Page 72 of Blood from the Marrow
“Salem witches use relics too,” Zuri explained, looking through the hole that had been blasted through layers of cement and rock to reveal what looked like a well of dark water. “My guess is that theirs used to be in there.”
“Used to be?” Marisol asked.
Zuri shook her head in disbelief. “Once coven grounds are consecrated with a relic, it doesn’t get moved.” Her mind raced. It was theoretically possible, but it was such a risk, no one would do it. Relics were the heart of magic and the transplant of vital organs was always tricky. It was more likely that they’d destroy or critically diminish the relic’s power.
“If Sayah killed the whole coven”—Marisol looked like the notion of so much death made her queasy—“why take their relic?”
A coven’s relic couldn’t possibly hold any value for a vampire… Could it? Zuri’s head was a fucking wasp’s nest of activity and she couldn’t see the picture that was trying to develop right in her face.
“That’s because they weren’t killed.” Elena looked down at a dust-covered writing desk. Her lips peeled away from her fanged teeth when she snarled. Eyes pitch black when they looked at Zuri, she said, “Sayah took them.”
Zuri bounded to the other side of the room with Marisol right behind her. On the table was a beautiful piece of cream colored stationary with initials embossed in gold at the top.
You’ll always be too late, the note said in looping cursive. The kiss pressed to the bottom of the card made Zuri’s stomach heave. It might have been red when Sayah left it, but blood oxidized when exposed to air.
“Too late, my ass.” Zuri clenched her jaw, magic surging at the edges of her skin like waves slamming the coast. “Bambi, get me a bowl of water.” Her stomach churned when she looked at Elena and then the note in her hand. Blood was a revoltingly effective tool for locating spells.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Racing toward nowhere,Marisol’s stomach churned. Elena sat up front, black eyes boring into the road, her body coiled rage waiting to spring.
They tried to kill her, Marisol reminded herself.They very nearly succeeded.If Elena had been taken to a different hospital. If the attack had occurred the night before. If Marisol had been pulled away to another patient. The spiraling thoughts slammed into each other in her mind, but they all landed in the same place. The witches they were racing toward would have killed Elena if Marisol hadn’t been there when she was brought to the hospital.
They wanted her to die, Marisol repeated to herself. And yet… she couldn’t drum up the same vengeance that had made Elena’s fangs appear. The incandescent rage making Zuri’s beautiful face an unrecognizable mask.
Marisol struggled to remember the image of Elena lying on the gurney, clothes torn and covered in blood, but all she could see was the coven house. The photos of smiling women in frames. The beanie someone had been knitting and left on an armchair. A shopping list on the kitchen counter. A world’s best grandma mug left to dry in the sink.
She couldn’t imagine Elena eviscerating someone’s grandmother. Nausea pushed Marisol’s morning coffee into the back of her throat. The burning acid made her eyes water. Images flashed in her mind, memories of sharp fangs and rending flesh and screams.
“Slow down,” Zuri said, attention on her phone where a map was open. “We’re close.”
Marisol’s vision blurred. She closed her eyes, but it wasn’t fast enough to stop the tear that dripped down her cheek. Wiping it away, she was morbidly grateful that Zuri and Elena were so focused on revenge they couldn’t see her struggling to hold herself together.
Minutes later, they were bouncing down a country road with nothing but fields on either side. When Zuri called for them to stop, they were in front of a weathered sign: O’Neil’s Meat Packing. Marisol choked down another wave of acid. Beyond the open gate was a lone, windowless building. A slaughterhouse. Unsure whether it was a good or bad sign, at least there wasn’t a single living thing in the unkept and overgrown grasslands around the building.
“What if it’s a trap?” Marisol managed, voice trembling despite her best effort to hide it.
Elena opened the window while they drove toward the building. Sniffing the air, her lip curled into an unrecognizable snarl. “No vampires. Only witches,” she all but hissed.
Taking slow, deep breaths, Marisol tried to steady her pounding heart. “It could still be a trap.”
No one acknowledged her. Zuri and Elena were both leaning forward. Both ready to kick open the car doors and run toward the witches inside.
“It reeks of blood,” Elena said, hand on the door handle, ready to leap. “Animals,” she muttered.
Marisol glanced at the air vents and imagined the stench of blood wafting in like toxic fumes. She shut her eyes and wished she was anywhere else.
Before the SUV rolled to a stop, Elena was already jumping from the front seat. Like she knew exactly where to go, she raced toward a heavy, rust-caked door. Once, EMPLOYEES ONLY must have been written in gleaming white letters. But now, the letters that weren’t faded were peeling off and all Marisol could see was PLOY. Everything about this was wrong.
“Maybe we should?—”
Elena kicked the shiny new chain wrapped around the double-door handles. It took three hard heel-strikes before one of the links weakened. Three strikes before Elena pulled the metal apart with her hands and unfurled the chain like a whip snapping behind her. Before she forced the door open with a sickening screech and the stench of death, old but palpable, flooded Marisol’s nose.
“Bambi.” Zuri’s voice was gentle but her grip around Marisol’s waist steady. “Baby,” she said so softly, it was all Marisol could do not to start sobbing. “Why don’t you stay in the car?”
Marisol didn’t realize she was dizzy until there were two sets of caramel brown eyes looking back at her. “No.” She wished her voice sounded anything but thready. “I’m coming with you.”
The regret in Zuri’s eyes made Marisol straighten. She didn’t want to be the poor little tagalong that couldn’t handle things. She hardened herself enough to ease the shaking in her knees and followed Elena into the dark, dank corridor.
