Page 31 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Twenty-One

Zuri paced the room that reminded Elena a little too much of a fucking tomb. “What’s the deal with the Victor thing?” she asked, not breaking her stride.

Elena felt the interminable minutes since Marisol had disappeared into the ground—into a literal repository for the dead—in the growing ache in her belly. Why the fuck did vampires need crypts? Why had she let her walk off without her? Her mind raced with doubt and mistrust.

“Hey.” Zuri interrupted thoughts and barreled toward her. “Are you listening to me?”

Elena pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against and walked toward the door in the ground. The one she’d opened again the moment Marisol left.

“Army Corporal Victor Serrano,” Elena said, attention on the steps leading down to a crypt built under sea level. Why wouldn’t they fill it in?

Zuri’s mounting irritation blasted Elena like radiation. It was like that all the time now. Frustration from Zuri. Anguish from Marisol. Elena had nearly forgotten what it felt like to experience anything else. Nearly three hundred years of sensation reduced to this.

“I don’t know what kind of Guess Who you’re trying to play with me, but I quit.” Zuri rolled her eyes, disappointed that Elena couldn’t have a conversation with her. The sight of her walking away made it impossible for Elena to breathe.

Zuri leaned against the open doorway, looking out at the trees and the nearly obscured water beyond. Elena moved toward her. “That was Librada’s assumed name when she joined the Americans during the war.”

Zuri turned to lean against her back, watching Elena when she took up the other side of the doorway, foot propped up against the frame and weight resting on one shoulder. It was the closest they’d been while facing each other in a while, and Elena felt the proximity in the singing in her skin.

“Which war?” Zuri furrowed her brows.

“The very big one,” Elena replied, unsure why she was being coy, but her soul felt a little lighter in this space.

Felt slightly less burdened thinking about something other than her failure with the cool night air between them.

If only they were in Elena’s villa. The three of them together, far away from the danger that stalked her every waking moment.

Zuri’s dark eyes widened with delight. “Librada was out here cross-dressing to kill fucking Nazis?”

Elena chuckled, the rattle strange in her dry throat. “So many fucking Nazis.”

Zuri tipped her head to one side as if Librada just rocketed up her list of favorite people—short as it was.

“And what? Did Hel woo her with a grenade between her teeth?” Zuri joked, but she wasn’t entirely far off.

“Captain Thomas Landry, I believe, was the identity she stole,” Elena replied to Zuri’s evident surprise.

“Holy shit, I was kind of kidding.” Zuri’s smooth skin was luminous in the moonlight and calling for Elena’s touch. “They were together?”

Elena nodded, amused at Zuri’s enjoyment.

“Although, Jesus, the vibe between them was impossible to miss.” She shifted her weight. “They really met killing the shit out of Nazis?”

“Many vampires served in the war. And for reasons of ignorance and patriarchy, the females had to don male identities to be at their most lethal. Although nearly all of us aided the allies with intelligence and sabotage.”

She smiled to herself, remembering the trap she’d laid for German U-boats in Cuba, luring them in with the promise of hidden bases to resupply. Instead, they found her and Sofia waiting. They’d all done their part.

“Alright, fuck it. I’m invested. Here go words I never thought I’d say,” Zuri murmured. “Tell me how Victor and Thomas met.” She snorted. “I mean, I can’t imagine Lib dating anyone, but I guess dating in a foxhole checks out.”

Traveling eighty-five years in a blink, Elena was back at her desk in her Miramar estate with a letter in her hands.

The Art Deco building, with its geometric design and curved edges, had been a jewel encased by flowering trees and swaying palms. Havana had been a vibrant city then.

It was all new money and limitless progress.

Elena’s lip twitched, remembering how it had all been destroyed by dictatorship dressed up as populism.

She returned to the memory of Librada’s curved script on yellow paper.

“When she arrived in Northern France, it became apparent rather quickly that Victor’s irrepressible Spanish accent was a problem.” She smiled to herself.

No amount of dialect coaching had changed Librada’s speech. Elena had hired the best of the best tutors to no avail. The accent was as stubborn as the woman herself.

“Spain never declared for the axis powers, but its sympathies were clear.” Elena answered the question etched in Zuri’s dark eyes. “Librada was already concealing so many truths, it would be too easy for someone to mistake that for her hiding allegiance to the enemy.”

“And where the hell does Hel come in?”

“They met during the invasion of Normandy.” Elena remembered the coded letter. She could still feel the thin material under her nervous fingertips.

“Tale as old as time,” Zuri replied with a smirk.

“They recognized each other’s true forms on the beach. The vampires hidden in the ranks were supposed to wait for sunset to follow the advancing troops, but—”

“Neither of those two could wait.”

Elena nodded. “The cloudy skies weren’t nearly as much cover as Lib expected. Covering herself as best she could, she was exhausted when she dragged herself to the sand. Hel had already clocked her, as you like to say, and dragged her under the hull of a boat that had been blown out of the water.”

Zuri’s eyes widened. “Fuck, is that kind of hot?”

“Waiting to see whether you can outlast the sun or be reduced to ash?” Elena shrugged. “That is not my kink, I suppose.”

