Sloane Briallen

“Hey, it’s been a while since we sent Mickey and Bell out for skewers,” Sharona said, sitting on the bench next to me.

I glanced up from where I was tying my shoelaces. “They’re not back?” I glanced up at the sky. The sun was beginning its descent behind the trees that bordered the back of our yard. We were having a rare day of no rain or snow. It was cold outside, but the bonfire in front of us was warm, the flames reaching two or three feet out of the fire pit. I had been hellbent on having a bonfire for my eighteenth birthday.

Our friends were milling around the backyard. A game of hacky sack was going on in one corner, two guys I both dated trying to outdo each other with the most elaborate kick. They had asked for me to play, but I was pretty sure they just wanted me to watch. They had both been trying to get back with me. I was done with it all and had sat down on a bench at the fire.

Inside of the house, I could hear Mauve telling a story about a writer she worked with. It involved a lot of alcohol, a goose, and maybe some cocaine? I didn’t know the story, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I read a lot of the writers she worked with, and I wasn’t up for her killing my heroes on my birthday.

“No. Do you think they got lost?” Sharona asked.

“Oh, one hundred percent,” I snorted, sitting up. I pulled my flip phone from my pocket to check for messages.

No good sticks. Gonna try by the creak.A text message from Bell.

“Does he even try to spell?” Sharona asked, leaning over my shoulder, her blond hair brushing against my arm.

I pushed her hair off me, and she leaned back. “No, but why does this text message sound like a disappointed dog? No good sticks. Gonna try the creek. Maybe roll around in some deer shit I find.”

Sharona laughed.

I dialed his number and held my phone up to my ear. It rang five times before going to his voicemail. I ended the call. “Must be out of service. Or on silent.” I dialed Mickey’s number.

A moment later, I heard his phone go off. I looked over to see it on one of the tables set up with food.

Shaking my head, I shut my phone. “Useless. Alright, let’s go see if we can find them.”

She stood up. “Probably find Bell halfway up a tree, trying to figure out how to come down.”

I chuckled. I’d watched Bell tree himself enough times that I couldn’t doubt her statement. “So, potentially he’s a cat. Definitely a dog.” I stood up. “Gotta tell a grown-up.” Saying that was so weird to me. Two years ago, I would have never given a shit if an adult knew where I was. Nowadays, I tended to keep Mauve and Leah pretty apprised of my comings and goings. There was an aspect of it that was comforting—someone was always interested in where I was. Checking if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

“I’ll meet you in there,” Sharona said, heading toward the forest.

I went into the house to find Mauve.

She stood in the center of five of my friends and two of her own friends, gesturing animatedly with a beer in her hand. Her russet brown hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. When she saw me, she toasted me, the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes crinkling as she said, “Sloane!”

“Your son and nephew appear to have gotten lost in the woods.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sounds right.”

“Sharona and I are going to search for them. I have my phone.”

“Alright. If you’re not back in fifteen, we’re coming after you.”

I gave her a thumbs up.

“Mauve!” a frantic voice shouted. Sharona ran in with a bundle of something in her hands. Her brown eyes were wide with concern and fear. Immediately, the hairs on the back of my neck rose as Mauve moved past me to meet her.

“What’s wrong, hon?” she asked.

Sharona held up what was in her hands, and I realized it was the remains of a shirt and shorts.

Specifically, the remains of a brown shirt that said Life is good on the front, and black cargo pants. The same clothes that Mickey had been wearing when he left.

The shirt was split along one seam, the hem of the neck stretched and mangled, but still intact. The shorts had split along the seams, too. The waistband was torn raggedly.

“Isn’t that what Mickey was wearing?” someone asked from behind us.

“Where did you find this?” Mauve was already heading towards the backyard.

“Like, thirty or forty feet into the trees? They were just there with nothing else. I tried to call out, but I didn’t hear anything.” Sharona trotted to match Mauve’s long strides to the back door.

Sharona led us through the trees to where she had found the torn clothes. The forest floor was thick with brown pine needles and leaves. I could see bits of the cargo pants on the ground, threads and buttons. They were bright against the dark dirt.

