A howl sounded again. This time terribly close.
“We must go,” she whispered. “I see a path through the lago del fuego just ahead.”
Carolina tried to get up, but pain exploded through her body.
“Here.” Lalo gently put his arms around her and eased her up, holding her against him.
She cried out in agony.
“I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Bushes rustled in the distance. A voice roared with fury. “Carolina!”
They both gasped. Papá had found them.
From the diary of Maria Rosario (Alma Rosario Fuentes’s mother)
We draped her body in her favorite flowers, star lilies. My dearest daughter was as beautiful as the pearl-white flowers she adored, but now she is gone. When she was first brought back to Del Oro, I could hardly recognize her. Her skin was so pale. And she looked like a hollow husk of herself. The men who carried her body to the church said there had been blood on her lips and puncture marks on her throat. We do not know what happened in the forest or why she went out there at all. I can only pray my Alma did not suffer long. My only solace is that she will be with her beloved Vidal in el Cielo soon.
CHAPTER 45
Lalo
They barreled up the mountainas fast as the horse could go with two riders clinging on to his back and tree roots growing thicker underfoot like angry spiderwebs. The trunks and branches of the great oaks twisted and stretched at odd angles, making a clear path impossible to find.
Lalo urged on the horse, cutting left and right. He held on to Carolina with all his might, watching in horror as she writhed in torment.
“How much farther?” she asked through her clenched jaw.
He wasn’t sure. Lalo knew they needed to reach the peak of Devil’s Spine, but that was all the information he had.
A tiny clump of pink and white flowers caught his gaze, a shock against the deep green moss and black trunks. “Star lily.”
His mind scoured over everything he had read. Alma’s bodyhad been found in a field of star lilies. And the lover’s daggers both had engravings with star lilies on the blades.
Was it a coincidence? Fate? A small ache thrummed in Lalo’s chest. Had Vidal planted fresh flowers here? Might the original sediento still have some of his humanity left?
A shadow bolted through the trees. Then another.
“We have company,” Lalo said.
“Here.” Carolina pulled her revolver from its holster. “I haven’t wanted to use this because I didn’t want to alert anyone of our location, but I think we are past that now.”
Lalo took it.
“Remember to—”
“I know, Carolina,” he said. “I’ve done this before.”
“Don’t get cocky now.”
Hope filled his chest. If she could tease him, it meant she wasn’t completely lost to the poison eating away at her life force.
“Can you hold on to the horse’s mane yourself?” he asked.
Her hands reached forward, and she clasped the coarse hair.
A chupasangre bounded onto the path behind them. Its glowing eyes focused. Its snout frothed. When it drew closer, the beast leapt forward. Lalo pointed at the monster’s chest and fired. The chupasangre exploded in smoke.
