The Taste of Home

Chapter 1

If it weren't for the low, steady music thrumming from inside the dimly lit restaurant, Miguel would have thought The Crimson Goat was closed for the evening.

"This is the place everyone's been going on about?" Isabella curled her lip over her fangs in a sneer. "As if humans know anything about good food."

These at least knew something about how to make chupacabras comfortable. The familiar sound of slurping welcomed them inside as chupacabras dined on San Antonio's finest— and so far only— sanguine cuisine.

"Welcome to The Crimson Goat!" The hostess's voice dripped with fake cheerfulness as she craned her neck to look Isabella in the eye. "Do you have a reservation?"

"It should be under Isabella of Saguaro Pack." Miguel offered the hostess what was supposed to be a smile but, judging from the way she cringed, he still needed practice. Most of Saguaro Pack didn't interact with humans much, and Miguel saw them less than most since he was usually busy caring for hatchlings.

"Is the third member of your party here?"

Miguel and Isabella sniffed the air and glanced around the restaurant, but there was no sign of Creosote Pack's leader among the sea of scaly bodies. "Not yet," Miguel said.

"She shouldn't be long, though." Isabella's claws twitched by her side. "We have much to discuss."

Since a member of Saguaro Pack would soon leave to live with her mate, tradition dictated that Creosote Pack's leader must give Isabella a gift in exchange for the packmate she was about to lose. She'd invited Isabella and a handful of her most trusted packmates to dine with her on neutral ground, promising to present them with her offering at the end of the meal.

"Alrighty then. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for her, but let's go ahead and get you to your table."

The hostess led them to a secluded corner of the restaurant, far from the contented slurping of the other diners. "Your waiter will be with you shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy your complimentary mice."

Miguel eased himself into his chair with a wince as the hostess scampered away.

"Were the hatchlings roughhousing with you again?" Isabella bent to inspect his bad leg, left weak and slightly twisted by a coyote attack when he'd been just a hatchling himself.

"I was trying to show them how to do a proper hunter's crouch, and I guess I moved my leg wrong. Stars forbid I even look at it the wrong way, or I'll be feeling it for a week."

"I can put you on nesting duty if you need to rest it."

Miguel shook his head. His sister always tried to look out for him. While she was always the first to kill and the last to feed, he had his pick of whatever tickled his teeth that day. Perhaps tonight he could finally get her to pamper herself for once.

"Don't worry about me," he said. "Have you figured out what you'd like to try?"

"Worrying is my job, hermanito. And if you think this dreck is appetizing, then I have a lot more to be concerned about." She gestured toward the cage full of frantically squeaking rodents in the center of the table. "I wouldn't feed these pests to a hatchling, yet humans seem to think we have no better taste than snakes."

"At least they're trying." Miguel shuddered at the memory of the tough, stringy slabs of meat they'd been forced to settle for the last time another pack leader had invited Isabella to dinner. It had taken him a week to scrape the last of the fibers from between his teeth. "They're live, even! Surely they can't be that bad."