“It sounds to me like you have issues with objectifying women,” Andy observed as we walked to his house.

“Do you really think so?” I asked. “I never considered it that way before. I’ve always looked at it from a perspective of being appreciative of them.”

“My mom says you can appreciate something without being respectful of it,” Andy said.

“But we’re talking about genuine affection,” I argued. “How can you love something without respecting it?”

“I have a dog,” Andy replied. “I love him lots but he’s still just a dog.”

“I have a dog too, but what does that have to do with anything?” I replied.

“Dogs are dogs. People are people,” was his answer.

“There are some people who appreciate their pets just as much as they do their fellow man,” I said in response.

“Yeah, well, some people carry a lot of damage in their lives,” Andy said. “Are you one of them?”

“Are you implying I treat the fairer sex as being lesser than myself?” I said, scandalized. “I assure you; I do no such thing.”

“Yet here you are, using terms like fairer sex,” Andy said with a disapproving tisk. “Why are you idealizing fifty percent of the species with such flowery language? Overemphasizing the traits you find attractive in others is also a way of diminishing them.”

“It’s not intentional!” I protested.

“Then stop doing it,” Andy said calmly.

“Even when the language is appreciative?” I asked.

“It’s condescending,” he said matter of factly. “It’s a way for you to look down on others even when you find them intimidating.”

“I don’t find women intimidating!” I scoffed.

“Did you say you don’t find women intimidating, or you don’t find women intimidating?” asked Andy.

Through force of will, I bit off my words before I could say something genuinely hurtful.

“Are you ignoring the question?” Andy wondered mildly.

“I’m ignoring you,” I replied gruffly.

“Sounds like capitulation to me,” Andy said cheerfully.

“I had three wives in my previous life,” I continued. “I know a little something about keeping people happy.”

“Were they still happy with you by the time you died?” he asked.

“Well, no…but that’s only because time erodes everything. Eternal happiness just isn’t possible.”

“Why three wives, though?” asked Andy. “Monogamous relationships are difficult enough, aren’t they? Why deliberately play on hard mode?”

“It’s a cultural thing,” I said. “My older brother, Vitor, had three wives. So did that preening attention-seeker, Dracula. It wouldn’t have felt right not to at least match their achievements.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that your marriages weren’t about what you felt for the women themselves, but about using them to project your prowess to other men? Wouldn’t that make your wives mere trophies? Tools of validation for the soothing of your fragile ego?”

“This isn’t going how I imagined it would,” I said flatly a few moments later.

“Hey, I’m just asking questions, old man,” Andy said blithely.

“In my day, the young were far more deferential to their elders,” I said with undisguised bitterness.

“Sir, check the calendar. I do believe your day has passed.”

“Ah. Is that the verdict of today’s generation?” I muttered darkly. “You’re a real bastard, Andy Fitzgerald.”

“I’m only what society requires of me,” Andy said unapologetically.

“Okay. Go back to normal,” I commanded him with a wave of my hand, as I removed his mesmerization and erased his memories of our conversation.

“Sure thing!” Andy said cheerfully.

Our impromptu therapy session had begun as a way to kill the time while I escorted Andy back to his home, which was located in an even seedier section of the city than my office. If I lived in a bad part of town, then it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Andy was nestled in its very worst section. One with low employment and high rates of crime. The kind of place an inhabitant of the Diamonds wouldn’t be caught dead being seen in, although if they were seen there, it was because they were probably dead. Or being held for ransom.

The distance was considerable as well. Honestly, I don't know how the kid got all the way to my place on those tiny little legs of his. I guess the baby seal, as Annika had dubbed him, possessed a lot more stamina than his appearance let on.

Broken windows, graffiti tags, and angry looking people sitting on their porches or leaning against crumbling walls and fences met our gazes as we made our way south down the cracked sidewalk. There was a surly sense of volatility all throughout the air. An anger I’ve observed more than a few times in my life, shortly before the guillotines and the gallows began being mass produced.

Based on these seething feelings of frustrated resentment, it seemed the small people of Gardenia wouldn’t be averse to subjecting the nobles to a live reenactment of Les Misérables. It sounded like it would make for a hell of a show. Just my wretched luck I was one of those decadent elites they’d want standing in line to be beheaded.

