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Fain met Kaltenbach five years earlier, late at night in a highway diner so dusty and worn it seemed like it belonged on the set of a movie about alien abductions or secret government proving grounds for pilots. Vinyl tiles, peeling up at the corners, covered the floor, worn down almost to the cement in a path from the door. He hadn’t much liked the look of the place. But then, he hadn’t much liked the look of the whole town. After the Pacific Northwest, the landscape still felt wrong to him, too empty, too arid. It was quiet in a way that had little to do with noise.
“What were you exiled for?” he’d asked Kaltenbach.
“I wasn’t,” she said. She ate quickly, cutting her sandwich into chunks and stuffing each one into her mouth. She drank milk to wash it down, a strangely homespun trait which matched the twin braids and kerchief tied over them but not much else. She had a rawboned look to her, with wind-scarred cheeks and hands that looked tougher than leather gloves.
“He wants a colony,” Fain said, watching her reaction. “I was sent to lead it. Not an exile, exactly, but they made it clear my job was here for the next few years.”
Kaltenbach looked up at him, chewing the next bite. She ate like a wolf, as if she might have to run at any minute and wanted to get as much food inside her while she could.
“That’s why I’m here,” Fain said. “But I don’t get why you’re here. What do you want? What do you get out of it?”
“The desert sky,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
She hadn’t said much else that night. It had taken her a while to open up to him. He thought he might know her for years and years before he really knew her well enough to consider her a friend. But he trusted her, which was more than he could say about anyone else in this town.
And now they were here, the two of them, in the same shitty diner, everything the same except the girl behind the counter and the prices on the menu. Fain felt his heart beat faster. They were so close. Just one more step and they’d finally make this a Guild city in truth. One final nest to tear open. Some of the fledglings they’d found had been willing to submit, once Fain and Kaltenbach had laid it out to them. Join or die. Mercedes Varga had seemed relieved at the prospect of someone imposing order over the hardscrabble free-for-all that had been here when he first arrived. For others, Fain and Kaltenbach learned how difficult it was to dig a deep grave in the baked desert soil. One more step, one more nest, and they’d own this town in truth.
Steel Fang arrived not long after midnight. He had graduated high school less than a decade earlier and been turned into a vampire sometime within the past two or three years. Steel Fang looked like the runt of the litter. Either he’d been turned just before he hit his final growth spurt, or he had parents who were short and this was his terminal height. He had curly brown hair and close-set eyes which would have made him look weaselly except for a generous mouth that smiled easily, such as when he saw the girl behind the counter. This girl’s nametag said Madison, but the regular customers called her Maddy.
Maddy turned the closed sign to open for Steel Fang, greeted him warmly and asked if she could get him coffee. Fain had been flirting with the girl every time he’d come in, but not gotten a single smile out of her. Perhaps she knew this guy.
Fain watched her chat with Steel Fang. Eric. Did he tell her his name was Steel Fang? Did he tell his high school buddies that he had been turned into a vampire? Was he blabbing it to everyone who would listen? Did he have any idea the fiery vengeance that would fall upon this entire city if certain vampires found out he was revealing the truth to humans? True, the unspoken pact of silence had been losing strength in recent decades, but it was still foolish to be too open. But what did these young fledglings know of safety and sustainability? He should have had a sire who taught him how to hunt without being caught. Instead he had a dipshit who picked the wrong human as prey and got a stake in his chest for the trouble.
Maddy had long hair in a braid which she flipped over her shoulder as she talked, bright red lipstick, and an innocent laugh. She might have been all of twenty. Maybe the little sister of someone Steel Fang knew, someone who had a crush on her big brother’s friend. Steel Fang asked about her family, leaning with one hand on the counter and one hand idly resting on his hip. Fain watched him with steepled hands, not moving, like a cat at a mouse hole, which anyone with half an instinct would have felt, but Steel Fang just kept flirting with the girl until she pointed over at their booth. Steel Fang nodded at her and slapped his hand on the bar a couple of times before sauntering over to their booth.
“You must be Fain,” he said, cheerfulness draining away. “And the one they call La Patrona. Which one of you is in charge and which one of you is the bitch?”
Fain glared at him. “What kind of idiot would actually call himself Steel Fang when he had a perfectly serviceable name like Eric?”
Maddy came over with her coffee pot and an empty cup for their guest. She poured Eric’s cup and set it down, ignoring Fain’s empty cup.
“Maddy, is there any of that pie left?” Steel Fang asked.
“I’ll check,” she said, smiling.
Steel Fang sipped his coffee, doctoring it from the melamine bowl of colored paper packets. “So, Fain, if that’s your real name, wanna tell me why you asked me to meet you here?”
“Will you join our guild and accept me, El Patron, as leader?”
“Nope.”
“Then if you don’t leave town, we’ll kill you.”
Steel Fang laughed. “You and what army, bro? Like, seriously, who do you even have? Is it just the two of you?” He looked back and forth between Fain and Kaltenbach as if not impressed by what he saw. “You ain’t got shit.”
“What’s your plan?” Fain asked. “Just to live in someone else’s house going out only to kill people whenever you get hungry?”
“What’s it to you, old man?” Steel Fang turned over his shoulder, winking at Maddy. “It’s a nice place. We got this giant mansion, we got a landing strip, we got everything we need. Where are you holed up? Oh, wait, yeah, that shitty little three bedroom over on Pena street. How’s that working out for you? Do you know we have a swimming pool?”
“It’s just a house.”
“It is literally the nicest house in fifty miles,” Steel Fang said, and Fain could not contradict him. “The property contains the entire valley and you can see Red Rock from the peaks. It’s got like twenty bedrooms or some shit. I’ve never even counted. It doesn’t matter how wild your party is, no one can hear you. We got security like you’ve never seen. Electric fence, cameras, motion detectors, all kinds of shit. You can’t even get close enough to the house to look in the window at our amazing home theater system, if we even had windows you could look through, which we don’t. I know you’ve been snooping around. You know the cops are friends of my dad? They won’t be too happy if they find out you’ve been trespassing.”
“You can’t stay inside forever.”
“Wanna bet? We can get everything delivered. Even blood.” Steel Fang turned over his shoulder again, looking pointedly at Maddy. “I could probably even get pie delivered. Or something else just as nice. You wouldn’t know, because you ain’t got game. She thinks you’re creepy.”
“I won’t make this offer again.”
“Oooh. I’m so upset.” Steel Fang looked up at the ceiling and shook his hands by his face sarcastically. “Oh, here’s a question for you. You wanna join us?”
Fain steepled his fingers and glared at Eric.
“Well, you can’t, because you suck.”
Maddy set a plate down in front of Steel Fang. It held a large slice of lemon meringue pie which had fallen apart and was more like a pile of custard, meringue, and pie crust. “On the house, on account of it’s broken,” she said, with a flirtatious wink. Turning to Fain, she added coolly, “You want to settle up?”
Fain paid her and left, seething. He heard Kaltenbach follow him outside. It was only early summer, but the night air felt warm with heat radiating off the parking lot. Fain got into the driver’s seat and Kaltenbach got in the passenger seat.
“You want to kill him?”
“Yes,” Fain said. “But first I want that house.”
“The house?” Kaltenbach asked dryly.
“He’s right. It’s the nicest house for fifty miles. It’s got the best location, both for convenience and defense. I bet it’s priced under market, since it’s been trashed by foolish young men. I want to break into that fancy security system, and I want to take that house. And then I want to kill him.”
Kaltenbach didn’t say anything for close to a minute, and he waited for her, knowing that she was considering all the options, considering the feasibility of it. Finally, she nodded. “We will take the house.”