I don’t remember falling asleep, and that’s the most terrifying thing that can happen to anyone in the Summers Clan. I startle awake and clutch the shotgun to my chest, its butt against my shoulder and sawed-off barrel darting from left to right. Panting. Sweaty. Mouth dry and my throat hurts when I try to swallow. I’ve got a heartbeat that sounds like a war drum between my ears, but… silence. I breathe out and shakily lower the gun. I’m already on my knees, and that only changes when I slowly shift toward the window I’d slept underneath. I peek outside, but the sun is barely up and the heat hasn’t started baking the air hot and dry. Gods above, I think, getting low again.

  The smell finally reaches my nose, and it takes all my willpower not to vomit. I spit bitter saliva and wipe my mouth on my shoulder, because I know I don’t stink that badly, but the answer is pretty clear the second I turn.

  The tiny Dragonborne is sitting in a pile of guts and flesh and chewed bones, some of them are still being gnawed on as she stares at me. We look at one another, then she pauses, searches through the piles of destroyed meat, and finds a piece she can offer me. She smiles, shaking the slab of bloody meat. I want to puke, because I know what human meat smells like and looks like—usually sloppier, more fatty, and no, don’t ask me how I know. But this wasn’t human or Mage—Monster, and if it wasn’t the sheets of leathery black flesh lying around or the horns and the hard, black bones, then it would be the gross amount of withering magic lingering in the shadows.

  “Fuck me,” I whisper as I slowly stand up. I’m not letting go of the shotgun, because that’s my one security as I sweep through the room. The makeshift wall I set up is completely down, like some Minatour barged in here last night looking for the money I owed him. I look at the kid, who’s still staring at me with her wide eyes and the bone getting chewed down in between her rigid teeth. I count seven, maybe eight torsos around her. There’s a head impaled on a piece of rebar sticking out of the wall. Half a body hanging from the rafters above me, dripping blood and…there go the organs inside of it, slopping splattering onto the ground beside me. I look at the Dragonborne. I move slowly, stepping over the gore until I reach her, then I crouch. She stops chewing on the bone. “You did this?”

  She doesn’t speak—all she does is stare at me with those bug dumb eyes. Blood splatter on her cheeks catches a brief ray of sunlight that comes just over my shoulder, but she doesn’t seem to mind that it’s soaked through her potato sack dress or her loose strands of dark hair. Then she burps, and the stench that gushes from her mouth makes me reel. Giggling comes next, and finally her stomach growls so loud I momentarily freeze in place.

  I’ve hunted enough Monsters to know what happens when they start getting hungry, but…

  I don’t know, maybe it’s how sleepily she suddenly looks, but I think she isn’t gonna eat me.

  She’s a lot more interested in standing up, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands, and groggily stumbling toward me until her face is pressing against my chest. I look down at her, the gun in my right hand and my body frozen in place. She’s still warm, just like last night, except she’s now wet with hot blood. When I try to move back, she grabs my t-shirt and holds firm, her face still burrowing deep into my stomach. Right, I think. The Blessing. She must think I’m some kind of awesomely warm and comfortable pillow, which isn’t ideal, considering I need to get inside the Forge today and, even worse, deeper inside the mines if my bad luck rears its ugly head again.

  “I guess I owe you this much,” I mutter, letting the shotgun rest on the floor and standing up. She looks up at me and stretches out her arms. I look down at her, because no, no way, that’s not happening—I’m willing to compromise on some things, and sure, I owe her for making sure I didn’t get ambushed at night, but come on!

  When her lower lips starts trembling as I step back, waving my hands no, she follows. I try to keep walking away, always going backward, but all she does is scamper after me, arms raised, her face screwing so tightly that—

  She suddenly stops, sits down, and starts wailing.

  And if you’ve never heard a Dragonborne’s cry, then try to imagine your face getting smashed through a window that just won’t give. I cup my ears and look around, running for the windows and looking into the sky. My vision starts to blur, and that’s when I figure I’m either gonna have to shoot this kid dead on the spot in a moment.

  Or I do the stupid thing, and take care of my second kid in just a few days.

  Maybe I should’ve just stayed in Heaven.

