Sloane Briallen

Swanskin’s was the only place where I felt comfortable getting drunk.  I worked there, I knew its ins and outs, and if worst came to worst, I could activate the wards to the basement and hide in there if something bad happened.  Niqui took the safety of her employees seriously and there was always an out in case someone got too rowdy for anyone to handle. 

I tipped back a shot of whiskey and barely felt the burn of it down my throat.  I caught the eye of the bartender, a light-skinned mage named Bart.  He had worked at Swanskin’s for a few months before he left for grad school.  We never had overlapping shifts.  But he was usually working when I was a patron.

I signaled for another shot, and he nodded, making a just-a-minute motion.

I watched as he poured blood straight from the bag into a shaker.  He followed it with vodka and tobasco.  A literal Bloody Mary.

He chatted with the man who had ordered the Bloody Mary.  He was smiling a lot as he capped the shaker and shook it.  The agitated sloshing of mixing drinks was a sound I’d come to like.

I followed his gaze to the vampire he was talking to, and I saw Karhi for the first time. 

He wore a short-sleeved maroon Henley that clung to him.  He had defined biceps and shoulders and his waist cut in before flaring out over a nice ass.  He drained the last of his drink, the tendons on the back of his hand jumping where he held the glass.

I couldn’t blame Bart for his smile or the way he lingered with Karhi.  Karhi was flirting with him and wasn’t a bad looking guy. 

But beneath the surface, I was frayed thin because today was my birthday.  I was on edge and needed another fucking drink.  Now.  Bart needed to work faster.

Bart poured out the drink into a glass and set it in front of Karhi.  He skewered three olives and laid them across the top of the glass with a flourish, winking at Karhi.

Bart headed back towards me.  “Same?” he asked.

I nodded quickly.  “Leave the bottle this time.”

He shrugged, grabbing the bottle from the top shelf.  LaPhroaig, twenty years.  He set it down in front of me, and I threw him a thumbs up.  “Tell Niqui to take it out of my paycheck.”

He shrugged again, heading back to flirt with Karhi.

I poured out a finger and threw it back.  There were only a few ounces left in the bottle.  I guess this whiskey wasn’t really something you should be taking shots of, but I liked the aftertaste and burn of this particular one.  And a younger, poorer part of me loved the idea of drinking what was a status symbol for rich people like it was a PBR.

I listened idly to the chatter in the bar.  Two nurses gossiped about work in the corner.  A man in a booth was animatedly, and drunkenly, telling his friend the plot of V for Vendetta and dissecting how it told the story of the original comic.  Every person in the bar was a regular except for Karhi.

The door to the bar opened.  I glanced up to see a burly man I didn’t recognize, a shifter with greying temples and sharp eyes.  He wore a heavy coat and thick work boots.  His boots thunked on the wooden floor with every step.

He sat down at the bar closer to the door, and Bart tore himself away from Karhi.  “What can I get you?” he asked the man.

“Corona,” the man replied brusquely.  He hunched in on himself, arms heavy on the bar.  Something about him made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t know if it was the instinctive fear of large men, or the way he replied to Bart.  I jiggled my knee, glancing over the counter to see one of the purple spray bottles that Niqui had along the bar.  A little bit of relief eased the tension gathering in my shoulders.

Bart got a Corona and put a lime wedge into the mouth of the bottle.  He set the bottle down on a cocktail napkin.  “Anything else?” he asked.  “Kitchen closes in twenty minutes.”

“No,” the man said, taking the bottle and twisting the lime into it.  He took a sip before shoving the lime down into the bottle.

Bart nodded.  “Let me know if you need anything.”  He left to check on the other customers.

I poured out another finger of scotch and shot it back.  I was met with a faint swirling sensation at the top of my head as I set the glass back down.  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the man giving me the stink eye.

Guess he didn’t like me treating the whiskey like a shooter.  His attention on me, unwelcome and unasked-for, made me want to leave.

Instead, I poured out another finger and glanced at him.  I toasted him and threw it back. 

He grumbled but turned his gaze back to his beer.

Bart came back from his rounds and moved back to flirt with Karhi under the guise of washing dishes.  I listened to them, looking at the mostly-empty bottle.  Karhi was telling Bart how he’d just moved here from London.  His voice was warm, his laughter at Bart’s responses genuine.  He had a slight accent, but it was one of those accents that had been acquired living in many different places.

The tension in my shoulders eased a bit.

Then two things happened.

The first: “Elizabeth?”

My head snapped up to see Karhi staring at me.  Bart was turned away, getting the bus tub from the end of the bar next to the back wall.

