“I have been turned, Fernanda. I’m a monster.”
She shook her head. “That cannot be true. You seem fine.”
Fernanda snatched up a matchbox from a nearby table.
“Don’t!” he shouted. He couldn’t let her see him like this.
His sister raised her brow and did as she wanted, like she always did. She struck the match and lit the candlewick. A small flame flickered to life. Lalo hissed at the sudden brightness and tucked his face behind his arm.
His sister gasped, and his heart sank.
“Your hands,” she whispered. “Your clothes.”
Lalo turned away from her and examined his arms. Thesleeves of his coat were torn to shreds. And his palms were still stained with blood and the mysterious inky gore that spilled from vampiros’ veins.
“Whose blood is that?” Fernanda asked.
Hot tears filled his eyes. “Everyone’s.”
The horror of what had transpired filled his mind.
He woke with a start. He didn’t know how or why or when he’d gotten there, but he was lying on an icy floor. His throat burned with this frantic sort of thirst. The desperation was like nothing he’d experienced before. He scrambled to his feet and ran up the stairs, only to be met by a barred door.
He wrapped his fingers around the metal bars and shook with his entire might.
“Help!” he had screamed.
A seductive laugh bounced off the stone walls and crashed into his skull. He grimaced at the sudden ringing in his ears.
“Can’t you feel it?” Maricela asked. She stepped out of the shadows, her lean body draped in an emerald gown. “I still remember when I was turned by my maker.” She breathed in deeply, as if the memory smelled of jasmine. “I was mad with need. My throat was on fire.”
That was exactly how he felt. Like if he didn’t douse himself with water, he would burst into flames.
She half grinned. “The only thing to quench that thirst was another’s life.”
He gripped his neck. “What have you done to me?”
“You should already know. You are an expert on my kind, are you not?”
Lalo’s mind reeled. Maricela had bitten him. She’d drained the lifeblood right out of him and— His eyes bulged. He was going to be sick. “You forced me to drink your blood!”
But when he swallowed her blood, he saw bits and pieces of her memories, not her entire life like she had with him. He caught only small glimpses of her past. A mountain with jagged, spinelike ridges. A valley tucked away from the rest of the world. He saw other memories too.Thousandsof them. Other people’s memories. Her victims, he realized. He was seeing her victims’ lives. When un vampiro drank, they took their life forceandtime. Every ounce devoured counted for days stolen off their life. It seemed the more vibrant the life, the faster it was taken.
She had turned him into the very thing he wanted to destroy.
“I will never drink a human’s blood,” he hissed.
“And I don’t intend on letting you. Though, I suspect by the third day of being un sediento, you will be begging me to let you feed.” The tip of Maricela’s tongue toyed with one of her incisors. “I told you I wanted to see you suffer. And suffer you shall. Un vampiro who does not devour life suffers a fate worse than death.”
His brows pinched.
“If we do not consume, our own bodies begin to turn on us. Your organs will devour you from the inside out. You will become a monsterworse than I. I can assure you of that.” She winked and turned her back to him.
“Where are you going?” he bellowed.
As she started to walk away, she said, “I have business to attend to. I’ll come back in a few days just to listen to your screams.”
She had been right. After the third day locked in the cantina’s cellar, the thirst had become too great a burden for Lalo to bear. His veins, his intestines, his damn eye sockets felt as if they’d explode if he didn’t consume life right then. And his screams continued to go unanswered. Everything was a blur after he gavein to his thirst. All he remembered was tearing the bars from the wall and sinking his teeth into the first body he saw.
