Marcy sat tucked into the corner of the loveseat, wrapped lovingly around her third bottle of beer. The tips of her clawed fingers played with the bottle’s lipstick-kissed rim. On the floor, Dorian was sober, but reluctantly so. He needed a steady hand and clear head to paint over the chipped edges of his black nail polish. Dominique dozed in his lap as he carefully brushed over his nails in short, quick strokes.

  It was one of the few nights off they had together, he and Marcy. Life working overnight crushed Dorian’s sense of time. Days slipped away into long, long shifts at the bar, emerging at sunrise to return to the club to pick up Marcy. Sometimes there were men loitering outside, looking to take her home; sometimes there weren’t. The longer Dorian stayed over the fewer men tried to approach her, assuming the skinny goth who showed up to walk her home was her boyfriend.

  Tonight, Dorian and Marcy could sit around the apartment in sweet silence, and not have to deal with anyone else. The small TV set murmured from the other side of the living room, left at a low volume, and largely ignored. Marcy had a few beers. Dorian was glad to be home at a decent hour.

  Once Marcy’s question finally registered in Dorian’s distracted brain, he chuckled. “What, living on your couch?”

  “No. I mean, yeah,” Marcy contracted herself sleepily. “But, you know, here. In Devil’s Row.”

  Dorian shrugged. It wasn’t a subject he liked to dedicate a great deal of thought to. “Where else would I be?”

  Taking a drink, Marcy flopped over to stretch across the loveseat. “I don’t know. Anywhere but here, I guess.”

  Chewing on the thought, he couldn’t help the guilty feelings it conjured up. “I never really wanted to stay, but...leaving always felt too hard.”

  A soft, slightly drunk-sounding chuckle. “Yeah, big same. I could straighten up and fly right, maybe find a nice job working at my mom’s shop, but the money’s too good dancing to bother. Why work harder than I need to just to end up tired and broke?”

  “I don’t even know where to start. It’s not like I know anybody who can help me find better work, even if I could do anything but make drinks.”

  “That’s not true,” Marcy said. She flopped a limp hand onto Dorian’s head, ruffling through his long hair affectionately. “You could call any of your girlfriends. And your boyfriends, too. Surely one of the wealthy and bored of Wren’s Way would have you as their kept man.”

  Chuckling, Dorian shook his head. “Yeah, well. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.”

  “Pfft.” She took another drink. “Don’t tell me you’re looking to settle down.”

  A pause. Dorian blew on his nails to dry them. He regretted painting them, in the face of things. The urge to pick up the sleeping dog and hold her was getting harder to ignore. “I mean. I don’t know. I just don’t want to do this forever.”

  “Do what?”

  “This. Work at a shitty bar and go home with strangers willing to pay my way,” Dorian said. “Put up with assholes just to try to make rent. And, even if I met somebody who doesn’t completely suck, it’d be too weird to bring them around because your apartment doesn’t even have walls. So, no, I really don’t want to do this forever.”

  The sound of snoring caught Dorian off-guard. Over his shoulder, somewhere in mid-rant, Marcy had fallen asleep. Sighing, he took the empty bottle from her loose grasp and pulled a blanket up to her shoulders.

  “Good talk.”

  In the morning, Marcy woke up embarrassed and apologized for hogging the couch all night. Dorian shrugged it off. Then, she asked what they were talking about. He just smiled as best he could and told her, “Nothing.”

  CASH LEROY DIDN’T SO much enter Dorian Villeneuve’s life as he stumbled into it, gracelessly, with two black eyes and a split lip.

  It was nine o’clock on a Tuesday night. Salazar’s was blessedly quiet for once, with only a few pickled old vampires sitting at the bar-top nursing Long Island iced teas. Kaitlyn popped her head into the back office to ask Alonso if she could leave. The manager waved her off and told her to close the door, so she took that as a yes. Now it was just Dorian and Jenny, an empty bar, and the whole night ahead of them.

  The cocktail waitress leaned against the bar, idly watching the TV mounted above Dorian’s head. She snapped bubblegum and flipped through the 150 channels in search of something interesting. Dorian busied himself cutting lemons and limes to store in the bar fridge under the counter. Anything to pass the time.

