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After the annoying leprechaun left, I showered and got dressed. Keeping the red leather pants, I pulled on a long-sleeved t-shirt and pulled my hair back into a short ponytail that somewhat hid the white streaks in the blue-black strands. Sometimes it was the little things that made people treat you differently. I was too young to have naturally white hair, and it shimmered just a bit, like metallic silver. I should probably dye it, but I was being stubborn and vain. Pulling it up helped draw the attention away.
My eyes were weird too—the light blue just a little too bright and intense to be a natural human color. But I couldn't do anything about the eyes. I glared at myself critically in the mirror. Eh. Good enough, toned down at least. There was no need to flaunt my differences, but a lot of the people at the hunter's association knew I was a cur anyway.
I took the rickety electric trolley across town to save on the expensive gasoline my old Jeep guzzled like a drunk at an open bar. Checking my watch, I was relieved to find I had somehow still made it to the association building on time to bid on the bigger contracts before they all got snatched up.
I pushed through the glass doors and into the old train station that had been converted to the hunter's association headquarters. It was crowded, and the sound of people milling about was magnified by the polished stone tiles and the high, arched ceilings. All around the perimeter of the main room were ticket windows where lines formed, eager hunters waiting to put their bid in for contracts, or to cash in bounties they'd already completed. The windows were labeled with the types of jobs they had.
The local governments had a lot of failings, but the initiative to clean up dangerous fiends and mongrels wasn't one of them. I stepped into one of the shorter lines. This window was for the bigger paying jobs—which meant the more dangerous ones that only crazy bastards like me took on. The line inched forward and I heard muttering behind me. My hearing was pretty sharp, thanks to my cur nature, but they weren't even trying to be quiet. They wanted to be heard.
"Look at that," one guy said. "They letting monsters in here now? How does that even work?"
His companion scoffed. "Someone ought to put a bounty on that thing, not hand it contracts like it's a person."
I gritted my teeth together. I had heard every variation of this conversation, countless times over. It really shouldn't bother me anymore. But for some reason, I still wanted to punch the fuckers in the face.
Someone jostled me, a shoulder bumping into mine from behind, hard. "Oh, sorry," the scruffy guy said when I shot a glare over my shoulder. "Didn't see you there."
I stretched, arms above my head, back arching so my jacket rode up, revealing my gun and several knives and other sharp pointy things strapped to my waist. "No problem," I said, slumping back into myself. "Human eyesight isn't that great. Not your fault."
I turned away with a smirk. They wouldn't start anything. They might be assholes, but they were hunters. And I'd seen these two in this line a few times, so they had enough skill to survive big hunts. That meant they should be smart enough not to test me out in the middle of the association building. They would just keep taunting me, hoping I did something to get myself in trouble.
Lucky for them, I wanted to keep my job. And my head attached to my neck. Didn't keep me from stepping on one guy's foot and grinding my heel in when the line moved again. But we were at the window, so all he could do was bitch to himself.
I leaned on the counter and smiled at the pretty brunette woman behind the glass. She was a regular employee. She might look sweet, with her librarian glasses and her cardigan, but she was used to dealing with asshole hunters all day long. "Hey Lydia," I purred. "I see you've got a dragon posted. I'll bid on that one." I pushed my ID through the little slot so she could scan it into their ancient computer system.
She typed away at her keyboard, then frowned at me, shoving my ID back through the barrier. "Nice try, Sam, but you can't take out multiple level two contracts at the same time."
I frowned at her. The fiends dangerous enough to require contracts were organized into three levels. Level three was the easy stuff. Level two was for the ones like unicorns and dragons that would murder a mediocre hunter in the blink of an eye. Level one was the truly nasty stuff. Things even I wouldn't attempt without a seasoned guild at my back.
"I don't have another contract," I told her, tapping my fingers on the counter in irritation. "And I've done dragons before."
She shook her head and gestured at the asshats behind me. "Next! Sorry, Sam. No duplicate contracts. Take out the unicorns, then you can bid for something else. You know how it works."
I refused to give ground as the asshole behind me tried to shoulder his way up to the counter. "What are you talking about? I thought the unicorn contract was already taken."
She gave me a look that said I'd better stop wasting her time. "Yes. By your new guild master." She gave me a softer look. "I'm glad you're finally joining a group, Sam. It's dangerous out there on your own."
