Page 25 of Blood from the Marrow
“I hear you in there,” Zuri said loud enough to hear over the water. Elena imagined her hand pressed to the door. Imagined the concern etched into every part of her heartbreaking face. “Let me in.”
Elena’s throat closed. How long before Zuri or Marisol paid the steep price of loving her?
The memory of Sayah’s cruel laugh echoed in her head. The sound of Narine’s neck snapping. The gurgle of blood in her throat. Elena pressed her palms to her ears, but she couldn’t shut it out. Couldn’t stop seeing Marisol’s wings spread wide, putting herself between death and Elena’s daughters. Beautiful. Fierce. So fucking breakable.
Despite the cascading water and pounding on the door, all Elena could hear were the death rattles of everyone who’d ever trusted her to keep them safe. She’d lived so many lives, taken so many souls, but she’d never managed to save a single person who mattered.
Were they safe enough in the condo? Should she buy the entire building? Everything made her exposed. She couldn’tthink of a single place that wouldn’t carry her taint. That wouldn’t subject the people she loved to her violence.
“Elena,” Marisol’s voice was so low. So gentle. Even now—after she’d seen what vampires really were, what they’d always be, death where she was life—Marisol was worried about her. “Please let us in. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Even Marisol’s distress was sweet, so centered on everyone else. She was the only reason Librada and Sofia were recovering in the guest quarters. The only reason for Sayah’s retreat.
Elena curled tighter into herself, forehead pressed to her knees. She couldn’t stop seeing Marisol and Zuri, lifeless and mangled on the floor. It felt more like providence than fear. It’s where they would end and Elena couldn’t do anything to stop it. She couldn’t do her one job and protect them.
Would Sayah accept her surrender? Could she believe Elena if she bent to her authority?
Elena’s stomach heaved. No vampire power hungry enough to make a move like Sayah did would risk letting Elena live. Elena sure as fuck wouldn’t leave her alive if she got a chance to end this.
It wasn’t death Elena feared. She couldn’t tolerate leaving Zuri and Marisol to Sayah’s clutches. And what of Sofia and Librada and the rest of Elena’s inner circle? They’d all be targeted no matter what path Elena chose.
Another knock. “I’ll kick this fucking door down,” Zuri warned, but her voice cracked on the last word. “Don’t think I won’t.”
They could hide, she thought. Her mind reeled, taking her back to the place she’d felt safest. Zuri’s farm. The moment she conjured it, a sob racked her chest. Sayah and her minions breaking through the wards. She smelled blood sinking into soil. Heard screams bouncing against glass. Bile rose in her throateven as her fangs extended to take on the phantoms tormenting her.
There was nowhere to go. Nothing Elena could do keep from bringing death with her anywhere she went. To keep it from trailing her like a shadow.
Chapter Thirteen
Jaw clenched,Zuri washed a mug that was already clean. The sound of running water helped drown out the constant buzz of conversation, but couldn’t create any space for her to breathe. Couldn’t take Zuri away from a hundred fucking vampires sitting inhumanly still and purposeless like creepy-ass robots waiting for activation codes.
The number of unexpected guests hadn’t changed in a week, but Zuri felt more and more crowded by the second. There wasn’t an inch of space where she could be alone.
Her empty stomach twisted. The only time she felt alone was when she was trying to get Elena to talk to her. To fucking see her.
It had been seven days since they’d dragged their broken pieces out of Sayah’s fortress of fucking nightmares. Seven days since Elena turned from vampire to ghost. Since she slipped away from Zuri—a loss made brutal by its silence—and locked herself in her office. Seven days of watching Marisol try to heal wounds that weren’t physical. Of cataloguing Elena’s every micro-movement like all would be well if Marisol just diagnosed her correctly. Of Marisol finding nothing but heartbreaking emptiness.
It was too much. The mug slipped through Zuri’s fingers and clanged against the metal sink. Shattering ceramic shouldn’t have sounded so much like the crack of a skull against stone. Shouldn’t have made Zuri’s heart leap into her throat and assault her frayed nerves.
A dozen sets of eyes turned toward the sound because there wasn’t a shred of privacy in the open-concept prison cell. The vampire that had been sitting at the kitchen island—the one with red hair and crippling anxiety—stood. Zuri couldn’t absorb his fear when she was already choking on her own.
“Zuri—”
“I’m fine?—”
“You’re bleeding,” he said with unreasonably kind eyes for a bloodsucker.
Zuri glanced down at the minor cut on her finger, a thin stream of blood running over her palm and swirling down the drain. A week ago, she might have worried about getting so much as a paper cut while in the viper pit, but now everything she feared was in the past, stuck in that cellar reeking with blood and death.
She closed her eyes, but there was no escaping the gruesome memories. The stench lodged in her sinuses, the fear burrowed under her skin and festering in her bones.
“Hey,” Marisol’s voice was soft against Zuri’s pounding eardrums, her hand between Zuri’s shoulder blades even softer. “Are you okay?”
Zuri was going to ask if that was a real question. Ask if anything could possibly be okay. But then she looked up at Marisol. Her pinpoint pupils and eyes red from crying had turned hazel to bright green. It was too hard to look at her without wanting to burst into tears, and Zuri couldn’t handle that. Not now.
“It’s nothing.” Zuri turned her attention back to the sink and shoved her hand under the running hot water.
She was starting to clean up the mess when Marisol shut off the faucet.
