by Sara Beaman
“I... don’t know.” I handed him the empty vessel.
As I swallowed the last of it, I felt a rush of emotions all tangled into themselves: grief, fear, anger, despair, and a potent, piercing self-loathing. The blood confirmed everything. I was dead, and Alison was dead, and if those facts weren’t hideous enough on their own, this effete rich kid had turned me into some sort of hemophagic monster without my consent. What had he called it? An immortal. A revenant. Not that it mattered, now that she was gone.
The back of my throat prickled. Tears welled up in my eyes, started to blur my vision, but I choked them back. “How do I get out of here?” I demanded.
“Aya can show you back to your quarters,” Julian said, and began walking me back through the library to the double doors.
7
Mnemosyne’s Head
{Anonymous}
I wake up on the floor of the kitchen. Adam is crouching above me, the back of his hand to my forehead, backlit by the overhead lights. His face is fuzzy. Everything is fuzzy. I try to sit up; the room starts spinning and I feel nauseated.
“She’s still drugged,” he says. “Maybe I should have let her sleep.”
Aya appears next to him. “Can you stand?” she asks me.
I try to focus my eyes. Didn’t she just get shot? She looks fine...
“Aya’s an illusionist,” Adam says. “That was a trap, a mass hallucination.”
A what? What the hell?
“I’ll carry her out to the car,” Aya says.
Adam nods and stands up.
Aya slides her little arms underneath my neck and the crook of my knees. “Hold on to my neck, okay?”
I comply. I close my eyes as she picks me up to avoid making the nausea worse.
She carries me out into the cold night air. “I’m going to set your feet down so I can open the door,” she says, and then she does.
I open my eyes and find myself looking at her arm. It’s so thin. How can someone with such thin arms be so strong?
She opens the passenger side door and helps me climb in to the front seat. “Just close your eyes and rest, okay?” she says. “See if you can get some more sleep.”
I nod, but I have no intention of listening to her. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to be Adam again. I don’t like drinking blood through his lips.
Aya closes the door to the car and leaves me. The three of them start carrying things to the car and loading them in the trunk.
“Just dump anything we can afford to replace,” Haruko says. “We got the head?”
“Yes,” Adam says.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I’m quite sure. Let’s go.”
Someone slams the trunk shut. Adam and Haruko get in the back seat. I watch them through the rear-view mirror, just to keep myself awake. Haruko reaches up across me, opens the glove compartment, and pulls out a road map.
“Did you find anything to eat?” Adam asks.
“No. Why?” She turns the overhead light on and unfolds the map.
“I think I gave her too much,” he says, lowering his voice. “I’m right on the edge.”
“God damn it,” Haruko mutters.
“I won’t ask you again, I promise.”
She sighs. “Fine. But make it quick.”
Adam pushes Haruko’s glossy black hair off her shoulders and holds it at the nape of her neck. He brings his mouth to her throat, and—I look away, horrified.
Aya climbs into the driver’s seat, starts the car, and pulls out of the gravel driveway. I fumble for my seat belt, fasten it, and stare out the window. Aya accelerates; the trees whip by. She says nothing. She doesn’t even seem to notice.
I glance back into the mirror and catch a glimpse of Haruko’s face. Her eyes are closed; her lips are parted.
I look away again.
Soon the hum of the engine and the gentle vibration of tires on asphalt start to send me into the twilight state between waking and sleep. I can hear the three of them talking as if through layers of cotton, but I can’t hold on to the words.
My half-sleep is restless and wracked with pain. My stomach has begun demanding food again, and my muscles are sore with fatigue. My chest wound still aches mercilessly.
After some time I feel the car slow and then stop. I blink my eyes into focus, peel my cheek away from the car window and look outside. We’re at a decaying strip mall, anchored by a dead grocery store, its painted concrete exterior eroding and mottled with incoherent graffiti.
“Pull around back,” says Haruko. “I’ve got an access code for the employee entrance.”
We roll through the pothole-ridden parking lot and past a bank of dumpsters to the back entrance. Aya pulls into a parking space, puts the car in neutral and yanks on the parking brake. She and Adam pile out of the car. Haruko writes something on the skin of her palm with a felt-tip pen before she gets out.
I watch the three of them through the rear-view mirror. Adam takes the keys from Aya. She and Haruko grab a few things from the trunk, suitcases and backpacks and the black lockbox. They start walking towards the back of the supermarket.
Adam gets into the driver’s seat. “Do you feel up to eating?”
I don’t want to go anywhere with him, but I’m starving. I nod.
“Breakfast food okay?”
I nod again.
“I’m sorry about all this,” he says. For the first time he sounds like he means it.
We roll back through the parking lot in second gear, over to a twenty-four-hour diner with trash strewn throughout the parking lot. We climb out. Adam presses the lock button on the remote key until the car beeps at him to stop.
Adam opens the door to the restaurant for me. Before I can step inside, a man in a leather coat pushes past me, throwing me a look that makes my skin crawl. Adam stares at the back of the man’s head as he walks towards the back of the building, his expression slowly hardening.