There was a rapidly growing movement among the populace for a greater role in the running of the government. Ever since society had originally collapsed, the nobles had ruled the three great cities with a merciless fist. Those who protested their tyranny, or rather, the equalists, as they came to be called, resented this and with increasingly greater numbers began refusing to meekly play their designated roles as the downtrodden masses.

Demonstrations, marches, and riots were beginning to happen with alarming regularity. The last big one had happened at the very gates of the Diamonds themselves, which spurred forth a call for order to be firmly restored.

It would be a bad thing all around if the Hunters were pulled from their monster slaying duties and sent after the unruly masses. The system may have prevented them from killing ordinary humans outright, but there was nothing preventing them causing a lot of pain and misery before letting their ordinary servants finish the job. In fact, some of the older nobles were champing at the bit for an opportunity to cull the population and firmly set everyone back in their proper place.

In other words, it was getting dangerous to be caught outside at night on the streets of the big city. Even in the aftermath of the apocalypse, when every life taken could be considered an irreplaceable loss, in one of the few safe havens where they could live in peace, humanity just couldn’t stop being themselves. Why let go of the mistakes of the past when you could just scrabble in the muck for a nicer pile of mud than what your neighbor had?

It would nauseate me if I had the right to judge anyone else.

“We’re here!” Andy said happily as he pointed out a surprisingly well-maintained two-story home with nary a broken bottle or wad of discarded paper to be seen in its front yard. How interesting. Whenever you came across a home this nice in a neighborhood as bad as this, it meant that whoever occupied it was highly respected by their community.

Or feared.

That made me wonder just who Andy’s parents were. It was one thing to be brave enough to set up a business in the Narrows. But what was the exact nature of their business? Jamie, whose bar they were refurnishing and repairing, had been a powerful broker for criminal activities in the wild. She’d been dangerous, calculating, and extremely manipulative, and before her death, she conducted her dealings mainly out of her tavern.

Were Andy’s parents seeking to take over Jamie’s position in Gardenia’s underworld? And if so, did that make this little goofball some kind of gangster princeling? I suppose that would explain why he’d been able to walk all the way from here to my office without getting harassed by any of the locals.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Hmm. I also supposed that meant that all the hostile looks we’d been receiving on our way here had been directed mostly at me. After all, if his parents were neighborhood bigshots, then they had to be wondering who the hell I was supposed to be.

Not necessarily a good thing. Well, maybe for purposes of advertising.

I guess I’d have to see where the evening went.

“Hi, Kendall!” Andy chirped as a barefoot young woman in jeans and a white t-shirt who I estimated at being about five years older than Anikka opened the front door of the house and came running forward to give him a fierce hug. “Check it out, I found someone who’s going to take care of the monsters for us!”

“Andy! Oh my god, I was scared half to death!” Kendal said with tears running down her cheeks. “How could you just leave like that? I had no idea where you were! I was going insane!”

“Are you mad at me?” Andy asked her with wide, guileless eyes.

“You’re damn right I am!” Kendal said with increasing anger in her voice. “You don’t just disappear whenever you feel like it, buster! What if something terrible happened to you? How do you think I’d feel? Did you even consider that before you went running off to God knows where?”

“No,” the boy replied. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to get some help before the monsters got us in our sleep and—”

“Andy. Sweetie. There are no monsters, okay?” Kendall said forcefully as she brushed back his bangs, so he could look her in the eye. “Gardenia exists under the dome. The dome keeps out all the awful things in the dark and keeps us safe. These monsters your afraid of are just your imagination running wild, okay?”

Heh. What sweet naivety.

Well, technically, she wasn’t wrong. Through an incredible feat of magical engineering, Gardenia generated a powerful dome of light that covered the entire city, strong enough to destroy anything that wasn’t human that attempted to come through it. Even I would have disintegrated in a flash if I dared to make the attempt.

The problem with the design, however, was that the protection the dome provided was far more limited than most people realized. If for example, you were a monster who could transform into a human form like Rachel and I, then once we were inside, the dome’s power meant nothing. Anikka had been changed into a vampire beneath its gleaming luster with no ill effects to speak of. Although I consider myself a person of considerable intelligence, I’m by no means an innovative genius. I highly doubted I was the first being to ever discover this glaring weakness in Gardenia’s defense.

