Sloane Briallen

I kept Mira awake almost all night with my nightmares.  I couldn’t sleep, but I couldn’t stay awake. A vicious cycle where I dozed off, began to dream, woke up screaming and crying, and it repeated. 

It was even worse for Mira because on top of being awoken to the screaming, she was tuning into my dreams.  She had seen my rape in my dreams, and in my waking moments, replayed many times over the years.  I was sure she hadn’t missed this.  I knew I hadn’t.

Finally, at seven AM, I gave up.  I got up, pulled on my jeans, and left her room.  She was staying further down the hall from the king and queen.

I still didn’t know why Mira was even here, but the past eighteen hours had been such a whirlwind that I honestly hadn’t cared.  After Mira, Hazel, and Sevilen had taken me from the dungeons, I had dissociated for hours until just before Karhi had arrived.  I think I had sensed when he finally crossed the threshold of the castle, and it had pulled me out.

I’d been in therapy the entire time I lived in Port Orchard.  It had been a weekly talk therapy and biweekly CBT/DBT.  I quit cold turkey when I left Port Orchard to move to Minnesota.  But I still knew techniques to self soothe.

I could recognize that the day before had fucked me up.  Nightmares of the night I was raped, followed by a forcible invasion of my mind that made me relive it.  I knew that I should talk it out with someone, but it was still so fresh that I didn’t even want to think about it.

Also considering I had almost died in October—I wasn’t doing well.

I wandered the halls of the castle.  I would occasionally pass servants who would nod to me but otherwise didn’t react to a foreign vampire in the castle. 

Being in this castle, I felt like my skin was perpetually crawling.  I wanted to scratch at it, but it was an itch that went underneath my skin.  It reminded me of how I felt when there was magic around me.  That coupled with the way living vampires felt slightly off from human vampires, it all made me jitter like a junkie in withdrawal. 

I finally found a set of double doors that led me into a breezeway with benches overlooking a small courtyard on one side and a wide-open field on the other side that stopped at the castle walls.  The snow was a thick blanket over the uncovered areas, but it wasn’t thick enough to hide the dead plants in the courtyard that were grouped in such a way that made me think of a butterfly garden or something.  The field had snowmen and an attempt at an igloo.  There was a shed against the outer curtain wall that had been left open.  I could see sleds and buckets—toys for children.

I had heard about the Montana castle over the years.  I knew it was a small community of a couple hundred that lived here, mostly families with children that were home schooled. 

Living vampires could have children.  The children were born human and could choose to turn into vampires after they turned twenty.  Some would wait until later in life; some would choose to even never turn.  But from the bits I had gathered over the years, most turned between their late-twenties and early-thirties.  Effectively, they were fledglings for most of their lives, until they finally turned into full vampires with their first taste of blood directly from a human.

I sat at one of the benches, facing out towards the snowy field.  The sun was rising from behind the mountains, and the air was still.  It was peaceful.  Being outside made the itchiness in my skin fade until it was a vague tingle.  It was still annoying, but it wasn’t the persistent scream in the back of my head that it had been.  Above me, there were heaters built into the ceiling of the breezeway, giving off some warmth.  I couldn’t feel it much.

I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.  Hazel had asked, when she had taken me from the dungeons, if I wanted anything.  This had been my answer.  She’d supplied it to me along with a fancy gold zippo lighter that had an R engraved on it.  It was heavy, which made me think it may have been real gold.  Which, in theory, was absolutely appalling, but in practice, I was so fucking numb, I just wanted a cigarette.  I would deal with the $15k gold lighter in my hand later.  Though in the back of my head, a calculator was running the numbers on how much I could pawn it for.

The first inhale brought a rush of smoke, much smoother than I was used to.  The exhale helped center me.  The tingle under my skin eased, and I was through my first cigarette before I even realized.  They were those long thin ones that I always associated with Europeans.

I lit a second one, planted it at the corner of my mouth and pulled out my phone.