  At nine-thirty, the door opened with a chime of the bell. Ellison strolled in with three other vampires in suits, Blood Triad all. His teeth still stained with blood and his pupils already blown-out, Ellison was the most brutish among them. He laughed the loudest, slapping his compatriots on the shoulders and herding them to the bar. Jenny sucked in a breath and scurried away.

  There, his full bulk draped over a bar stool, Ellison jabbed four meaty, clawed fingers in Dorian’s face.

  “A round of top shelf bourbon for my boys here,” he said, his breath soaked with the coppery tinge of human blood. “Put it on the company tab.”

  Dorian’s stomach churned. The company tab. Whoever lined Ellison’s pockets came by once a week to pay off his debts and keep Salazar’s lights on. That was why Alonso would never throw any of the Triad out, even when they brought humans in to feed on. But Dorian said none of that. Instead, he bit his tongue and poured their drinks. The four Triad henchmen took their shots to Table 6, but Dorian could still smell the stink of them at their distance.

  “Another round!” Ellison barked, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “And keep ‘em coming!”

  Pouring the fifth round of shots, Dorian heard the door chime tinkle softly. Heavy, booted footfalls paced up to the bar. The distinctive smell of human skin and blood hit him immediately, all salt and copper. He looked up as the human in question strolled up to him. A man, tall and strapping, with dark hair and a five o’clock shadow edging a well-defined jaw.

  Oh, no, Dorian thought.

  The two old vampires at the bar twitched their noses as the human approached. Ellison and all the others were too sauced to notice the smell. Dorian’s heart raced with each heavy step forward, as though watching in slow motion. The human was handsome, poured into a tight plaid shirt, an even tighter pair of jeans, and a black leather jacket. He leaned onto the bar with a tilt of his head, and smiled.

  Oh, no.

  Up close, he smelled strongly of aftershave. Both sockets of his big, sleepy eyes were bruised from what looked like a punch by very large fist. His bottom lip, pillowy and soft, was split down the middle as though it had been bitten.

  “Hi,” the human said.

  “Hi,” Dorian said.

  He’s so hot.

  “I’m looking for someone, and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction,” the human said. His voice was soft, lilting in a long, Southern drawl that went right to Dorian’s balls in a treacherous current. “His name is Ellison Beauregard. I thought that giant dickhead over there might’ve been him, but I wanted to double-check with you first.”

  Shifting his stance, the human pulled his jacket aside. A giant hunting knife the size of a grown man’s forearm rested in a sheath on his belt. He was a hunter, and there was only one way this was going to play out. Dorian swallowed, then nodded.

  “That giant dickhead over there is definitely Ellison,” he answered.

  “Thank you,” said the hunter sweetly. “I appreciate it.”

  Before Dorian could think of anything intelligent to say, the hunter sauntered off to Table 6. The hunter had only just started in on his polite good ole boy routine before Ellison punched him squarely in the face. Jenny screamed. The old vampires at the bar-top scrambled for the door while the hunter rebounded to charge at his far larger aggressor. Dorian barely noticed the ensuing brawl, his heart still hammering against his ribs as the tips of his pointed ears grew warm.

  Chairs flew, and teeth gnashed on a roar. The hunter swung his knife at Ellison, trying to land a blow as the vampire advanced on him. Jenny ran for safety outside, followed by the rest of the Triad suits. The scuffle continued long enough for Dorian’s senses to make their sluggish return. Ellison picked up the hunter and hurled him across the bar, then pounced with another furious punch. Blinking, a sudden wave of panic came over Dorian at the sight of the trashed bar and the blood streaming from the hunter’s busted nose. Without thinking, he picked up the cash register, came up behind Ellison, and bashed it over Ellison’s head.

  Then Dorian bashed Ellison with it once more, and harder, for good measure.

  Dollar bills and quarters flew into the air. Ellison’s skull made a sick, chunky sound on impact, like hitting a piece of raw meat with a hammer. Blood went everywhere that the money didn’t. Ellison didn’t have a chance to hit the floor before the hunter came around to see his opening. The hunter plunged the blade deep into Ellison’s chest in a single, precise drive, between the ribs to slice through the heart underneath. Already drunk, it didn’t take long for Ellison to quietly bleed out on the dirty bar floor.