“Shut up,” Zuri joked, a change so drastic from all their previous interactions that Elena felt the shift in her weakening knees. “It’s romantic. What does that have to do with Lib’s accent?”

“Hidden together in close quarters for a few hours, Hel came up with the idea of pretending Lib’s vocal cords had been damaged during the invasion somehow.

The number of casualties and injuries sustained on that single day had been staggering.

Apparently, getting a medic to make a record of an injury that didn’t impede her ability to pull a trigger was simple.

From there, they fought their way through France until they could slip away from their respective official duties and slither behind enemy lines together. ”

Elena didn’t want to tell Zuri the rest. Librada had not been forthcoming with details, but over the years Elena understood that what she and Hel had seen and done had been harrowing.

Neither had gotten over it, but it was Hel who’d departed emotionally when they returned home.

Hel who hadn’t been able to separate her love for Lib from atrocity.

Who’d tried to find meaning in the disorder of life by retreating to a Lilith cult.

Lib had done her best to follow, but she couldn’t stand to be cloistered the way she’d been as a nun in her first life.

Tragically, it had been the first and last time Lib had offered her heart to another for safekeeping. Elena never wanted that kind of solitude for her blood daughters. Her only solace was that they had each other.

Zuri’s gaze drifted to the crypt door. “What do you think Hel looked like in a uniform? Those muscles straining against her clothes.”

“Hilarious,” Elena replied dryly, a spike of heat blazing up her spine even when she knew Zuri was baiting her.

Zuri moistened the full lips Elena missed like air. Like nourishment. Like home.

“It’s not even just how hot she is,” Zuri continued and Elena dug her nails into her own palms. “It’s all the fucking top energy.” Zuri’s body released a flood of dopamine so strong, Elena nearly choked on it. “I bet she could throw me—”

Elena rushed forward, pinning Zuri to the door frame with her hand around her neck and her leg between her parted thighs.

Before Zuri could harden her face into a mask, Zuri’s expression was molten desire.

Skin flushed and eyes rolled back and lips parted to release the faintest groan.

It was the spark that burned away the fog clouding Elena’s thoughts.

“You’re mine,” Elena said through gritted fangs.

Zuri’s dark eyes glinted with her fearlessness. With every ounce of power she had over Elena. “Just decide that, did you?”

Elena squeezed harder and Zuri couldn’t resist biting her own lip even if her expression remained resolute.

“You have been so far up your own ass, you don’t even know where I’ve been for days… weeks even,” Zuri snarled, pushing against Elena’s hand as if daring her to go further. Knowing that Elena wouldn’t dare hurting her. “Maybe I’ve had half of Miami—”

“You haven’t,” Elena said with complete confidence. She would have detected the scent of anyone else on her skin.

“Yeah, well maybe I should,” Zuri threatened in a tone that sounded too much like the truth.

“You wouldn’t do that to Marisol,” Elena said, knowing immediately it had been a mistake.

Zuri grabbed her wrist and pulled her off.

“Oh, you want to give a fuck about Bambi now?” Anger raged so hot, she was incandescent.

She shoved Elena backward. “You’re fucking breaking her with your bullshit, Elena, or can’t you tell?

Are you too consumed with your own self-pity to notice how you’re wearing her down? ”

Stunned, but feeling the truth in her shredded gut and ravaged heart, Elena could only shake her head weakly. “I didn’t intend to—”

“Yeah well, intentions count for shit, Elena.” Zuri wiped away tears before they could form, but Elena couldn’t stop her own. Didn’t even try. “Whatever you meant to do by pushing us away like this isn’t fucking working.”

Elena opened her mouth but all she could taste was the salt of her own regret.

She couldn’t find a way to defend herself.

To explain her convoluted plan to protect them from herself.

Zuri was right. It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t counted on them remaining steadfast. Of loving her more than she’d ever loved herself.

“I can’t believe I have to tell someone who’s lived several fucking lifetimes to grow up and get their shit together.

” Zuri dried her face but her emotion broke through, unstoppable as the tide and the rising moon and the love Elena hadn’t managed to quell.

“It’s going to be a long lonely life if you don’t—”

Elena rushed forward again, but this time with her hands lightly holding Zuri’s face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, unsure how to put into words how badly she’d mishandled and misjudged and miscalculated. “I thought I was…” She lost her broken reasoning in Zuri’s glistening eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t leave me again,” Zuri said with a voice vibrating with emotion. “I won’t survive it.”

Elena’s soul fractured at the plea. She kissed Zuri with the desperation of a drowning soul gasping for fresh air. Zuri’s response was immediate, hands cupping Elena’s face, pulling her deeper into a kiss that tasted like forgiveness and last chance.

“Never again,” Elena promised against her mouth. “I swear to you, never again.” Her voice broke on the words. “I love—”

The faint sound of shattering glass pulled Elena out of her reverie. She pulled back, straining to listen. The rumble was faint, but her instincts screamed trouble, and that warning system had never been wrong.

Marisol, her heart pounded the syllables even as she was already running. Already leaping into the darkness, chasing the trail of her and Lib’s scent.