Read Hellforged for Free Online

sorry for me, imagining me pining away for him all by my lonesome. That’s why he oh-so-generously said I should date other guys, out of pity. Then he plugged some auto-reminders to call me into his calendar and told somebody’s secretary to send poor Vicky something nice. He didn’t put two seconds’ thought into what.
    Was I being petty? Probably, but so what? On the scale of personal failings, how did “petty” measure up against “can’t be bothered”?
    I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to figure that one out. And I wasn’t going to sit around an empty apartment getting hay fever, either. It was still early. I pulled on my jacket to go out. Not to that place where everybody knows your name—that’s a tourist bar on Beacon Street—but to a place where it was impossible for someone like me to feel sorry for myself, a place where I could hang out with zombies, vampires, and a werewolf or two.

3

    CREATURE COMFORTS IS A BAR IN THE NEW COMBAT ZONE, the no-man’s-land between Deadtown and human-controlled Boston. It’s also where I go when I want to unwind. As I pushed open the heavy oak doors, warm air puffed out, scented with beer, sweat, tobacco (good luck enforcing a smoking ban in the Zone)—and the slightest tinge of blood.
    As I stepped inside, a sandy-haired zombie rushed past with a tray. His orange, yellow, and turquoise Hawaiian shirt clashed with his green-tinged skin, and he moved stiffly, as zombies do. He was fast, though, and something about his bearing suggested he’d been an athlete before the plague. He set the tray on a table and unloaded drinks, smiling and joking with the customers.
    Must be Axel’s latest help. Creature Comforts wasn’t Boston’s classiest bar, with its beer-sloshed floor, red-vinyl booths, and sticky tables. But business had been up lately, now that zombies were allowed to wander the New Combat Zone without a permit. Zombies and humans had been on pretty friendly terms since Tina had led other zombies in defending Boston’s Halloween parade from a Harpy attack. The thawing of human-PA relations had lured more norms to venture into the Zone and live a little dangerously by visiting a monster bar. One of the most popular spots was Creature Comforts, which had always been a one-man operation in the past. (Although come to think of it, the bar’s owner, Axel—a seven-foot-tall, hook-nosed, bearded, shaggy knuckle-dragger—might best be described as something other than “man.” Nobody was quite sure what he was. But nobody was brave enough to ask.)
    The new waiter zipped off to take orders from a booth. Behind the bar, Axel filled a pitcher with beer. I caught his eye, and he nodded in greeting. I went over. “Looks like your new guy’s doing a good job.”
    Axel shrugged. No scowl, so he must’ve thought the kid was okay. In the past two months, since he’d become an employer, Axel had hired and fired a procession of waitstaff: two vampires who’d snacked on the norms, a werewolf with an unfortunate customer-sniffing habit, even a human vamp tramp who’d pestered every vampire in the place to turn her—against Massachusetts law. Based on that track record, anybody who managed to serve customers without taking a bite out of them was doing very well indeed.
    I climbed onto a bar stool and ordered a beer.
    “What kind?” Axel asked.
    “Um, you pick.” Can you tell I’m not much of a drinker?
    His lips twitched in what might have been a smile, but it was hard to tell under the beard. A minute later, he gave me a bottle of something pale and yellowish.
    “Lite beer, huh? Daniel wouldn’t approve.” Daniel Costello was a beer connoisseur. When we went out, he always ordered something exotic sounding, like red ale or oatmeal stout.
    “If it tasted like beer,” Axel said, “you wouldn’t like it.”
    Probably true.
    I took a sip. Not bad. Axel was right, it didn’t taste like beer. It didn’t taste like much of anything. I swigged—and nearly