Page 73 of Blood from the Marrow
Covering her nose with her shirt, Marisol darted down the hallway. Cinderblock walls with chipping paint were so narrow and the floor scuffed and dented—it was impossible not to imagine helpless, sentient beings taking their last breathes in this lightless hell.
“Sayah is a sick fuck,” Zuri panted with her hand on Marisol’s back while they ran. “Breathe through your mouth.”
Marisol couldn’t do that. Couldn’t make herself breathe at all.
Elena was kicking in a massive door with a row of locks gleaming with their newness. Each thunderous strike deepened the ache in Marisol’s gut. If she couldn’t handle the destruction of abandoned property, how the hell was she going to survive this?
Before Elena yanked the door open to reveal six women huddled together in a room surrounded by meat hooks hanging from the ceiling like the most sickening scene from a horror film. As if it weren’t enough, the huge room was illuminated by a single lamp.
An older woman stood at the front of her quivering coven, arms spread as if to shield them with her body. Dirty and terror-stricken, it was obvious they’d been trapped in this hellscape for days at minimum.
“Make this quick, Elena,” Zuri said like she doubted whether she had the stomach for killing half a dozen grandmothers and a petrified girl young enough to be her daughter.
“God, Elena. Look at them,” Marisol screeched, wobbly legs darting her forward even if she couldn’t feel the floor under her feet. “They’re scared to death.” She grabbed Elena by the shoulders like she might shake her out of the unthinkable.
Elena focused her black eyes on the knot of witches. She didn’t look at Marisol when she said, “They weren’t scared to death when they tried to kill me.” Her voice was so cold. So distant. So unrecognizable.
“We had no choice in that.” A woman’s voice rose behind Marisol, trembling but absolute.
Elena barred her fangs. Marisol’s wings nearly burst free to block the witches from Elena’s gaze. It took all of her meager control to stop it.
“What, did you slip and fall into your cauldron and happen to make vampire-killing poison, Goody Osburn?” Zuri spat, but this time her doubt was broadcast clearly in her wavering tone.
“A vampire showed up at our coven door and demanded we make a potion for him,” the woman replied with growing confidence, but Marisol didn’t look back at her. She didn’t dare move out from in front of Elena even if it only offered the illusion of control.
“That’s convenient?—”
The witch didn’t let Elena finish. “And when I reported this man to the cartel leader, she threatened my entire coven with annihilation if we didn’t comply.” The woman’s voice warmed with anger. “So, no. Your kind has not given us a choice.”
“You must have heard that Narine and Baylor are both dead,” Zuri said, moving closer to Elena’s side.
“A lot of good that did us when a vampire I’d never met murdered my coven.” Her voice cracked and Marisol’s chest burned. “When she laughed while telling me how any second after she locked us in here someone else I’d never met would come slaughter us.” Her laugh was closer to a sob. “She hoped that we’d wait here long enough to imagine all the ways you’d make good use of these hooks.”
Elena’s muscles relaxed just enough that Marisol risked turning her back on her. Still standing between Elena and the witch, Marisol furrowed her brow. “Sayah?”
“That’s what the others called her,” she replied.
“How long have you been in here?” Marisol wanted to take a step toward the witches, but she didn’t want to frighten them any more than they already were.
The woman didn’t drop her protective stance even an inch. “We have no way of knowing. That vampire thought making it impossible to know the time would add tothe fun.”
“Jesus Christ,” Zuri cursed.
“You do not deny making the toxin that nearly killed me?” Elena asked like nothing else mattered but that single fact in a vacuum.
“Under duress,” she replied.
“So you just happened to have a recipe for killing vampires lying around?” Zuri asked.
“My coven has been developing brews and tinctures for generations,” she replied with unexpected pride. “Some are defensive.”
Zuri crossed her arms. “So you did have a?—”
“They took my daughter.” The woman’s grief was a knife driven into Marisol’s belly. “I repurposed what I had in the hopes of getting her back and they killed her anyway.” The young woman behind her let out a strangled cry and Marisol knew the girl had lost her mother. The pain in her own body was unbearable. “They ripped out my heart and now you’re here to end my life and my line, so just do it.”
“Why did they take your relic?” Zuri asked before Elena could take a step.
Marisol looked at her. Was she trying to stall? Trying to find a way to keep them alive?