Karhi had bought me a new phone after mine was destroyed by Ilona’s psychotic children.  It was one of those new fancy phones—an iPhone.  I’d downloaded a bunch of free games to play but I kept coming back to Tetris.  I’d read somewhere that it was supposed to help with fresh trauma.

I wasn’t particularly good at Tetris, but there was a soothing element to it.  My mom used to play Tetris on an old Gameboy Color when I was a kid.  The music was an old, familiar tune that grounded me into better times.

I had failed three or four times when I felt a little nudge in my emotions.  Karhi was close, coming from the same direction I had.

I started a new game and a new cigarette as he entered the breezeway.  When he saw me, I felt his uncertainty.  He wanted to check on me, but he also didn’t want to overstep.

I shifted over on the bench, crossing one leg over the other, making an obvious opening if he wanted to sit down.

He took the opening, sitting next to me.  I pointed to the box of cigarettes and lighter without taking my eyes off the screen.

I heard the hollow rasp of him removing a cigarette from the carton and then the flick of the Zippo lighter.

We sat in silence.  I continued to tap at the screen, pushing around pieces and clearing rows.  Karhi’s presence was calm and reassuring, which hadn’t been the case recently.  The past few weeks, he had been on a few heroin benders, and he’d been sleeping with anything and everything that walked and was willing.  He was free of Ilona, but he didn’t know how to process it or even accept it.

I lost again, and I set my phone down on my lap and looked out towards the field.  The sun had made it over the mountain and the snow sparkled everywhere that it wasn’t packed down from kids playing.

I felt Karhi’s eyes on me, and I looked at him.  He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth.  The little ember smoldered at the tip, a thin stream of smoke rising up into the air. His fingers holding the cigarette were long and solid—the fingers of someone who had spent his human life with hand plows and scythes.

In the morning light, his brown hair had a russet tint to it.  It was light, a halo around the crown of his head.  For the first time in weeks, he didn’t look bone tired.  His grey eyes were clear, a pale blue sunburst around his pupils that wasn’t usually there.  His skin was also missing the pallor it had had.  He’d been the son of a farmer and his skin was pale, but still had a golden glow to it.

He looked better.  For the first time in a while, I didn’t hear him clicking his tongue piercing against his teeth.

“You’re calmer than you were,” I finally said.

He looked back out at the field, putting the cigarette to his mouth.  “Well yeah.  Getting called to come to Montana out of nowhere because something happened to you wasn’t the most calming experience.”

I shook my head.  “No.  Calmer than before.  Like, calmer than before the sentencing.”

I felt his understanding like a lightbulb turning on.  Then some sort of sheepishness that came out in the way his shoulders hunched slightly.  “Ah . . . yeah.  I, uh, I finally took your advice.  I talked to Carry about Ilona.”

I had been telling him for weeks now that he needed to talk to his family about the shared experience that was being Ilona Emelyn’s child.  I had always suspected that Karhi wasn’t getting worse punishment than his siblings.  Just different punishment.  “It helped?”

He nodded, setting his elbows heavily on his knees.  “She told me about the things she had experienced.  They were just as fucked up, but very different.”

I nodded, refusing to say what I really wanted to say.

“I know, I know—you told me so.”

I snorted.  He was right.  That’s what I wanted to say.

“It helped to know I wasn’t alone.  And that we could talk about this stuff without being ashamed.”

“That it was shared trauma.”

He nodded, reaching for another cigarette from the pack.

I told him about the past forty-eight hours.  My fight with Mickey and Bell.  The bullshit they had tried to sell me.  The original vampires.  Meeting the living vampires.  The dungeons.  I still wasn’t ready to tell him about the rape, and I left that part out.  It didn’t matter.  He still winced that someone had forcibly gone through my head.

“I’ve always assumed that Mira doesn’t go forcibly into your head.”  It was part question, part statement.

The question was so ridiculous that for a moment I didn’t know how to respond.  And before I could stop it, laughter bubbled up.  It was close to hysterical but not quite.  I actually did find the question pretty funny.

