Page 43 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Racing toward nowhere, Marisol’s stomach churned. Elena sat up front, black eyes boring into the road, her body coiled rage waiting to spring.

They tried to kill her, Marisol reminded herself.

They very nearly succeeded. If Elena had been taken to a different hospital.

If the attack had occurred the night before.

If Marisol had been pulled away to another patient.

The spiraling thoughts slammed into each other in her mind, but they all landed in the same place.

The witches they were racing toward would have killed Elena if Marisol hadn’t been there when she was brought to the hospital.

They wanted her to die, Marisol repeated to herself. And yet… she couldn’t drum up the same vengeance that had made Elena’s fangs appear. The incandescent rage making Zuri’s beautiful face an unrecognizable mask.

Marisol struggled to remember the image of Elena lying on the gurney, clothes torn and covered in blood, but all she could see was the coven house.

The photos of smiling women in frames. The beanie someone had been knitting and left on an armchair.

A shopping list on the kitchen counter. A world’s best grandma mug left to dry in the sink.

She couldn’t imagine Elena eviscerating someone’s grandmother. Nausea pushed Marisol’s morning coffee into the back of her throat. The burning acid made her eyes water. Images flashed in her mind, memories of sharp fangs and rending flesh and screams.

“Slow down,” Zuri said, attention on her phone where a map was open. “We’re close.”

Marisol’s vision blurred. She closed her eyes, but it wasn’t fast enough to stop the tear that dripped down her cheek. Wiping it away, she was morbidly grateful that Zuri and Elena were so focused on revenge they couldn’t see her struggling to hold herself together.

Minutes later, they were bouncing down a country road with nothing but fields on either side.

When Zuri called for them to stop, they were in front of a weathered sign: O’Neil’s Meat Packing.

Marisol choked down another wave of acid.

Beyond the open gate was a lone, windowless building.

A slaughterhouse. Unsure whether it was a good or bad sign, at least there wasn’t a single living thing in the unkept and overgrown grasslands around the building.

“What if it’s a trap?” Marisol managed, voice trembling despite her best effort to hide it.

Elena opened the window while they drove toward the building. Sniffing the air, her lip curled into an unrecognizable snarl. “No vampires. Only witches,” she all but hissed.

Taking slow, deep breaths, Marisol tried to steady her pounding heart. “It could still be a trap.”

No one acknowledged her. Zuri and Elena were both leaning forward. Both ready to kick open the car doors and run toward the witches inside.

“It reeks of blood,” Elena said, hand on the door handle, ready to leap. “Animals,” she muttered.

Marisol glanced at the air vents and imagined the stench of blood wafting in like toxic fumes. She shut her eyes and wished she was anywhere else.

Before the SUV rolled to a stop, Elena was already jumping from the front seat.

Like she knew exactly where to go, she raced toward a heavy, rust-caked door.

Once, EMPLOYEES ONLY must have been written in gleaming white letters.

But now, the letters that weren’t faded were peeling off and all Marisol could see was PLOY. Everything about this was wrong.

“Maybe we should—”

Elena kicked the shiny new chain wrapped around the double-door handles.

It took three hard heel-strikes before one of the links weakened.

Three strikes before Elena pulled the metal apart with her hands and unfurled the chain like a whip snapping behind her.

Before she forced the door open with a sickening screech and the stench of death, old but palpable, flooded Marisol’s nose.

“Bambi.” Zuri’s voice was gentle but her grip around Marisol’s waist steady. “Baby,” she said so softly, it was all Marisol could do not to start sobbing. “Why don’t you stay in the car?”

Marisol didn’t realize she was dizzy until there were two sets of caramel brown eyes looking back at her. “No.” She wished her voice sounded anything but thready. “I’m coming with you.”

The regret in Zuri’s eyes made Marisol straighten. She didn’t want to be the poor little tagalong that couldn’t handle things. She hardened herself enough to ease the shaking in her knees and followed Elena into the dark, dank corridor.

Covering her nose with her shirt, Marisol darted down the hallway. Cinderblock walls with chipping paint were so narrow and the floor scuffed and dented—it was impossible not to imagine helpless, sentient beings taking their last breathes in this lightless hell.

“Sayah is a sick fuck,” Zuri panted with her hand on Marisol’s back while they ran. “Breathe through your mouth.”

Marisol couldn’t do that. Couldn’t make herself breathe at all.