  “Fine!” I snap. She stops crying so loudly, and the problem with Dragons is their offspring (and them, too, of course, as is the problem with all Monsters), especially emotional ones. She’s already scorched the concrete she’d been crying on, and the air inside the room stings so badly my skin starts peeling when I get closer. The Runes on my arms do their best to make sure I don’t burn up entirely, but I can only get so close. Tiny red flames spark and flicker at the ends of her hair, threatening to consume her whole. She reeks of burnt gore and smoke, and…Gods, what the fuck did I ever do to deserve this? I get on one knee and, against my better judgement, open my arms.

  Gods, if my siblings saw me right now, they’d be killing themselves with laughter.

  Mom would’ve probably been disgusted that this was even happening.

  The little Dragonborne with the cross engraved in her forehead didn’t seem to care one bit as she slowly made her way toward me. I’ve barely ever held kids. Something, something, I kill people for a living, so it’s just not something I usually get around to doing. She climbs into my arms, wrapping hers around my neck and digging her face into the nape of my neck. Blood smears along my throat, and it’s all I can do to not shudder as I stand up again.

  Sometimes I hate this job, and sometimes this job hates me, but I think the Pantheon must find this really funny, don’t they? I swear, when I find them and their golden asses during that solstice. But I can bitch all I want. She’s given me one hell of an opportunity, and without her, I would’ve been dead in my sleep. Maybe it’s a lucky break, my first one in months, maybe even years, so…I’ll take it, sure, why not? After all, there’s nobody I can sell all this stuff to, so I’ll just have to use it. I’ve got to shift her onto my back, but she’s competent enough to know how to use her legs to cling to my body, arms still around my neck and her chin resting on my shoulder. Her breath stinks, and it’s so warm it makes my face sting. But I don’t bother getting angry at that, not right now, anyway.

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  It must be the first time a Monster has actually helped me out, and not just because I paid them. It felt strange, a little odd, like I was half-expecting her to crack her jaw wide open and bite down hard on my shoulder.

  But it never comes, so I focus on the job ahead of me today.

  “You know,” I say to her, as I start gathering piles of leathery skin. Some of it must be Fallen Angel flesh. For some reason, it’s not dissolving, but then I find the pattern of Runes on their bodies—different from the Angels I fought on the highway. Doesn’t matter now, not when they’re dead. “If I wasn’t a bounty hunter, I’d be selling Monster hide in Dogway. I’ve got this aunt, right? Real bitch of a gal”—I pick up what I need and lay it all in a pile near the window, and I’m not risking going outside, so I’ll use the sunlight I have to dry it; all I needed to do was stretch the flesh out just enough for it to give but not tear, and with all this heavy debris around, it takes just a few minutes to get it splayed out—“but I really like the broad sometimes. She’ll remember my birthday and send me a few Drachma, maybe a solid piece if she’s feeling nice. She sells hides. Lives in this ugly little place, but her kids go to the October Academy, which is, like, insane, you know?” I look over my shoulder. She’s staring at me. No, I guess you don’t really know, do you? “Anyway, I help her out sometimes, but then we got into a fight last year and—”

  “Kill.”

  I stop halfway through trying to gather threads of hair off the floor. I’ve found enough for a handful, and yet all I can focus on is the tiny whisper of a word that’s just leaped out of her mouth. “No,” I mutter. “Not kill. Just a family thing. You did this, you did that—he said this, and now he’s dead, so now you owe me this, Kacey, I swear.”

  It wasn’t my fault that her husband got a little too in over his head on a job. I’m efficient.

  Not a babysitter.

  What comes next is finding a shard of bone, which there are plenty on the floor to choose from. I find the tiniest, thinnest piece—a fracture that’s come off a thigh, I’m sure. I check it over in the sunlight, then prick it against my finger. It’s sharp enough to barely need any force to split the skin, which is more than good enough.

  I say, “Open wide,” and she does, if only because I wave the bone in front of her teeth. I move my shoulder to close her jaw just enough to dent the bone, meaning I’ve got enough of a dent to knot the threads of hair around the end of the bone needle I just made. I had to learn that one for myself, because sewing kits are damned expensive when you’re choosing between hunger and survival. “Time to make myself a flesh cloak. Ever done this before?”

  She doesn’t shake her head or nod, which probably means she can barely understand most words.

  But I guess I don’t mind the company. Just this once.