His brow furrowed.  “What?”

“Has Mira read your mind?” I asked.

“Yes . . .”

“Did you feel it?”

The lightbulb didn’t quite go off again, but I felt his understanding that there was a nuance here that he didn’t quite get yet.  “No.”  I knew it made him uncomfortable that he couldn’t.  He was used to feeling people’s intrusions in his head, since he had so much experience with Ilona.

“She doesn’t have to go into people’s heads, like most neuropaths.  She’s like a radio antenna—she just gets what people are broadcasting.  She has to block them out, if she doesn’t want to listen.  She’s spent years building up her walls so she can walk through a room without being subjected to everyone’s thoughts all the times.”

I felt his surprise.  Most neuropaths had to actively go into someone’s head to do things.  It’s how his own power worked.  It didn’t just “come to him”.

“She can get more information by actually going into their heads, instead of just listening.  She’ll pull memories out of you for a variety of reasons.  She idly reads, but occasionally she’ll pry if she thinks she’s doing it for your own good.  Which sounds like a slippery slope, but she’s never broken my trust.  She’s gentle in everything she does with us.”  I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold.  “This was cold and calculating—the truthseeker tried to examine me.  There was no connection.  She just tried to take things from me.”

He nodded.  “I’ve been with Hazel’s truthseekers before.  I know what it feels like.”

“But even more so—you don’t have to relive your memories for Mira to take them.  She knows how to find them without hurting you.  You don’t have to see them.”

Understanding flashed through him.  “Truthseekers don’t have the same finesse as Mira.”

“No, they do not.  They violate you.”  I wrapped my arms around myself, leaving my cigarette in my mouth.  I had been trying hard not to think about it but that truthseeker’s entry into my mind felt like a searing cut in my head.  Thinking about it made it hurt.

“I guess that’s why Hazel hires Mira.”

I nodded, tightening my grip on myself.

“How long has Mira worked for the living vampires?” he asked.

The change of subject was welcome, the pain in my head easing.  “Probably like three of four years now?”

“But she only got protection this year?”

I nodded. We hadn’t really told Karhi that Lina had the same powers as her mom. It was one of those secrets that I had kept for so long that it was hard to feel safe to tell someone new. I trusted Karhi, but I still had some reservations with big secrets.

“How did they find her?”

The doors opposite where we had come out opened, and a woman that I hadn’t seen in over three years walked through them. She was barely over five feet, but she walked with a solid step—she was confident, and she held herself like it.

She saw Karhi first, and she stopped. Her pale eyebrows furrowed together. “How did you get here before me?”  She blinked. “Wait, why are you here?”

I didn’t say anything. I waited to see how long it would take her to notice me.

“Well it turns out you didn’t need to come get me,” Karhi said. “While you were looking for her, my fledgling seems to have made her way here already.” He leaned back slightly to let her see me.

She made a noise of annoyance. “Of course. Well—”  She stopped, mouth dropping open.  “Sloane?”

I waved awkwardly. “Hi, Aoife.”

“You’re the fledgling I was supposed to meet?”

I glanced at Karhi quizzically. 

“Right after we parted ways after the sentencing, I ran into Aoife at Swanskin’s.  She was looking for you.  To bring you here.  To have the conversation we had last night with Hazel.”

I nodded slowly, looking back at Aoife. 

“My turn,” Karhi said.  “How do you two know each other?”

“You just asked how Hazel found Mira.”  I held out my hand towards Aoife.  “That’s how.”

My explanation didn’t give Karhi any sort of clarity, and I felt his annoyance like a prickle against the crown of my head.  But before I could speak, Aoife did.  “I met Sloane and Mira in Phoenix by happenstance.  Over time, I figured out what Mira could do.  I was the one who spread rumors about ‘the White Psychic’.”

“Mira recently told me about one where she can make people’s heads explode?” I asked.

