Page 49 of Blood from the Marrow
Librada leapt in front of Marisol and Sabina, crouched like a cat with fangs and claws extended.
The intruders spread out, scaling the bookshelves like revolting spiders. Marisol struggled to process that this was really happening.
One of the vampires jumped to the very top of the landing, looking down at them with a fanged grin. “Well, well.” Her cold, dark eyes were fixed on Marisol. “Look what we found.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Zuri pacedthe room that reminded Elena a little too much of a fucking tomb. “What’s the deal with the Victor thing?” she asked, not breaking her stride.
Elena felt the interminable minutes since Marisol had disappeared into the ground—into a literal repository for the dead—in the growing ache in her belly. Why the fuck did vampires need crypts? Why had she let her walk off without her? Her mind raced with doubt and mistrust.
“Hey.” Zuri interrupted thoughts and barreled toward her. “Are you listening to me?”
Elena pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against and walked toward the door in the ground. The one she’d opened again the moment Marisol left.
“Army Corporal Victor Serrano,” Elena said, attention on the steps leading down to a crypt built under sea level. Why wouldn’t they fill it in?
Zuri’s mounting irritation blasted Elena like radiation. It was like that all the time now. Frustration from Zuri. Anguish from Marisol. Elena had nearly forgotten what it felt like to experience anything else. Nearly three hundred years of sensation reduced to this.
“I don’t know what kind ofGuess Whoyou’re trying to play with me, but I quit.” Zuri rolled her eyes, disappointed that Elena couldn’t have a conversation with her. The sight of her walking away made it impossible for Elena to breathe.
Zuri leaned against the open doorway, looking out at the trees and the nearly obscured water beyond. Elena moved toward her. “That was Librada’s assumed name when she joined the Americans during the war.”
Zuri turned to lean against her back, watching Elena when she took up the other side of the doorway, foot propped up against the frame and weight resting on one shoulder. It was the closest they’d been while facing each other in a while, and Elena felt the proximity in the singing in her skin.
“Which war?” Zuri furrowed her brows.
“The very big one,” Elena replied, unsure why she was being coy, but her soul felt a little lighter in this space. Felt slightly less burdened thinking about something other than her failure with the cool night air between them. If only they were in Elena’s villa. The three of them together, far away from the danger that stalked her every waking moment.
Zuri’s dark eyes widened with delight. “Librada was out here cross-dressing to kill fucking Nazis?”
Elena chuckled, the rattle strange in her dry throat. “So many fucking Nazis.”
Zuri tipped her head to one side as if Librada just rocketed up her list of favorite people—short as it was.
“And what? Did Hel woo her with a grenade between her teeth?” Zuri joked, but she wasn’t entirely far off.
“Captain Thomas Landry, I believe, was the identity she stole,” Elena replied to Zuri’s evident surprise.
“Holy shit, I was kind of kidding.” Zuri’s smooth skin was luminous in the moonlight and calling for Elena’s touch. “They were together?”
Elena nodded, amused at Zuri’s enjoyment.
“Although, Jesus, the vibe between them was impossible to miss.” She shifted her weight. “They really met killing the shit out of Nazis?”
“Many vampires served in the war. And for reasons of ignorance and patriarchy, the females had to don male identities to be at their most lethal. Although nearly all of us aided the allies with intelligence and sabotage.”
She smiled to herself, remembering the trap she’d laid for German U-boats in Cuba, luring them in with the promise of hidden bases to resupply. Instead, they found her and Sofia waiting. They’d all done their part.
“Alright, fuck it. I’m invested. Here go words I never thought I’d say,” Zuri murmured. “Tell me how Victor and Thomas met.” She snorted. “I mean, I can’t imagine Lib dating anyone, but I guess dating in a foxhole checks out.”
Traveling eighty-five years in a blink, Elena was back at her desk in her Miramar estate with a letter in her hands. The Art Deco building, with its geometric design and curved edges, had been a jewel encased by flowering trees and swaying palms. Havana had been a vibrant city then. It was all new money and limitless progress. Elena’s lip twitched, remembering how it had all been destroyed by dictatorship dressed up as populism. She returned to the memory of Librada’s curved script on yellow paper.
“When she arrived in Northern France, it became apparent rather quickly that Victor’s irrepressible Spanish accent was a problem.” She smiled to herself.
No amount of dialect coaching had changed Librada’s speech. Elena had hired the best of the best tutors to no avail. The accent was as stubborn as the woman herself.
“Spain never declared for the axis powers, but its sympathies were clear.” Elena answered the question etched in Zuri’s darkeyes. “Librada was already concealing so many truths, it would be too easy for someone to mistake that for her hiding allegiance to the enemy.”