I hadn’t heard that name in years.  And there would be very few vampires who would know it.  In fact, probably just one.

But I didn’t have time to react because the second thing happened.

“Fags.”

I saw Karhi pause, ever so slightly.  Bart didn’t react from where he was bringing the bus tub to the sink.  He hadn’t heard.

I turned from Karhi.  I had a more pressing thing to attend to than my grandmother’s ex-lover.

I poured out the last of the scotch, shot it back, slipped off my stool, reversed the bottle in my grip to hold it by the neck, and smashed the bottom off the bottle over the man’s head.

The shifter roared in pain, stumbling to his feet.  Blood poured from his forehead down his face.

“Get out,” I snarled, holding the bottle out toward him.  He towered a good nine inches over me, but I didn’t let it bother me.

The room had gone quiet, and I could feel the tension like taught strings against my back.

He roared wordless rage, lunging at me.

I dodged into his guard and shoved the bottle directly into his huge neck and twisted.  I felt the slice of glass through flesh all the way up my arm.  The skin in the neck didn’t resist nearly as much as other body parts would, but I still felt it in my teeth.

I darted out of his grip, and he screamed in pain.  Hair spurted out across his cheeks and neck.  I felt the subtle smokey magic of a shifter changing forms.

I grabbed the purple bottle behind the bar and squirted it at him.  The man screamed, jerking away from me.  I followed him, squirting in time with the words I next spoke.  “No.  Homophobia.  In.  The.  Bar.”  He shrieked in pain, scrambling away from me.  His exposed skin was turning ugly colors of yellow and purple, but other than that, there was no outward sign of what the liquid in the bottle was doing.

“Aconite’s a bitch, ain’t it?” I shouted.  “Out!”

He turned from me and ran, limping.  He barreled through the door, screaming obscenities at me.

When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I turned back to the bar, setting the squirt bottle back down behind the counter and looking at Bart.  “Broom?” I asked. 

The adrenaline and the alcohol were warring in my system, but it left me curiously calm.  I was annoyed, but I wasn’t angry or scared.  I had just done what needed to be done.  And the tension that had settled in my shoulders was gone.

Bart stared at me with wide eyes.  “What the fuck?”

“He called you the F-word,” I replied.  “We don’t stand that word in this establishment when the entire fucking staff is queer.  Not the F-word, not the T-word—nothing.”

Understanding overtook his confusion and he nodded, shuffling to the far side of the bar where there was a broom and dustpan.  “Niqui wasn’t kidding when she said it was safe here,” I heard him mutter.

I didn’t reply, looking up at the room.  The nurses and the two guys in the corner were staring at me, mouths agape.

“You have a problem with the gays?” I asked them.

They all shook their heads.  “I’m gay,” one nurse volunteered.

I was actually pretty sure I had known that.  She normally came in with her girlfriend.  They were both paramortals.

“Excellent,” I said, trying to take the broom and dustpan from Bart.  “Drinks on me!  As an apology.”  I swayed as I said it, almost hitting Bart with the broom.

“Sloane, give me the broom,” he muttered, tugging the broom away from me.

“No, I broke the bottle, you shouldn’t have to clean it up.”

“You are still holding the bottle and are going to hurt someone.”

I looked down to see that I was indeed still holding the bottle, jagged edges tipped with blood and flesh.  “Right,” I said.  I set it down on the bar, shrugging.  “Alright, you clean, I pour.”

“Sloane—no.  The last time you poured off your shift, you cleaned us out of rum.”

I waved him off.  “Just clean, Bart.  I’ll do just one round of drinks.”

Bart huffed out in annoyance, but he didn’t argue.  I was the closest thing to assistant manager at this place anyway.

I made my way around to the back of the bar.  “French 75s!” I called out, reaching for the Hendrick’s at the top of the bar.  It was crowded with alcohols that didn’t match with it—brandy, cognac, scotch.  There was supposed to be another shelf for those items but there had been an incident.  I grabbed a bottle of syrup.  “But we do them with pomegranate.”  I pulled a bottle of champagne cider from the fridge.  “Aaaand cider.” 

One of the first things I had learned as a bartender was how to hold more than one bottle in my fingers as I poured it out.  I had always thought it was so cool in movies.  I had become pretty proud of my pouring game.  I could do three bottles on a good day.

Today was not a good day.

It really only works if everything has spouts on it.  If it doesn’t, you just wind up pouring champagne all over the bar and dropping a bottle on the floor.

“Sloane!” Bart shouted.  “I swear to God.”