She shrugged.  “I didn’t make that one up.  But mythology leads to more mythology.  But that’s not the point—Sloane, what the hell?”  She motioned to Karhi.  “This guy?”

“Hey,” Karhi protested.  It wasn’t particularly offended, though.  It was a weak protest.

“He’s, like, the least stable vampire.”  She looked at Karhi, eyebrows knitted together, nose and mouth wrinkled as if she had smelled something bad.  “You?  But why?”

Karhi looked between me and Aoife, caught between bewilderment and offense.  “Since when do people choose their sires?”

Aoife snorted.  “If Sloane got turned, she chose it.”  She looked back at me.  “Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Aoife,” I said, stubbing my mostly finished cigarette out on the ground.  “I’m surprised this is even news to you.  I’ve been a vampire for almost a year now.”

She grimaced.  “I’ve been on assignment for over a year.  Very disconnected from the vampire world.  I came back and she sent me straight to Minnesota.”  She scowled.  “She did it on purpose.  She knew how much of a surprise it would be.”

I assumed the “she” was Hazel.  Aoife was colloquially called the Fist of the Ruaidhrí house.  I think her technical title was War General?  But I had never understood why because as far as I knew, the living vampires hadn’t been to war in centuries.

Aoife had been one of Hazel’s first fledglings.  She had been turned during the Black Plague.

I felt Karhi’s annoyance at Aoife, but he didn’t say anything.  It made me feel like I needed to say at least one nice thing.  “I mean, as far as sires go—there are worse.”  I shrugged.  “He understands the weight of the fledgling-sire connection.  And he lets me do my own thing.”  I glanced at Karhi.  “What he does in his spare time is none of my business.”

He scowled at me.

Aoife pushed her hair away from her eyes, shaking her head.  “It just baffles me—of all people, Hazel would never allow Ilona into this house.”  She pulled her hair back into a short ponytail.

Karhi and I exchanged raised eyebrows.  I was assuming the Aoife knew what I was being asked.  And I assumed her comment meant that it surprised her that Hazel was even considering letting one of Ilona’s children sire her daughter in law.  Karhi’s glance at me confirmed my assumptions.

“What?” Aoife said, catching our shared glances.

“You’ve really not been in the vampire world then,” Karhi said.  “Ilona isn’t dead, but she has no power anymore.”

Aoife blinked slowly, staring at us.  “What?”

I pulled my necklace away from my neck.  “Soulsilver plus evil sire plus angry Sloane equals evil sire burnt to a fucking crisp before her loyal dog Jumped her out of harm’s way.”

I could see the whites around Aoife’s blue eyes.  “Soulsilver?  Sloane, what the fuck?” she whispered.

Before I could respond, Aoife’s phone went off in her pocket.  She pulled it out and looked at the screen before cursing in what I thought was Irish.  “Sorry, I have to go deal with a certain asshat.”  She pointed at me.  “We’re not done, I expect an explanation.”

With that, she turned on her heal and stomped back into the castle the way she had come.

I looked at Karhi.  “Asshat?”

“That would be the middle child, Prince Saeran.  The crown prince,” he said.  “He is . . . difficult.  I would suggest you stay away from him whenever possible.  He’s narcissistic and goes after any pretty woman he comes across.”

I furrowed my brow and pursed my lips.  “You think I’m pretty?”

I immediately felt his embarrassment, but he did a really good job of smoothing over his expression.  He stood up, turning from me.  “I didn’t hook up with you because I was drunk or out of pity that night.  And the way you used that bottle was impressive.”

He left back into the castle from the way he had come, and I found myself smirking.  Karhi and I had never talked about the night we met past the whole me-turning-into-a-vampire thing.  I had always assumed he regretted every part of it, not just turning me.

But, watching his ears as he left, I realized vampires, with our limited blood supply, could blush.  And I could hear his nervous habit of clicking his tongue against his teeth.  So, he didn’t completely regret that night.

Maybe I didn’t either.