Page 7 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

“Hecate,” Elena whispered before Marisol asked. “She guided her sisters out of the dark and remained at the gate between the worlds to guard it.” Shadow dogs ran along the bottom, chasing something. “Her dogs guide and protect the crossroads between the mortal and immortal realm.”

One of the dogs leapt from the pack, showing them what they’d been running after. A massive peahen in flight took over the scene when the dogs and torch fell away. At least Sayah hadn’t gone with a peacock this year.

“Hera,” Elena explained. “She is confidence, protection, vengeance.”

The bird flew with its beak parted in a screech before it erupted into a nest of snakes. Slithering in all directions, their movements were slow and uncanny.

“Medusa. Rebirth and transformation.” She leaned closer, lips brushing against Marisol’s jaw.

“She’s responsible for our ability to slip into minds and exert influence or control.

It’s only a fraction of what she could do with her snakes.

Imagine being able to coerce a mind into shutting down each of its organs one by one,” she added in open awe.

When Marisol turned her head over her shoulder, her eyes were wide with horror. At their side, Zuri shook her head and offered an amused little smile. She was listening, even if she was feigning disinterest.

The mass of snakes tangled and knotted until they became a single creature. An enormous cobra reared up and flicked its long tongue at the crowd. Reflexively, Marisol and Zuri tensed when it opened its maw like it might swallow them whole.

“Cleopatra,” Elena said even though she expected it might be obvious. “A cunning and shrewd mind concealed inside lethal beauty.” The cobra darted at them again. “The fangs lack a bit of subtlety,” she added with a shrug.

Jezebel was next. Represented as a woman with a conventionally beautiful form, she stretched out her hand to the cobra.

Soothing it, she coaxed it to slither up her arm and come to rest around her shoulders.

Jezebel was seduction and influence. The ultimate weaponization of female sexuality. A master of charm and manipulation.

Jezebel walked until an island appeared on the horizon. The music softened to a calming melody. She’d found her sister Circe, found her sanctuary. A place of power and independence and magic.

It was no surprise when the shadows combined to create a lion.

As it stalked toward the audience, the strings disappeared and the entire brass section boomed.

Percussion instruments rallied soldiers to war.

The call awakened Elena’s blood, tempted her to rise from her seat and find the nearest enemy to slay.

“Ishtar,” Marisol recognized. “Sex and war.”

Elena forced her muscles to unclench. There wasn’t any actual danger. She’d forgotten how much music could sway her mood.

The curtain became detached from the ceiling and fell to the stage in a white ring.

From its center, aerialists climbed out from a trap door in the stage two at a time until seven of them flew above the crowd.

As the show segued into a different tempo, Zuri decided to get a drink from the patio bar. Sofia was all too eager to follow.

Slipping off Elena’s lap and into the space next to her, Marisol was incandescent with curiosity. Her eyes were so bright, so intrigued. “How did you become a vampire? Why?”

“I can’t believe you waited this long to inquire,” Elena replied with a chuckle.

She turned in her seat so they were facing each other. When she rested her arm over the back of the sofa, Marisol traced her thumb over her hand. It was such a gentle touch. Such a soft gesture.

“Well, we’ve had a lot going on.” She couldn’t hide the flush in her cheeks and Elena couldn’t help the chemical reaction it triggered in her body.

“We’re going to find out more about the Aglion—”

“No,” Marisol snapped unexpectedly. “I don’t want to talk—” She shook her head. “Anyway, will you tell me what happened?”

“Oh, it was so long ago,” she teased with a sigh. “Who remembers?”

“Do you want me to tell it?” Librada joked even though her face gave no hint of it.

Elena smirked. “She’s jealous because she’s the only one in the family who made a thoughtful decision rather than accepting this life on the brink of death.”

“Brink of death?” Marisol’s expressive hazel eyes bled with concern despite the fact that Elena had obviously made it through just fine.

“It’s less dramatic than it sounds.” Deciding that she’d tell Marisol the real story without embellishment, she took her hand.

Interlacing their fingers, she held Marisol’s hand in her lap and told her the pathetic truth.

“My first love was named Catalina.” She memorized the sensation of Marisol’s soft hand in hers.

Let the weight of her gaze warm her. “I won’t bore you with that story now,” she said when what she meant was that she didn’t want to revisit it.

“When she let her parents marry her off to some asshole instead of running away with me, I may have acted a bit rashly.”

Marisol laughed, the sound pressing against Elena’s chest. “Oh boy. What did you do?”

“Modern teenagers didn’t invent angst, okay?” She smiled. “In my perhaps short-sighted view, I decided that stowing away on a ship full of people seeking their fortunes in the newly colonized Caribbean was a good idea.”

“You didn’t!” Marisol covered her mouth with her free hand and squeezed Elena with the other. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking. I was preoccupied with drowning in the feeling that I’d never know love other than Catalina, so I might as well forge a new life.” She couldn’t help but chuckle at herself. “Definitely not overreacting.”

“So what the heck happened?” Marisol asked, her undivided attention an addictive thing.

“It actually went shockingly well for the first couple of days. I’d hidden in the cargo hold without incident and even made friends with a one-eared cat I named Little Fox. He kept the rats away, which was nice.”

Marisol crinkled her nose, anticipating that it had all gone wrong.

“I had brought a loaf of bread—”

“For sailing across the entire Atlantic Ocean?” Marisol all but shrieked. “How long did that even take?”

