Leather and Lace by Magen Cubed

Author:Magen Cubed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magen Cubed
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Six Months Ago

WHEN DORIAN STARTED out as a hunter, he didn't know what to do with a gun.

A gun didn't have much use where he came from. Knives had a place on the street if he ever needed to defend himself. Cutting a smaller silhouette than most left him too weak to fend off bigger, stronger vampires. A switchblade did the trick. It gave him the chance to swipe at an attacker and get out of biting- or clawing-distance. But a gun meant nothing to a monster whose instincts readied him to kill someone with his hands and teeth if it ever came down to it.

Of course, the only time Dorian got around to maiming someone else was with a cash register, so perhaps his instincts were shit.

Learning how to hunt involved more reconnaissance work and bookkeeping than Dorian anticipated. The vampire mostly followed Cash on jobs, talking to witnesses or assets and keeping the human company during stakeouts. Dorian was good at talking to people; his years spent working in dive bars and nightclubs made it easy. Talking to monsters was even easier. They could smell Cash coming a mile away and rarely answered the hunter’s questions, no matter how politely Cash asked them. With Dorian, they were usually more willing to cooperate. Monsters could trust monsters, even those from other species, far more than they could ever trust a hunter.

Cash called these soft skills. It sounded condescending, but he said that they were the skills hunters acquired in the field to help them better close out the job. That was what Cash called it, in that vaguely sterile way he sometimes did when he described the unpleasantness of their work—closing out a job. Time and again, he promised to train Dorian on how to take down a target. When the day finally came, Dorian climbed into Cash's truck to drive out into the woods. Cash didn't give him a gun. The vampire was grateful for that.

Instead, the human brandished a long Bowie knife.

"You want to learn how to hunt?" asked Cash. "Then you got to learn how to take somebody down. The best way to start is to get used to doing it in close quarters."

Dorian took quickly to the knife. The blade was larger than any pocketknives the vampire had previously carried. It was heavy, but the handle was comfortable and never slipped from his hand. He got used to its weight and size, striking at the upholstered training bust that Cash had dragged out to the woods with them. He could plunge it down easily, making controlled, angled slices into the dummy's torso as though cutting open a monster's chest.

"You're pretty good at this," Cash remarked from the back of the truck. Seated in the bed beside an ice chest, Dominique asleep in his lap, he watched Dorian make quick work of the training dummy. The experienced hunter took a drag of his cigarette, then said, "Maybe you don't need my help after all."

The vampire paused mid-strike with a glance over his shoulder, his attention stolen by the human's passing observation.

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