“Would you mind getting us a table?” His voice is soft, his tone dark. “I’ll be right back.”
I nod once and step inside the diner. I pause for a moment as my eyes adjust to the bright light, then look for a bathroom. The one I find is a single room with no stall. It smells overwhelmingly of ammonia. The toilet seat doesn’t look particularly clean, but my legs are suddenly too weak for me to squat, so I sit, trying not to consider the surface underneath my thighs too carefully.
Pulling Haruko’s jeans back over my hips takes work. They’re only barely large enough for me to button. I wash my hands, look at myself in the mirror, shudder. I look grotesque. I splash water on my face, trying to clean the blood and grime off, then wash my hands a second time, then comb my hands through my hair. I look in the mirror again. Only marginally improved.
The mirror jogs my memory. What the hell happened to Mirabel? Did they kill her? My mind starts to race. Adam must be out in the parking lot, drinking that man’s blood. Distracted. Would it be worth it to run? I don’t have any money, or any idea where I am, but this might be my only chance.
I leave the bathroom, psyching myself up, but Adam enters the restaurant just as I emerge in the dining room. I swallow hard. Too late.
I walk towards him, drying my hands on Haruko’s jeans. He grabs two menus and sits down at a booth in a corner. I slump down across from him.
“Sorry for the delay,” he says.
I shake my head no, then shrug. He picks up a menu and begins to read. I pick up the other, but instead peer at him nervously from behind it, inspecting him with morbid curiosity.
He’s a little too thin, with hollow cheeks. His frame isn’t small, though; he looks like he could have been an athlete at some point. His features are all sharp lines and angles—square jaw, thin, aquiline nose, deep-set eyes—except for his mouth, which is soft, almost feminine. I wonder what it felt like against Haruko’s neck.
He gives me a knowing look over his glasses.
I duck behind my menu, feeling my cheeks burn. I need to not think
about him. I need to not think about anything while he’s around. I can’t believe it. I’m going to be stuck with him for the rest of my life? Christ.
“I really am sorry,” he says, sounding almost hurt.
Oh, God. Whatever.
A server, a skinny blonde girl in a dull pink polo shirt, wanders over to our table. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I stutter silently, fumbling with the menu, then point to a picture of a cup of coffee.
“Regular or decaf?”
I sigh and point to the word “regular”.
“And for you, sir?”
“Just water, thanks,” Adam says.
“Do you know what you want to eat?” she asks me.
I point to some monolith pictured on the menu by the name of the Mega Breakfast Special.
“Bacon or sausage?”
I look for the word ‘bacon’, irritated. This stupid voice condition better be temporary.
“Bacon,” Adam says.
“What about you, sir?” she asks.
“Nothing for me. Thank you.”
He hands her his menu, and I do the same, and she leaves.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he continues. “Your voice, that is. Your tongue and your mouth look normal. I think something might have happened to your vocal cords.”
My right hand travels to my throat, and for a moment I find myself distracted, but—wait. What happened to Mirabel?
“That wasn’t her. That was another double,” he says, lowering his voice. “Like you. Although she wasn't a dhampyr.”
I blink, processing this information. A double. Yes—I was being trained to be Mirabel’s double. That was the Program. There were many others like me in the Program; I’m not sure how many.
“She gets girls—somehow, somewhere—and has them altered into flawless copies of herself,” Adam says. “Looks, voice, mannerisms. Everything the same. It allows her to interact with the, uh, daytime world.”
So what did you do with her?
“The double?”
Yes.
“We, uh...”
You killed her, didn’t you.
“Haruko did. Yes.”
I shiver, my fingers and toes curling.
“She was different than you. Complete. Once they’re done with the program...” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s really no hope for them after a certain point. Their personalities are too thoroughly warped—“
So you’re saying I wasn’t finished?
“Well, obviously. You can’t even talk yet.” He shakes his head, puts his glasses back on. “And you don’t seem to have any programming, either.”
Programming?
“Like OCD on steroids. Like you wouldn’t believe.”
But Julian said revenants aren’t allowed to tamper with human life.
“Julian?” he asks, confused. “What about Julian?”
He said something about a consensus. Rules for what you can and can’t do.
“Wait—when?”
In my last dream.
His upper lip curls slightly. “Right. Well, you’re correct. There are rules we’re supposed to follow. But Mirabel’s kind of... exempt.”
Why?
“Because of her abilities. She has some irreplaceable skills that are very useful to us.” His voice keeps getting lower. “Many of my line, my family group, can control others' thoughts or memories. Some of us can even erase memories. I can’t, but that’s beside the point.”
Where are you going with this?
“Mirabel is unique in her ability to control the thoughts of many individuals simultaneously. Moreover, she can erase memories on a wide scale. A societal scale.” He pauses, putting his glasses back on. “She’s the reason you’ve never heard of us.”
How the hell did I get involved with someone like that?
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he says.
The waitress returns to our table. She places a mug of black coffee in front of me, a glass of water in front of Adam. As she walks away, Adam pushes the water over to my side of the table.
