Page 36 of For Love and Blood and Fury

With a smack,Zuri smashed the mosquito that had tried to make a meal of her elbow.Fucker. She inhaled a deep lungful of dusky, humid air as she walked up to the greenhouse instead of taking the cart to check the wards. She knew they were as strong as they could get.

From the moment she’d walked into Elena’s place a few nights earlier, tension had been coiled in her back and hamstrings and neck. She grumbled under her breath and yanked the glass door open. Dropping onto the stool near her potting table, she took another deep breath.

Depleted. She was utterly and completely fucking depleted. She had no idea how she was going to teach Bambi to do whatever the hell kind of magic she did, and she didn’t know how to heal Elena by herself. In all her years as a practicingbruja, she’d never known a vampire in need of healing. It was kind of their whole thing.

It only took Zuri a few minutes of sitting in the silence of her greenhouse to admit to herself that her exhaustion had nothing to do with Bambi or Elena’s weird ailment. Traveling over the wreckage of their relationship to remind Elena what she knew had hurt so much more than she expected it to.

Fuck.

Unwilling to feel the pain that had taken her years to leave behind, Zuri reached for the cell phone in her jeans’ back pocket. Opening her group text with Del and Avani, she ignored the barrage of messages and told them she was going to be off the grid for a while. Told them she needed to think. She was sure that they’d assume she was licking her wounds after failing to unseat any of the triumvirate, but she didn’t care. Maybe it was even a little true. Maybe she’d earned a little wallowing.

Dropping her head onto the well-loved wood surface, Zuri felt completely sorry for herself. She wanted to regret the moment she’d even considered asking Elena for help with her coven trouble. The price had been significantly heftier than advertised, something she should have known.

Elena was all mess and destruction. Everything always became about her. But she’d been so desperate, she hadn’t thought it through. And now, her aspirations for the coven were even further away than before.

And for what? All she’d done was trade her own problems for Elena’s. Worse, her picture was probably tacked to some deranged vampire’s dartboard now. She should have guessed that opening up that locked door could only lead to trouble. That Elena would take over her life.

Zuri tried to drown out the little voice in her head asking her what the hell else she was supposed to do… Let Elena die? A pit in her stomach opened, cold and jagged. Remembering what Elena looked like lying in a hospital bed, defenseless in the face of a threat, hurt worse than the blade biting into her arm.

Ignoring the group chat blowing up on her screen (she wasn’t going to answer any of their questions anyway), Zuri was back in the hospital room. Trapped in her memory, her heart raced. Fighting the encroaching hyperventilation, she gripped her knees and took shallow breaths in quick succession.

The vampire’s hatred had seared into her retinas, but it was her abject fear of losing Elena—of being completely helpless to save her—that was pushing her to the brink of a panic attack.

I’m home. I’m safe. I’m home. I’m safe.Zuri repeated the mantra until she managed a full inhale, sweat a thick film on her skin.

They’d survived, and they were safe. Elena had Bambi now and she was happy to fawn all over her. Tired and on the edge of delirium, Zuri could almost laugh at the shitty pun.

A rhythmic thump followed by a frustrated growl echoed through the stillness of the greenhouse. Zuri’s head shot up, her heart pounding again the moment it had started to settle. She scrambled to her feet, adrenaline jolting her awake. It wasn’t the sound of her wards breaking. It was the sound of Elena, struggling.

She rushed outside. Wards hummed with the power of their protective barriers intact. Elena was trying to amble up to her, body leaning precariously against a broom that made for a terrible crutch. Her movements were jerky and uneven, her jaw clenched in frustration as she tried to navigate the uneven ground. The golf cart sat abandoned a few feet away, a testament to her failed attempt at independence.

“You poisoned me,” Elena snarled, her voice a guttural growl that cut through the stillness of the evening. “You put something in your blood.” She looked like a cornered animal, wounded and desperate, her usual seductive grace replaced by a raw, untamed fury. Her eyes glowed with an unnatural intensity, her fangs bared in a snarl that sent a shiver down Zuri’s spine.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Zuri snapped, anger quickly outpacing her confusion.

“Oh, you’re going to pretend to be the one with a compromised memory now?” Elena roared, dark eyes burning into Zuri with something like disdain. “I remember, Zuri. Iremember drinking your blood and then I woke up in the hospital. Explain that,” she all but spat.

“Why the hell would I want to kill you?” Zuri shouted, her anger flaring. Elena couldn’t really believe that Zuri would hurt her, but the insult of the accusation burned in her gut.

“You wanted me weak,” Elena spat, her voice vibrating with fury. “You wanted to control me.”

“Control you?” Zuri laughed, the sound sharp and brittle. “Control you for what?”

“I don’t know yet,” Elena snarled, her grip tightening on the broom handle when her right leg bowed under her weight. “You drugged me. You stole my memories. You left me helpless.”

Zuri’s vision blurred. Her pulse thundered in her ears like a war cry. She was tempted to press her palm to Elena’s forehead and take her back to the worst day of her life. To punish her for daring to suspect her after all they’d been through. She balled her hand into a fist and stepped into her space instead. “All I’ve tried to do is help you, you self-centered?—”

“I don’t need your help,” Elena shouted, and all Zuri could see was an angry child lashing out. But Zuri was nobody’s emotional punching bag.

“You sure? Because it seems like you might need help carrying that enormous bruised ego of yours back to the house. Or better yet, you can get right the fuck out of my?—”

“Stop it, both of you!” Marisol’s voice, sharp and clear, cut through the falling night. Appearing out of nowhere, she stepped between them, her hands outstretched as if to physically separate them. “Why the hell are you fighting?” Her hazel eyes were huge and pleading.

Elena’s gaze shifted to Marisol, her eyes narrowing. “Stay out of this, Marisol,” she warned, her voice laced with venom, canine teeth flashing lethal points.

Before Zuri could tell Bambi to get the hell back inside and stop antagonizing an apex predator, the nurse unexpectedly hardened her resolve instead of shrinking.

“No,” Marisol said, her voice firm despite the obvious tremor in her hands. “Zuri could have died trying to save you, Elena.”

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