Eagerly, Carolina threw off her bedsheets, grabbed her boots, and tiptoed barefoot after him. Abuelo was a large man, tall and strapping, just like her papá. But Papá’s footsteps could be heard from anywhere within the casa. He stomped about as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and didn’t care who took notice, whereas Abuelo moved here and there quiet as a tumbleweed. Carolina envied him for it. She wasn’t so graceful. She’d often been likened to one of the newborn calves in their pastures. The ones that trampled over flowers and barreled through brambles just to get to their mothers. But she tried her best to move like her abuelo because she wanted tobelike him. Patient. Nimble. Strong. Courageous. The best damn sediento hunter in Del Oro.
They slinked down the stairs and turned right, snaking their way through the long corridor toward the rear of the casa. The hand-painted tile was cool underfoot. All was quiet, save for the comforting sound of her great-uncle’s snores coming from his bedroom nearby.
That was the thing when one lived in a great rancho with their family and their family’s family—even in the silence, there was noise.
When they made it to the kitchen, Abuelo stopped before the exit.
“Boots on,” he whispered.
She nodded, a smile burning her cheeks. She couldn’t help it. Anytime Abuelo woke her up in the middle of the night, it was either to train or to teach her about weapons and how best to slay vampiros. This midnight meeting was something they started the day after Carolina turned ten.
Each of her five older brothers had started training to be hunters at that age. Carolina just assumed she would too. But when she ran outside into the courtyard to join her papá and hermanos, Papá had vehemently denied her.
“This is not your place,” he had said simply and walked away. As if that was all the answer she needed.
Carolina had been destroyed. She idolized her father. She loved watching the people who guarded el pueblo ride and hunt for monsters. She pleaded with him to let her join the guard. But he silenced her with a stern look and sent her inside to help her mamá with the cooking. As she stomped through the hallway toward the kitchen, she decided she would prove him wrong.
Papá might have dismissed her, but Abuelo was never one to turn away his grandchildren.
“I have something for you,” he whispered, breaking up her thoughts. “I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”
She shook her head. “You had important work to do. And no one felt like celebrating when Señora Costas was taken so viciously and suddenly.” El pueblo was small. Three hundred people lived within the town at most. Every loss was felt within the community because everyone knew and cared for each other as best they could.
“But you only turn eighteen once,” Abuelo said. “I don’t want you thinking I forgot about you, Lina.”
Her heart warmed. “Did you bring me a new pistol?”
She used some old hunk of metal to practice her aim and only when storms came into the valley to conceal the blasts from her papá.
“Better than that,” he said. “Now put your boots on before the rest of the house awakes.”
Carolina squealed ever so slightly and shoved her feet into the worn-soft leathers.
He pushed open the back door and peeked outside. The sound of crickets chirping floated into the quiet kitchen. The cool autumn breeze caressed her cheeks, practically begging for her to step into the midnight air. She closed her eyes and sighed at the fresh scent of grass and earth. Of moisture still dripping from nearby leaves after yesterday’s rain.
They weren’t supposed to be outside the casa after sundown. No one in el pueblo usually risked stepping beyond the stuccoed walls of their homes for fear of exactly what had happened to Señora Costas. But Carolina was with her abuelo, who was the best vampiro hunter of the Fuenteses. And she could hold her own. She’d been throwing daggers into bullseyes and proficient with a rapier since she was twelve. Certainly better than her brothers Manuel and Sergio.
“The coast is clear.” Abuelo winked. “Follow me.”
They swept out of the great house and into the shadows. Warm light flickered from the torches that lined the fences. Carolina’s home was an immense estate and the heart of Del Oro. If there was a funeral or fiesta to be had, it took place there. The Fuentes family had lived and worked the lands for generations, and they shared the fruits of their labor.
Every inch of the hacienda held memories for Carolina. Therewas the large marble fountain she and Nena sat in when the heat of summer became too great to bear. Next to the grain shed grew a scraggly bush, half-dead after she tumbled off the shed rooftop and fell onto it. The chicken coop, where she once hid for an entire day to avoid the wrath of her brothers and their friends after she had thrown rotten eggs at them, still stood. Each memory made her giggle or wince, but she loved them all equally, and she never wished to leave this place or let go of those feelings.
A cow mooed from one of the pastures beyond. Carolina’s family’s rancho spread for acres and acres on end. Stopping only at the stone walls that marked as a border between their lands and the forest. Raising cattle was their livelihood. No one in the entire country of Abundancia bred better steers than the Fuenteses. Even their family crest bore the image of a bull skull—a symbol of strength, determination, and honor.
She followed Abuelo through her mamá’s prized garden and past the stables, which were large enough to hold an army’s worth of horses. Not that an army would ever come so far north. The only guests Del Oro received were traders come to barter for leathers and the occasional drifter.
Carolina stopped suddenly when she rounded the back of the barn. Bales of hay had been set in various positions with wooden sticks jutting out of them at odd angles. A single box with a shiny bow practically gleamed from a wooden crate.
Abuelo grabbed it. “For my eldest granddaughter,” he said, his voice full of pride. “Your abuela would be delighted to see the woman you’ve become. You have her same spunk, you know?”
She’d often been told how much she acted like her late grandmother, who she was named after. How they had a fierceness about them that was unrivaled, which made her immenselypleased. Because Carolina favored her grandfather’s side, the Fuenteses, in every other way. She had their same stubborn nose and jaw. Their same pretty black hair and skin that browned in the sun. But she’d inherited their same temper too.
Smiling, Carolina took the gift her abuelo offered. Her brows pinched together. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but the box didn’t hold the weight of a new pistol. Slowly, she removed the lid.
“A rope?”She met her grandfather’s gaze.
He chuckled. “Do not look so offended, Lina. A reata is un vaquero’s greatest ally.”