“Here. I don’t want you getting dehydrated.”
I make a dismissive sniffing noise and pick up the coffee instead.
“So these dreams,” Adam says.
What about them?
“You’ve been dreaming about... about being me?”
Yes. About how you became a revenant, I guess.
“I see.”
Is it because I’ve been drinking your blood?
“I have no idea. It’s never happened before.”
I shrug.
He stares at the ceiling, his eyebrows furrowed.
So what’s in the box? I wonder at him. You said she was looking for it.
“Ah. Right. Mirabel recently stole something important, something which rightfully belongs to Julian. The three of us raided her offices to reclaim it.”
Okay, but what is it?
“It’s, uh... Well, I know it’s macabre, but...” He puts a hand between his mouth and the rest of the restaurant. “A severed head,” he tells me in a whisper.
A severed head?!
“Yes. It, er... belonged to Julian’s mother.”
What the fuck are you fighting over a severed head for?
“It’s actually a powerful artifact,” he says. “Julian’s mother was called Mnemosyne, and she was—still is, in a sense—the oldest of us, or at least the oldest one we know of.”
The oldest revenant?
He nods. “And arguably the most powerful. And now, even though she’s—” he makes a slashing motion across his neck—“members of our line can still communicate with her, channel her power, even learn some of her... techniques from her.”
And you didn’t want Mirabel to be able to do that.
“Exactly.”
That’s all he says. The waitress is coming with my food.
Adam sits quietly as I eat. At first I feel so hungry I intend on finishing the entire spread of eggs, bacon, pancakes and hash browns the waitress sets in front of me, but after just a few bites my hunger fades, and before long I feel like I’m stuffing myself. I keep picking at my eggs long after they’ve gone cold, taking tiny bites, but eventually I give up. I’m not going to be able to finish even half of it.
Do you want any? I think at Adam.
He shakes his head no. “Are you sure you’re done?”
I nod and put my napkin on top of the plate. You don’t eat food, I guess?
“I could if I wanted to, but... well, it’s a waste.”
After a few minutes the waitress returns with our check. Adam hands her a twenty-dollar bill and stands to leave.
We walk out to the car. I take shotgun; he gets back in the driver’s seat.
What’s it like? I ask as we roll back to the supermarket.
“What?” he asks. “Being a vampire?”
I nod.
He thinks about it for a moment.
“It sucks,” he eventually concludes.
I snort. You’re hilarious.
He smiles.
///
The back entrance to the supermarket is a dingy white door labeled only with a street number. Adam knocks on it twice. After a minute Haruko pulls it open and gives the two of us a look I can’t decipher.
The darkness inside is unwelcoming. The high shelves of the stock room have been cleared out, but the interior still smells of rotten food. The air is heavy with dust and mildew.
Aya is leaning against the exterior wall of a meat locker, holding a flashlight under her chin. As she sees me, she smiles pleasantly. “I made you up a place to sleep,” she says. “We found the old store manager’s office. I set up a sleeping bag for you in there.”
I follow her down a narrow corridor to the office. It’s empty, save for a pillow and an unrolled sleeping bag she’s placed in the middle of the floor. A single window outfitted with Venetian blinds allows tiny slivers of lamplight to filter in
from outside.
“I wish I could stay in here,” she says. “Do you think it will be okay for you?”
I nod, smiling through tight lips.
“Do you just want to go to sleep now?”
I keep nodding.
“Okay. You know where we are if you need anything.” She hands me the flashlight and slips out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Alone. Finally. I sit down with my back to the wall and pull off Haruko’s sneakers and socks, recalling the conversation I overheard between Haruko and Adam back in the cabin. One minute she was saying I was a liability, the next she was throwing me a change of clothes. I guess they decided not to kill me. I mean, they probably would have done it by now otherwise. I hope.
Someone knocks at the door.
I pull myself back to my feet and open the door. It’s Adam. Holding a knife in his hand.
I slam the door closed and scramble to lock it from the inside.
“No!” he shouts. “Jesus Christ. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”
Then what do you want with that knife?
“Remember back in the woods, when you took the blood from my neck—“
Yeah. I’d rather not think about it.
“Right, well... you had a flashback, didn’t you? A memory vision.”
I frown. I guess I did. Although I only really remembered things I already knew.
“You don’t have to let me in,” he says. “But if you do we can try it again. We might recover something important.”
I chew on my lower lip. Once again I try to reach back past the attack: preparing for my appointments, putting on my makeup. I see nothing before then. Nothing at all.
“Your memories have been sealed,” Adam says in a quieter tone. “But they’re not gone. Even Mirabel can’t completely erase them, not permanently.”
I unlock and open the door. Adam steps inside.
“All right,” he says. “Why don’t you sit down?”
I sink down onto the floor.
He crouches next to me. “What would you prefer? My wrist, or...?”
Sure, I think, grimacing. Whatever. That’s fine.
He nods and brings the blade to his wrist.
I look away. I can’t watch him make the cut.