Page 51 of Blood from the Marrow
“Don’t leave me again,” Zuri said with a voice vibrating with emotion. “I won’t survive it.”
Elena’s soul fractured at the plea. She kissed Zuri with the desperation of a drowning soul gasping for fresh air. Zuri’s response was immediate, hands cupping Elena’s face, pulling her deeper into a kiss that tasted like forgiveness and last chance.
“Never again,” Elena promised against her mouth. “I swear to you, never again.” Her voice broke on the words. “I love?—”
The faint sound of shattering glass pulled Elena out of her reverie. She pulled back, straining to listen. The rumble was faint, but her instincts screamed trouble, and that warning system had never been wrong.
Marisol, her heart pounded the syllables even as she was already running. Already leaping into the darkness, chasing the trail of her and Lib’s scent.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Everything moved fasterthan Marisol could see. One moment there was a vampire snarling in front of her, and the next a blonde streak she almost recognized as Sofia.Sofia?
A scream tangled up with flailing arms and billowing clothes. Sofia, Marisol was sure now, had the other vampire beneath her as they plummeted from nearly the top of the tower. Time slowed as they fell. Marisol was stunned silent while Sofia held the vampire like a hawk might hold a fish—all talons and horrific rending.
And then the sickening crack of a skull hitting stone. The room spun and Marisol staggered backward until her back hit the wall. She struggled to stay in her body. To stay in the present. But her nervous system was in the past, in Sayah’s cellar with Narine’s decapitated sons and so much blood that Marisol choked on the memory alone.
“Do not reveal yourself, Child.” Sabina’s voice was a disembodied whisper.
Below, Sofia and Librada and Hel scaled the bookshelves, pulling the other two vampires off and dropping them to the ground. Hel and Librada moved around each other, working in unison like they were two arms extending from the same body.
Two more vampires streamed in through the open window, but Sabina didn’t give them a chance to get near Marisol. When Sabina leapt to meet the attackers in mid-air, it was more flight than should be possible.
Sabina moved with a grace that concealed her lethal nature. A nature Marisol was reminded of when Sabina opened her mouth and extended the longest fangs she’d ever seen. Marisol closed her eyes, but the inhuman scream was obviously not Sabina’s.
She forced herself to her feet when she’d realized she’d dropped to the ground, knees clutched to her chest. Vision blurry when she opened her eyes, and racing pulse making her vision dance, she made herself look over the edge. She couldn’t stand to think that one of them needed her help while she let her fears take her hostage.
There didn’t seem to be any more vampires coming through the window; on the ground, the ones still standing were outnumbered. Marisol blinked back inexplicable tears. The ones that appeared even after she told herself that Sofia was okay. The blood streaking her face wasn’t hers. Her throat hadn’t been savaged. Not this time.
And then the door leading to the crypt erupted with sound, a furious rattling like the solid wood might be ripped from its hinges. Using the momentary distraction, the only vampire left alive vaulted himself onto the stairs. But instead of running up to a lone Marisol, he all but flew across to a bookshelf. Like a frog, he sprang from one ledge to the other until he hurled himself out the window.
Without hesitation, Sofia followed him into the night.
“Librada, open this door!” Elena roared in Spanish, her muffled voice loud enough to echo in the tower.
The door bowed but didn’t break, and Marisol got the distinct feeling it had been bewitched somehow. Like the stones concealing the archive.
“I was reckless for a little light,” Sabina muttered toward the broken window.
Marisol descended the stairs as quickly as she could without stumbling on unsteady legs. By the time she made it to the ground, Librada had opened the door to the crypt and the last invader was no longer moving. Elena rushed in, brown eyes huge and wild the way they’d been the first time she’d seen them. So stricken with abject fear they made Marisol forget her own.
Elena bounded toward Marisol, catching her with her palms cradling her jaw. “Are you okay?” Her voice was thin and trembling and nothing like the one that had demanded entry.
Zuri was next to her seconds later, the same horror etched in her face. “What the fuck happened, Bambi?” She scanned her from top to bottom. “You couldn’t activate your wings?”
Pulse pounding with relief as her shock ebbed, Marisol shook her head and tried not to cry in front of the others. “I didn’t need to,” she replied, attention fixed on Elena so she didn’t have to look at the bodies in pools of blood.
Marisol’s heart lifted despite the lingering fear. Elena was looking at her—really looking at her—for the first time in weeks. Dark honey eyes were warm and familiar and dripping with the love Marisol had desperately missed. Elena looked more like herself than she had since Georgia. More present. It should’ve made Marisol sick that it had taken so much death to bring Elena back to her, but she could only reach for relief.
When Zuri was sure that Marisol didn’t have a visible scratch on her, she turned to the carnage on the floor. To Sofia who’d reappeared without Marisol’s notice.
“Who the fuck are these assholes, then?” She looked at her daughters. “And when the hell did you get here?” Her attemptto sound surprised was weak, like she’d expected Sofia to follow despite being told to stay. She turned to Sabina. “You look incredible for a…” Zuri cocked her head to one side. “What do you call someone who’s lived a thousand years? Somehow millennial seems inappropriate.”
Flooded with euphoria, Marisol chuckled despite standing in a sickeningly macabre scene. “Here comes the rant about late-stage capitalism.”
“What did they want?” Elena turned to ask Librada, apparently satisfied that Marisol was okay.
“They did not make demands,” Librada replied from where she was crouched, cleaning her hands with the back of a dead vampire’s shirt.
