I first met Eric when I was fifteen years old. I had spent my entire life in a town named Gainville, a small community off of one of the Waste's largest highways that made it's living off of the traders that stopped by during their travels. Gainville was about halfway between what used to be the U.S.-Mexico border and the rebuilt city of Denver, which was a trading hub for the entire Waste. We saw our share of strangers, and even though it was a quiet enough town I did not live an uneventful childhood. Gainville was the home of my family on both sides for more than five generations, and even though I couldn't wait to leave I knew it would always be home to me. It was where my grandfather and Uncle Eric had started their illustrious careers as tekkers, and it was where my grandfather had finally settled down when he parted ways with my uncle. Grandfather bought a boarding house and turned it into a hotel and tavern for weary travelers, and my family has run the place ever since. My parents do most of the real work, keeping track of the finances and purchasing all the supplies we needed. My grandfather tends the bar as he had done for more than thirty years; my two sisters and I worked in the kitchen and waited tables. My brother, the oldest child, had left when I was ten to learn the salvage trade from my aunt Kaitlyn, my mother's sister; we hadn't seen either of them in over three years, though we occasionally received a letter from them through the mail caravans. One slow day a man came into the tavern as the sun was setting and took a seat in the darkest corner of the tavern. He was dressed in a thick leather trench coat that was covered with dust from the road; worn and weathered cowboy boots covered his feet, with faded denim jeans tucked into them. Every inch of exposed skin up to his scalp line was wrapped in heavy bandages, and a pair of dark, tinted goggles covered his eyes. I was intrigued, of course. The only people who dressed like that were Vampires, and very few of them braved the light of day; I had never seen one myself, but my sisters were always quick to tell me wild stories about their own encounters. Knowing what I do now, I realize they were just playing on my youthful naivete. I rushed over to take his order; I thought at first that my enthusiasm had startled him, because as soon as he heard my voice he turned his head to me and looked at me for a long while. I could not tell what sort of expression was on his face because of the bandages, but it felt like he was studying my face. "Is there anything I can get you?" I asked him a second time, feeling a little awkward. "Sorry," he replied, his voice muffled by the bandages. He pulled them down a little to uncover his mouth; I remember being surprised at how tanned the skin was for someone I believed could not bear the light of day. "I'll have a beer and a plate of whatever's the special today. And tell the man at the bar that I have some news for him when he can spare some time." I was a little surprised, but the seriousness in his voice told me it wasn't a joke. Something about the voice seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it at all. I told my grandfather about the stranger then shouted into the kitchen for my sisters to start cooking a special. Before I turned around Grandfather told me to watch the bar for a few minutes and headed to the stranger's table with two mugs of beer. Seeing my grandfather enjoy a drink while he was working was not uncommon. Seeing him sit down with someone I had never seen before was a bit odd. Seeing him shake hands with the stranger and grin like he had just met up with an old friend was especially strange, though, and as they settled into talking I found myself desperately wanting to listen in. Relief came when my mother stepped out of the room she and my father used as an office and saw me tending the bar; she hated to see me doling out drinks, since as far as she was concerned someone shouldn't even be touching alcohol if they weren't old enough to drink it. "Get one of your sisters to tend the bar and take her place in the kitchen until your grandfather finishes up there," she told me. "I need to go down to the general store and place an order; I'll be back in an hour." "Do you know who that man is?" I asked her, nodding my head in the stranger's direction. "Just some old friend of your grandfather's, I suppose," my mother sighed. "People he met when he was younger used to stop in all the time before you were born; this is the first time I've seen him drinking with a traveler in almost five years." My mother left to make her order, and I saw my opportunity. "Hey Dana!" I shouted into the kitchen. "Mom says watch the bar while I go make an order for her at the general store!" As soon as my sister was behind the bar I was out the door and circling around to the back of the building. There was a crawlspace right near where the stranger and my grandfather were sitting that I could get into from the rear of the hotel; I used to hide there a lot when I was younger, and I knew from experience that I could hear almost everything that was said from the tables nearby. "That's good to hear," I heard my grandfather say as I crawled up to where they sat. "Look, Rikki," the stranger started. I knew he must have been a friend of my grandfather's; his full name was Rikkimar, and Rikki was a nickname only used by close friends and family. "I didn't come here just to catch up on old times. Much as I wish it wasn't so, this time I'm the bearer of bad news." "I may be getting old, Eric, but I can still take some bad news now and then," my grandfather replied. Had I heard right? At first I thought it was just a coincidence. Even though the stories still circulated, my parents had always told me that Eric had died years ago. "It's..." the stranger sighed. "It's about Kaitlyn." I could see my grandfather's skin going pale in my imagination. "What about her?" my grandfather asked, his voice thick with worry. "I found her and Jerman out in the waste, stripped of all valuables and executed," the stranger said softly. "God," my grandfather breathed, his breathing becoming shallow. "Kaitlyn dead? And Jerman too? How will I tell Moira? She'll be devastated that her oldest is gone..." My own heart skipped a beat. I had always had a rather gilded image of my brother Jerman. He had always seemed so strong and capable to me, I guess in a childish fashion I had almost believed him to be invincible. A part of my childhood died forever that day, and unfortunately it was the least painful event of the events to come in the following years. "The youngest kid already knows," the stranger said. "What are you talking about, Eric?" my grandfather asked. "The girl who was waiting tables earlier? The one who looks exactly like her grandmother did at that age?" "Moira's youngest. Moira named her Cielidh after the girl's grandmother, bless her heart." "An eerie thing that she should not only be named for my sister, but look and act like her as well," the stranger said, and I knew that the stranger HAD to be the Eric from the stories. "I'm not following you, Eric." "Remember how my sister would always spy on us?" Eric asked. "This Cielidh's been eavesdropping from the crawlspace for the past five minutes or more."