I grimaced.  “Oops.”  I glanced up to see Karhi was watching me, a small smile on his face.  I pointed finger guns at him and clicked my tongue.

Bart stalked to the back of the bar with the broom and dustpan.  “Sloane, get out.” 

I reached up to the higher shelf and grabbed one of the top tier cognacs with a French name.  I dodged beneath Bart—a feat considering he was four inches shorter than me—giggling as I shot into one of the booths.

The other patrons stood by the bar, watching my antics with amusement.

“I’m so sorry,” Bart said, leaning over to pick up where I dropped the bottle.  “I’ll get you the drinks she promised you.”  He shot me a venomous look, but I ignored it.  The adrenaline had gone (probably why I had dropped the bottle), leaving only the alcohol.  My stomach fluttered pleasantly.

“You know she got the Louis the Thirteenth, right?” Karhi murmured to Bart.

Bart shot me another glare.  “If you let her take the high shelf stuff, she won’t destroy the furniture.”

“That happened once, Bart,” I shot back, glancing at what had once been an even higher shelf above all of the alcohol.  It was why the alcohol shelves were so crowded.

Bart didn’t reply, mopping up the champagne I had spilled all over the bar top.

I pressed my back to the wall of the booth and brought my knees to my chest.  I rested the fancy cognac bottle on my knee and my head against the wall.  I was in that stage of drunkenness where I could follow everything that was happening, and everything swirled pleasantly.  I didn’t have to, or want to, think about what day it was.

I watched Bart clean up my mess and rectify my promise of French 75s with pomegranate syrup and champagne cider.  I felt a twinge of guilt, but not much. 

I took a swig of the cognac.  The floral, fruity notes of this exorbitantly expensive brandy were lost on me.  After a while, all alcohol tasted the same when I was drunk enough.

I watched Karhi step away from the bar as Bart worked on the drinks.  He had a glass of ice water in his hand.  He set it down in front of me.

“‘S that?” I asked, taking another drink from the cognac bottle.

“I believe water is recommended after a night of raucous drinking,” he said.

“Didn’t think vampires needed to stay hydrated with water.”

He smirked, smoothly settling in across from me.  He had a French 75 in his hand.

“Mmm, didn’t say you could sit there,” I said.  But I took the water.  He was right; water was a good idea now.

“Would you like me to leave?”

I looked him up and down.  “Up to you.” 

Dimples flashed as he smiled, and my stomach fluttered in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol in it.

Or maybe it had everything to do with the alcohol.  I hadn’t been attracted to a man in years.

“You sit, you drink,” I said, pushing the bottle of cognac towards him.

He took it and winked, toasting the bottle towards me before taking a long draught.

Watching him, something nagged at me.  He said something earlier that had bothered me.  Right before I’d shoved a broken bottle in a man’s neck.

I drank the water.  The shock of cold water down my throat made me realize how flushed I’d become through everything.  My face felt hot and sweat beaded at the back of my neck.  My sweater was sticking to my skin.

“I’m Sloane,” I said, pulling off my sweater.  Cool air flooded me, and I sighed contentedly.  My undershirt stuck to my back.

“Karhi,” he said.

Right.  Karhi.  I knew who he was.  He was . . . wait.  Who was he again?  I knew he was a vampire.  Famous one, too.  Why . . . maybe one of Aoife’s?  But no . . . this wasn’t a living vampire . . . right?  Wait, did Aoife have children besides Sevilen?

“Do you work here?” he asked.

“What gave it away?”

“I don’t think patrons are typically allowed behind the bar—also Bart was complaining about you pouring off your shift.”

I shrugged.  “What can I say?  I’m a rapscallion.”

He smiled again and that same fluttering feeling came back, this time in my chest.  The way his eyes lit up when he smiled was so inviting.  There was an openness to him that I hadn’t expected to see in a vampire.

I took a swig of the cognac bottle before holding it out to him.  He pointed to his French 75.  “I’m fine.”

“Double fist.”

He eyed the bottle in my hand, glancing at his own drink before nodding.  He took the bottle from me and paused, looking between the glass and the bottle in his hands.  Then he shrugged and put them to his lips side-by-side.

It went as well as he had probably expected.  He got the cognac in his mouth, but the French 75 spilled on his shirt. 

I snorted at him.  “Nice.”

He set them both down and shook his head, chuckling.  The dimples made a reappearance.  “My brother is really good at doing that, but I’ve never been able to master it.”

