As Lie The Dead by Kelly Meding

club across the street flashes neon signs that invite all the wrong sort. As many hookers as johns pace the corners, all keeping an eye out for cruising cop cars.
    As if they’ll see any around here.
    The cab has left me in front of a tiny jewelry store called A Puzzlement. I’m curious about the name and mentally check it off as something to explore later. My destination is the shadowy alcove to the store’s right—supposedlythe entrance to stairs leading up to a series of cheap apartments. My new home.
    I shift the plastic grocery bag that holds my entire life from my right hand to my left. Two changes of clothes are wrapped around a pair of sheathed, serrated knives—a graduation gift, of sorts—plus the sealed envelope I’m supposed to deliver to my Handler, Wyatt Truman. He even sounds like a prick—and if Handlers are anything like our Boot Camp instructors, I know I’ll hate this guy.
    “How much for a blow job?” The man’s voice is nearby, slurred, drunk.
    I ignore him, not caring much what the whore he’s addressing says, and stroll toward the alcove. Her rates are not my business. A bulky shape slips into my path. Meaty jowls and yellow teeth are all I see. Rum-soaked breath puffs in my face. I skid to a stop, disgusted.
    “Hey, rude much?” I snarl.
    “I said, how much for a blow job?”
    My mouth falls open. I can’t help it. Okay, I’m wearing denim shorts cut a little high—I’ve got the legs, I’m going to show them off—and a blue midriff-baring T-shirt, but fucking hell! “Ask me that again.”
    He blinks bleary eyes, not getting the warning in my tone. “How much for a fucking blow job, honey?”
    I step closer. He misinterprets and doesn’t protect himself. I smash my knee into his groin, and the rummy drops to his knees, howling. No one pays much attention. I step around, into the alcove, past a row of metal mailboxes, and ascend the badly lit stairs.
    They smell like sweat but are otherwise clean. Atthe top of the stairs is a brief corridor lined with six thick metal doors. I track down to number 4, raise my hand to knock, and hesitate.
    Going inside will change my life. Boot Camp had started out as an alternative to real jail time. I hated every single second of it. Hated the snarling instructors, the torturous training sessions, the exhaustion that was both mental and physical. Hated the way we’d killed to survive. And yet part of me loved it. Loved the sense of inclusion I’d felt for the first time in my eighteen years of existence. Loved the control I now had over my life. The training to hurt anyone who tried to hurt me. The ability to protect myself.
    I could take this new power and leave. Get the hell out of this city and start over somewhere else. Forget that vampires and shape-shifters and goblins exist, and that my job now is to hunt them. To keep them in their place. To punish them for acts against humanity. I can’t do that anywhere else—the largest uncontrolled population of Dregs in the world is in this city. Out there, I’m alone. Here I can have a purpose.
    The door opens before I can knock. An Asian woman gives me a once-over so cursory I might as well be invisible, then looks over her shoulder and shouts, “Fresh meat’s here.”
    She retreats into the apartment, leaving me in the open doorway. I hesitate, then go inside.
    It’s a hole. Peeling paint, stained floor, windows covered with ragged curtains. The sofa is faded beyond any reasonable color or pattern. Two other chairs look ready for the dump, and the small kitchenette is a grease fire waiting to happen. And yet it still feels … comfortable.
    Only three doors, though. One has to be the bathroom, which means two bedrooms. Sharing. Fucking fantastic.
    A young man with Hispanic features unfolds himself from the sofa and stands. He’s tall, towering over the chick by a good foot, broad-shouldered and muscular. Handsome in a high-school-football-player kind of way. He waves his hand at me—not