Mauve moved past the torn clothes, calling out. “Mickey? Bell?”

I followed her, also calling out.

“If this is a prank, it’s awful,” Sharona said. She smiled as she said it, but her voice betrayed her with how it shook.

“I could see Bell doing this, but Mick—” Mauve stopped short, and I almost crashed into her.

“Mauve,” I said, ducking around her. “What—” I stopped.

More torn clothes. Bell’s salmon shorts, white hoodie, and sneakers. The pants and hoodie were torn the same way, just along the seams. But the sneakers had been shredded. Like an animal had gone after them.

But there wasn’t a hint of blood anywhere.

“Sharona, go call the police,” Mauve said, looking back at my friend.

The mention of cops coming here made my shoulders tense. “There’s no blood,” I protested weakly. “It’s probably a joke.”

“If it is, they’ll be in a lot of trouble,” she replied grimly.

I didn’t point out how she didn’t say anything about what she would do if it wasn’t a joke.

I couldn’t bring myself to.

Karhi texted me the address of where he had woken up after he was kidnapped. It wasn’t too far from Mira’s house, but it wasn’t anywhere I was particularly familiar with.

“Take Annie with you,” Mira said, bumping her hip into Annie’s to push her closer to me. I still sat on the steps with Mikko.

“What?” we chorused in dismay, looking back at her.

“Annie, you’re making both me and Mikko exhausted with all your fluttering around him. Sloane, that area is where some of Annie’s friends live. Go. You two can work some shit out.”

“I ain’t got shit to work out,” Annie muttered, folding her arms over her chest.

“Same,” I agreed.

“Bullshit,” Mira shot back. “Y’all two need to work out your new normal. Now go.”

Mikko leaned away from me, and before I could stop myself, I was standing up. I glared at Mikko. “Traitor.”

He gave me a look. “We both knew it was coming, I just pulled away, so I wasn’t leaning on you when she made you stand up. Been burned too many times by that in the past.”

Annie was standing in front of the stairs, also likely not of her own accord.

“Mira, I swear to God, the fucking mind control—” Annie started.

“If you ain’t done nothing about it by now, you ain’t gonna do nothing,” Mira cut her off. “Now go, you two. Before I make you.”

I bit back the response that she already was making us. Literally.

The scary thing was that I had hardly felt her in my head when she made me stand up. Her mind control had gotten way stronger than I liked.

“Just ‘cause you don’t like it don’t mean you don’t need it,” Mira said.

I glared at her. Stay out of my head.

She shrugged, smiling guilelessly. But I knew she was listening.

“Ugh,” Annie said. “Fine, let’s go. Where?”

I showed her the address.

She scowled. “Yeah, a couple of my girls got a apartment down the street from there.” She handed me my phone back and shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts.

I gave Mira the finger, but I followed Annie.

Walking side-by-side with Annie down Mira’s block brought back a lot of memories. I had barely seen her since I had come back, and most of the time, she had been unconscious. And I knew a lot of that was my own fault—I was avoiding her just as much as I was avoiding Mickey and Bell. Annie had been my ride-or-die when I lived in Phoenix. We had been almost inseparable since the day we escaped from a foster home together.

But she was a shapeshifter. And the bad blood between vampires and shifters went back centuries. Honestly, the general repulsion towards vampires from all other magics went back centuries.

Annie had been raised with a shapeshifter mom, aunt, and cousin. And while she was half, and generally hated by other “pure” (read: full-blooded and racist) shapeshifters, she had found community in other halfshifters as she had grown up. I had spent most of my time with her, but she had had a lot of halfshifter friends, too.

All of this was to say that I didn’t know how to initiate a conversation with her now that I was a vampire. I had honestly expected her to be a lot more hostile towards me than she had been.

“How long?” Annie asked.

“Almost a year,” I said. I wasn’t going to play dumb like I wasn’t thinking the same things she was. She wanted to know how long I had been a vampire.

“And you said you ain’t fed from no humans?”

“I have not.”

She ran her hand over her locs. “How did Frankie handle it?”

“He did not.”

“That checks out. Genie?”

“Beat on Frankie for not handling it well.”

“Mira?”