  Twitching and gurgling, his eyes went dead.

  Finally, feeling the hot splash of Ellison’s blood on his face, Dorian realized he was panting. On the floor, the hunter looked just as surprised. Surprised, and covered with his own nosebleed. Embarrassed, Dorian quickly reached out to help the hunter off the ground, dusting him off.

  “Holy shit.” The hunter spat blood. He hugged his arm to a bruised rib, catching his breath. “Thank you. That’s one hell of a faux pas, though. Usually y’all leave the dirty work to me.”

  “Yeah.” Dorian felt sick, but remarkably okay with it. “Yeah, I mean. But fuck him, right?”

  Chuckling, the hunter nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What the fuck is this shit?”

  Alonso emerged from his office to survey the remains of his bar. He gestured around helplessly at the broken tables and the dead vampire leaking on the ground. Dorian looked at the hunter, then at Ellison, and chewed his bottom lip.

  “Okay, I know this looks bad.”

  Pointing at Dorian, Alonso bellowed, “Get out of here! You’re fired”

  “Is it the dead vampire or the property damage? Because I feel like I can explain at least part of this—”

  “Get the fuck out! And take that piece of shit with you!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m gone.” The hunter waved Alonso off. “I tried to get him to take it outside, so you can take your grievances up with the Triad.”

  Alonso proceeded to cuss and scream as the hunter grabbed Ellison by the ankles to drag outside. Dorian watched in silence, as the full weirdness of the situation settled in. The blood on his face had started to cool; that was a deeply unsettling feeling, all on its own. He had never seen anybody die before, let alone played a role in getting them killed. Now Ellison was dead, and it was Dorian’s fault.

  Halfway to the door, the hunter glanced up at him and asked, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”

  Dorian shrugged. “Um. I guess so?”

  “Good. Then help me get this thing into my truck.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Dorian did just that. They hauled Ellison’s corpse into the bed of the hunter’s red pickup truck, parked on the curb outside. Alonso continued to yell from the bar doorway, jabbing his finger around wildly as he rambled about compensation and property damage. The hunter threw a blue tarp over the body, turned to Dorian, and smiled despite the bloody nose and two black eyes.

  “So, I know this sounds forward, given that we just killed somebody, but can I buy you a beer?”

  It seemed incredibly distasteful. However, Dorian hadn’t paid for a drink in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You can buy me a beer.”

  “MY NAME’S CASH, BY the way.”

  A short drive out of Devil’s Row in the rickety red pickup brought Dorian to a convenience store parking lot. The store sat on the edge of vampire territory, where the humans took over the rest of Devereux. Dorian couldn’t remember the last time he had wandered beyond the relative safety of Devil’s Row. Now that the shock of his recent unemployment and the dead body in the back of the truck had worn off, Dorian felt too numb to consider the dangers of being seen out with a hunter.

  Cash bought a six-pack of beer from the clerk inside the store, then invited Dorian to sit next to him on the curb. Stretching his long legs out, he popped off the cap with a bottle before handing it to the vampire. Dorian took it with a delayed nod of thanks.

  “Oh,” he took a sip and said, still groping around amid his rambling thoughts for something useful to say. “Cash as in Johnny?”

  Taking a drink, Cash let out a little snort. “It’s really more like Cash as in Cassius, but my parents got creative with their nicknames.”

  Dorian absently peeled the label off his beer bottle. “Well, I’m Dorian. But, not like Gray or anything like that. I think my mom heard it on a soap opera or something.”

  Cash nodded. “In any case, Dorian, I’d like to thank you for saving my ass back there. I mean it. You didn’t have to help me at all, so just know that I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. I think. I didn’t do anything, really.” A pause, still playing with the paper label. “So, who sent you? To kill Ellison, I mean.”

  Hunting was an abstract concept in the lives of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures. They didn’t live in fear of hunters, not like previous generations had, when humans still knew of them. So long as they kept their heads down and lived quietly inside their own territories, today’s humans didn’t even know they existed. It was only when monsters decided to step outside of their well-defined boundaries and make themselves known to humans that hunters entered in the equation.

