Page 19 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Fourteen

“How are we supposed to do this without her?” Marisol asked when she stopped crying over Elena’s best effort to shove them away. An effort Zuri vowed would be unsuccessful while she let Marisol drench the collar of her shirt with tears.

Winter was nearly upon them and it made Zuri’s mini greenhouse pleasantly warm even in the mid-afternoon.

Sitting in the armchair across from Marisol and surrounded by plants and herbs, Zuri took a deep breath.

She imagined herself as the taproot of an old tree—pushing through packed soil and hard rock to anchor herself. To find water.

“Well, that’s simple, Bambi.” Zuri waited for Marisol to look at her, brows drawn together. “We do it for her.”

Marisol looked at her like she didn’t understand. Like she feared that Zuri had lost her mind at the most inconvenient moment.

“Simple?” She looked like she might laugh before thinking better of it.

“What about this is simple?” Color rushed over Marisol’s elegant throat and Zuri was thrown back to a time when she was flushed for wildly better reasons.

“Are we supposed to fight a vampire war?” Her eyes were wide with exasperation. “How?”

“One superficial cut at a time,” she replied with her healed hand up.

“Zuri—”

“I’m going to start where I can, Bambi, because I have to start somewhere.” She straightened. “I have to inaugurate my coven because there’s no way to convince my old one—”

“Three witches against who knows how many vampires?” Marisol scooted to the edge of her seat, eyes wide with worry. “I believe in you. You’re badass, fearless, and incredible, but Sayah—”

“But Sayah,” Zuri agreed, thoughts moving too fast to catch.

A single bullet laced with a toxic potion nearly killed Elena.

For all they knew, it could have been crafted by a single witch.

One witch could have taken out one of the oldest vampires moving around.

And how many of Elena’s boys had been killed? At least three, right?

“Let me in.” Marisol reached for her hand. “Please.”

“Why would someone willing to play as dirty as Sayah kill witches capable of making vampire-ending potions?” The suspicion solidified as she spoke.

“She invited Elena into her home to ambush her. Why would she give up an asset like that?” Zuri shook her head.

“She’d take every single advantage she could get. ”

Marisol searched Zuri’s face like that might help her understand more quickly. “You think the witches were working with Sayah all along? But Narine didn’t seem to know Sayah was aware of her movements, much less plotting her own attack.”

Zuri nodded. “Maybe Sayah won the witches over to her side?” She leaned back to consider the angles.

“She was obviously keeping tabs on what Narine was doing with Baylor or whatever the hell his name was. Doesn’t seem impossible that she would know what witch or witches or coven made that shit. That they’d be working for her now.”

“Are there rules about using the craft for things like this?”

“It sure as fuck isn’t normal for witches to get so deeply involved with a vampire like that.

They couldn’t know that Narine would be successful.

That they wouldn’t paint targets on themselves if Narine failed.

” She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s enough money in the world to get me to take that kind of risk.

And I don’t know any witches who would spend the time it would take to tailor something for vampires… ”

“You’re involved with a vampire like that,” Marisol said with a raised brow.

Zuri sighed. “Yeah, well. I’m a moron.” She stood.

“Where are you going?” Fear Zuri never wanted to see again darkened Marisol’s expression.

“To start somewhere I understand, Bambi,” she said with her hand on Marisol’s cheek because thinking in terms of vampire wars was incomprehensible.

“If Sayah thinks she’s got this secret witch weapon, I’m going to form my coven and take them out,” she decided, as if she had any idea how she was going to do it.

Having something to do felt as solid as the hammer in her hand had been.

Felt like movement and progress and not waiting to die.

“I’m going to call Clara,” Marisol said like she’d decided in that very moment.

“No,” Zuri said reflexively. “Not without me.”