“Immediate mind control and keeping Lina from being near me.”

She huffed out a breath. “And Mikko had no problem.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I’m the one to tip the scales.”

“If you don’t count Lina not giving a shit. But I ain’t really seen her since that first night ‘cause I was either here when she was at school, or it was nighttime. I guess she sleeps like a log.”

“She’s five,” Annie shrugged. “She could sleep through a raid.”

“Yeah . . .”

I didn’t know where we were going in this conversation. I didn’t think Annie did either.

“Mira told me about Mickey and Bell.”

I didn’t say anything. It was too frustrating and confusing to talk about.

“How do you feel about being a vampire?”

I hesitated. “What?”

“I feel like nobody’s asked you that. How do you feel about it?”

I blinked, looking down at the pavement as it disappeared beneath my feet. “Uh . . . worried y’all would hate me, I guess.”

“That ain’t what I asked,” she shook her head. “Like, if we wasn’t around, and you wasn’t worried about how we’d think of it—just you. How do you feel about it?”

How did I feel about being a vampire? Had anyone ever asked me that before? Had I ever even thought about it before?

I had spent so much of the past year hating myself, convinced I would never be able to return to my old life. I had stayed in Minnesota because I thought I needed to stay away. I thought that if I went back, they would just reject me and hate me. I had already lost Mickey and Bell—that family was gone. I loved their mothers, but I couldn’t look at them without being reminded of what I has lost. I couldn’t look at them and not see their sons.

And I had just assumed, when Karhi turned me that I had lost the rest of my family. And that was all I could ever focus on. Everything was gone.

I had never thought to ask what I had gained.

“I guess not going to the bathroom anymore is cool,” I finally said.

Annie snorted. “What?”

I shrugged. “It was the first thing I could think of.”

She looked up thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can see that. It’s annoying to find a bathroom when you out and places won’t let you in cause you not a paying customer.”

“And I can still eat and drink. It’s fun, actually. I can eat how much I want and not get sick.”

She shrugged. “I could already do that.”

“We’re not talking about you,” I shot back.

She chuckled. “No.”

“And I heal fast. And I’m a lot stronger and can move a lot faster.” I smiled. “It’s nice. I guess I don’t hate it? Like, the blood drinking is weird, but I don’t have to really think about it too much cause my sire always makes sure we have blood in the house. And it’s not like I hurt anyone.” I paused. “Did you know there’s a whole industry of small scale farmers paying vampires to kill their cows for them?”

Annie gave me a weird look. “What?”

“I don’t know. Just thinking that I don’t think I know any vampires that kill humans. It’s all hunting or slaughtering animals, or using blood workers and the Red Cross.”

“So, you’re okay with being a vampire?”

I held my hands up in response. “I made my bed. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing when I left the bar with him that night. It’s not like my birthday’s ever been the best anyway.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You trying to make me feel bad for your or something?”

I scowled at her. “Can’t y’all pity me for like a second? Karhi said the same fucking thing yesterday.”

She frowned. “I don’t like you comparing me to your sire . . . but he also right.”

I rolled my eyes. Coming to Annie for pity was always a losing game and I knew it. I really wasn’t picking the right people to pity me. And that’s probably what I needed if I was being honest with myself.

“He turned you on your birthday?”

“Yeah. I was at the bar I worked at doing shots, and I hooked up with him.”

“You hooked up with a vampire?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t think I had anything else to lose.” I looked at the ground, suddenly unable to even look at Annie. “Not until Mira called me, anyway. And told me Mikko was gone and Genie and Frankie were back. And then I remembered how much I had to lose.” I bit the inside of my lip.

I had been drowning in my sorrow at losing Mickey and Bell. The days in the past two years had blurred together, even after I became a vampire. Everything was just going through the motions. Nothing about changing the scenery from Washington to Minnesota, or even changing the humanity from living to dead, had done anything for me. It had just been one giant smear of ash and grey and apathy and hopelessness.

“Why did I lose sight of everything else when they disappeared?”

It took me a minute to realize that I had asked that question out loud.

“Everyone has their breaking point,” Annie said. “That was just yours. I don’t know . . . if I lost Daoine, I don’t think I could come back from that.” She pronounced it theena.

