BloodRose

19.1. Hades

*Present, Garret*

I release my resentment, the hate I have nurtured these past years, in one motion. The knife finds its mark. My hand comes away wet and cold with dark, dead blood. I let her fall.

Alias looks up and his face fills with too many emotions to count, with despair at the forefront. He catches Hannah before she can hit the ground and I am through the door behind me before the first of his cries reaches my ears. The sound is piercing. I know how he feels. I too have lost much that I loved. More than he could ever know.

My followers flood the room behind me and the sounds of a fight soon break out. Over all the noise, Alias can be heard, his sadness suddenly turning to rage. I know I must act before his wrath can hunt me down. I must act before he kills me.

*Present, Calliope*

I am slamming my already bruised shoulder into the door for what seems like the thousandth time. Before I make contact, it flies open and my momentum kicks me into the ground, nearly on top of Alias. When I get up and make it to his side, Kyle is already there, a hand on our teacher's shoulder.

Hannah is cradled in his arms, lifeless, even more so than before. Not alive, not undead, just dead.

I hug Alias, trying in vain to do something, anything to alleviate his pain. Before he has time to grieve or be comforted, Ambrogio acolytes fill the room. They have us surrounded in seconds, but we all have a fire now.

Alias has lost his true love. Kyle and I have had to watch it happen. They've tortured all three of us. They've kept hundreds of people as slaves and they've been the death of innocents like Margaret for thousands of years. Our gazes resonate with our conviction. The fire burns the acolytes from the inside out. They may fear us, but right now they fear The Augur more.

That is about to change.

We charge as one, whirling around the room. Their fresh blood advantage means they're stronger than us, but the spark that ignited is a roaring pyre now, a tribute to all those we've lost.

We hold out for several minutes and for awhile, it seems like we will be conquerors. Then, their flood overtakes our fire and we are on the ground again. The Augur is gone, Hannah is dead, and we are back to square one.

Hauled to our feet, marched down a corridor, and tossed roughly into another cell. We are in the underworld and we have eaten the fruit. We will never leave.

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Months, maybe? Years? How long have we been in here? My pain never ends and I see the same hopelessness on my friends' faces.

The Augur, Garret, as I now know him, is ever present, witness to our suffering. Alias tells me they used to be friends, or allies at least. Clearly, that's not the case anymore. Friends don't try to kill friends.

I ask him why he would be friends with someone so awful. Alias simply says that Garret's the one that turned Hannah. He brought them back together. Alias realized too late that it was only so he could have a powerful vampire on his side. When he'd discovered the truth, he had taken Hannah and tried to escape, he'd thought she was killed in the attempt and he'd never looked back. He'd never had a reason to.

I don't know how many times Alias apologizes. Kyle and I keep telling him it's not his fault, that we chose to come with him. He doesn't believe us.

Through it all, we stick together and yet somehow the pain becomes more unbearable when we learn that Garret has enacted the plans he's been building for so long.

A Vampire Sanctuary, he calls it. He tells us, excruciating detail after excruciating detail, how he has done it, what he has done. He's taken the city, my home, and turned it into a living hell. Every human inside the city limits has been taken underground. The compound is expanded and vampires are now coming from around the nation to see this new novelty, a place where vampires are allowed to do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want. It is the worst that any of us ever could have imagined. It gets worse.

Garret starts by offering to let us out as long as we submit to his rules, to his way of life. My code. It enters my mind for the first time in years. I don't know if I remember all of it, but I repeat what I do remember and it gives me the strength to do what I know is right. We all, of course, refuse.

We thought we had been in pain before.

Alias. I have never seen him so bruised, so battered and bleeding. As if that's not enough to scare me, they don't even take Kyle out of the cell before they start in on him. They hold me back as I fight to get to him, the screams filling my ears, waking and in sleep. As for me, my torture is physically painless. Garret seems to hate me more than either of them, if that's possible and I am not touched again. Shackles bind my wrists to the wall with an iron grip. I am forced to watch my friends in agony for days on end. Sometimes, they bring in people I don't even know. Regardless, every second of my new life is an eternity of misery.

A millennium passes. Garret expands his empire and now nearly all vampires have accepted his vision. Ambrogio has doubled a hundred times, a thousand. Kyle is gone. Alias is barely hanging on and before I know it, I too am starting to slip away. My name is Calliope Jade Thistle, is the only sentence I can clearly think. It is the only thing keeping me alive. Even that is starting to fade.

I used to stand for something, believed I was living for it, but my mind is fuzzy and any thoughts I have are nearly incoherent now. Will there be a light, someplace to go? The knife pierces my heart. Before I have an answer, I get pulled back. Memories hurl through my head, making me dizzy. I can't tell up from down, left from right, my life flashing before my eyes.

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A gasp tears into me. I cough as my eyes roll up in my head and everything goes black before I hit the ground.