Page 8 of For Love and Blood and Fury

Her accent was unusual and her words were too fast. She wouldn’t have guessed she was a Spanish speaker by her vaguely Greek appearance, but Marisol was relieved that she could communicate with her if she would just slow down.

Marisol leaned closer, her brow furrowed while she strained to understand. Each syllable was imbued with a strange intensity.

Eyes huge and expression wild, the woman pulled out her IV and tore at the leads on her chest faster than the medical staff could react. Terror poured out of her in a tidal wave.

“Restrain her,” someone shouted behind Marisol, too many pairs of hands coming at the panicked woman trying and failing to get away from them.

“Wait,” Marisol shouted, stretching her arm to stop anyone else from touching the patient.Herpatient. “Be quiet a second, please,” she begged the room full of professionals focused on the medical questions and not the person in their care.

Tearing off one of her latex gloves, Marisol half sat on the gurney so she was closer to eye level. So she wasn’t towering over the woman whose big brown eyes were wide and radiating her fear. So she was less like all the imposing machines and bright lights and mob descending on her.

“You’re okay. You’re safe,” Marisol whispered in Spanish, offering her bare hand palm up in a non-threatening gesture. “You are in the hospital and we’re taking very good care of you.”

When the woman didn’t recoil, Marisol took a chance and slid her hand into hers. Skin warm and soft, she let the power of human touch settle her frayed nervous system.

Her patient’s breath caught in her throat, eyes widening again at her touch. As if she’d seen a ghost. Her gaze drifted, unfocused, like she was looking at something just beyond Marisol’s shoulder. Glancing behind herself, Marisol didn’t see anything, but was grateful that the woman had stopped thrashing.

“Can you tell me your name?” Marisol’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Perfect eyebrows pulled into a furrow again. Despite her steady pulse—pulse that should’ve been much higher given her agitation—Marisol sensed that the question had brought back her stress.

“It’s okay. We have plenty of time to figure that out,” she said reassuringly. “We’re going to get some scans, okay? Just to make sure you don’t have any internal bleeding.”

A wave of protectiveness washed over Marisol. This woman, so vulnerable and lost, needed her help. And she was going to make sure she got it.

Chapter Five

Zuri slammedher car door and started for the Mediterranean Revival mansion on the outskirts of Coconut Grove—a neighborhood older than Miami itself and alive with power. The number of cars parked on the huge cracked driveway were already fewer than anticipated. A fact Zuri absorbed like a gut punch.

The air was humid for an early spring morning, signaling what a hot and shitty summer they were going to have. It was the kind of oppressive heat that made her sweat the second she stepped out of air conditioning. The kind of day that made her think about leaving Miami and never looking back.

Halfway up the walk, she reached the shade from the overgrown Banyan trees taking up most of the sprawling grounds. The coven house reeked of neglect. Of dwindling resources. Of too few hands to tend to the needs of a structure that had stood for well over a century.

The mansion was where all the witches in her coven had learned how to weave the particular magic they inherited from their mothers. Control over fire to forge a weapon, or air for divination and influence, or earth to consecrate and protect. Water, Zuri’s dominant element, was the most flexible. In her, ithad manifested as the ability to flow into a person’s mind. And then there were the spellcraft skills all witches could master with patience and time. It was crushing how little there was to learn now.

Zuri reached the once-imposing double doors, flanked by chipped marble columns now obscured by creeping ivy. As soon as she entered the dimly lit foyer that never lost the smell of mold, Zuri felt a familiar pit in her stomach.

Every inch of the house was steeped in magic, but the energy was growing so thin. The pit instantly filled with rage.

In the mansion’s heart, the coven’s meeting room awaited. The triumvirate sat at a curved table facing fifty high-backed chairs. When Zuri was a kid, there’d been twice as many seats and the younger witches had to stand along the edge or sit on the floor. This room, where decisions were made, where magic had once crackled in the air, was lifeless.

Scanning the room, she counted thirty-two women. Five fewer than last week.

Fucking Elena.

Hand in her pocket, Zuri fiddled with the gold ring she’d given her all those years ago. The one with the blade. She should have known that Elena wouldn’t keep up her end of the bargain. That she could only rely on herself.

Taking her seat between the only two witches she knew would never abandon her, Zuri's mood was poisonous.

“I gave your vampire my blood for nothing,” Candela grumbled to her right.

“Told you so,” Avani muttered on her left.

Gritting her teeth hard enough to crack a molar, Zuri was sure she wasn’t going to keep quiet. That she’d hit her breaking point.

And then the triumvirate glided in.

Three women in their late eighties took their seats behind the curved table. The three lines of leadership cut into their cheeks had been there so long that the scars were faded and hard to see. As if Mother Nature herself was telling them it was time to go. To give someone else a chance.

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