Daoine was her cousin, the only family Annie had left. She lived at one of the local churches. She used to be glued to our hips when I lived in Phoenix.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Her church goes on a trip just before Samhain every year. Keeps the kids from sneaking out to the festival. This year she’s a chaperone now that she finally old enough.”

I nodded pensively. “How do you think she’d take this?”

“Probably say something about it being God’s will, hug you, and ask you to come to mass with her on Sunday to revel in your new life.”

I chuckled. “You’re probably right. And you’d say something about Jesus being a vampire, and then she’d get mad.”

Annie smirked, shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one who came up with that.”

“Nah. It was you.”

She pushed me. “Nah.”

I stopped, tilting my head at her. “You pushed me.” I furrowed my brow.

She shrugged, stopping with me. “Don’t make it a thing.”

“You’re . . . not mad at me?” I hadn’t expected Annie to be laughing and joking with me, much less touching me.

She started walking again. We were getting close to the address Karhi had sent. “I wasn’t taught to be particularly kind to vampires,” she said. “But I also wasn’t taught to turn on family for being different than I expect. You always had my back. Covered for me with cops. Covered for me with boxing. Covered for me in foster when we first met. Wouldn’t be right if I turned my back on you. Ain’t happy about you being a vampire, but I also ain’t happy that Frankie and Genie lost they parents.”

I had expected Annie’s judgment to be much harsher than everyone else’s.

“I will set you on fire though if you hurt any of them, though.”

There it was.

I couldn’t hold back the laughter that erupted in the back of my throat. “Good to know.”

She eyed me for a moment before looking away, the hint of a smirk on her lips. She came to a stop. “This the place?”

The number on the house in front of us matched, and I could see the broken bars where Karhi had escaped out one of the front windows. It was a nondescript house, painted a dark grey over the stucco. The front yard was well kept with some trash here and there from people passing by and just tossing things. There weren’t any decorative plants and the walkway from the sidewalk had some weeds between the blocks of concrete. It was an unobtrusive house that blended in with the rest of the neighborhood. You wouldn’t have thought anything bad could happen here.

And that was kind of the point, right? Karhi was kidnapped and taken here, and it was designed for magics. No one was supposed to notice this place.

“A couple of my homegirls live in that apartment complex.” She pointed to a series of two-story buildings a few houses down across the street.

“Anyone I know?”

“Riley and Shayna? I think they was after you.”

I shook my head. “Don’t know them. Shifters?”

“Yeah. So, I think—”

“I’ma stay here,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t think they’d be quite so understanding like me.”

“Real understanding,” I rolled my eyes.

She left, but not before punching me in the arm. Normally, I would have been angry about it. As it was, it meant things were okay between us. A sense of relief settled between my shoulder blades.

I knew that Lunette had already searched the house, but I didn’t have much else better to do while I waited for Annie. At the very least, I was curious to see what someone had apparently thought was a good prison for a 500-year-old vampire.

The front door was open. Either no one had bothered to lock it after they abandoned it, or Lunette had left it open.

The first thing that struck me was the sterility. Everything was white and unblemished. Nothing hung on the walls and the front hall didn’t have any sort of key hooks on the walls or a table by the door.

Lunette had said it seemed like a safehouse, and she wasn’t wrong. No one had ever lived here. The threshold let me through as if I was walking into a business. There was no resistance, not even a whisper of reluctance to let me in.

The hallway went off to my left. In front of me gave way to a large room with an open kitchen. There was a folding table to one side with chairs. The back wall was a sliding glass door with white blinds obscuring the backyard from view.

To one side was a series of closed doors. As I moved towards them, there was the faint, musty scent of old urine. It was the same thing I had smelled where Mikko had been held. I remembered, at the time, thinking he must have picked a corner to pee in.

But thinking now . . . he had said there had been a bucket for him.

I opened the closest door to me. It was the room Karhi had been held in. I smelled the bleach, like Lunette had said, and I smelled the same musty scent. In fact, it was stronger in here.

That didn’t make sense though. Vampires didn’t pee. Why would I smell that here?

