Sloane Briallen

Rain beat down on my face—a steady drum of droplets. The sky was an ugly ash grey. One of the rare days of Phoenix rain.

My body ached. I had been beaten and torn apart with a knife. Some turf war, I thought. I couldn’t really remember why . . . had it been Spike?

“Why are we back here?”

I blinked, staring up at the woman standing over me. She wore a blue V-neck and jeans.

After a moment, I said, “I’m not blonde.”

The mirror image of myself standing over me rolled her eyes. “No, but I am.” She held out a hand to me.

I blinked again before grabbing her hand and letting her haul me up. As I did, I came to stand up in a field with brown grass up to my knees. The grass settled back where I had disturbed it.

“Here?” I said, looking around at the lot. It was empty of anything except grass and some trash. On either side of the lot were houses.

“That’s what I said,” the blonde me replied, looking around us. “Why here?”

I bit my lip, running my hand through my wet hair. “This is where Spike abandoned us. When we were nine, remember?”

“Yeah, of course. But why, Sloane?”

I tilted my head at her, holding my hands out to say, What do you mean why? “You may look like me, but you’re dumb. This is where Spike left us behind. After fighting with those other kids. They stabbed me in the stomach and left me to die.”

Warmth bloomed across my belly, and I looked down to see my white shirt soaked with blood. Fear raced like cold fire down my spine, staring down at the crimson spreading over my abdomen. Fingers trembling, I touched my stomach gently.

“They left me to die,” I whispered, shaking. “But unlike last time, Mira isn’t going to stumble on me. I’m too far away from anyone who can help me.” I pulled my hands away, an ache settling in the back of my throat. I looked back at myself. “This is probably the last bit of time before my brain dies from blood loss. You’re some figment of my imagination.”

“I am your imagination, idiot.” She flicked me in the forehead.

I rubbed my forehead. “What the fuck?” It hurt. Getting flicked in the forehead by my fragment hurt?

“Told you,” she replied. “Now, quit being so melodramatic. Your time isn’t up just yet.”

As she spoke, the rain and grass faded away until all the surrounded me was darkness. Darkness and silvery, full-length-mirror-sized moving images. Like person-sized movies filling a room. They spun lazily around me, chatter and background noises filling the air.

I recognized some of the sounds around me. I heard Mira and Mickey and Karhi . . .

“Memories,” I whispered, watching the spinning silver memories slowly float around me.

“Yes,” blonde-me said. She pointed behind me. “That’s where you took us.”

I turned to see myself, as a nine-year-old, laying covered in blood from a knife wound on my stomach. The memory was slightly colored but was quickly fading to silver and grey like all the other memories.

Tentatively, I reached out to the memory to touch it. I didn’t want to go inside of it, just see what happened if I touched it.

“No no no no n—” Blonde-me tried to grab me before I could touch it, but she missed. I brushed it with my fingers.

I wasn’t thrown in the memory, it just flared to color, fresh as the day that I experienced it. As soon as it filled with color, it started to fade to silver and grey again.

I looked at myself. “Just wanted to see what it would do.

She rolled her eyes. “I hate that fucking memory.”

I shrugged. “We met Mira that day. Shitty situation. Good outcome.” I stepped forward, examining another memory close-up. It was the one where I met Mickey and Bell, the one I had told Lina about.

“What is this?” I asked, waving around us, careful to avoid touching another memory by accident.

“Your memories.”

I glared at her. “Yes, no shit. Who the fuck are you?”

She smirked. “Finally. Asking a question you don’t already know the answer to. I’m your subconscious.”

I stared at her flatly. “Seriously?”

Her smirk disappeared. “What?” she shot back defensively.

“That sounds like horseshit.”

It was her turn to glare at me. “You accept that we’re in a hall of your memories, but me being your subconscious—oh, that’s too far.” She pantomimed clutching at the collar of her shirt. Pearl clutching with the pearls.

She had a point. Her words tugged at me, a ring of truth to them. It was like they came from inside of me. They were familiar, like the faint voice that jogged my memory when I was talking or thinking.

“Fine,” I said, scowling at her. “I’ve never met you before.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why would you have?”

I gestured at all my memories surrounding us. “Well, aren’t you—isn’t this all—like my life flashing before my eyes?”

“Oh—not this again—look, I already said that this isn’t you dying.”

I eyed her skeptically.

“You already died,” she said, waving it off. “You’re back now because Karhi brought you back.”

My mouth dropped. “What?”

“Yeah, I held off Keeran for a little while longer.”

“Who?”

“Nothing, look—this is a rare moment for us. Let’s not squander it. You have free access to me. Direct access.”

“So?”

She made a noise of disgust. “Look, I know you only like to focus on what’s in front of you, but let’s look at the long term, okay?”

I blinked at her. Annoyance bubbled in my shoulders. “Hey, I’m not—”

“I know you’re not stupid. Short term is what’s kept us alive this long. But long term will keep us alive for longer, okay?”

I paused for a moment before finally nodding. “Okay, fine. What long term thing should I be focusing on?”

“Ilona tried to kill us.”

I stopped.

Memories near me spun wildly, and I looked over to see one inching closer. Inside of it I saw vague colors over the grey and silver, indicating it was activated.

Ava and Angus standing over me. “I supposed it would make us your aunt and uncle, huh?” Angus said.

“Shit.” I had been too groggy at that point to really register what he meant by that, but . . . they were Ilona’s children.