All this to say that if they were persistent enough to keep trying and intelligent enough to remain hidden, I’m sure Gardenia was crawling with a hidden underground of inhuman inhabitants. But since they kept to themselves, I never had any reason to seek out these theoretical neighbors of mine.

But if they were here and causing problems, problems that could presumably make things difficult for me and my family, then coming here to investigate Andy’s home was well worth the effort.

“Have no fear, Miss, your nephew was under my protection,” I said to her in my most charming manner as I stepped forth to offer her my hand. “He came seeking a consultation which I was more than happy to provide. Afterwards we enjoyed some tasty street vendor carnitas, and I escorted him home. No harm, no foul.”

“He eats funny,” Andy snickered. “It’s so messy.”

“Don’t be a prick, Andy, I’m trying to help,” I said in a friendly tone of voice.

“And who the hell are you supposed to be?” Kendall asked with unveiled hostility. She stepped away from the boy and glared at me with her hands on her hips. “What kind of weirdo goes walking around with a seven-year-old boy at this time of night?”

Well. That was rude, wasn’t it?

“My apologies, Miss,” I said in a voice that oozed with harmless positivity. “I guess I’m the sort of weirdo that wants to make sure a small child is fed and spends the night sleeping in his own bed, not occupying a dumpster after being robbed and murdered on the cold streets of the city his ditzy aunt let him run wild on after taking her eyes off him.”

“What?” Kendall said. “What the hell did you just say to me?”

“It’s a real shame too,” I continued. “Your sister was trusting you to watch over the most important thing in her life, and you absolutely blew it. If I were you, I’d be choking on shame and self-loathing right about now, not taking my feelings of failure and frustration out on the kind and handsome stranger who returned your seal pup to you.”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Kendall asked angrily as she raised her fingers to her mouth and blew out a sharp whistle. Before I could reply, her neighbors, who’d been sitting idly by on their own property, began surrounding us on all sides. A large ring of them, cracking knuckles, crossing their arms, and stretching their necks to show off their facial tattoos.

In other words, a real friendly bunch.

“What’s up, baby girl?” asked one of them, a shirtless man in ripped jeans, swollen with muscle, who stepped forth to stand beside Kendall.

“Got us a tourist,” she said without taking her eyes away from me. “One with a big mouth.”

“Wouldn’t that make me a satirist?” I asked. “Tourists like walking around. I deliver a running commentary.”

“You’re gonna wish you ran earlier if you don’t shut your fucking mouth,” said the shirtless guy. “This idiot giving you problems?” he asked Kendall.

I cut in before she could respond. “No, I’m giving her lip. A mouthful, you could say. It translates to an earful, though. Some people just don’t want to hear the truth about themselves.”

“He took Andy,” Kendall said furiously. “He’s the reason he was missing all day.”

“He took Andy home,” I said, correcting her. “He’s the reason he got home safely. I’m just waiting to be thanked.”

“Mister, this ain’t your neighborhood, and you’re a fool if you think you can speak that way to one of us and get away with it,” said the shirtless guy.

“I dunno, I kind of feel like all neighborhoods are mine in the sense of spiritual brotherhood, you know?” I replied. “Not that I’d want to live anywhere near this hovel. I only enjoy slumming with friendly poor people.”

“It’s about to be as unfriendly as it gets, tourist,” he said as his pack of neighbor-hoodies stepped closer to me. “I’m about to inject some respect into that fucking mouth, bitch,” he said.

I said nothing and gestured for him to make the attempt.

“Do it,” Kendall said savagely. “Fuck him up, Austin!”

“Uh, guys, please don’t!” pleaded little Andy. “He can kill anything he wants! He said so!”

At his words, everyone burst into laughter.

“Is that what this asshole told you, little man?” Austin said after he caught his breath. “He can kill anything he wants. That’s a big promise to make, don’t you think so?”

“He was being serious!” Andy insisted shrilly. “You have to believe me!”

“Guys, little man says he was being serious!” Austin said mockingly. “Well, what about it, asshole? Were you being serious?”

“Yep,” I nodded.

“What?” he asked, confused by the nonchalance of my response.

