For Love and Blood and Fury (Lilith’s Legacy #1)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Fuming, Zuri pulled up to where she expected to find Elena. If she thought ghosting her was going to keep her from making a scene, she’d forgotten who Zuri was. Good thing she didn’t mind reminding her exactly who she’d fucked with.

Lurching forward when she threw the car in park a second before it fully stopped, Zuri left her small hatchback parked between a Bentley and a Porsche. At noon, there were only a few cars in the pretentious converted warehouse. Outside, the air stank of diesel and seafood left in the sun. Why anyone would overpay for shitty drinks just to say they were at —

“Ma’am, you can’t park there,” a man with a valet polo shouted before Zuri reached the door.

Whirling around, Zuri glared at him with the ire of a millennia of women over being told what to do. Of being told no.

“I don’t want to tow—” The guy stopped his advance like Zuri had brandished a blade.

“If you so much as look at my car, I’m going to come back with Luna and Loba and feed them your spleen,” she roared, challenging him to take another step. To say one more word.

His eyes widened, face paling in the direct sunlight. With a nod and his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, Polo turned back to his shaded valet stand.

As soon as Zuri walked away from him, she knew she’d been an asshole. But she was too full of anger she couldn’t redirect.

Inside, the heat and blinding sun gave way to air conditioning and disorienting darkness. She blew past the hostess. Why did any place have to be so dark? If she ever visited as a patron, she’d be afraid she’d go home with Eva Mendes and wake up with Frankenstein’s monster.

When she reached the black door, she hit the buzzer and waited for one of Elena’s lackeys to open. It only took a few seconds before she escaped into the soundproof oasis of the private lounge.

Before Zuri could rampage her way to Elena’s office, she stopped just inside the doorway. Librada rarely answered the door, and the mood wasn’t usually so somber.

The surrounding energy was stagnant and chilling. Silent. It was completely silent despite a dozen vampires sitting around the lounge like it was some creepy ass wax museum.

Zuri’s stomach dropped. Everything in her body told her to turn and run. It was good advice, and she hated herself for not taking it.

“Where is she?” Zuri seethed.

Librada’s reddish-brown eyes flicked to Sofia, who was sitting at the bar. Sofia, who always had the chaotic energy of a homicidal tween, was motionless.

“Lib, what the fuck?”

With the personality of a dull machete, Librada looked like she was debating something. Realizing that Elena wasn’t in the office, that something had happened, Zuri’s skin turned clammy.

Zuri stayed within arm’s length of the door. Elena’s vampires obeyed her every command, but Zuri had never been in the viper pit without her. She couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t attack her. She wasn’t Elena’s girlfriend anymore. There was nothing to protect her. She needed to find out what was going on and get out.

“There was an attack,” Librada said, like that told Zuri the story.

“Attack?” Zuri scanned the group again. “Just fucking speak in full paragraphs. Where’s Elena? What the hell is going on?”

Zuri wished she could listen at double speed. Vampires truly lacked a mortal’s sense of urgency.

“By the time we were alerted, she was gone. We covered up the human’s death, but…”

Zuri couldn’t absorb any more language. Gone . The word was a sucker punch, snatching the air from her lungs and leaving a gaping hole in her chest.

Gone?

A wave of nausea rolled over Zuri, her surroundings spinning. “Elena is dead?” she whispered, debating whether she should bolt before she passed out.

“No, she’s not dead. She’s missing.” Librada looked at Zuri like she was an idiot. Like Zuri was supposed to read her cardboard box body language.

“Jesus.” Zuri clutched her chest, lungs burning from the rush of relief.

Librada’s expression darkened, her eyes cast down to her terrifying stiletto nails. “He did not survive.”

“What?” Zuri shook her head and got back on track. “Rewind. What do you mean Elena is missing?”

“After the attack, she was just gone,” Librada replied with visible dismay. Like hundreds of years of language had failed her. Like she didn’t have the words to explain.

“Can’t you use your internal find-a-friend and locate her? What do you mean, missing ?” Zuri couldn’t process the information. Couldn’t understand what the point of being a damn vampire was if they couldn’t use their heightened senses when they needed them most.

“It doesn’t work like that?—”

“Then how do you know she’s not dead?” Zuri couldn’t keep her voice down. Couldn’t stop the pounding in her chest and the crippling ache in her belly.

The vampires around her stirred, and Zuri felt them closing in even though they hadn’t stood.

“We would know,” Librada explained, patience thinning. “We would feel the loss.”

“So why can’t you sense where she is?” Zuri’s mind was racing in so many directions. Being the only point of interest for a cluster of bloodsuckers wasn’t helping calm her mind. She had the focus of a horror film victim trying to get the damn key in the door.

Librada’s demeanor was an iron door slamming shut. “We do not discuss intimate?—”

“Whatever.” Zuri cleared away the conversation, her desperation to get the hell out of there mounting. “I know your sense of smell is outrageous. That’s not some secret. Couldn’t you track her?”

“We think she ran,” Sofia, standing next to Librada, said under a crush of heartbreak. “We think she masked her scent from us and left to seek retribution on her own.”

Zuri shook her head. Elena loved her pack. She wouldn’t leave without them. Didn’t they know that?

“We’ve tried everything and we will continue at sundown,” Lib said by way of dismissal.

“You haven’t tried everything.” Reaching for her anger because fear was too hard to process, Zuri lifted her chin. “You haven’t tried me.”

Zuri turned away, resolute in her purpose and rushing through the noise of the bar. She pushed open the door, stepping back into the humid afternoon. Was Elena’s clan really waiting for sundown to scour the city? She couldn’t imagine sitting still in the face of that news.

Could she even trust them to tell her the truth? For all Zuri knew, Elena’s spawn could have turned her murderous impulses on their own mother and were playing at bereavement. Anything was possible and Zuri wasn’t about to put her faith in any vampires who weren’t Elena.

As she strode towards her car, she cursed under her breath. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Couldn’t believe she was letting Elena drag her back into her chaotic vampire bullshit.

Sliding into her driver’s seat, she slammed the car door shut. When she tried to take a deep breath, a shiver of unease slipped down her spine. A prickle of awareness, like eyes boring into her back. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing but the stressed out valets hoping she’d get her ugly duckling away from the status symbol cars.

Zuri gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, and forced herself to take a deep breath. She couldn’t let paranoia get the best of her. Not now. She had to focus on finding Elena.

But as she started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, the feeling of unseen eyes lingered, a chilling reminder she was stepping back into a world where danger lurked around every corner.

Fucking Elena. You better not be dead, or I’m going to kill you.