Sloane Briallen

The scent of wet asphalt and brine slammed into me like a punch in the gut, as I stepped out of the car.  I found myself bracing against the door frame, my heart racing.  I had to close my eyes to stop the lightheadedness that threatened to overwhelm me.

I had spent the past several days anxious, thinking of confronting my adoptive parents for the first time in two years.  I had been so focused on this trip that it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I’d have to deal with sense memory.

I had only lived in Port Orchard for two years.  And I had been gone for just as long.  I had expected it to feel familiar.

I hadn’t expected the way my heart would ache at the scent of grass and forest and salt.

Mickey, Bell, and I had driven together, but I was alone as I got out of the car.  I had to let Mickey and Bell out a mile out of town.  As far as anyone here knew, they had disappeared midway through our senior year of high school.  Pulling up in a car when everyone thought you were dead in the woods somewhere was a good way to make a scene, and none of us wanted that.

I had parked a few houses down from our house.

The air was wet, the sky filled with grey clouds.  Sad, sloshy snow covered the ground in patches.  This was the Olympic peninsula and whenever it snowed, it tended to get very wet. 

But, even though it was cold out, the neighborhood was filled with life.  Kids played catch in the street; parents talked to each other over fences; neighbors worked on getting the slush out of their yard.  This community was outdoorsy.

As I walked, I saw double takes and heard whispers with my name.  I’d been a well-known figure in Port Orchard.

“Sloane!”

I looked up to see Rita Berber, our next-door neighbor, standing in her yard with her son, Jonathan.  Jonathan was working on getting slush off the front steps while Mrs. Berber stood in the doorway.

I stopped, putting on a fake smile.  “Oh, Mrs. Berber! Jonathan.” 

“Hey, Sloane,” Jonathan mumbled, looking down.  I could hear his heart speed up in reaction to his blushing.  He still had a crush on me even two years later. 

“It’s been, what?  Almost two years since I last saw you?”  Mrs. Berber glanced toward Jonathan, who was doing his best not to look at me.  I felt bad for him.  “Hasn’t it, Jonathan?” she asked him.

“Yes, Mom.”  The words were barely intelligible as he scrapped snow off the bottom step with a shovel.

Jonathan was a cute boy with long, curly brown hair and friendly brown eyes that lit up whenever he smiled.  He had strong shoulders from years of yard work for his arthritic, green-thumbed mother.

I heard footsteps inside their house, and the screen door opened.  A girl with rosy skin and dyed dark red hair stepped out.  She wore black glasses over bright blue eyes.  In her hands was a college chemistry book. 

Tessa.  Bell’s ex-girlfriend, and now, apparently, Jonathan’s girlfriend.  She’d be a sophomore at Seattle U now.

“Ah, Tessa!” Mrs. Berber called out.  “Do you remember Sloane?”

Kind of hard not to.  She’d hated me since the first day we’d met when I had shown up in Port Orchard, and suddenly, Mickey, Bell, and I were inseparable.

She didn’t even try to fake a smile.  She just rolled her eyes.  “Hello, Sloane.”  

“So, where do you go to school?” Mrs. Berber asked, either not noticing Tessa’s disdain as she went to ask Jonathan a question about something, or just politely and kindly ignoring it.

I shrugged.  “At the moment, I’m just getting on my feet, a few things have happened, and I’ve had to reorganize my priorities.”   Yeah, like the daily question of whether I should drink bottled blood or animal blood. 

She nodded solemnly.  “I can imagine,” she said.  “Life is crazy sometimes.”

She had no idea.

She caught me glanced at Mauve and Leah’s two-story house next door.  “Are you visiting Mauve and Leah?”

“Yeah.”  I caught her sad look out of the corner of my eye.  If she only knew about Mickey and Bell. 

“Okay, well I won’t keep you.  Give them my best.”

I managed another smile.  “I will.  It was good seeing you.  Goodbye.”   I left.  I could feel Tessa’s cool gaze on me as I went.

Mauve and Leah’s house was a two-story Victorian painted navy blue, framed by two leafless oaks.  A walkway led from the sidewalk to four concrete steps that went up to the wraparound screened-in porch.  Two wicker chairs and my favorite rocking chair sat on the porch, still where they had been before I’d left.

