Page 24 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

On her drive to the farm while Librada trailed behind her in an SUV carrying the crate, Zuri’s thoughts raced in multiple directions at once.

She was debating how the hell she was going to turn into a fucking battle mage when her power was limited by her need to touch her target.

At the same time, she was plotting a way to convince Elena’s vampire friends to let her into their minds.

Not that she’d figured out how to make that strategy work—vampires that powerful could hide specific memories if they wanted.

It would take so much time and energy to scour every corner.

And she couldn’t check every member of every cartel.

She could check the hell out of Clara’s memories, though, and she decided that she would as soon as she returned from Venice.

After Librada had delivered the crate to the center of the clearing surrounded by mango and starfruit trees roughly at the center of her property, Zuri stared into the hole her occasional groundskeeper dug for her.

Dug without asking a single question. Before serving federal time for drug running in the 80s, he’d probably done stranger things than use an excavator to create a ten-foot deep square in the dirt.

Looking at the crate, Zuri regretted not having asked him to leave the heavy machinery behind.

She should have at least asked Lib to stay a minute.

How the hell was she going to get the damn thing in the ground without breaking the plate?

She looked at the enormous pile of dirt and wondered how long it was going to take to shovel that shit back in.

The late fall afternoon was unseasonably and unreasonably hot. By the time Avani and Candela arrived, Zuri’s T-shirt was sticking to her back, and she wished she’d worn shorts rather than leggings.

“Holy shit.” Candela’s attention was fixed on the crate, sealed shut to keep the dirt out. Even closed, the power that radiated from the three intact artifacts was palpable. Power that had grown exponentially when Zuri’s coven sisters arrived.

“I’ve never felt anything like this.” Avani closed her eyes like she was listening to a moving piece of orchestral music.

She swayed on her feet and a breeze rushed over Zuri’s sweaty skin. It seemed to move with intention. To announce its presence like a favorite great aunt Zuri hadn’t seen in years. The comfort of a familiar embrace wrapped around Zuri, warm and achingly loving.

“Do you feel that?” Candela asked, voice soft and distant like she was half-asleep.

Zuri nodded even though her eyes had slipped shut and she didn’t know whether the others were looking at her. She communed with her grandmother often, and it didn’t surprise her that her favorite person in the world would be present. But it wasn’t just her.

Witches whose names had been lost to time surrounded them. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins going back one, two, three, four generations. Back and back and back until the force of their presence swelled and tears streamed down Zuri’s cheeks.

It was overwhelming. Love and pride and support that was almost too much to take in sent Zuri to her knees. She pressed her palms to the rough grass, to the soil joining its song to the wind even though none of them were earth witches. In the distance, an unexpected crack of thunder.

“Thank you,” Zuri whispered, fingers digging into the dirt like she might take hold of the blessing their ancestors offered.

Deep in her throat, Candela started a song.

A wordless melody that they’d beat out on drums since the first witch stretched a piece of animal hide over a mortar and tapped into a new source of connection.

The sound traveled into Zuri’s body, heating her blood and opening her chest. She joined in the humming and her nervous system erupted into an electric display she felt in every inch of her body.

Her grandmother’s voice was strong and clear when it reverberated in her mind. “Blood,” she said in Spanish. “Blood as magic. Blood as covenant. Blood as life.”

The message grew like the swell of a wind-tossed sea. Like a tidal wave that could reshape the world. Swallow islands and reveal new ones. Zuri understood the purpose of her old coven’s scars and knew what they were supposed to do next.

Legs trembling and knees weak, Zuri got to her feet like the Earth’s gravity had suddenly changed. Like she was being forcibly held down. Not by burden, but by the weight of a thousand witches with their hands on her back. By the crushing power of support.

When she opened her eyes, Avani and Candela were staggering toward the gaping hole in the ground too. Acting on instinct and wearing the same awe coursing through Zuri, they each stood at a cardinal point, leaving West empty.

But it wasn’t empty, Zuri realized after a breathless moment. All of the energy shifted to that spot. The might of their ancestral power filling the position.

Avani’s humming grew louder and Zuri strained to match her.

The wind whipped around them, tighter and tighter, faster and faster.

Zuri would have feared that they were about to be picked up by a fucking tornado, but there was only the warm spice of magic in the air.

When Avani stomped one foot in a steady rhythm, the other two matched it immediately.

And then the crate was in the air, held by the twisting wind that had picked up leaves and grass and bits of straw. Zuri sang louder even though her throat was raw and her lungs burning. Clouds, thick white and brimming with rain, blotted out the sun.

Like it was a perfectly ordinary event, Avani hoisted the crate into the sky with nothing but the wind at her fingertips.

Magic rushed through Zuri’s veins and she tried something she’d only ever heard about.

Reaching for the sky, Zuri imagined running her hand through the clouds.

Coaxing them with a gentle touch and asking for their blessing.

Thunder cracked again with its resounding yes a moment before the clouds tore open.

Rain, cool and fresh and miraculous, poured over them.

It seeped into the ground and their skin and the wooden crate.

They were cleansed and unified and reborn, and Zuri couldn’t contain the laughter that wracked her chest even as her tears stung her eyes.

The rain slowed until it was nothing but a fine mist before fire roared so suddenly from Candela’s hands that Zuri nearly lost her balance.

A massive fireball engulfed the crate suspended in mid-air.

Zuri watched, hypnotized by the beauty of transformation.