Ilona had sired hundreds, if not thousands, of children in her millennium on Earth. Karhi would occasionally point out her children to me if we ran across a vampire while we were out. I couldn’t ever identify them by any sort of bond like Karhi could (he said it was because I wasn’t direct siblings with them), but they were everywhere.

“I doubt they came after you because you pissed them off in Lazarus,” my subconscious said.

“They said, ‘she said to make it bad.’ They were there at someone’s behest.”

She nodded in agreement.

“So, are you thinking it’s what Mira and I were talking about? Like it seems like everything is leading back to me?”

She nodded again. “Mikko did say they referred to him as belonging to some mistress. A woman. And he was tortured. He had no way of knowing who tortured him. But that’s her thing. She tortures.”

My fists clenched, anger burning up my spine.

Green flames flared around me, a halo surrounding me for a few feet before they dissipated.

“Oooh,” Subconscious said, looking around us at the lime green flames. “Look at that.”

I ignored them. We were in my head. A manifestation of flames from anger made sense. “And she killed Genie and Frankie’s parents. Filleted them. Probably tortured them, too.” I made a noise of disgust. The flames around me flared for a split second in time with my anger. “I wish Amos was here. He could fucking figure it out.”

“Yeah, well he’s not,” she replied. It wasn’t sarcastic or snappy. She was just stating the facts. “But Annie . . .” she mused.

“Same thing, right?” I shrugged, glaring at the flames. “All that blood and—“

“But Annie doesn’t remember it.”

I paused, glancing away from the flames to look at her.

“Annie didn’t feel any pain, except in the aftermath, when she woke up and was healing.”

She was right. Annie hadn’t felt the pain as it was inflicted on her. Ilona wouldn’t have done that. She would have made sure Annie felt it.

“Yes,” she said, responding to my thoughts. “She didn’t suffer.”

“So . . . that wasn’t Ilona?”

“Either it wasn’t, or something went wrong. It was out of pattern, for sure.”

I tapped my fingers together, considering that. My subconscious was right . . . but I didn’t know what it meant. Mikko, I could definitely see. The kids’ adoptive parents, too. Annie could be a fit . . . but not really.

Amos could have unraveled that, too.

“And he’s gone,” Subconscious said. “Him, his sister, and Carlos, and Timber. Everyone who could have helped us figure this out. Real adults who do this detective shit for an actual fucking living.”

“But why?” I finally said. “Why go through all this trouble?”

“She likes to dominate,” she replied. “To be in control and have the advantage.”

I paused for a moment. “Wait,” I said. “When did Mira go under contract with Hazel?”

She blinked. “I believe Mira said two months ago.”

“I wonder if she found out about my ties to Mira when that happened.”

We stared at each other.

“Fuck,” we both said.

“That is not good,” she said.

“She’s been punishing them to fuck with me,” I growled. The fires around me had steadily grown as we spoke. Almost all of the memories around us had disappeared behind a wall of flames taller than us.

“I wish I could fucking use these on her,” I snarled.

My subconscious surprised me by grinning at me. “Soon enough,” she said. In fact, she almost sung it.

“What?”

My eyes opened to a familiar-yet-unfamiliar ceiling in a dark room. It was quiet except for the steady breaths and heartbeats next to me.

I blinked a few times, trying to place myself. I knew, without having to think about it, that I was somewhere safe. But where?

I looked to the side and found myself face-to-face with Mickey.

His eyes were closed, his breathing even. He didn’t look peaceful. His brow was tented, even in sleep. His lips were pouted slightly. He was on his side, both of his hands clasped around my left hand.

I looked to the other side to see Bell. He was asleep, too. His face was contorted in anger, his mouth moving. He’d always been a sleep talker. But he wasn’t making any noise.

His hands were also holding mine. My right hand.

I was in Mira’s room.

A part of me that was still angry wanted to pull my hands away and push them off the bed.

But most of me was tired and in pain. That part of me just wanted me to relax into the softness of the two men I loved almost more than anything. Relax into the softness that was them holding onto me, even in sleep.

I couldn’t relax though. Everything hurt.

I ached. I felt like I had been hit by a freight train. Every little bit of myself that I moved, even just my feet, burned like they were covered in open wounds. My arms were skewered on pins and needles.

Everything hurt.

But I was alive.

Those fuckers didn’t kill me.

Tears brimmed, and I finally had to pull my hands away from Mickey and Bell to wipe my eyes. I hissed in pain at the movement.

But the tears wouldn’t stop. The weight of everything from the past few days fell in a single sheet of torrential rain on me.

Mikko’s kidnapping and torture. Genie and Frankie’s murdered parents. Annie’s attempted murder. Mickey and Bell’s reappearance.

My own attack.

I hadn’t been conscious for most of it, but the aches and pains in my body told me that whatever Angus and Ava had done to me had been brutal. The worst was my abdomen. It was as if something had been scraped out. It felt raw and scorched. Something was wrong with it and a piece of me knew that whatever it was, I could never fix it.

A sharp intake of breath on either side of me told me Mickey and Bell were awake.

I couldn’t speak through the tears, but it didn’t matter. They knew.

They wrapped their arms around me and each other and pulled us all together. I hugged them as close as I could and sobbed into them. I wasn’t sure whose shoulder I buried my face into, but it didn’t matter. I needed their comfort.

And they delivered.