I heard four heartbeats in the house.  Two were normal human heartbeats and two were fast, shifter heartbeats.  Mickey and Bell had beaten me here.

Walking toward the house and thinking about the Berbers, it was crazy.  My life was so . . . not like that.  It never would be.  Mrs. Berber would maybe become a grandmother, and she would die.  Jonathan and Tessa would maybe get married one day, maybe have kids, grow old, and die.  And their kids would grow up, get old, and die.

I would never have a life like that.  Not ever.  I would continue my life, and I would never die until something killed me.  I would never get married.  I would never have kids.

I would never live a vanilla life.  A quiet, sentimental part of me ached at the thought of that.

I found myself standing before the front door.  Before I could decide not to open it, it opened for me.  A man almost my height, but twice as wide, stood there.  He wore a pair of sweatpants, revealing the body of a wrestler, with thick arms and a trunk for a torso.  His chestnut hair stuck to his wide jawline, fresh from the shower.

“Let’s get it over with,” Bell murmured.

I followed him through the door.  The threshold let me pass without any issues.  This had been my home for two years.  Apparently I was still welcome.

I followed Bell through a hallway filled with framed photos into a living room.  The room was painted a soothing burnt sienna, with warm brown furniture in a circle around a glass-topped coffee table.  A TV and sound system sat across the room from the furniture.

Another man, taller than me, sat on a recliner, dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail.  He had the same sharp jawline as Bell and their mothers.  He wore a T-shirt and jeans.  Mickey.

Two women sat on a loveseat facing me. 

Mauve was a tan, curvy woman with dark hair wearing jeans and a red knit sweater.  She had the same eyes and nose as her son, Mickey.  On Mickey, these manifested as friendly, approachable features.  On Mauve, her brow was heavy, and the strong jawline and nose made her look hard.

Leah, on the other hand, was slender, wearing leggings and a long tunic.  She had blonde hair and the same eyes as Bell, but her face was softer.  She was paler than Mauve, and heavily freckled.  She had the same jawline and nose they all had.  They were all clearly related.

I was the oddball out.  Pale skin, bright eyes and almost-black hair.

I stopped in the doorway, unsure of what to say.  Seeing Mauve and Leah wasn’t the same punch in the gut that the asphalt and brine had been.  The sight of them didn’t bring any of the anger or sadness.

It just brought a weird, uncomfortable numbness.

Leah stood up.  “Hi, honey.”

I couldn’t find my voice to reply.  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“Sloane?” Mauve said.

Here were the two women who had hidden Mickey and Bell from me for two years.  The women who slept in the same house as their grieving daughter, keeping to themselves the knowledge that could stop her grieving at any time.  The women who had called me their family while lying to my face every day.

But here were also the two women who had taken me in.  Who had fought to take me from Phoenix.  Who had done everything to bring me here.

How did I reconcile those two things?

I heard the clicking of nails on tiles.  Something pressed into my hip and I looked down.  A white German Shepherd grinned up at me, tail wagging, tongue lolling out.

“Norton!” I cried out, stooping down to scratch his head.  God, I had forgotten about him.  We had only gotten him about a year before I left.  He had been a police dog before being retired.   

He was wet and panting.  He must have just come through the doggie door from the backyard.

Norton was content to let me scratch him, eyes closed in pure bliss.  He was a dog—historically very unfriendly to vampires—and he had no problem with me being a vampire.

Finally, I exhaled, looking up.  Mauve’s face was impassive, but Leah’s was not.  I could see the worry on her face.

Bell had moved to stand behind the loveseat.  He was one of those people—a stander.  One of those guys who never sat down in a group of people.

But him standing there, with his mom and Mauve and Mickey . . . there was a gulf between us.  A separation, with them on one side, and me on the other.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The question hung in the air between us.  It widened the gulf.  An ocean of separation inside of fifteen feet.

“We wanted to,” Mauve finally said.

“Sweetie, we really did,” Leah said.

I blinked at them, staring in disbelief.  “Really, that’s all you got?”

“Don’t you—” Mauve started in a scolding tone.

