Page 27 of Blood from the Marrow
A minute later, she was banging on the door to Elena’s office, the place she hadn’t left in days. Librada, who hadn’t moved from the chair she’d positioned to face Elena’s office and the front door, looked up from her phone. Her red eyes, lost and desperate, met Zuri’s. For the first time, Zuri imagined her as a young woman who’d had no way to fight when her parents put her in a convent. No choice until Elena offered it to her with a bite.
Now here was Librada, centuries later, still waiting for Elena to save her. To tell her what to do. Waiting—like the rest of their siblings—for their maker to remember they needed her.
Zuri gritted her teeth. Elena had built her family from people who’d never had one. She’d given them a home when they didn’t fit anywhere else. And now she was abandoning them to drown in their fear, just like she was abandoning Zuri and Marisol to drown in theirs.
There was no way Zuri was going to allow that to happen. Not to any of them.
She turned her back to the anxious vampires staring at her and knocked harder. Fist closed, she banged until her hand hurt.
“Zuri, if she doesn’t want?—”
Zuri ignored Marisol’s gentleness and delivered a threat. “If you don’t open this fucking door, Elena, I’m going to break it down.”
No response.
“Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
She strode down the hall leading to the parking garage and into a storage room. After a little rummaging, she found a hammer. When she returned to the main living space, every vampire except for Sofia, whom she hadn’t seen in days, was staring at her.
Librada sprang to her feet, mouth open like she was going to protest. Zuri skewered her with a look. A silent plea to trust her.
Fingers balled into fists, Librada seemed to wrestle every instinct to stay still. The fact that she was desperate enough to let Zuri arm herself with a weapon and go after Elena spelled the end of her doubt.
“Last chance,” Zuri called through the door. She lifted the hammer over her shoulder. The solid weight of it in her hand felt right. Like it was what she needed to do with all the rage coursing through her veins.
“Are you going to open up?”
When silence was her only answer, Zuri swung.
The hammer connected with the doorknob in an explosion of sound that shattered the stillness. Pain shot up her arm. The shock of metal on metal vibrated through every bone from her fingers to her shoulder. Her teeth rattled. But the doorknob was still there, barely dented, mocking her.
Zuri latched onto the pain and fed it to her fury like raw meat to starving alligators. She raised the hammer again, using both hands this time. The second impact was louder than the first. Her palm burned where it gripped the handle.
Vision blurry and pulse pounding, she pulled back for a third swing. Arms trembling, knuckles white around the handle. Each shock of pain was another reminder not to stop, not to let Elena hide in her self-loathing.
Before she could hit the stupid fucking thing again, the door flew open. Luna and Loba bolted out and bounded toward Librada.
“What the hell are you doing?” Elena was a pale imitation of herself. In a black T-shirt and dark pants, she looked gaunt. Like pain and grief had been feeding on her life force.
“I guess you couldn’t hear me knocking.” Panting, Zuri let the hammer slip from her hands and land on the floor with a thud. “But now that I have your attention—” She looked back at Marisol, whose eyes were wide with surprise and relief, and signaled for her to follow. “We’re going to fucking talk.”
Zuri caught a glimpse of Librada as she closed the door. The gratitude in her expression spurred Zuri on.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Elena turned her back on them, walking toward the chair behind her desk like that was going to create distance between them. Like she’d forgotten everything about Zuri in a week.
“Nothing to talk about?” Zuri heard the madness in her own laugh when she darted in front of Elena, stopping her before she made it around the desk.
Elena turned, as if to take a different route to her chair, but Marisol had been right behind Zuri. She stood with her fists clenched and tears in her eyes, but she didn’t move out of Elena’s way. There was nowhere to hide. Not now. Not here.
Gaze distant and energy completely disconnected, Elena crossed her arms and leaned against the front of her desk. She had the disinterested expression of someone browsing tabloids at the grocery checkout counter before phones got smart.
“You really going to pretend you don’t see what’s happening out there?” Zuri gestured toward the door, toward Elena’s bloodsuckers waiting in suspended animation. “Pretend your family isn’t floundering while you hide in here?”
“My family?” Elena’s caustic laugh landed like food poisoning in Zuri’s gut. “The same family that followed me straight into Sayah’s trap? The one I practically gift-wrapped for her?”
“Don’t.” Marisol’s voice cracked on the word. “Don’t do that.”
Elena’s eyes snapped to her, suddenly sharp with a cruelty Zuri didn’t recognize. “Don’t what? Tell the truth? That I failed every single one of them? That I made them vulnerable by making them depend on me?” Her gaze cut to Zuri. “Just like I made you vulnerable. Like I almost got both of you killed because I was too fucking arrogant to see what was right in front of me.”