  I crouch and get to work puncturing the sun-dried flesh, and as the sun keeps rising and the heat worsens, the stench inside the room gets so bad I’m forced to use the bandana around my neck to cover up my mouth and nose. I work until my fingertips are bleeding and my back hurts from being hunched over with several pounds of Monster hanging off it, too, but I get the job done by around midday. Hovels like this, that reek of pungent death, are exactly the kinds of places Monsters tend to avoid. Too little magic. Too much gore. Whatever’s in here means business, and it’s better you just stick to your lane and not get turned into another example for everyone to learn from. There, I think, dragging my arm across my face to get the sweat off my forehead. It’s not perfect, but I’m not either, so I guess it’s a-okay. I stand up stiffly and hold the flesh cloak out in front of me, looking it up and down.

  Nothing too wild, and nothing too dissimilar from the cloaks you’d find in any back alley Knight market. The blood has dried, meaning it’s soaked back into the flesh, making it rubbery enough to feel like hardened leather. Monster flesh, kids, is perfect against most Monster attacks. Claws, teeth, even venomous spit, but at the end of the day, it’s probably Fallen Angel flesh—not all that strong, but at least it’ll be better than going in there with nothing except my t-shirt, a dagger, a backpack and a shotgun, so I hang it off a pile of stones and turn.

  It’s time to look for a piece of bone I can turn into a—

  Perfect.

  No, jackpot.

  A thigh bone still wet with blood and a spinal cord still attached to a head lie in the corner, just about touched by the scorching sunlight coming through the window. I’ve got to smash the skull off the end of the spine, leaving a barbed whip that’ll just about burrow into anything from flesh to stone for at least a day, maybe two if I use it sparingly. That’ll do in a pinch, I think, winding it up and hanging it off the side of my backpack. Then comes the thigh bone, which I can use to make a sword, or at least a long pointy object. This one’s a little harder to deal with, but if you’re ever out in the wild looking for something to carve away at bone, don’t start sweating about it. Deep breath, crouch down, and grind the fuckin’ thing against the ground until it starts giving and your arms hurt and your back burns, but you’ve just started seeing bone marrow seep out of it, meaning you’re getting to the weakest, most hollow part of it. Past that, and now you’re in for the win. A little more elbow grease, and bang, kid.

  You’ve got yourself a sharp piece of bone—tear up some loose cloth, wrap it around the hilt, and thread through some left over Monster flesh for some extra grip, and just like that, you’ve got yourself a shitty sword.

  But Gods I missed how this felt. The weight. The length. The way it sings as I cut through sunlight and point it out of the window. It glints, catching a dagger of sunlight, and glistens so sharply I have to put it down.

  “Kill?” she asks over my shoulder, this time sounding a lot more sure.

  “Kill,” I agree, sliding it through my backpack and shouldering it, which means she has to get down, but she extends her hand up and waits as we stand at the exit of the room, the hallways silent, dark, and clinging to the kind of heat that’ll make any day in River City feel like a gentle summer. I grudgingly take her hand, using my other for the shotgun, as we walk through the dark. My hands are wet and my body is exhausted. All I’ve eaten is a slab of Monster meat, raw and chewy and bloody, that’s running through my stomach like a handful of old needles.

  But if there’s ever a job to be done, hire Kacey Summers at 1-800-BountyHunter. I swallow the saliva and keep walking, ignoring every stumble, every wince, every stab of pain, because none of that really matters now.

  Because whatever’s waiting for me inside that Forge is going to be my ticket out of the Barrens. How do I know, you’re wondering? That’s simple. You sell enough bodies, you’re eventually gonna have enough for a bus ticket. And at the end of the day, as we stand at the exit of the building, the heat stinging even from the shadows, the silence loud, the air humming with insects and vile, tainted magic, I can always just sell the tiny Dragonborne.

  Trust hasn’t been in the dictionary ever since humanity turned the First Angel into a power plant. But the Summers have been at it way before humans started tearing Monsters apart and using their magic to turn their world into a somehow even worse state of affairs. We’re the Clan who got executed on sight, no questions asked, because we might’ve pissed off the wrong set of gods who didn’t take too kindly to us selling the First Angel to the humans.

  Something, something, money makes the world go round.

  At least, that’s just the rumor.

  So that’s what it is, and that’s what it’ll always be.

  Clear?

  Great.

  Let’s go save a magical cat and an Angel who’s supposed to be dead.

  And kill the fuckers who ruined my peaceful walk through the Barrens.