I cut her off.  “No—you lied to me.”  I gestured to Mickey and Bell.  “About them.”  I pressed my lips together to keep them from wobbling.  I was angry, but the tears were threatening to flow.  I didn’t want to cry.  Not right now.  “How could you?”

Mauve opened her mouth, but Leah put a hand on her arm.  Mauve shut her mouth.

“It was to protect you, baby.”  Leah  stood up, stepping forward.  She shortened the gap between us.

“From what?”  My voice was reedier than I wanted it to be.

Leah looked at Mauve for a second before saying, “Come here and sit with us.”

I sat down on the floor.  Norton climbed in my lap, and I glared at them. 

“Mature,” Mauve said.

“You’d do the same.”

She didn’t have a reply for that.  Mauve survived on spite.

Leah held up a hand to Mauve to silence her.  She came to sit on the floor in front of me, meeting my gaze with warm brown eyes.  “Honey, it was a terrible situation.  But we were trying to do what was best to keep you all safe.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”  My voice cracked, but I held in the tears that threatened to spill.  I had promised myself that I wouldn’t cry.  I had already spent too much time crying over this.

She shook her head sadly.  “We thought we were doing what was best for you all.  Their anger was so explosive in those first few months.  They were dangerous and—”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” I protested.  “I’ve spent my whole life around shifters.  They weren’t dangerous when they first transformed—”

“Were those shifters who transformed as young teenagers?  With parents who were shifters, too?”

I paused.  “Yes.”

“That’s not how it works when you transform as late as they did.  And shifter parents generally have the strength to reel their kids back in.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.  I didn’t know anyone who transformed late.  Most of Annie’s friends started transforming as early teenagers.  Annie started even earlier at age eight, but halfshifter bodies were different than fullshifters’. And a lot of shifters I had known in Phoenix had been adults.  I hadn’t known them when they first started shifting.

“Shifters who transform as late as the boys did—their aggression is ten times worse.”

She pulled down the neck of her tunic to her shoulder to reveal three parallel scars, the center scar the longest, across her shoulder and down halfway across her chest.

“I had to have a blood transfusion and I have permanent nerve damage in this arm,” she said, rubbing her left forearm. 

I blinked.  “What?”

“This happened four months after you left,” she said.

I looked up at Bell, but he met my gaze.  I had assumed it was him.  He was so much more the hot head.

But, when I looked at Mickey, he was the one who couldn’t meet my gaze.

Mickey had done this to her.

“This was what we were dealing with, Sloane.  They were out of control.  You’ve had experience with wolves and vampires—they can handle an attack like this.”

But a human couldn’t.  I couldn’t have survived that.

But it didn’t matter.  “You took the choice away from me.”  I gently pushed Norton off my lap before standing up.  “Did they tell you?”  I looked at Mickey and Bell.  “That I had experience with magics?”

“They did.  But again, what did it matter?” Mauve replied, speaking over whatever Leah was going to say.  “You could have still gotten hurt.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make!”

“It was the decision we made to protect our kids.  All of our kids.”  Mauve’s gaze was hard and unwavering.  “Maybe it wasn’t good—but we did what we thought would keep you all alive.  Especially you.”

“Yeah, well you didn’t do such a good job of that did you?” I shot back.  “I’m fucking dead anyway.”

Mauve’s mouth dropped.  Pain flashed across wide, shocked eyes.

Good.

“Sloane!” Bell said sharply, taking a step towards me.

“No, fuck you guys.  I’m out.”

Anger colored my vision as I ran.  Everything was so much clearer, and I could smell the pine around me so sharp, it was like I had plunged headfirst into a pool of sap.  My thoughts ran with me, vacillating between anger at them and anger at me.

They had done what they thought was necessary?  They were “keeping us safe”?  What sort of bullshit excuse was that?

But then again, hadn’t I done the same thing to Mickey and Bell so many years ago?  Hadn’t I cut them off to save them the heartache of seeing what I had become?

How was I so different?

I had been twelve, and Mikko had been with me.  It was his birthday, and I had some money from pickpocketing at the mall.  I wanted to take him to the ice cream shop as a celebration.

The shop was almost blinding from the Phoenix sunlight coming in through the wall of windows.  Everything in the room was white—white floors, white tables, white walls.

