CHAPTER 1
Lalo
Lalo Villalobos hated many things.Long walks, crowded streets, unkempt suits, people. But one thing he hated above all else was his word not being taken seriously. Tonight, he would prove to everyone he was no fool.
The parchment in his hand shook like the remaining leaves on the trees rustling overhead. He stepped beneath the light of a lantern and eyed the paper once more to make certain he had read his handwriting correctly. He had, of course. He knew this location to be correct, but he couldn’t quite let himself believe it. All this time, his parents’ killer had been lurking close by.
He walked past this very building almost every day and never had a single suspicion that the monster dwelled within. Even in the moonlight, Lalo could see that the three-story structure was clean and well-kept with wrought-iron awnings and a black tiled roof. It looked perfectly ordinary within the bustling city of LosCampos. Lalo and his sister, Fernanda, lived less than four streets away, in a townhouse constructed in a similar style.
In that very townhouse one year ago, he stood by his bedroom window and witnessed his parents being murdered under flickering streetlamps. He watched in paralyzing horror as a woman with auburn hair, pale skin, and delicate hands tore into their throats and left nothing but corpses behind.
Lalo shuddered and stuffed the paper into his pocket. As he did, his fingers grazed against the wooden stake he’d carved from the root of a willow tree. Vampiros couldn’t stand the touch of tree roots. Lalo thought that fact extremely odd when he first learned it, until he understood the origins of their kind. They were born from a selfish human willing to make a deal with one of the gods of the underworld. Any person who had gone to religious instruction as a child would know these gods are tricksters. Deals with devils always came with a price.
Tecuani was the first god one met when they entered the Land of the Dead. He was the hunter of hearts. His lone purpose was to ensure a person was truly deceased before they moved past his domain and into their next trial in the Land of the Dead. Tecuani was there to make certain a person’s heartbeat no longer thumped within their chest and that their soul was no longer connected to the Land of the Living. If he found someone with a pulse, he took on the form of a jaguar and chased them down. He clamped his fangs into their flesh and drained their blood until there was none left.
Tecuani was bound to the Forest of Souls, the initial stop for the newly departed. If he tried to move past the tree roots that stood as a barrier between the realm of the living and the dead without an invitation, they’d wrap around him in a tight grip.Nor could he step foot inside the river that separated his domain and the Valley of Remembrances, or else risk being dragged down into the water’s infinite depths by lost souls. It made sense that the vampiros he helped create would be weakened by the same elements, ones as harmless as wood and blessed water.
Lalo hoped that tale was true. Otherwise, he would be woefully helpless once he marched inside the building where he believed his parents’ killer resided. Entering some place in search of a predator with no true plan of what to do after was a bad idea, but he needed to see the monster with his own eyes. Lalo needed to be sure she was the one he saw so clearly in his nightmares. Only then would he know for certain he hadn’t gone mad like everyone in town seemed to believe.
In Lalo’s nineteen years alive, he’d only been to a handful of balls. They were awkward and stuffy and every mother with an eligible daughter kept thrusting them at him as if he were a prince. He didn’t like dancing, and he wasn’t particularly fond of small talk, which made for an uncomfortable time. Lalo was happy to be alone, but Fernanda was like their parents. His younger sister enjoyed fun. Unfortunately, his going around Los Campos warning people about a woman with fangs and glowing eyes had put a damper on her invitations to events in the last year.
He chewed on his bottom lip as his eyes scoured over the building again. He would get revenge for Fernanda. And selfishly, Lalo wanted to prove everyone who laughed in his face wrong.
He stepped forward, hands shaking. According to the young man he overheard in the public library, the trick to obtaining entry into the secret cantina was to knock once, pause for four seconds, then knock three times in quick succession. He grabbedthe knocker and followed the instructions. His heart pounded as he waited. And waited. And waited.
Just when he thought he should try again, he heard the locks disengage. The door opened a crack. Thumping guitarróns and blaring trumpets poured out of the shadows but nothing more.
“Hello?” Lalo said, peering into the darkness. No one was there.
His brow furrowed, but he stepped through the threshold with caution. He slipped inside the doorway and jumped when the thick wood slammed shut behind him.
“Not the warmest of welcomes, I see,” he whispered. Clearly, un vampiro didn’t worry much over social norms like etiquette.
Slowly, he made his way down a dank corridor, following the music and laughter. He didn’t dare brush against the walls because his jacket had only just come back from the cleaners and who knew what sort of messes monsters left behind. A few people littered the hallway, their arms wrapped around each other, their voices hushed as they whispered sweet nothings into their partner’s ear.
He eased around them and entered a large room with wine-colored walls and an immense bar at the rear. It was a wonder he could see anything with so little candlelight and so much tobacco smoke in the air. His coat was doomed to go back to the cleaners now. The band played a riotous tune, and people writhed about. Lalo’s eyes snapped back and forth. He prayed to whatever gods still listened that he didn’t see anyone he knew. Though, he supposed they would have to explain their appearance in such a scandalous place too.
Lalo jolted. His breath caught in his throat. There, standing not twenty paces away from him, was the woman who terrorizedhis every nightmare and waking moment. Her long red hair was pulled into a chignon. A lacy gown stuck to her skin, showing off every sharp angle of her. And those eyes, her terrifying, horrible eyes were as red as before. He found himself frozen in place. He didn’t even think he was breathing.She was real.
The woman slipped away, slithering toward a darkened corner. Lalo forced his legs to follow.
“Discúlpeme, por favor,” he said as he bumped into a dancing couple.
“Excuse me,” he offered as he attempted to pass a woman in a gown that had gone out of fashion long ago.
She turned to him, and Lalo had to hold in his gasp. Her pupils glowed in the low light like a cat’s. But not with the golds or blues one might be accustomed to. This woman’s eyes shone blood-red just like the killer he sought.
His already thundering heart tripled in speed.
Vampiro.
Lalo stumbled back, but the woman reached out and snatched him by the buttons of his shirt. She jerked his body toward hers.
“Your pulse is loud and strong, mi amor,” she purred. One of her fingers slid up his neck. Lalo’s innards coiled in disgust. “Are you here with someone?” she asked. “Are you claimed by one of my siblings?”
Siblings? There were more than two vampiros here?!
There hadn’t been many police reports about attacks like his parents’ that he could find. His research on humans who’d been murdered by people drinking their blood had brought him to findings from countries far from Abundancia and a single case from some tiny pueblo to the north two hundred years ago. Lalo had assumed his parents’ killer was the only beast in the cityof Los Campos. And now, here he was, learning he’d walked into some sort of nest of them.