“I couldn’t exactly Google it before leaving,” she replied, skin warm and chest light. “It was only later I learned the trip would take a month if I was lucky.”

“What were you even planning to do when you arrived in a new country where you didn’t know anyone—”

“If I didn’t find fresh water, I was going to be dead before that problem emerged,” she joked.

So many lifetimes later, she could still feel the dizziness and pounding headache that had made it nearly impossible to move.

“When I didn’t have a choice but to emerge from my hiding place, I knew the chances were high that the voyage might have been a miscalculation. ”

“A big ass mistake, you mean,” Marisol said with a little grin.

Elena waved away the characterization. “Of all the things that could have happened to a teenage girl traveling on her own, the best case scenario befell me.” She was back in her frail body.

Lost in a dark maze, the smell of saltwater and damp wood trapped in her nostrils.

Blinded by pain and thirst, she’d collapsed.

“When I woke up, I was in a small cabin with a woman and her beard of a husband. Later, I’d learn that he was her blood son, and they played the married role so that her movements weren’t questioned. ”

“How much later?” Marisol raised both her brows, misreading her encounter.

Elena shook her head. “Even though I was nearly an adult, Francisca and Rodrigo annoyingly treated me like a child.” She smiled to herself.

“I didn’t know they were vampires for another year or so.

They claimed to both suffer from a rare sensitivity to light.

Not that I cared. It was a small tradeoff to run out and retrieve whatever they wanted during the day.

In return, Francisca forged some papers and made me her daughter. ”

“So where did the ship end up?” Marisol rubbed her thumb over Elena’s skin in a slow, soothing gesture.

“The very eastern tip of Cuba. They were looking for a new life in a new world too, and a few months after we landed, we made our way to Havana. Within the year, Francisca owned a sugar mill and was building wealth faster than she could spend it.”

“When did you find out she was a vampire?”

“I was nearly eighteen when I arrived home unexpectedly to find Francisca with her fangs in a carpenter’s neck.

You can’t imagine how scared I was, but I didn’t run.

When she explained the concept of the second life to me, changing diets seemed like a tiny price to pay. She didn’t turn me for another decade.”

“You may have appeared a little impulsive with the whole jumping on a ship without a plan thing,” Marisol joked, her eyes so full of a joy Elena would keep stoked her entire life if she could.

“And that’s exactly the reason she made me wait,” she agreed with a laugh that warmed her marrow. “Francisca was usually so cautious. A very boring trait in a vampire.” She could still see her blonde hair and fair skin and her perennially concerned expression.

“Where is she now?”

All the happy nostalgia that had been coursing through Elena’s chest congealed like a plague. After rushing through the last part of the story, she cleared her throat and got to the end.

“She died turning what would have been my first sister. Neither of them survived the process.” She looked away and tried to stop the emotion from blurring her vision.

Tried not to remember her selfish pleas for a blood sister when Rodrigo left for Jamaica.

“Turning female children requires significantly more blood. Nearly all of it.”

“Oh, Elena.” Marisol let go of her hand, only to pull her into a crushing embrace. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Your many losses.”

Elena barely absorbed the overwhelming affection, the compassion and concern and empathy so intense it was impossible to breathe with Marisol’s arms around her.

The vise around her heart only grew tighter when Marisol leaned away, palm pressed to her chest. The warmth of her skin melted barriers Elena didn’t know existed until they were gone.

Holding her in her gaze, Marisol was that nurse again.

The woman standing over her with luminous wings and filling her with the impossible assurance that everything was going to be okay.

That she was safe within every meaning of that cavernous single syllable.

Elena had never known someone so aggressively kind who was also so fierce.

Zuri had called it from the beginning. Elena had no way to protect herself against someone so earnest. So free from pretense.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Marisol whispered, her hand on Elena’s cheek before kissing her.

Thank you, she thought, but couldn’t bring herself to speak. Couldn’t bring herself to leave the home of Marisol’s embrace.

She’d only just pulled away when Zuri arrived with three shot glasses. Elena’s body was still buzzing, but she did her best to conceal it.

“If this vampire circus is going to continue, I need to be one hundred percent drunker,” Zuri said before putting the trio of shots she was awkwardly holding with both hands in front of Marisol.

“What is it?” Marisol asked Zuri with a smile like she hadn’t just punched a hole through Elena’s sternum.

“Strong,” Zuri replied before handing Elena the second glass.

“I can’t get intoxicated.” Elena furrowed her brow, surprised that Zuri had forgotten her metabolism didn’t allow for drunkenness.

“Yeah, well, we’re all going to taste like vodka, okay?” Zuri lifted her shot before knocking it back in one gulp. She tried and failed to stop her shoulders from shaking.

“There are much better things to taste like,” Elena joked, voice intentionally low and tempting.

Marisol had barely gotten the glass to her mouth when Sofia arrived with a tray full of shots. Elena swallowed the smooth vodka before reaching out and pulling Zuri into her lap.

Zuri passed around the shots again, this time including Sofia and Librada. She tossed a reckless wink at Elena who caught it with her lips between her teeth. “To getting fucked up.”

With a wicked curl in her lip, Marisol held up her second shot and whispered against Zuri’s ear with her eyes on Elena knowing she’d hear. “To getting fucked.” When she leaned back to drink, her eyes were dark and full of filthy promises.

Elena wished farewell to the woman who’d trembled under her touch in Zuri’s bed. With a grin, she welcomed the woman who seemed to realize that everything she wanted was up for the taking.