Marisol’s eyes crinkled when a faint smile crept up one corner of her mouth. “I don’t need you to protect me—”

“It’s not about protecting you,” she lied. “We don’t know who the hell she is. What she wants. It could be a trap—”

“If she wanted to snatch me off the street, she could have done it already,” Marisol shot back, irritatingly rational.

“Fine, so wait until I get back from—”

“From what?” Bambi crossed her arms in way she probably thought was so fucking cute. “You don’t know how long it’s going to take you to start a coven. Don’t you need a relic—”

“We’ll call your bio mom first then. See what she wants and then—”

Marisol wrapped her arms around Zuri’s shoulders. “You know we don’t have time to lose,” she said gently, forehead pressed to Zuri’s. “You must have considered the same thing that’s keeping me up at night. The thing that makes it impossible to eat or drink or breathe.”

Zuri closed her eyes and hugged Marisol so tight that not a speck of space was left between them. “That Sayah can show up at any time. That she could blow up this whole building to get to Elena.”

Giving life to the crippling fear made Zuri want to puke. She held Bambi tighter, wishing she could just get her and Elena the fuck out of here. Wishing there was anywhere they could run where Sayah wouldn’t follow.

“She’s probably toying with us,” Marisol guessed. “But that’s not going to last forever.”

“At some point the cat is going to get tired of playing with her food.”

Marisol straightened, her determined gaze fixed on Zuri. “And I’m nobody’s fucking mouse.”

Pride hit Zuri like a shot of pure adrenaline. Like lightning striking a tree and setting it ablaze from the inside out. It rushed through her bloodstream, making her fingers tingle and her chest expand.

“The f-bomb, Bambi?” Zuri couldn’t stop her smile. “Have I corrupted you this much?”

Marisol gave her a lopsided grin. Standing there, Zuri knew that they didn’t have the luxury of doing one thing at a time. They needed everything all at once and it still probably wouldn’t be enough.

“Imagine if I can get a bunch of healers like me,” Marisol said with her fingers at the base of Zuri’s neck. “There’s no way Sayah would be ready for that. Maybe she’ll even decide it’s not worth the fight. Things can just go back to normal without any more violence.”

Zuri sighed. She had no hope that the fighting was over, but she had to agree that the more tools in their fucked up toolbox, the better their odds. She relented. “If you’re going to see that woman, promise me you’ll take Lib with you.”

Marisol laughed. A true, surprised little shriek. She checked Zuri’s forehead with the back of her hand like Zuri’s grandmother would have done when she was a kid. “Are you okay? Did you really just—”

“Promise me,” she insisted, sure that Librada would stop at nothing to keep Marisol safe.

“I promise,” Bambi whispered against her lips before kissing her gently.

“And if you get the slightest sense that Clara is bullshit—”

“I’m out of there,” she promised before pulling Zuri into another kiss.

This one was deeper, slower. Zuri’s hands trembled when they cupped Bambi’s face, terrified that this moment of warmth and connection might be their last. She poured everything into their kiss—her fear, her fierce need to keep Marisol safe, her desperate hope that Elena would find her way back to them before it was too late.

Zuri’s lips were still tingling and her chest was still aching when she went inside. To her surprise, Librada wasn’t at her self-designated station at Elena’s door. When she found her, Librada was in the smallest bedroom in the penthouse. A room smaller than their walk-in closet.

Kneeling at a low side table that had been in the living room, Librada’s normally stoic demeanor had devolved into actual statue. Head bowed in front of seven red clay bowls and a matching pitcher, Librada didn’t open her eyes when she said, “You may stay.”

Zuri wanted to snap that she didn’t need to witness whatever weird vampire cult shit Librada was doing, but she managed to clench her jaw rather than open her mouth.

Elena hadn’t told Zuri much about the time Librada had joined a cult obsessed with Lilith, but she’d known that Elena thought it was all bullshit.

Zuri stood there, unsure how to leave without being an asshole, but not wanting to intrude. She shifted her weight between her feet.

“I have not done this in a century,” Librada said in an unnaturally relaxed tone.