There was a case along one wall displaying the ice cream flavors next to a cash register.  We sat at a plastic white table, Mikko with strawberry, me with cookie dough.  Mikko was turning twelve.

“Aren’t you sticky?” I asked, watching as melted ice cream dripped over his hands, sticking between his fingers.

He shrugged, using his non-sticky hand to push his dark hair from his face.  He refused to meet my eyes, which annoyed me.  But I had promised Annie that I would leave him alone today.  It was his first birthday with us.  I had to be nice.

“Sloane?”

I hadn’t heard that voice in months.

I looked up to see Mickey and Bell standing just inside the doorway of the shop.  Bell had been the one to call my name.

They hadn’t changed much since I had last seen them.  Maybe a little taller.  But Mickey was still pretty chubby with round cheeks, and Bell was skinny with knobby knees.

“Uh . . . hi.”

“How are you?” Bell asked, a tentative smile on his face.

The smile made my stomach fall.  I shrugged.  “Here and there.  You guys?”

“Mauve got offered a job in Seattle to work there,” Bell replied.  Mauve was a literary agent. 

I knew what that meant.  They’d move.  They’d be away from me.  And that was their best chance.

“Oh, that sounds great.  I’m glad you’re going,” I told them, keeping my voice even.  The words sucked the air from my lungs as I said each one.

I apparently wasn’t the only one who felt the breathlessness.  Mickey’s mouth twisted, and he glanced at Bell.  Bell had stiffened.

But, God bless him, Bell tried anyway.

“Sloane, you can come with us.  We can adopt you, and you can move away with us.” 

I shook my head.  “No.  I can’t.”

Mickey finally spoke.  I heard the way his voice hitched as he did.  “Why not?”

I glanced at Mikko, who was looking between us.  He didn’t say anything.

I stood up and nodded towards the door.  I didn’t want to talk in front of Mikko.

Bell and Mickey followed me out into the ninety-five-degree weather.  I stayed under the awning to avoid the sun shining directly in my face.  I noticed the way Mickey’s nose wrinkled as he stood closer to me.  I hadn’t had access to a shower in days, and I hadn’t changed clothes in almost as long.  I couldn’t even smell it anymore.

“You should go,” I said.  I kept my voice as even as I could.  “I don’t belong with you guys.”

“Yes, you do,” Mickey argued.  He took a step forward and I could already see the sweat beading on his forehead.  He hated the heat.  “You should be with us.  You should come with us.  It’s—”

“No,” I barked.

Mickey jumped, and Bell’s brow furrowed in confusion.

I hadn’t meant snap at them.  But . . . the dreaded day had finally come.  I had hoped I would never have to do this.

I took a deep breath and smoothed my expression out.  When I felt like I looked impassive enough, I said, “Because, Mickey and Bell.  I don’t care anymore.  Not about you.  Not about Mauve and Leah.  I wish you’d move so I never saw you again.  Then we wouldn’t bump into each other all the time, and it wouldn’t be this awkward small talk and desperate begging.”

The words hung between us.  And for a moment, I found my hands twitching, wishing I could grab them out of the air and put them back.  I wanted to tell them it was a lie.  I wanted them to know that I didn’t mean it.  That I missed them more than they could ever know.

But the anguish in their eyes stilled my hands.

I couldn’t take this back.  And I shouldn’t take this back.  Because they didn’t depend on me.  They wanted me to be a part of their family, but I already had a family that needed me.

I glanced back at Mikko through the window.  His eyes were on his ice cream.

I looked back at Mickey and Bell.  “Please go, before you embarrass yourself more.”  I hated every word as they came out.  I was the embarrassing one.

Mickey opened his mouth, but Bell put a hand on his shoulder.  Bell’s anguish had disappeared, replaced by the anger he had always done so well.

“Fuck you, Sloane.”  He turned from me and started down the street.

Mickey looked between me and Bell.  The distress in his eyes made my chest ache.  I could barely meet them.

But I needed to.  I needed him to leave.  I met his gaze.

And finally, he did.

I waited until they turned the corner before going back inside.  My chest felt hollow, a buzzing noise filling my head.

I sat down numbly across from Mikko.

“What’s wrong, Sloane?” Mikko asked, his mouth covered in ice cream.  He only glanced up at me for a split second.