The other hunter finally succeeded in shoving his way to the counter. "Yeah, freak. You hunt alone and one of us might accidentally mistake you for a monster." He eyed me up and down. "Wonder what the bounty would be on your scrawny ass."
I ignored him. I was too busy fuming over the absolute fucking gall of that smarmy redheaded bastard. He'd already registered us as a guild without my permission. I stormed out of the association hall without any contracts at all. They wouldn't let me pick up any bounties until I delivered on the unicorns, no matter how much I bitched—even puny level threes. And when I said I never joined a guild and it was all a mistake, they told me the guild master involved would have to be the one to fix the error.
I stepped into a run-down café around the block from my apartment and ordered a coffee and a breakfast sandwich to go. The place looked seedy as hell but Arty, the owner, made amazing food for cheap. If he wasn't some sort of lizard cur, he would probably be running a five-star restaurant in one of the big cities. But instead, he was stuck here, catering to the dregs of society. Which was lucky for me, I guess.
I turned away from the counter and nearly tripped over four-foot-something of handsome, redheaded smugness. "Hey there, Saber," the guy said with a grin. "How's it going?"
I stepped around Finlay. Leave it to the leprechauns to make fun of the humans' labels by adopting largely Irish names. "Piss off."
The guy followed after me, nearly running to keep up when I hit the sidewalk and headed toward home. "Oh, come on man, don't be so pissy. Good things are going to come from this partnership, I can just feel it."
I scowled down at him. "You put my damned name down as your guild member. Now I'm tied to a runt with a contract he can't even hope to survive. What good, exactly, is supposed to come from that?"
He shrugged. "You get to see my handsome, smiling face every day until we cash in that bounty."
I snorted. "Great. Thanks."
He reached out a hand to stop me when we reached my apartment. His work-roughened fingers were warm against the back of my hand. "Look. I know I'm being a creepy, pushy stalker. But I've learned the hard way to trust my gut when it comes to the luck thing." His chiseled features went hard for a second there, and I really wanted to ask what he meant. Except I was trying not to care. I didn't have time for this crap. I needed that bounty. And I didn't want a liability tied to me while I was trying to hunt.
"You stay here, I'll get the unicorns. Then we'll cash in the bounty and split it up. Go our merry ways," I said with a shrug. "But I'm taking eighty percent of that bounty, since I'm doing all the damned work."
He rolled his eyes. "We're splitting it evenly, three ways. I can handle a gun. I'll stay out of your way. And our big green friend already hacked a satellite and got us updated maps."
I gaped at him. It was hard to get updated maps these days. Most of the stuff in circulation was okay, but you never knew if something deadly had cropped up in the time since the area was last surveyed, especially out in the wastelands. There could be anything from natural disasters, to dragons, to who knew what the fuck going on out there, you just never knew. I'd heard that satellites were plentiful before the rift. But when the shit hit the fan, the governments had seized control of them and shut down public access to keep people from seeing what was going on and starting a panic. It wouldn't do to have the population know that large chunks of the world were being overrun and destroyed by herds of rabid beasts from another dimension.
Then, later, the control loosened up a bit. People knew by then that they were fucked, so there was no need to hide info. But only a few big corporations could afford or maintain the satellites in the aftermath of the destruction. So now, public access to Internet, media, and things like satellite maps was limited, and it cost a pretty penny.
It was no small thing the big guy had done, if he'd really gotten us updated maps.
"You're shitting me," I muttered.
Fin just nodded. "I'm telling you; this is going to work out. And...well, I think it's going to be a bigger success than we know. I just have a feeling."
I rolled my eyes upward and stared at the bits of blue sky visible between the tall buildings and abandoned factories around us. "I'm going to regret this, I just know it."
He gave me a twinkling green wink and a grin. "Oh, live a little, my friend."
I held the door to the cannery open and shooed him inside so we could talk logistics. "I don't have friends," I said flatly.
He stopped a few steps up the stairs and looked back at me, his position putting us nearly at eye level, his mossy green gaze seeing way too much. "Maybe it's time you change that, Sabertooth."
I growled. "Stop fucking calling me that."
His laughter echoed up the stairwell in a way that made my gut clench. I didn't have time for this shit.