Page 21

CHAPTER 21

Lalo

He’d been in the cellar under la cantina for at least a few hours now. Lalo knew he needed to get home in order to keep up with the charade of his betrothal, but how could he leave all these journals and books behind? Maricela was lurking in the valley. The answers to finding more about Vidal could be here. He couldn’t leave until he discovered them.

His eyes leafed through the pages, the words on them scrawled so delicately across the parchment. People didn’t write like this anymore. They didn’t take the time to get the perfect amount of ink onto the quill and curve their letters like this author had.

Lalo was reading through a woman’s diary written some two hundred years ago. She was a terrible gossip. This person did not take care of their gardens properly because they were too busy drinking in the barn. That person was seen slipping out of a certain padre’s rooms late one night. Funny how so much had changed in the world yet stayed the same. Humans would always be humans. Flawed. Judgmental. No matter the century.

Lalo remembered his father grumbling about how good things had been a generation or two back, perhaps for some. For the privileged, things were never so terribly bad. They had time to sit in their reading rooms or rocking chairs and write about basic human follies while others were simply trying their best to survive.

His eyes caught on a name in the journal. Alma.

El patrón’s daughter Alma has sadly lost her husband, Vidal, today. And they have the sweetest baby boy. I told my dear Nacho it was such a pity. But Nacho said Vidal knew better than to go stag hunting so late at night. Poor man tumbled right down Devil’s Spine.

There was another entry just below.

Vidal was buried in the graveyard at Orilla del Río today. I couldn’t go on account of my bad knees, and I am glad for it. Nacho said the funeral was dreadful. Alma was too beside herself with grief to talk, and it rained the entire time.

The next entry was about the new roses blooming.

“That’s it?” Lalo said to the spiders in their webs above.

But at least la chismosa del pueblo gave him a new clue. Vidal had been buried in a place called Orilla del Río.

Lalo gasped as a sudden thought hit him.

If Alma had prayed to the god of the dead, if she had begged to bring Vidal back, his body would not be in the grave. He could prove to Carolina he was right. And if that were the case, Lalo would just need to find him, kill him with whatever Alma had used to call Tecuani, and the god’s power coursing through his vampiros, Lalo included, would vanish.

When he listed it out like that, the task seemed impossible.

He rose quickly from the crate he sat on and stretched. Carolina was going to kill him for missing their tea. But she might find what he had learned to be enough to stave off her desire to put a stake through him for a bit longer. A sudden pain sliced through his skull. He clutched his head and groaned.

Perhaps he could sneak in through the back of the butcher shop and pilfer some blood?

You need a human life, a sick voice inside him said. Resistance is pointless. You need to kill and devour someone’s soul.

Lalo furrowed his brow. “Never.”

His body felt sluggish and empty as he pushed open the hatch, and the world around him screamed with chaos.

He pressed his palms over his ears and climbed the rest of the way out of the cellar. Alarm bells clanged. Slowly, he stumbled down the darkened corridor and entered the main room of the cantina. The windows were boarded up. The door sealed shut with a heavy post.

People sat tucked under tables, clutching chairs or holding their pistols.

Fear fluttered in Lalo’s chest. Those bells had rung the night of the attack. He was in such a daze then, but he remembered them reverberating in the distance.

“Sedientos,” he whispered. He sucked in a breath. “Fernanda!”

He started for the door, but someone clutched his arm. “You can’t go out there. Those bells mean vampiros are still on the loose.”

Lalo’s eyes snapped to the man’s face. He had a nick on his upper cheek. The wound had only just begun to scab over. Saliva pooled in Lalo’s mouth. Even over the bells, he could hear the thump of the man’s pulse. His fangs dug into his lip. A low growl emanated from within.

The man let go of Lalo as if he were made of flame and stepped back.

“Suit yourself, amigo. But it’s your death.”

Lalo lifted the bar barricading them in and stepped into the night air. The rain had ended, but there wasn’t a star or the moon in sight. An ominous mist had blanketed the sky.

The door shut quickly behind him as he stepped into the muddy road.

Maricela and her children might come upon him at any moment, but he couldn’t just leave his sister to fend for herself in their home.

Horse hooves pounded down the road to his right. The mist separated as if it were afraid of the rider. And perhaps the mist’s fear had been justified.

The rider’s cloak billowed about them. Their face was covered in shadow. They raised a stake and pointed it directly at Lalo.

“You are dead!”