I shook my head, ignoring the stinging sensation behind my eyes.  “Nothing, Mikko.  Just had to take care of some old problems.” 

He didn’t reply, going back to his ice cream.  Mine was melting in the sunlight.

I didn’t tell Mikko about how hollow and cold I felt inside.  It was easy to pretend that I wasn’t falling to pieces.  It was something I learned to do, living like I did.  It got to be routine where I woke up every morning, pretending everything was okay and that my life wasn’t spiraling out of control.  Being with Mikko was no different.  It was easy to fake everything.

I had thought I was doing the right thing at the time.  I thought I was protecting everyone.  By that age, I was with Annie and Mikko and Mira, and we stayed together.  I couldn’t go back with Mickey and Bell.  They had family.  They did.  And I wasn’t part of “they”.  I was part of “we”.  I had to stay.

So, going back to now, going back to reuniting after Mickey and Bell had disappeared—didn’t that all mean that I walked out first?  Eight years ago, wasn’t I the one who walked out first?  When I told Bell and Mickey that I didn’t need them?

Was this what I deserved?

“Sloane.”

I’d already heard them coming.  I didn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise.  I had escaped into the woods behind their house and climbed up a cedar tree, sitting on the lowest branch, twenty feet in the air.  It was cold and wet, and the air was almost oppressive in its weight.  I couldn’t feel cold, but I could feel the humidity.

They stood at the base of the tree, looking up at me. 

“This was a horrible idea,” I said.

“They were just trying to do what was best,” Bell shot back defensively.

“Taking away my choices from me is what’s best?”  I stood up on the tree branch.  I took a certain amount of satisfaction in being above them.

Mickey was the one to reply.  It was the first time I had heard him speak since we had come back to Port Orchard.   “Sometimes parents have to do what they think will best protect their kids.  Even if it hurts.”

“No.”  I shook my head.  “They were stupid and reckless, and they hurt all of us in the process.  Why are you siding with them?”

“It’s not sides, Sloane,” Mickey said.  “Come down here.”

I sneered at him, but he met my gaze with a steady expression. 

Finally, I jumped down behind them.  They turned to face me.

“I lived in that house.  For six months.  And they knew.  They knew where you were.  And they knew what I was going through.”  I glared at them, tears threatening to spill.  My throat ached as I spoke, and I fought to keep my voice from cracking.  “How is that protecting us?”  I clenched my fists.  “How did that protect me?”

“Better sad than dead,” Bell replied.  His brown eyes were hard, his jaw clenched.

“And apparently better dead than happy.”

“But you’re not dead, Sloane.  You’re a vampire, but here you fucking are.  You’re here, fighting with me.”  He motioned to Mickey.  “Talking to us.  Don’t stand there, fucking telling me, that you’re miserable as a vampire when—”

“When what, Bell?   When being a vampire means this?”  I grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled up to show the thick, white scar that tore from my sternum down to my pelvis.

His mouth shut so fast that I heard his teeth click together.

“I was torn apart because Ilona decided I was taking away her toy.  My insides were ripped out of me.  My uterus is gone.”  I glared at him.  “Or have you already forgotten?”

He didn’t answer.

“Mikko was tortured.  Genie and Frankie’s parents are dead.  All because I met the wrong guy at a bar.  In a city I would have had no reason to be in, if I had known you were alive.

“So, no.  You’re right.  I’m not dead.  But what price did I pay that I’m still here?”

Neither of them had an answer to that.

“Did anyone think of that?  Did anyone realize the consequences of this?  Because the only fucking reason that I am right here, right now—standing here—is because of a decision they made without consulting me.”

“There was no way to know—” Mickey started.

“The fuck there was,” I snarled.  “I was broken.  When you left, it broke me.  And everyone could fucking see it.  Everyone except, apparently, your parents.”

There was no response.  Bell’s jaw was clenched, and Mickey was obviously trying to search for something to say.

“Whatever,” I finally said, waving my hand dismissively at them.  “I’m leaving.”

“Sloane, don’t you walk out on us!” Bell shouted as I turned my back.

“You walked out on me,” I replied.  “I’m just continuing the legacy of walk-outs.”