  Ellison, as Dorian knew very well, was just that kind of a monster.

  “Devereux PD tied some missing persons cases back to Devil’s Row, with bodies cropping up in Triad territory,” Cash answered. “Teenage girls, mostly, some in their 20s. I talked to a few informants I pay to keep an ear to the ground, and all their sources pointed to Ellison. So, that’s that on that.”

  “Oh.” Dorian wrapped his fingers around the bottle. He didn’t have Dominique with him to hold, so the bottle would have to do. “You do this a lot?”

  “What?”

  “Like, kill people.”

  “When it’s gotta be done, yeah. It doesn’t do much for the dead, but it keeps other people from dying.”

  Dorian looked up at the sky, and the scatter of stars visible through the city’s haze above. The night air was cool on his face. He couldn’t even feel the dried blood on it anymore, though he could still smell it. Like he could smell it leaking from Ellison’s corpse, hidden away under the tarp.

  “I can’t go home, can I?” Dorian asked, already knowing the answer.

  Cash cleared his throat, then took another drink. “Yeah, I was gonna talk to you about that.”

  “My boss saw me with you and Ellison. Word will get back to the Triad that I helped you kill him. I’ll be hunted for sure.”

  “That’s probably the gist of it,” Cash said gently. He leveled Dorian a somber look. It was the kind that made Dorian’s heart pound all over again, but not out of fear. “Look, you don’t know me from a hole in the ground, and I know you have no reason to trust me. But this is my fault, best as I can figure, since none of this would’ve happened to you if I hadn’t wandered into your bar.”

  Dorian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, I think it matters.”

  Cash scooted in, closing the meager space between them on the sidewalk. Heat spread across Dorian’s face. He hoped it was too dark to see and hurriedly took another drink.

  “So, I was thinking: this is a shitty job I do. I mean, look at my face - and that’s even considering the fact I looked like roadkill before Ellison laid my nose open. But you picked up that cash register like it was nothing. You’re stronger than me, and faster. And, to be completely honest, I could use the help out here.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Want a job helping me hunt?” Cash asked. “There’s no benefits or thanks in it, but the pay’s good. We’d split the profits fifty-fifty, like partners.”

  “Why?”

  “To pay you back for ruining your life, to start.”

  “No, but, why are you being nice to me? You don’t even know me.”

  “Dorian, I spend all day hunting down critters that eat people alive,” Cash replied. Softly, and good-naturedly, with the conviction of a man preaching gospel truth. “Trust me, I know a good person when I see one.”

  Dorian swallowed. His heart raced faster than his thoughts. It all seemed so perfect; too good to be true, and presented by some hot guy who smelled great. Even when Cash had blood on his face, he was hot. Hot, and nice. It didn’t even seem fair. Dorian would have to leave, anyway, for Marcy’s sake. She had enough problems without anybody snooping around her place looking for him. And if he worked with Cash, he could get out of Devil’s Row forever.

  He could square his debts.

  He could start over.

  Instead of saying any of this, Dorian blurted out, “Can I come stay with you?” Catching himself, he quickly added, “I mean, until I get back on my feet? Since I wouldn’t just live with some stranger indefinitely. Because that would be weird.”

  Even if he smells good, Dorian didn’t say aloud.

  Cash chuckled. “So, I take that as a yes?”

  “Yeah,” Dorian said, “I think that’s a yes.”

  Dorian Villeneuve wasn’t known for good ideas. Agreeing to hunt monsters with a hot guy he just met probably wasn’t going down as one of his better moments. But, sometimes, things still worked out for the best.

  End

  Caught Up on You

  When Dorian Villeneuve went to work his shift at Salazar’s the night before, he didn’t expect his life to change. He didn’t expect to befriend a hunter and help commit a murder, either, finding himself shivering under Cash Leroy’s borrowed jacket behind the 23rd Precinct in Devereaux. There, in the middle of the night, he watched a tired, gruff-looking detective named Fritz process the body of Ellison Beauregard, the murdered vampire whose blood was still dried to Dorian’s cheek.

 

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