His eyes bulged as she swung her knee into his nether parts. He made a strangled sound and released her. She stumbled and tripped on the rug. Carolina yelped as the weight of her dress yanked her backward. Her head was inches from smacking into the heavy desk her father kept his ledgers on, when fingers dug into her arms. The sediento pulled her up so fast, her mind spun. They were nose to nose, her hands grasping at his chest. His arms held her tight against him. She panted, but he stood frozen in place as if making a single movement might break him.
She couldn’t help but feel every single point where his skin or clothing touched hers. She knew she should be revolted. His ilk took her grandfather away. They’d murdered her favorite person in the entire world. And yet, she hadn’t shoved him back.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his tone achingly gentle.
Her eyes searched his. “Why would you save me like that?”
She would have cracked her skull on the corner of the desk and been an easy meal for the beast.
“Because I am not what you think. At least, I am not trying to be.”
“Explain,” she said. “And fast.”
Neither of them made any effort to move from their embrace. She understood why he didn’t let her go. He didn’t want to die. But why wasn’tshepushinghimaway?
“I was turned just over a month ago,” he said. “By my calculations,I have a few weeks until my body gives in, either to a final death or to the thirst. I am surviving by feeding off animal blood. I refuse to harm another human. I’d rather die than truly become one of the monsters webothhate. I have traveled all this way because I think…” He gulped. “IhopeI can find a way to reverse what has been done to me before it’s too late.”
“As soon as you’ve been turned, your humanity is gone. There is no cure.” Her mind went back to the last night her abuelo was alive. She thought of the sediento to first attack her, too. He had once been her cousin. He had once been an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy she envied because his parents always supported him. When she faced him in the courtyard, he was nothing more than a monster lost in bloodlust. But what if there had been a way to cure him? Lorenzo might be with his family now. She hardened herself against the sorrow before her heart ached. “You may as well let me kill you. You are as good as dead already.”
“I can’t,” he said simply. “My sister’s life depends on me finding what I came here for. I’m not only searching for a remedy. I’m trying to rid the world of sedientos for good.”
Carolina scoffed. “Like I would believe that.”
His eyes darkened. “You sound like the policía.”
“You are a sediento, señor. If we purge the world of your kind, that means you will be gone as well.”
“I will worry over that once I know my theories are correct.”
“What sort of theories do you have?” she asked.
His eyes lit with hope. “I can show you. There are a number of transcripts and journals at my home. I have learned almost everything there is to know about sedientos.”
The fact that she was entertaining this was ridiculous. He was playing her. She wasn’t sure how or why. But if he knewthings about the monsters that plagued her pueblo, shouldn’t she at least ascertain what they were before thrusting her dagger through his heart? There was so much the people of Del Oro didn’t know about los vampiros. Like where they came from. Why they started coming. And why they continued to return.
“Do you know the origins of your kind?” she asked. Her eyes slipped to his lips. She didn’t know why. She didn’t ask them to.
“I think I do,” he said somberly.
“Tell me.”
“I will, if you promise to—”
The doors to the library opened. In walked her papá and Rafa deep in conversation. The two men froze. Carolina gasped in horror. She and the sediento were chest to chest, breathless as if they’d just been engaged in a lover’s kiss.
She pushed him away. “Papá, this is not what you think.”
She saw the reata sprawled near the sediento’s foot. She took Lalo’s arm, hiding the rope under the hem of her dress.
Papá glared at them. The muscles of his jaw flexed and unflexed as did the fists at his sides. Rafa looked equally enraged. Standing tall and large beside her father, his handsome face was etched with possessive ire.
“You dare dishonor me in such a manner,” Papá growled. “Stealing away to be alone with some man I do not know.”
“I…” How could she explain this? How could she possibly articulate to him what was truly going on without telling him everything she’d been up to? If she did that, he’d stop her mission to prove how good of a hunter she truly was. Papá would kill Lalo on the spot, and she’d be even more of a disgrace than he thought her to be for bringing a sediento into their home and hesitating.
Her pulse rushed through her ears. Sweat coated her skin.
She blurted out the first idea that bubbled to her brain. “We are in love!”