Light footsteps scuffed through the front door. I looked back from the doorway. It couldn’t be Annie—even with my vampire hearing, she was still quiet.

A familiar face popped around the corner though it took me a second to recognize him. Messy dark hair and band aids on his face.

“Uh . . . Michael?” I asked, looking down at the nine-year-old.

“Yes!” he grinned brightly.

Something about the grin unsettled me. “What are you doing here?”

“Annie sent me over here,” he said, glancing behind him. “She pissed off one of them shifters and she’s in trouble now.”

The mismatch between his cheery demeanor and the words that came out of his mouth was so discordant, it took me a moment to realize the gravity of what he had said.

I bolted, jumping clean over the kid as I went.

Annie was strong, but she was still weak from the beating she had taken the other day. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem leaving her alone with some shifters, but I couldn’t take that risk with everything else that had happened recently. If that kid had said she’d pissed off some shifters, then I’d take him for his word. I couldn’t risk her getting hurt again.

I heard the commotion before I reached the apartments.

They were shaped like U’s, a courtyard in the center walled off from the rest of the street. There was a concrete wall with a metal gate across the tines of each U.

“I knew you was a fucking freak,” I heard from behind one of the walls, “but friends with a vampire?”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Annie growled. The ferocity behind the words was immediately undercut by her coughing.

I vaulted the wall into the courtyard. Landing, I only had a split second to take in what was going on before I needed to move. I could already sense that there was a full-blooded shifter among us.

Shattered tiles surrounded Annie where she lay on the ground just below the balcony that lined the second floor of the apartments. Her left arm was crushed beneath her, and the scent of her blood was heavy in the air.

Two women stood against the railing that overlooked the ground floor. From the angle, they had to have pushed her off the second story.

A full-blooded shapeshifter stood over Annie, her hands partially transformed into scaly talons.

I barreled straight into her, shoving my shoulder into her solar plexus. She shouted in pain, the blow knocking her on her ass.

I could feel the points of my claws against my palms. My canines grew into fangs, and I bared my teeth.

I flew after the woman, but she was already getting her feet under her. I dodged off course just before she launched herself into me but couldn’t avoid her.

Pain exploded against the side of my head, and I saw stars. The scent of my own blood pierced my nose.

The blow knocked me over, but I turned the motion into a forward roll, coming back up with no stars in my vision but a hell of a lot of blood. I wiped it out of my eyes, just bobbing out of the way as the shifter swung her hand at me.

I popped back up just in her guard, wrapping my arm around her arm to keep her from grabbing me.

Before she could react, I rammed my shin straight into her crotch. The crunch of bone-on-bone juddered up my shin and thigh, and I bit down the whimper of pain.

The shifter howled in agony, crumpling to the ground, hands clutching at her pelvis.

“Broken pelvis is a bitch,” I snarled at her, lunging to finish her off.

“Sloane,” Annie whined.

The wind left my sails at her voice, and I turned my momentum into a spin back to Annie. My goal wasn’t to teach anyone a lesson. My goal was Annie.

I shot nasty looks at the women above me, but they didn’t make a move to come down. They stared at me in horror as I went to help Annie up.

Annie cradled her injured arm against her body. I was careful to pull her up by her other arm.

“I know Siyavash taught you to kill, but don’t,” Annie muttered when she was standing, using her good arm to hold the mangled one. It was bent in the wrong places.

I grimaced. “Are you okay? I smell blood.” I couldn’t see any fresh blood on her, though.

“Healed,” she growled. “But they broke my fucking arm.” She looked up at the other two. “Halfborn pieces of shit,” she shouted at them. “You fucking sent Aisha after me?”

“What’d you expect?” one woman shouted back. “You fucking with bloodsuckers? You ain’t welcome here no more.”

Aisha moaned from where she lay on the ground, a limp mass of broken shifter.

“She’ll heal fast,” Annie said to me. “We gotta get out.”

“Alright,” I said. I glanced at the gate and wall. It was still locked from the inside. “You’re not going to like this,” I said.

“What?”

I put my hand to Annie’s back and swept her legs out from under her. I leapt over the wall holding her, and we ran.

Well, I ran.