Page 65 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Forty-Three

Shock was all Zuri could register. She’d never seen violence like this.

Never seen people dying by the hundreds.

Never seen them burn alive until they choked on the flames.

And then Clara had paid for Elena’s life with her own, and all Zuri could do was sit in the mud and cling to Marisol and Elena so tightly, she could barely breathe.

“I’m so sorry, Marisol,” Elena said, voice hoarse like she’d just fucking died and come back to them. “I would never have accepted your mother’s sacrifice if I’d known—”

“She didn’t ask your permission,” Zuri said, hand running up and down Elena’s back.

And I am so fucking grateful. I will build that woman an altar even bigger than my grandmother’s, she vowed to herself.

She’d get Clara is the World’s Best Mother-in-Law tattooed on her chest. She’d have a dozen children just to name them all Clara.

She’d offer her Aglion a place on her farm.

Do everything in her power to honor the unbelievable gift she’d given them.

She’d never forget Clara. Would love her right into the afterlife for loving her child more than she loved herself.

Marisol was still stunned. She was half curled into Elena, but her grip on Zuri’s free hand was tight enough to cut off her blood flow.

Not that Zuri gave a single shit. She would give her the damn arm.

She didn’t care as long as they were both in her grasp.

Both breathing. They’d survived, and they were together, and nothing else mattered.

Marisol finally muttered, “I didn’t stop her,” so quietly that her words got tangled with the sound of Zuri’s racing pulse.

“I knew, I think…” Zuri squeezed her hand.

“I think I knew the whole time she was going to do that and I…” A sob shattered her voice and Zuri’s heart. “I let her… I wanted her to do it.”

“You didn’t ask her—”

“I didn’t stop her,” Marisol repeated before Zuri could rationalize.

Zuri held back from trying to make Marisol feel better.

Marisol had barely gotten to know the woman she’d yearned for most of her life.

A woman who made her feel deeply complicated and conflicting feelings.

A woman she’d finally allowed into the periphery of her life despite her fears and pain buried deep in her marrow.

And now she was dead. Her mother was dead.

Objective facts wouldn’t help with Marisol’s grief.

It was going to suck, and all Zuri could do was support her through the suck.

Around them, anyone still breathing was weak and wounded.

The Salem witches hadn’t exaggerated the impact of their potion magic.

She looked for Librada, ready to shout for her.

Lib had corralled Sofia before she kicked off a second skirmish.

She wanted Lib to find the St. Augustine witches and make sure they were okay, but the thought evaporated.

Something was wrong. In the middle of the blood and wreckage of a war zone, some people looked pretty okay. Like they hadn’t just survived a meat grinder.

It was too much. Zuri was fatigued on such a deep level, her instincts were telling her something was wrong but her brain couldn’t piece it together.

Not quickly enough. Not before she figured out what the too-clean vampires had in common.

Not until after thirty vampires had grouped together and were starting for them.

“Now before this becomes a whole thing, sug, I think we can all agree there’s been enough vampire-on-vampire violence today.” Cordelia’s sugary-sweet accent left an acrid taste on Zuri’s tongue.

Zuri scrambled to her feet a moment before Elena and Marisol. Around them, the air stilled. Whether vampire, witch, or Aglion, everyone stopped to look at them. It was the imperceptible signal that animals picked up before a storm. The thing that made them know danger was on its way.

Cordelia tossed back her blonde hair and sighed. “Oh my, I really didn’t want to make a fuss.”

There was something unsettling about the mismatch between the friendly tone of Cordelia’s words and the tension in her shoulders. Of the three of them, Zuri was the least dismantled. She stepped out in front, blocking Elena and Marisol with her body.

Librada and Sofia were at Zuri’s side before Cordelia could shift her weight. A Sayah operative? But how? Elena vetted Cordelia herself, and Zuri had seen her fuck up plenty of Sayah’s forces. It didn’t make sense.

