, the one who let us all go-?"

"Yeah?" I urge him.

"That was Hannah."

I feel my eyebrows raise almost of their own accord, "The Hannah?" I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that Alias' former girlfriend is still alive when Kyle starts walking away. Numb once again, I follow him.

Alias thought she was dead all this time, but if she's been a vampire and if she wasn't dead, then why didn't she come find him? Did she try to or did she forget about him? I know the same thoughts must be running through Alias' head and all that was piled on top of the fact that I had gotten caught, but Alias thought it was his fault.

The two of us round a corner and I see a hunched figure sitting on a pile of blankets. Kyle puts his hand on my shoulder, but offers no further explanation now that we're within hearing range.

"Alias?" I ask hesitantly. When he doesn't answer, I move closer to him. I'm trying to come up with something to distract him from his grief when a thought strikes me. "What did The Augur mean about you breaking your oath? What oath?"

At the moment that a shuddering breath might shake the body of a normal human, Alias remains perfectly still. The only sign that he heard me is the sidelong glance he gives. The woman he loved came back from the dead right after he lost his newest pupil to an insane cult that he's obviously afraid of. I switch tactics.

"Alias," I say, putting a hand on his shoulder, "It's not your fault I'm in this mess, you know. I left. I got myself caught. You told me to stay away from them and I didn't." When he still doesn't respond, I lower my eyes and all I can think to do is beg. "Please, Alias. We need you right now. We need to get out of here and we can't do that if our leader doesn't lead us." I almost hate asking him to put aside his grief, but he really is the only way Kyle and I are going to get out of here alive. If he doesn't start moving now, I don't know if he'll ever have the will to move again.

An eternity seems to go by before he answers. He drags his eyes up from the ground and his expression is somewhere between pain and fury. Though his voice is still as strong as I've ever known it to be, there's an edge of raggedness to it, like he hasn't used it for years. "We can't leave yet. The Augur cannot survive. If he does, he will hunt us down and kill us all. He'll kill Hannah. Again."