She picked up the pitcher and poured the same amount of water into each bowl. The symbolism was obvious enough. Lilith pouring herself into the seven original vampires. Hera, Jezebel, Medusa, Cleopatra, Hecate, Ishtar, and Circe.

The ritual was obviously soothing for Librada.

She was as at ease as a woman with fingernails filed to points could be.

Pity, foreign and nauseating, bloomed in Zuri’s chest. Elena’s right hand was so lost without her, she was grasping at anything that could give her life purpose and meaning. Zuri knew that feeling.

“You might need another bowl,” Zuri said. “Your cult must not have told you about the Aglion being born from Lilith too.”

Librada finished her display before getting to her feet with the grace of a ballerina. She didn’t look surprised at Zuri’s comment, and she wondered if Elena had already told her about the lost history in Marisol’s mind. The one they hadn’t been able to access again.

“It’s an order,” Librada said earnestly. “Not a cult.”

Zuri almost took a step back. In the years they’d known each other, Elena’s top guard dog had always treated her with distrust. With thinly veiled animosity. Zuri didn’t really know how to handle earnest.

“And I had never heard of the Aglion when I was with them,” she added, like the fact made her sad. A few months ago Zuri wouldn’t have guessed Librada had any range of emotions.

Desperate to distract herself from the wrongness of being friendly, Zuri reached for a joke. “Well, if they’re anything like human religions, they’re probably hiding all the good secrets with the gold in a vault somewhere.”

Librada’s auburn eyes, less like oxidized blood in the low light, flashed with something.

Zuri could almost hear her thoughts whirling, going in a thousand different directions at once.

She couldn’t imagine what the hell went on inside Lib’s brain and she sure as shit didn’t want to add that house of horrors to her nightmare plate.

“Before all of this,” Zuri said, recapping Sayah’s viciousness with the flick of her wrist, “Elena was tracking down an artifact for me. Something from an old shipwreck.” She couldn’t remember the details from what seemed like another lifetime ago.

Librada nodded. “I read the Portuguese ship’s manifest.”

Unsure how much to say, Zuri went with the simple fact. “I need one.”

“There were several pieces Elena was negotiating over,” Librada replied, because of course she’d already known Zuri’s business. Though right then, Zuri couldn’t find the will to be annoyed about it. “Which do you require?”

“It doesn’t really matter.” Hope lifted in Zuri’s chest and made her want to take off in a sprint. “The oldest thing in the best shape after sitting at the bottom of the fucking ocean will do.”

Librada nodded again, but this time it was like a willing soldier giddy to accept an order.

Well, as giddy as someone whose face barely moved could be.

“Right away,” she said, like it was totally normal that Zuri was giving her a job.

She started for the door and turned back.

“And I shall inquire with the Order,” she added before disappearing.

Zuri had barely recovered from Librada’s entirely too pliant demeanor when she started on the hunt for Sofia.

Sofia, whom she found in an actual closet in a storage room leading to the garage.

Sitting in the corner among boxes like a small feral cat afraid in an alley, Sofia looked like a child.

Similar to how she must have looked when Elena found her young and bleeding on a street in Italy.

Except this girl was crocheting the longest, most pathetic scarf from what had to be a whole craft store’s worth of yarn.

When Sofia looked up at her, she didn’t speak. It was obvious that the vampire hadn’t slept. Hadn’t eaten. She was more lost than Librada and stuck in some disoriented loop.

Zuri offered her the same thing Elena had all those years ago.

Revenge. “I think those witches who made the poison are still alive.” She didn’t need to specify what poison.

“I’m going to find them. And I’m going to kill them.

” Sofia got to her feet, already looking more like her little homicidal self. “Will you help me?”

There was something disturbing about someone who looked so young being so ruthless. But when Sofia smiled, the same thirst for vengeance in her big blue eyes making Zuri’s blood hot, Zuri smirked.