People appeared in the courtyard. Some only half-dressed like they’d just been roused to consciousness. But only the group around Cordelia seemed to know what was happening. The other low-country vamps looked just as confused as Zuri felt.

“How did you lie to me under compulsion?” Elena sounded so tired as if all she wanted to do was drag herself into a shower and then collapse in bed for a week.

Cordelia smiled because Zuri had been transported to the Twilight Zone.

“I didn’t,” she replied like she couldn’t wait to spill.

“I answered everything you asked me, Elena. And I answered truthfully. I don’t mean you any harm, and I certainly did not share common cause with Sayah,” she added like her name was covered in barbs. “That girl just wasn’t right.”

“What the hell are you after, lady?” Zuri couldn’t take another pirouette around the fucking bush.

The way Cordelia’s eyes landed on Marisol made Zuri’s skin crawl. It was all she could do not to go at her eyes, talons out and hissing.

“Getting to know you,” Cordelia said with another sigh.

“It sure made things complicated. I almost called this off. Watching everyone work together.” She pressed her hand to her heart.

“It was so moving.” Cordelia dropped her hand.

“And then I saw what makes you so dangerous.” Her attention darted to Elena.

“The rest of us live within the laws of nature, darlin’ and there’s a reason for that. ”

“You’re with the people hunting us?” Marisol finally managed, voice thin and heavy with spider cracks.

Cordelia tipped her head to the side like she wanted to say, bless your heart. “Honey, I am the people.”

Zuri nearly staggered backward. There was no way. She couldn’t have been sharing space with this creature for so long and missed something like this. It was impossible. They were shellshocked, and her brain wasn’t understanding her ears.

“We killed your minions in Venice,” Sofia said with bright delight.

“It was a sloppy move and not my call.” Cordelia shrugged. “Sometimes a stab in the dark lands and sometimes it doesn’t. And it wasn’t a loss. I’d always suspected Sabina had some secrets in her tower. I’ll be going back for those after we’re done here.”

“Get inside,” Zuri muttered, putting Marisol directly behind her. Marisol didn’t move.

“I know what you must think of me, but if your hearts weren’t clouding your vision, you’d see what I see.

” She gestured to her sides. “What we all see. The power they have is dangerous. You all saw it for yourselves,” she said loud enough for her voice to echo across the stunned courtyard.

“You don’t think they’d turn it on us the first chance they got? ” Cordelia tsked.

The fog of fatigue cleared from Zuri’s mind as her anger spiked.

“Are you seriously trying to spin an act of aggression against people who haven’t done shit to you as a defensive move?

” She curled her hands into fists and thunder sounded in the distance.

After having given everything she had to stopping Sayah, her power was slow to respond, but it wouldn’t abandon her.

“That’s some 4D chess level gaslighting.

I bet you almost believe your own bullshit. ”

“Listen, I understand. I don’t take pleasure in it, I assure you.

” Cordelia furrowed her brow as if she were being so sincere when she said, “When I was a girl, I found the cutest little fox pup. It had been abandoned all alone near the road where I walked to school.” She smiled as if she weren’t unhinged.

“I loved this little guy so much. I about ran all the way back home to show my momma. Deacon, I’d named him.

And I’d already imagined a thousand adventures we’d go on.

I was going to ask my daddy to make him a little bed so he could sleep in my room, and…

” She sighed, completely content. “Well, I just loved him so very much.” Her expression darkened, her eyes going from blue to black to signal her fangs.

“And when my mother killed it, I cried for hours. But she taught me a valuable lesson that day. That little pup was going to turn into a fox, and its nature was to kill our chickens. I wouldn’t be taking very good care of them if I loosed a predator in their midst, would I? ”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Zuri snapped.

“Stand aside and let us do what must be done.” Cordelia shed her saccharine tone.

“The fuck I will.” Thunder rolled again, long and rumbling.