My smile fell, but he didn’t notice.  He was already turning from me, hips faced towards the bathroom.  “Give me a minute,” he said.  “Gotta blot.  Don’t want it to freeze when I go outside.”  He glanced at me as he stood, winking.  “Be right back.”

“Okay,” I said.

He headed back to the bathroom and when I heard the door swing shut, I got out of the booth.  “Bart, I’ll pay my tab when I get in tomorrow.”  I grabbed my coat from where it was hung by the bar.  I put my sweater back on and put the coat over it.

Bart waved me off, still dealing with the aftermath of my antics.  At least he’d kept my promise.  Everyone had French 75s.

I emerged onto Kellogg Boulevard, the street that ran along the Mississippi River.  Swanskin’s enjoyed a primo spot on the water, just across the street from a strip of trees that, in the summer, gave a nice bit of vegetation to walk through, and in the winter, revealed the river, frozen at the edges but never quite in the center.

I crossed the street, headed towards a fountain a block down from Swanskin’s where there were benches.  Even though I had grown up in Arizona, I loved the cold.  It made me feel clearer than any amount of warmth did, cutting through the haze of the alcohol.

I cleared the snow off one bench and instead of sitting on the bench, climbed up so I was sitting on the backrest, feet planted on the seat. 

The first pull of the cigarette helped ground me.  It was harsh, the smoke burning like inhaled embers going down.

My brother, Karhi had said.  In the present tense.  Something I couldn’t say.

It was ridiculous, really.  Someone referencing their male sibling completely taking the wind out of my sails.  But here we were. 

I hadn’t talked about Mickey and Bell for months.  When I had finally made it into St. Paul six months ago, I had made a vow not to say their names.  I had hoped that if I tried to pretend that they hadn’t existed, then maybe it would hurt less.

It had just served to make me more numb.  It had made me really good at drinking a lot of alcohol, on and off shift.  I only barely finished my last final for my Associate’s two days earlier.

Bell had been good at drinking two things at the same time.  It didn’t even have to be alcohol.  He could do it with anything—two mugs of coffee, two Gatorade bottles.  He’d even tried two gallon-sized milk jugs.  It had ended about how you would expect.  The jokes about jizz hadn’t been in short supply that day.

I felt the prickle of energy that betrayed a vampire’s presence before I heard the intentional shuffle of feet on packed snow. 

I glanced back to see Karhi in a black peacoat, hands in his pockets, but not shoved in the way humans who felt cold did.  He was just playing the part of someone who felt cold.

“Did I touch a nerve in there?” he asked, coming around to stand in front of me.

I shrugged.  “No.  I just realized I was getting hot.”

He nodded. “Okay if I join you?”

I tilted my head slightly to the side, considering it.  “I suppose,” I said after a minute.  “But only if you can smoke this without coughing.”  I held the cigarette out towards him.

He raised an eyebrow.  “I smoked the first generation of commercial American cigarettes,” he said.  “You think that scares me?”

“Well, considering you haven’t taken it . . .”

He rolled his eyes, taking the cigarette from me.  He took a drag, and his nose wrinkled but he inhaled without any trouble.  Smoke expelled from his mouth in little puffs as he spoke, “Not my favorite, but still nothing compared to the ones that were like sticking a log in your mouth and trying to breathe in ash.”

I laughed, taking it back from him and putting it back in my mouth.  “Why are you out here?”

He sat down next to me, climbing up on the back of the bench.  “Bart’s trying to close up, and he got a little mad that I went to sit with you.”

I nodded, exhaling out of the corner of my mouth.  “Don’t know much about Bart but I know he’s a flirt.”

He shrugged.

I glanced at him.  My vision was still doing a good impression of a lava lamp from the alcohol, but the cigarette was helping keep my head from spinning.  Karhi’s gaze was on the river.

Even without beer goggles, I would have found Karhi attractive.  There was a nice golden glow to his skin, and his brown hair had a red tint to it.  His shoulders were broad, and they made me want to grab them and sink my nails in.

He caught me staring but I didn’t try to hide it.  His grey eyes, the color of slate, met mine.  He bit the corner of one lip absentmindedly, searching my face.

Liquid courage wasn’t really something I needed, but it never hurt.  I shifted over so our hips were touching.  He jolted against me as we made contact.

I sat back up, our shoulders brushing together.  I met his eyes again, tilting my head up slightly.

He paused for a moment, looking between my eyes and my lips, his own lips pursing in contemplation.  “Queer?”

I looked at him for a moment.  Then I made a decision that would change my life.

“Bi,” I clarified.

The dimples made me weak.  “Excellent.”  He leaned forward to kiss me.