“Besides, if he’s out and about when the sun comes up…poof. At least in the basement, I don’t have to worry that he’s lost track of time. I mean, does he even tell time?”

“Try giving him a watch.”

“I guess. In the past, he’d nibble on whatever we gave him…books, magazines, clothes. He’s way ahead of the other Fiends now, though.”

“What is a Fiend?”

They were strolling along Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, as far away from the police station as they could get and still be in the neighborhood. Bait. The queen of the vampires, interestingly, had a thing about drinking blood: she only did it in response to attempted assault.

“Well, the guy in charge before Sinclair and I took over was a real psycho.” Betsy was tripping along daintily in ludicrous shoes for city-walking: buttercup yellow pumps with black stripes along the sides. “And he was into experimenting on his subjects, like any psycho. And apparently how you make a Fiend is—it’s so awful that I know this—you take a newly risen vampire, and you don’t let them feed for a few years. And—and they go crazy, I guess. They turn feral. Forget how to walk, forget how to talk—”

Antonia wrinkled her nose; the three punks following them had too much garlic on their pizza. And their guns hadn’t been cleaned in forever; they stank of old oil and powder. “But George can talk and walk. Well, he talks a little.”

“Yeah, now. See, for whatever reason, George wouldn’t stay with the other Fiends. We had them sort of penned up on Nostro’s grounds.”

“He agreed to this when you took over?” she asked, startled. Vampires were weird!

“He didn’t agree to shit; he’s dead.”

“Oh.” Appeased, Antonia hurried her gait, pretending to be nervous. The jerks quickened their pace, whispering to each other. “So Garrett wouldn’t stay with the other Fiends…?”

“Right, he kept getting off the grounds. And one night he followed me home. And I let him feed off me—yuck!”

“Yuck,” she mused.

“And he started to get better. And then my sister Laura let him feed off her, and he got really better—that’s when he talked.”

“Oh, your sister’s a vampire?”

“No,” Betsy said shortly, and Antonia knew that was all to be said on that subject. “Anyway, he was always different from the others. And now he’s really really different. And then you came.”

“And then I came.” She whirled, picked up one of the thugs, and tossed him. He skidded to an abrupt halt, courtesy of the unlit streetlight.

“Antonia!” Betsy shrilled. “You’re supposed to wait until he attacks us!”

“He was just about to,” she said defensively. She smacked the gun out of the other’s hand, almost smiling when she heard the metacarpals break.

The third, predictably, took to his heels.