“I think you miscalculated your position here,” Bernice said when she came out of nowhere. Even with her shirt and pants torn, she looked effortlessly cool and in control. How the hell was that possible? “We outnumber you by quite a few.”

Cordelia smiled. “This isn’t your fight, darlin’, and if you’re going to side with anyone, it should be your own kind.”

Bernice shook her head. “That’s the funny thing, isn’t it?

” She paused, looking at Cordelia as if she were absolutely pathetic.

“Who my kind is comes down to definitions, doesn’t it?

” Bernice looked at where all the Aglion had huddled together and watched what they feared most come to pass.

The three black wings left Sayah’s defectors unguarded to stand in front of their own.

To protect them with their tired, broken bodies.

“These people risked their lives for me.” She gave a fanged sneer.

“That’s about as in with me as it gets, princess. ”

“I know it’s tempting to let them go,” Cordelia replied like she might convince others to turn on the Aglion that had just fought side-by-side with them.

Whom they’d spent weeks getting to know.

Getting to trust. “Right now it’s just a few of them.

I can see why they seem harmless. But trust me, the second they’re allowed to breed, they will kill you in your beds.

They will seek to crush you under their heel—”

“Feelings aren’t facts, you fucking maniac.” Zuri had enough. She was ready to kill the bobble-headed bitch on her own. “Look at these people. They don’t mean you any harm. If you stop hunting them—”

“You’ll thank me when I save your hen from the fox in your coop,” Cordelia said with a fleeting glance toward Elena.

Without warning, without a word, Elena sprang out from behind Zuri like she’d been shot out of a cannon. And then Hel was running toward them at unbelievable speed. She crashed through Cordelia’s forces like a hot knife through butter while Elena and Bernice went for Cordelia.

All Zuri had was instinct when the fighting started.

She muscled Marisol back toward where the other Aglion had been mourning the loss of Clara.

Where they were now being protected by a random array of vampires and all the Veil witches holding the last few glass bottles of blue liquid.

Candela limped out of the house by using Avani like a crutch.

Zuri couldn’t feel the profound relief at seeing Candela conscious before Marisol was slipping out of her grasp.

“No, I won’t cower here while other people fight my battle,” Marisol decided.

“Babe, what you—”

“My mother died protecting me today,” she said to the assembled Aglion, not to Zuri. “And I will give everything I have to protect you,” she vowed to the demoralized bunch looking back at her with hollow expressions.

Zuri’s chest ached with pride. Goddamn it.

“Well, fuck. We’ve been saying y’all are witches long enough I’ve started to believe we’re cousins,” Zuri decided.

“I’m sure as hell not leaving you to deal with the southern belle from hell on your own.

” She turned her back on the group and prepared to send any approaching assailants into their worst fucking nightmares.

In the courtyard, two things became obvious immediately.

Cordelia and her crew had obviously saved their energy knowing they’d turn on the Aglion who’d saved their lives the moment Sayah was gone.

But they’d also miscalculated everyone else’s response.

Vampire fangs and witches’ spells and lightning strikes rained down on Cordelia’s meager force.

She’d probably expected the rest of her cartel to join her once the fighting started, but only a few had come to her side.

The rest created a wall around the Aglion as if to say, we won’t hit first but we will hit back.

But it was when the hundreds of Sayah’s rank and file approached the Aglion that Zuri knew the fight would end before it barely began.

Contrite and full of palpable regret, the vampires dropped to their knees and asked to atone for what they’d done.

Asked for the chance to thank the Aglion for their mercy when they could have taken vengeance instead.

When Marisol nodded, the horde moved in perfect unison toward the battlefield.

When they spread across the field like a shadow, Cordelia dropped to her knees, and Librada imparted justice more swiftly than she deserved.

No, Cordelia couldn’t possibly have counted on so many people willing to die to protect the innocent.

Willing to do what was right rather than being ruled by the fear that supremacy might turn into equality.