Page 7

CHAPTER 7

Lalo

The headache thumping through Lalo’s skull would not go away. Feeding on animals wasn’t enough to keep the thirst at bay. The migraines were coming more frequently. The peppermint oil Fernanda picked up from the town apothecary could only do so much. Still, he’d take suffering over ruining another person’s life any day.

Sighing, he turned on his back and stared up at the ceiling. His shoulder healed quick enough. Though, that had been an ordeal. It took his sister several attempts to yank the blade free. At least, that was what he had been told. He fainted after the first try.

Lalo pushed himself to a seated position. His brow furrowed. Everything was eerily quiet within the casa.

His senses roamed over the house. He couldn’t hear a thing, and he could always hear Fernanda. She was either clacking away at the out-of-tune pianoforte left in the home, or humming some off-key operatic melody, or giggling while she read inappropriate magazines about love in the city.

Fernanda was noisy. Even in sleep. So where was she?

A spike of fear ran through him. Did that huntress in the woods come back? Had Maricela found them?

Lalo shot out of bed and bolted across his room, ignoring the stabs of agony piercing his brain. He jerked the door open. The knob slammed into the wall, leaving a large indent. He hissed. There went any hope of a stealthy ambush on his part.

“Fernanda!” he called. There was no point in being quiet. Not after the walls had just rattled because of his newfound strength.

He sniffed. Nothing smelled amiss. Just the normal scents of the house. Fernanda kept sprigs of rosemary and some extra lavender in every space to help mask all the human smells that were wretchedly alluring when one was a vampiro.

“Fernanda?”

Nothing.

Panic bloomed to life within him.

Lalo ran through the halls. His bare feet slapped over crooked planks.

“Fernanda!”

She was not in the small library. Or the den. Or the kitchen. He bolted across the casa to where her room was. He slammed another door open, sending it smacking into the plaster yet again. He really should learn how to control his power.

A lump lay under the covers of her bed. But he was not daft. There was no heart beating underneath the quilt. He knew her tricks. She had often rolled towels together and formed them into the shape of a slumbering body before sneaking out of the house when they lived in the city. The girl was wily to her core.

His eyes went to her wardrobe, where a door was ajar. Her favorite party dress was noticeably absent.

A frustrated growl escaped him. She’d gone to the Fuenteses’ fiesta.

“Dammit, Fernanda.”

Finding Rancho Fuentes had been easier than he thought. He simply ran as fast as he could through the valley, entered the massive gates secured by sentries holding shotguns at the ready, and followed the trail of marigolds through the main street in el pueblo. Dozens of armed men sat on horseback donning extravagant sombreros and mustaches thick as Lalo’s forearm. He eyed them with a sorry hint of jealousy. His mustache was thin but well-kept as was the style in the ciudad, but he quite liked the way the men curled the sides of theirs up like a smile.

“Focus,” he spat. He shouldn’t be musing over facial hair. Lalo marched through the smaller gates that opened to the rancho without any trouble. He had been invited to the fiesta, after all. Not that any of the guards milling about seemed to care. But Lalo did. Sedientos could not enter one’s home until they were welcomed. This strange boundary was another one of Tecuani’s weaknesses. Unlike other gods, he could only come to the Land of the Living when called upon.

Beautifully colored banners hung from the large manor to the trees and smaller buildings within the hacienda complex. Golden flames flickered from fat candles leading up to stone steps that opened to the entrance of the grand home.

He’d done some more digging in the history books Fernanda had brought from the town library. The Fuentes family had laid claim to these lands well over two hundred years ago. This very home was the first building to rise from the dirt in the area. The valley had been a booming place only a few generations prior. But then tragedy struck, and half the town had perished. What that tragedy had been was noticeably left out of the texts. Lalo didn’t need ledgers to piece together what that was—the death of Alma Rosario.

One article he found said her body was brought back to el pueblo to be buried. Lalo could only guess Alma had turned sometime after and ravished the town in her newborn bloodlust, exactly as he’d done in the cantina. She had been turned. And she was the first of her kind to ever be recorded in Abundancia. Which meant, in his mind, whatever had made her might have been the original sediento.

His soul hurt for Alma. For himself too. Life was hard enough. Trying to survive death and its aftermath was nearly impossible.

He held his breath as he thrust himself into the throng of partygoers. But he was still bombarded with a thousand scents and heartbeats. His mouth watered. And Lalo’s stomach growled viciously, reminding him it wished to be satiated.

The music and merriment were so loud he could hardly think straight. He had detested raucousness before he was a vampiro, preferring calm, but now the sounds of stringed instruments and uncontrolled giggles were bouncing wildly around his skull.

He winced and turned away from the band. Lalo stilled. Fernanda stood just a few paces before him, smiling and speaking animatedly to a small group. A man, larger than the horses outside, was grinning. He had a gloriously robust mustache, his long black hair was tied back at the nape of his neck, and his sideburns were impressively thick. There was a woman, beautiful with soft eyes, her hand resting on top of her rounded stomach. A pretty girl who seemed familiar stood beside her. He caught her scent. His eye twitched. She was similar in size and smell to the masked person who had hit him with a pan. A young man smirked near Fernanda. He wore the latest fashions from the ciudad: a formfitting cream suit with a frill of lace at the neck.

Lalo’s stomach twisted when his gaze landed on the last person in the small assembly. Her back was to him, but there was no mistaking that figure. And that aroma of vanilla, lavender, and leather. The thirst inside him roared to life. It clawed up his throat, begging to be fed. Lalo’s fangs sank into his bottom lip. He clamped his palm over his mouth and spun around.

He needed to get away.

He wasn’t paying proper attention and ran straight into a table laden with an ice sculpture made to look like the bust of a man. The massive carving wobbled for a horrifying moment before rocking off balance. Lalo tried to catch it, but the slick ice slipped through his grasp and crashed onto the floor, breaking into a million pieces.

The mariachi stopped playing. The voices and laughter went silent. A man paused mid-drink.

Every eye turned to Lalo.

He gulped. Forced his fangs to retract. Forced his knees to stop quivering.

“The…um…the legs on this table might need to be tightened,” he stuttered.

All focus then turned to the pregnant woman standing byFernanda.

She offered a shaky grin. “I didn’t care for that sculpture anyway. They got Don José Miguel’s nose wrong. It was much longer in real life, no?”

This was met with boisterous laughter and calls for more drinks in the hostess’s honor. The fiesta continued, but Lalo could not move. The young woman standing near his sister had slowly turned. Her eyes locked with his.

Lalo’s very soul, if he still had one, fled his body.

This was the fiend from the woods who had tried to murder him. He’d know that velvety scent from anything. And those eyes. Infinitely brown and shielded by black lashes. Those veryeyes had glared at him from behind her ridiculous mask.

Seeing her face, unmasked, startled him more than anything. Because—holy saints—she was the most stunning person he’d ever seen.