“Yes, I was being serious. I can kill anything I want. That’s why he brought me here to check out his monster situation. You’re really dragging this whole thing out, though, so I’m giving a lot of thought to just pulling your head off.”

“Please don’t do that!” pleaded Andy.

“Aww, but now Andy’s like, please don’t do that! How do you say no to a face like that? Andy, can I just hurl him or something? Would that be acceptable?”

“What does hurl mean?” asked Andy.

“That’s when you throw something as hard as you can so that it flies far away from you,” I replied.

“Wouldn’t that kill him?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “He might land on someone’s lawn.”

“Please don’t do that!” repeated Andy.

“Damn it, I feel so constrained,” I said sourly as I walked past Austin and headed toward the house.

“Hey, fucker where do you think you’re going—” Austin began to say before I made eye-contact and used [Mesmerize] to put him and the rest of the neighborhood gathering to sleep.

As one, they collapsed to the ground in deep slumber, with the exception of Kendall and Andy.

“What…what the hell just happened?” she asked in alarm.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Your nephew just saved the neighborhood, was all. Show him some gratitude for this, it was about to get extremely ugly.”

“Fuck you!” she said.

“Yeah, that’s not gratitude,” I said as I stepped through the screen door. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got here.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply as the scents of the house washed over me. There were dirty dishes in the sink, clothing scattered about, a full trash bag waiting to be taken outside, and other aromas that suggested the place needed a good cleaning.

“Get out of my house!” Kendall said angrily.

“Andy already invited me inside,” I told her. “Does your sister know what a terrible job of upkeeping you’re doing? I swear, Kendall, the more I learn about you, the less I like you.”

“Fuck you!” she said again, shrilly.

“Hey!” I said disapprovingly. “Andy doesn’t need to hear language like that. Stop being such a disappointment, it’ll make others judge your family negatively.”

Okay, maybe I pushed her a little too hard with that last quip. Instead of yelling back, Kendall ran into the kitchen and came out wielding a kitchen knife and screaming her head off. Then she ran at me with surprising speed and thrust the blade into my abdomen.

I stared down at my belly where she’d buried the knife. Then I looked back at her and saw her face beaming with vicious satisfaction at the act of violence she’d just committed. Then I turned around to see how much Andy had witnessed.

Judging by his horrified expression, he’d seen it all. Which meant I had to erase his memories again.

After I put him to sleep on the cluttered living room couch, I sighed. Then I pulled the bloodless knife out of my gut and handed it to Kendall, handle-first. “Put this away,” I told her.”

“What?” she asked, stunned that I wasn’t bleeding everywhere or screaming in pain.

“I don’t like you, Kendall,” I informed her coldly. “I do not LIKE you. If things keep carrying on this way, I’m eventually going to kill you. But if I do that, then I’ll have to keep watch over Andy in your place. I don’t want to do that. He’s a sweet kid, but I prefer having my days free. So, stop provoking me, let me finish the job I was hired for, and then kindly stay the hell away from me for the rest of your natural life, okay?”

“Do you know who you’re fucking with?” she said defiantly. “Do you know who my family is?”

I responded by handing her one of my business cards. The one that identified me as Lord Kyler Velas.

"You're a hunter?” she asked fearfully after reading it carefully. “Oh, my god, are you a noble?”

In reply, I smiled nastily at her and gave a small nod.

Her skin paled considerably in a way I found gratifying.

Say what you will about the Velas family, but it was well known throughout the city. The old Lord Velas had been a meticulous bastard about defending his reputation. That went a long way toward making the family name well-known.

And feared.

“Oh, fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she said. "Are you really a Velas? I swear I didn't know."

“Yeah, well don’t expect any invitations for badminton and tea anytime soon,” I curtly informed her. “You would be a poor guest.”

“I told you I didn’t know!” she said.

“And now you do. Hey, didn’t I already ask you to put that knife away?” I asked her.

Although it was pleasing to watch her run into the other room while finally showing proper deference, it annoyed me that it was due to fear of another man. The old Lord Velas had been nothing compared to me.

Seriously. If she’d kept up the hostility, I would have literally bitten her head off.

Oh, well. That wasn’t what I was here for. Maybe later if I was still feeling angry. In the meanwhile, it was time I began my hunt for Andy’s alleged monsters.

Which, to my mild surprise, existed.