By watching the wood char until it was black.

Until it was waterproof and stronger than it could ever be in its raw state. Until it was ready.

Their humming slowed to something like a gentle lullaby while Avani lowered the crate into its home deep in the earth.

Zuri called on the rain again. Avani used the wind to push the excavated dirt over the box, making sure it was packed tight and protecting the heart of their coven.

Candela scorched the earth and sealed the place where their relics were buried.

Before Zuri could feel the absence of an earth witch to cover the sealed dirt with grass, a rush of power surged from the west. It circled the spot on the ground like it was waiting for them to do something. Like it was beckoning them to take the final step.

All at once, Zuri understood the significance of their coven mothers’ scarred cheeks. It was in remembrance of a moment like this. A memory they carried in their bodies if not in their minds.

“Hold out your arms,” Zuri said in a voice that was vaguely hers.

They each held out their left arms over the place where magic thrummed and their ancestors sang in the cracking thunder and cheered in the flashes of lightning. Zuri pressed her right hand to her chest, gathering up every ounce of power she could pull from her body.

Her magic was a knot, burning with the memory of destructive rage and life-giving love, all of it racing down her arm to her fingertips. She caught it in her palm like a ball of light until it sharpened to a point and the wind lashed at her thumb and suddenly blood was pouring down her finger.

It should have hurt like hell, but all Zuri felt was warmth.

All she could focus on was the symbol cast on her eyelids when she closed them.

She traced the pattern in blood over her forearm: two triangles, one pointing up, one down, overlapping in the center, a third triangle stacked above, a thin horizontal line slashed across the top.

When she opened her eyes, the bloody sigil gleamed in the late afternoon light, vivid and alive. And then Candela was standing at her side, the same symbol burned into her skin like a brand. Instinctively, Zuri offered Del her left arm.

Candela’s hand looked normal, but when she pressed it over their new coven sigil drawn on Zuri’s forearm, it was fucking molten lava. Zuri ground her back teeth when the blood mark hissed and her skin smoked. She didn’t scream while Del seared the brand deep into her skin.

Candela let her go, revealing that pain had transformed into permanence. Zuri stared down at the design etched in her body. Love and pride and gratitude swelled in her chest like it might break bones and rend skin to expand to its full potential.

After Avani had her matching mark, they stood together. Holding out their right hands, they made fists to squeeze a few drops of blood from their closing cuts. The moment hot blood hit dirt, the wind swirled and the rain returned without blocking the sun, and the dirt beneath their feet warmed.

“Life answers life,” her grandmother’s voice was a rustle through the trees. “Roots call to roots. Child answers to mother.”

The ground trembled and a single seedling appeared at the center of the swirling wind—bright green and growing fast. It shot skyward, magic cracking and vibrating as it thickened into a tree, branches kicking out and roots moving under them.

It was a ceiba. Zuri knew it instantly, even if her grandmother wasn’t talking to her, wasn’t whispering that the sacred tree was a bridge between earth and sky. Between the living and the dead and everything in the middle.

The tree’s roots plunged deep, anchoring the relics and the magic and the blood of three witches and a thousand ancestors.

Its spreading canopy protected them as the unfurling leaves drank in the rain.

As the giant limbs reached outward further and further, vines dropped all around them as if the ceiba wanted to reach for them.

She felt its intention like it was communicating with her, promising to guard the heart of their coven with its strength.

The crate and its contents hidden inside a thick tangle of roots like a giant squid capturing a submarine it would never release.

When the massive tree was finished and the rain stopped and the wind softened into a gentle breeze, Zuri dropped to her knees again. This time in intentional reverence, her blood-streaked palm pressed to one of the many exposed roots curving out of the ground like a giant’s huge shoulders.

She thanked her grandmother and when the scent of gardenias curled around her, she thanked Marisol’s grandmother too.

“So I guess that’s how you consecrate some mother-fucking ground,” Candela said with a rush, clapping her hands before looking down at the tattoo that had already healed bright red on her skin.

Zuri stood, body sore like she’d been hit by multiple trucks. She looked at her forearm, skin smooth where it had absorbed the ink like it had been there forever. Like it was always meant to be there.

Breathless, Avani threw her arms around Candela before roping Zuri into a crushing hug. “We really did it,” she panted.

We did, Zuri thought but couldn’t speak. She wished they had more time. More space to understand the impact of being a coven of three with three relics instead of one. To understand their magic as a trio. Fuck, she’d just made it rain—what did that mean?

Zuri let the warmth of her coven sisters sink into her bones just for a moment.

But the truth kicked her in the gut as if to remind her that she had to leave what they’d just breathed to life.

She was leaving for Venice that night, and her sisters couldn’t come with her without setting the vampire on edge.

If a bunch of vampires turned up at her door, she wouldn’t roll out the red carpet either.

She’d tell them about Venice before they left. After she’d floated the idea of building a tiny coven house under the protection of the wide canopy of their ceiba tree.

“What do you say?” Candela grinned. The small spark sitting on her middle finger danced before she whipped it around herself like an incendiary lash. “Should we test this shit out by fucking up some vampires?”

Avani laughed. The wind picked up into a targeted gust, feeding oxygen to Del’s fire. There was no doubt in Zuri’s mind that they’d be ready to defend Elena when the time came. That she’d have a chance at protecting her.

Zuri straightened, vengeance replacing fear. Behind her, thunder rumbled.