Weeks came and went until the last traces of winter left San Antonio like wisps of steam evaporating off a bowl of soup. In its place came a steadily growing warmth and swarms of college students stumbling down the boardwalk with booze in hand as they drank away their midterm exhaustion. Normally this would only mean Miguel would have to dodge a few drunken youngsters itching for a fight and the amber shrapnel they left in their wake, but tonight was different.

Tonight would be his first night cooking on his own.

He still wouldn't be manning an entire station by himself yet. That would come once he'd proven he could handle the pressure. For now, he just had to prove that he'd actually been learning. That training him hadn't been as pointless as trying to teach a pig calculus, as Yolanda had put it. That he and chupacabras like him belonged in more jobs than just pest control.

No pressure.

Alejandro practically skipped around the kitchen as he helped the other chefs with the evening's prep work. "Ready for your big day?"

"As ready as I can be," Miguel said. He'd grown so used to tending to the prey in the back that he missed the scuttling of the insects and the squeaking of the mice amidst the kitchen's constant commotion. One of the busboys would be handling that duty for the day and, if everything went well, they'd all take turns caring for the creatures so Miguel could spend more time in the kitchen.

"That's the spirit!" Ralph clapped him on the back. "You'll do fine."

"And if you do screw up, we've got a fire extinguisher handy," Yolanda said. She carved her aspic as if she was imagining the knife sinking into Miguel's back with each stroke. "Although it will take longer to take care of you since the trash won't be picked up until Tuesday."

Alejandro rolled his eyes but refused to let the smile leave his face as he ushered Miguel to the entrée station. "Mr. Kaminski wants you to handle the blood sausage today," he explained. "I'll be right here if you need anything."

By the time the night's first customers arrived, Miguel's eyes burned from chopping onions. Bits of their papery skins stuck to his scales, and, try as he might, he couldn't stop the tears from leaking out of his eyes.

But the burning of his tear ducts was nothing compared to the burning in his fangs. His venom glands ached with hunger as he stirred the onions and herbs into the thick slurry of pig blood and fat.

Swallowing a warm trickle of venom, Miguel knew this was why Mr. Kaminski had assigned him this specific dish. Sure blood was a common ingredient in many of their recipes, but it was usually forced to share the spotlight. The duck blood soup had its delicate aroma of dried fruits. Spices drowned the blood cakes until they were hardly appetizing at all. For the blood sausage, the only things shielding Miguel from the sanguine scent were the sharpness of the onions and the delicate herbs that submitted to the blood's iron tang.

If he could resist that scent for the rest of the night, he could do anything.

"Have you been eating okay?" Alejandro asked.

Miguel startled out of his thoughts, accidentally smacking his spoon against the side of the pot. "Things have been hard for the pack lately, but I've been managing alright. Why?"

"Because it sounds like you've got Shamu in your stomach," Ralph said with a laugh.

It was only then that Miguel noticed the rumbling moans coming from his gut. He ducked his head and silently begged it to stop doing its best whale impression. "I guess I'm not used to spending so much time in here."

"I feel you there," Alejandro said. "When I used to work at McDonald's, I could barely stand going by the fryers 'cause the fries smelled so good. By the time I quit though, just thinking about all that grease made me want to puke! Trust me, you'll stop craving everything we serve soon enough."

"That's easy for you to say. You're not used to eating the same sort of thing every day. I don't exactly eat much besides blood and meat."

"Good point. Hey, would you mind helping me stuff sausages? We had a shit load of orders for the variety platter last night, and we're running low on the goat ones."

Guiding the meat into the long, translucent casing took all of Miguel's focus. One false move, and his claws would pierce the ground meat inside. Yet, it was easy to lose himself in the task. Once the casing was nearly full, he closed the end and carefully pinched the long tube of meat into smaller links.

By the time he was finished helping Alejandro, Miguel's blood sausages were ready to be stuffed, and his venom glands had eased from a constant throbbing to a dull ache. He made quick work of the rest of his prep before hanging them in the walk-in to dry off from their ice bath.

Now all he had to do was wait for someone to order a blood sausage.

Steak tartare and a sausage platter. Three orders of tarantulas and two orders of bone marrow. Four orders of bone broth soup, two plates of pan-fried mealworms, and a jello salad. All these tickets and more filled the kitchen with hollered times and thudding knives.

But not a single customer had ordered the blood sausage yet.

"Maybe you should take a hint and call it quits," Yolanda said as she plated her jello salad. "One of our most popular items not even being ordered once seems like a heck of an omen to me."

"Yeah, an omen that their taste buds will be singing his praises into next year when they finally taste it," Ralph said. "Every item has a slow night sooner or later. You of all people should know that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

While Ralph and Yolanda traded barbs with each other, Miguel set to work stuffing another helping of sausages. Even if nobody ended up ordering them that evening, blood sausage could keep for days, or even weeks if they put them in the freezer. Whether chupacabras would enjoy the older sausages as much was another story, but Miguel wasn't quite sure of how it ended.

Despite everything he'd learned in the kitchen, there was still a lot he didn't know.

"Nervous?" Alejandro winced as his pan full of sausages spit grease at his face.

"Is it that obvious?" Miguel's spines twitched as he fought to keep them laying flat, and he kept stealing glances at the pass, both dreading and eagerly awaiting his chance to prove himself to the other chefs.