Elena was kicking in a massive door with a row of locks gleaming with their newness. Each thunderous strike deepened the ache in Marisol’s gut. If she couldn’t handle the destruction of abandoned property, how the hell was she going to survive this?

Before Elena yanked the door open to reveal six women huddled together in a room surrounded by meat hooks hanging from the ceiling like the most sickening scene from a horror film. As if it weren’t enough, the huge room was illuminated by a single lamp.

An older woman stood at the front of her quivering coven, arms spread as if to shield them with her body. Dirty and terror-stricken, it was obvious they’d been trapped in this hellscape for days at minimum.

“Make this quick, Elena,” Zuri said like she doubted whether she had the stomach for killing half a dozen grandmothers and a petrified girl young enough to be her daughter.

“God, Elena. Look at them,” Marisol screeched, wobbly legs darting her forward even if she couldn’t feel the floor under her feet. “They’re scared to death.” She grabbed Elena by the shoulders like she might shake her out of the unthinkable.

Elena focused her black eyes on the knot of witches. She didn’t look at Marisol when she said, “They weren’t scared to death when they tried to kill me.” Her voice was so cold. So distant. So unrecognizable.

“We had no choice in that.” A woman’s voice rose behind Marisol, trembling but absolute.

Elena barred her fangs. Marisol’s wings nearly burst free to block the witches from Elena’s gaze. It took all of her meager control to stop it.

“What, did you slip and fall into your cauldron and happen to make vampire-killing poison, Goody Osburn?” Zuri spat, but this time her doubt was broadcast clearly in her wavering tone.

“A vampire showed up at our coven door and demanded we make a potion for him,” the woman replied with growing confidence, but Marisol didn’t look back at her. She didn’t dare move out from in front of Elena even if it only offered the illusion of control.

“That’s convenient—”

The witch didn’t let Elena finish. “And when I reported this man to the cartel leader, she threatened my entire coven with annihilation if we didn’t comply.” The woman’s voice warmed with anger. “So, no. Your kind has not given us a choice.”

“You must have heard that Narine and Baylor are both dead,” Zuri said, moving closer to Elena’s side.

“A lot of good that did us when a vampire I’d never met murdered my coven.

” Her voice cracked and Marisol’s chest burned.

“When she laughed while telling me how any second after she locked us in here someone else I’d never met would come slaughter us.

” Her laugh was closer to a sob. “She hoped that we’d wait here long enough to imagine all the ways you’d make good use of these hooks. ”

Elena’s muscles relaxed just enough that Marisol risked turning her back on her. Still standing between Elena and the witch, Marisol furrowed her brow. “Sayah?”

“That’s what the others called her,” she replied.

“How long have you been in here?” Marisol wanted to take a step toward the witches, but she didn’t want to frighten them any more than they already were.

The woman didn’t drop her protective stance even an inch. “We have no way of knowing. That vampire thought making it impossible to know the time would add to the fun.”

“Jesus Christ,” Zuri cursed.

“You do not deny making the toxin that nearly killed me?” Elena asked like nothing else mattered but that single fact in a vacuum.

“Under duress,” she replied.

“So you just happened to have a recipe for killing vampires lying around?” Zuri asked.

“My coven has been developing brews and tinctures for generations,” she replied with unexpected pride. “Some are defensive.”

Zuri crossed her arms. “So you did have a—”

“They took my daughter.” The woman’s grief was a knife driven into Marisol’s belly.

“I repurposed what I had in the hopes of getting her back and they killed her anyway.” The young woman behind her let out a strangled cry and Marisol knew the girl had lost her mother.

The pain in her own body was unbearable.

“They ripped out my heart and now you’re here to end my life and my line, so just do it. ”

“Why did they take your relic?” Zuri asked before Elena could take a step.

Marisol looked at her. Was she trying to stall? Trying to find a way to keep them alive?

The woman gestured toward the corner with her head. It was hard to see in the low light, but it looked like a huge pot and a bunch of boxes were stacked on a metal table.

“She told us that if we made more Ebonbane, she might consider sparing our lives.” She shook her head. “I’m sure she believed stealing our relic to give it back would make us compliant.” Her gaze narrowed on Elena. “But I can’t begin to guess the machinations of a vampire.”

“Ebonbane?” Marisol asked, relieved that they were all still breathing.