Page 30 of Blood from the Marrow
Marisol laughed. A true, surprised little shriek. She checked Zuri’s forehead with the back of her hand like Zuri’s grandmother would have done when she was a kid. “Are you okay? Did you really just?—”
“Promise me,” she insisted, sure that Librada would stop at nothing to keep Marisol safe.
“I promise,” Bambi whispered against her lips before kissing her gently.
“And if you get the slightest sense that Clara is bullshit?—”
“I’m out of there,” she promised before pulling Zuri into another kiss. This one was deeper, slower. Zuri’s hands trembled when they cupped Bambi’s face, terrified that this moment of warmth and connection might be their last. She poured everything into their kiss—her fear, her fierce need to keep Marisol safe, her desperate hope that Elena would find her way back to them before it was too late.
Zuri’s lips were still tingling and her chest was still aching when she went inside. To her surprise, Librada wasn’t at her self-designated station at Elena’s door. When she found her, Librada was in the smallest bedroom in the penthouse. A room smaller than their walk-in closet.
Kneeling at a low side table that had been in the living room, Librada’s normally stoic demeanor had devolved into actual statue. Head bowed in front of seven red clay bowls and a matching pitcher, Librada didn’t open her eyes when she said, “You may stay.”
Zuri wanted to snap that she didn’t need to witness whatever weird vampire cult shit Librada was doing, but she managed to clench her jaw rather than open her mouth. Elena hadn’t told Zuri much about the time Librada had joined a cult obsessed with Lilith, but she’d known that Elena thought it was all bullshit.
Zuri stood there, unsure how to leave without being an asshole, but not wanting to intrude. She shifted her weight between her feet.
“I have not done this in a century,” Librada said in an unnaturally relaxed tone.
She picked up the pitcher and poured the same amount of water into each bowl. The symbolism was obvious enough. Lilith pouring herself into the seven original vampires. Hera, Jezebel, Medusa, Cleopatra, Hecate, Ishtar, and Circe.
The ritual was obviously soothing for Librada. She was as at ease as a woman with fingernails filed to points could be. Pity, foreign and nauseating, bloomed in Zuri’s chest. Elena’s right hand was so lost without her, she was grasping at anything that could give her life purpose and meaning. Zuri knew that feeling.
“You might need another bowl,” Zuri said. “Your cult must not have told you about the Aglion being born from Lilith too.”
Librada finished her display before getting to her feet with the grace of a ballerina. She didn’t look surprised at Zuri’s comment, and she wondered if Elena had already told her about the lost history in Marisol’s mind. The one they hadn’t been able to access again.
“It’s an order,” Librada said earnestly. “Not a cult.”
Zuri almost took a step back. In the years they’d known each other, Elena’s top guard dog had always treated her with distrust. With thinly veiled animosity. Zuri didn’t really know how to handleearnest.
“And I had never heard of the Aglion when I was with them,” she added, like the fact made her sad. A few months ago Zuri wouldn’t have guessed Librada had any range of emotions.
Desperate to distract herself from the wrongness of being friendly, Zuri reached for a joke. “Well, if they’re anything like human religions, they’re probably hiding all the good secrets with the gold in a vault somewhere.”
Librada’s auburn eyes, less like oxidized blood in the low light, flashed with something. Zuri could almost hear her thoughts whirling, going in a thousand different directions at once. She couldn’t imagine what the hell went on inside Lib’s brain and she sure as shit didn’t want to add that house of horrors to her nightmare plate.
“Before all of this,” Zuri said, recapping Sayah’s viciousness with the flick of her wrist, “Elena was tracking down an artifact for me. Something from an old shipwreck.” She couldn’t remember the details from what seemed like another lifetime ago.
Librada nodded. “I read the Portuguese ship’s manifest.”
Unsure how much to say, Zuri went with the simple fact. “I need one.”
“There were several pieces Elena was negotiating over,” Librada replied, because of course she’d already known Zuri’s business. Though right then, Zuri couldn’t find the will to be annoyed about it. “Which do you require?”
“It doesn’t really matter.” Hope lifted in Zuri’s chest and made her want to take off in a sprint. “The oldest thing in the best shape after sitting at the bottom of the fucking ocean will do.”
Librada nodded again, but this time it was like a willing soldier giddy to accept an order. Well, as giddy as someone whose face barely moved could be. “Right away,” she said, like it was totally normal that Zuri was giving her a job. She started for the door and turned back. “And I shall inquire with the Order,” she added before disappearing.
Zuri had barely recovered from Librada’s entirely too pliant demeanor when she started on the hunt for Sofia. Sofia, whom she found in an actual closet in a storage room leading to the garage. Sitting in the corner among boxes like a small feral cat afraid in an alley, Sofia looked like a child. Similar to how she must have looked when Elena found her young and bleeding on a street in Italy. Except this girl was crocheting the longest, most pathetic scarf from what had to be a whole craft store’s worth of yarn.
When Sofia looked up at her, she didn’t speak. It was obvious that the vampire hadn’t slept. Hadn’t eaten. She was more lost than Librada and stuck in some disoriented loop.
Zuri offered her the same thing Elena had all those years ago. Revenge. “I think those witches who made the poison are still alive.” She didn’t need to specify what poison. “I’m going to find them. And I’m going to kill them.” Sofia got to her feet, already looking more like her little homicidal self. “Will you help me?”
There was something disturbing about someone who looked so young being so ruthless. But when Sofia smiled, the same thirst for vengeance in her big blue eyes making Zuri’s blood hot, Zuri smirked.
Chapter Fifteen
