Page 88 of Blood from the Marrow
Judith didn’t hesitate. With a hard flap of her wings, she willed herself upward in time to catch the rogue lightning strike square in the chest. Zuri gasped, the sound of lightning hitting bone too close to the awful crack of it hitting a tree.
And then Judith was completely still and falling toward the pool deck like a fucking meteor. Zuri looked away to avoid watching her hit the stone floor. Too bad it didn’t do anything to mute the sickening thud her body made when it landed.
“Judith!” Sofia’s scream forced Zuri’s attention back to them in time to see all the Aglion rush toward them.
Kneeling at Judith’s side, Sofia was obviously unconcerned with the sight of Judith’s broken leg sticking out at an angle that made Zuri’s stomach lurch.
“The lightning strike wasn’t going to kill me,” Sofia said, looking down at a grimacing Judith like she couldn’t fathom what had made her take the hit.
When Avani and Candela moved a few feet away from them, Zuri followed.
“Yeah, well. Me either,” Judith replied, voice hoarse and strained like she was trying to conceal her pain. “Why should you get all the fun?” she added, as if to minimize that she’d taken a million volts just to spare Sofia.
From several feet away, Zuri had a front-row seat to something shifting between them. Sofia rested her hand on Judith’s chest, her gaze lingering on Judith who was looking up at her like she was hungry to be seen, like she wanted Sofia to know that she’d acted out of more than just duty. And then Sofia’s face softened into a gentle expression Zuri had never seen her wear.
“This is some realMatrix-level shit,” Candela muttered when she slipped in next to Zuri’s side.
Zuri stepped back when the healing Aglion swarmed Judith but Sofia didn’t move out of the way. Her musing about whether Sofia had a crush and whether she should tell Elena evaporated when Clara rushed to the place next to Marisol near Judith’s mangled leg.
The two of them were the strongest healers. Even Marisol had begrudgingly admitted that her power was strongest when she linked with Clara’s. Hel didn’t have anything about familial connection in her notes, but if the Aglion, like witches and vampires, were at their best in a group, it made sense that blood bonds would make their power even more potent.
Uneasy, as if it was her own discomfort making her muscles clench, Zuri watched Marisol stiffen when Clara put her hand over hers on Judith’s knee. The tension was palpable, but so was the magic flowing between them. Judith’s leg was alreadystraightening, the bone knitting itself back together with an audible pop that made everyone wince.
“Earth to Zuri.” Candela snapped her fingers in her face. “Did you hear me?”
Zuri shook off her worry that things were moving too fast for Marisol, even as Clara’s pain was still so fresh in Zuri’s chest she was sure the woman would have done anything to stay with Marisol if it had been a viable option. “What?”
“What I saw,” Candela said like she was obviously repeating something. Useless when Zuri clearly hadn’t heard her. “Did Avani tell you?”
She snapped into focus and tried not to stress about Marisol. It had been a few days since she’d been in Clara’s memories. Since Marisol had cried herself to sleep while letting go of so much old baggage. Things still felt so fragile.Marisolfelt so fragile, even if she tried to hide it. That girl sucked at hiding her feelings. There wasn’t a single thing she didn’t broadcast in her big hazel eyes.
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” Candela asked, prompting Zuri for a response.
“That there is barely any fucking magic after their relic was snatched and they legit almost took out a badass vamp and now they’re holed up in their gingerbread house making potions and shit?” Zuri recapped helpfully. “What exactly did you see?”
Candela explained how she’d volunteered to bring the Salem witches lunch because she was a “nosy bitch.” As soon as she’d stepped in the doorway to drop off their food, they’d hurried to conceal whatever the hell they were doing with huge pots.
“It smelled like a fuck-ton of something. Something potent and shit.” Candela rubbed the red coven tattoo on her forearm like it itched from her earlier proximity to magic.
Zuri nodded.
“They almost killed your girl with some potion shit like that,” she added like somehow Zuri might have forgotten. “Aren’t you worried that they might try something?”
Brujas didn’t deal in potions the way Salem witches did. Zuri should be worried that she didn’t know what the hell they were up to, her only comfort that they’d passed Elena’s compulsion about not meaning her harm. But they hadn’t meant Elena any harm when they killed her sons. When they nearly killed her.
And yet, all Zuri could see when she looked around the pool and sprawling gardens were all the people working together toward the same goal. The Veil witches would be arriving from New Orleans that night after having agreed to help Bernice. So many were willing to put their lives on the line.
“Maybe they’re making something to defend themselves with,” Candela considered after a beat. “I mean… We’re on Noah’s Arc and we’re trapped between the lions.”
Zuri knew she meant that the vampires far out-numbered the witches even if they counted the Aglion as their own. She’d gotten so used to calling Aglion witches in front of the vampires she’d started to believe it. “Yeah,” she agreed with a smirk. “But we’re the fucking scorpions.”
She turned from her coven and started toward the main house. It was easier to cut through to the witches’ house from there.
“Where are you going?” Candela called behind her.
“To ask them what the hell they were making,” she replied over her shoulder. “When the Veil witches get here, they need to see I run a tight fucking ship!”
But even as she said it, Zuri felt the weight of that responsibility settling on her shoulders like a lead blanket. Three covens. Three different kinds of magic. Vampires who could snap her neck before she finished a spell. Aglion who were stillfiguring out how to work together without accidentally frying each other.
