1
KIT
The beerin front of me was warm, flat, and tasted faintly like regret. I’d been nursing it since three in the afternoon, though nursing implied a kind of tenderness I didn’t feel.
Really, I was just watching the light fade through the grimy bar windows, wondering how a man could fall so far so fast and whether it was worth pretending I didn’t know the answer.
The place was called The Black Dog, though there wasn’t a dog in sight.
Just a cracked tile floor sticky with spilled beer, neon lights buzzing like dying fireflies, and a jukebox in the corner that hadn’t worked since someone punched it for playing the wrong song.
It wasn’t much, but it was cheap, dark, and no one asked questions. My kind of place. I used to come here after hunts, back when my name actually meant something.
Back when walking into a room full of hunters meant nods, raised glasses, and the occasional slap on the back. Back when the Guild still sent me on real jobs.
Violent shifters, rogue mages, vampires with body counts that made the news. Back when I was good.
Donovan used to say I had promise. He’d been my mentor. Donovan was sharp-eyed and steady-handed, the kind of hunter who made killing look like an art form.
For a while, I thought if I worked hard enough, if I bled enough, I could be like him. And I was, for a while.
I made a name for myself, took contracts others wouldn’t touch, built a reputation for getting the job done no matter how bad it got. Until things went to shit.
Now I walked into places like this and people looked away. Conversations stuttered out mid-laugh. The bartender didn’t even bother pretending to be friendly.
No one raised a glass. No one asked what I was working on. They all knew I wasn’t working on anything worth mentioning. The Guild didn’t have to say it out loud, but everyone understood.
Kit, the washed-up hunter. The guy who lost his edge. The one you didn’t want watching your back. I could’ve laughed if it didn’t sting so much.
The beer went down in a gulp that burned more than it should have. I signaled for another, and the bartender, some kid too new to know my reputation, brought it without comment.
His eyes darted toward the clock, like he was counting the hours until he could cut me off.
I couldn’t even blame him. I’d been that kind of drunk lately. I was loud, sloppy, unpredictable. Not the dangerous kind, not anymore. Just the sad kind.
My hunting knife rested in my jacket pocket, the silver hilt warm from my body heat.
Once, it had meant I was part of something. A hunter of the Guild. Order keeper, supernatural scourge, the kind of man people whispered about with respect.
Now it was just a weight I carried out of habit.
Donovan used to polish his hunting knife until it gleamed. He said the Guild was our shield, our purpose.
“A hunter without conviction is just a man with a weapon,” he’d tell me.
I’d believed him. I’d believed every damn word, because Donovan looked at me like I could be better. Like I already was. Until the day he walked away with one of them.
A vampire. One who used to be one of us, a hunter, but a vampire nonetheless.
I rubbed at my jaw, trying to push the thought aside, but the memory clawed its way back like it always did.
Donovan standing in that forest, moonlight cutting through the trees, his weapon lowered. Declan behind him, pale and monstrous. Donovan saying he loved Declan and would stand by him.
I’d thought I misheard. I’d thought he’d lost his mind.
But then he’d stepped between me and the vampire, his weapon down, his eyes steady. He’d chosen Declan. Chosen a monster. Chosen him over me, over the Guild, over everything we’d bled for.
I remember standing there, half in shock, half waiting for him to take it back. Waiting for him to say it was some trick, that Declan had compelled him, that the world still made sense. But he didn’t.