"If it makes you feel any better, I was a hot mess on my first solo night, too."

"You're just saying that to make me feel better." Imagining Alejandro having trouble cooking was like imagining a cow that couldn't graze. He felt like he belonged there in the most profound sense of the word.

"He's definitely not," Ralph said with a smirk. "He was shaking so badly when he was pouring the blood into the pot that he looked like a murder victim by the time he was finished. It was damn near impossible to get the stains out!"

"That's why we all wear black now," Alejandro admitted as his cheeks flushed.

"That reminds me of my first kill," Miguel said wistfully. "It takes chupacabras years to get the hang of using our venom and, well, let's just say I'm glad I wasn't born a chicken."

"That's an image I did not need today," Yolanda said. She mimed throwing up in the sink. "Do you have to talk about that?"

"Oh please." Ralph rolled his eyes. "Don't pretend we haven't seen you go apeshit on some ribs before. I've seen you do horrible, awful things that would give your dentist nightmares if she ever saw what goes between your teeth."

"And I've seen you tear apart a turkey leg, but that doesn't mean you killed the thing yourself."

Before they could continue debating who had the most horrifying eating habits, a waiter brought the latest ticket to the pass. "Two blood sausages!" he called out.

"Heard!" Miguel set to work pan-frying the blood sausages. Grease crackled in the pan and spit against his scales in a sizzling symphony. Next came the bread, toasted just enough to crisp and lightly blacken the exterior. After spreading whole grain mustard and a scoop of horseradish inside each roll, Miguel gently laid the blood sausages inside them and carried the finished plates to the pass.

The waiter was nowhere to be seen.

Miguel craned his neck in search of someone to take the sausages, only for Ralph to try and fail to stifle a laugh. "You've gotta take it out," he said. He let out a booming belly laugh as Miguel's eyes widened. "You look like my cat when I catch him trying to eat Easter grass!"

"It's tradition," Alejandro explained. "We've all had to fill in when we lose people, so Mr. Kaminski always makes sure we can handle dealing with customers at a moment's notice."

"Try not to embarrass yourself too badly," Yolanda said.

The dining area's dull crimson lighting did little to mask Miguel's nervousness as he took his order out of the kitchen. Diners turned to watch him with curiosity as the waitstaff gave him a wide berth. At last, he maneuvered his way to a table that was partially concealed by one of the flowering cacti Mr. Kaminski had recently set out to make The Crimson Goat feel more welcoming.

Miguel recognized one of the two chupacabras seated at the table. Rosa wasn't quite old enough to outgrow Miguel and the rest of Saguaro Pack's males, but her narrowed eyes still held more than enough authority to convince him not to question who she was dining with. For his part, the young male averted his eyes to the half-empty cage of complimentary mice as Miguel approached. His scales' slight blue undertones marked him as a member of Agave Pack, a fairly small group that had only recently left Mexico.

"Good evening," Miguel said, silently praying they wouldn't notice the way his voice shook. "You both ordered the blood sausage?"

"We heard it's really good," the young male said quietly. His spines twitched as he stared up at Miguel.

"Well, I hope it is," Miguel said. "I made it myself."

"So it's true Isabella lets you work away from the pack." Rosa's muscles relaxed, but her gaze did not waver. "Do not tell her we came here."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Miguel said quickly. His sister would not react well if she knew more of her packmates were mingling with humans, let alone members of other packs.

"Good. So how do we eat these...?" Rosa gestured to the plates he'd brought.

"Sausages," Miguel finished for her. "Some customers like to let their venom into the sausage first, and some just bite into it. You really can't go wrong with it, but be careful about the bread. Use your carnassial teeth if you don't want to use your venom on it. It looks soft, but it has quite a crunch."

They each took one of the sandwiches. Rosa gave hers a cautious sniff before tearing off a large chunk. "Not bad," she said between chews. "The bread's a bit wet, but at least this has a nice amount of fat. It's got a nice kick, too."

The Agave male sighed with relief. "Thank the stars!" He let out a rumbling thrum as his fangs sank into the sausage. "Who knew humans could make such good food? And you, of course," he added quickly as he glanced at Miguel.

"I still have a lot to learn," he said sheepishly. Like how to get the amount of mustard right so it wouldn't make the bread soggy. That was one of the hardest parts of preparing blood sausages, second only to resisting the temptation to devour them.

"I wish I could tell the rest of the pack about this," Rosa said, "but Isabella would never allow it. She'd have my hide if she ever found out I came here."

"Maybe someday she'll change her mind," Miguel said, trying to convince himself as much as her. "This'll be our secret for now, though. I promise."

He stuck around while they finished their appetizers, once again assuring him that he wouldn't say a word about their visit to anyone in the pack before returning to the kitchen to deliver their entrée orders. "We've got two orders for the sausage platter!"

"And I just won twenty bucks!" Ralph yelled. Yolanda slapped a bill into his outstretched hand.

Alejandro welcomed Miguel back to his station with a high five. "Told you you had nothing to worry about."

"Now you just have to do that a dozen more times tonight," Yolanda said.

"I'm not sure my heart could take that." Miguel chuckled nervously at the thought of having to venture back into the dining area.

Alejandro gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. "Just the cooking part. You'll have plenty of time to relax at The Iron Cactus tonight."

"And don't even think about pansying out on us," Ralph said. "This is as much of a tradition as throwing you out there with nothing but the food you made."