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

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Sleep had been fitful and full of nightmares. All night, Zuri had relived the attack in the hospital. In her memory, the vampire’s face was massive and distorted by rage. His mouth was open abnormally wide. His jaw unhinged to swallow her whole like some mutant anaconda.

The moment the sky turned the barest pink before full sunrise, she was out of bed. Eager to get away from the shadows and lingering memories. While tiptoeing toward her small bathroom, Zuri almost felt bad for making Elena sleep in the closet.

She didn’t need stupid vampire senses to know the change in her house bothered Elena. But what had she expected? Their breakup had been irrevocably final.

Did she think Zuri would keep that damn window tinting forever? Did she want Zuri to think of her every time she took half her plants outside to get enough light? Inconvenience herself until she died?

While she brushed her teeth quietly, she decided that Elena probably wanted that. She probably thought Zuri would spend the rest of her mortal life pinning after her… Or maybe she hoped Zuri would change her mind. Rinsing her mouth, she decided even Elena wasn’t that delusional.

On her way out of the bathroom, Zuri avoided the parts of her wood floor that creaked. When she hit one inadvertently, she froze, attention turning to the lump on the floor. In the pale light only starting to illuminate the house, Marisol was a small, pathetic bundle under Zuri’s extra quilt.

She shouldn’t feel bad, she told herself. It wasn’t her fault that Elena couldn’t stop complicating her life, even with retrograde amnesia or whatever the hell was going on with her. It was Elena’s fault that there were one too many in the house. Was she supposed to share her bed with a stranger just because Elena had picked up a stray?

Zuri’s pain-free back tugged at her guilt. The bed was more than big enough for both of them, but that shouldn’t matter, she decided before pulling on her boots and slipping outside. None of this was her responsibility. Elena could whittle Bambi a bed out of sticks if she felt so strongly about it.

In the early morning, the mosquitos followed her while she went to check on her chickens first. From the small barn, she grabbed a bucket of homemade chicken feed. It was full of ingredients she harvested herself to make sure they were really organic.

By the time she finished cleaning, laying down new straw, and refilling the water containers, the sun was well and truly up. Despite being ready for a shower, Zuri decided to reinforce the wards around the property even if she didn’t have the extra power of the full moon.

Zuri had no reason to think they had been damaged, but she hadn’t prepared them to defend against an invading army. Without knowing who was looking for them, she couldn’t take any chances.

Instead of using the golf cart hooked up to the plug on the side of the house, Zuri walked up the gravel path to the huge greenhouse in a clearing surrounded by small citrus plants. For the first time, she wondered whether she should have insisted on taking Loba and Luna with her. She hadn’t seen the dogs when she was in Elena’s place, she realized belatedly.

A pit opened in her stomach. When she and Elena were together, the dogs loved being on the farm. They’d accompany Zuri on her chores and refused to sleep anywhere but next to the chicken coop at night, as if they understood that the dozen hens and one small but valiant rooster needed protecting.

Convincing herself that the viper’s nest would never harm the dogs, and trying not to wonder whether Elena’s most trusted had anything to do with the attack, Zuri opened the glass door to the greenhouse.

In the space most sacred to her, Zuri took a deep breath. The humid air of the greenhouse, thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine, welcomed her home. Weak sunlight streamed through the glass panels, illuminating rows of lush plants and fragrant herbs.

She moved with purpose, collecting first a handful of rich, dark soil from a pot of newly sprouted basil. The earth would ground her wards, anchoring them to the land and providing a sense of stability and concealment. She whispered a prayer to the earth, asking for its strength and protection.

Next, she moved to a rain barrel nestled near the back of the greenhouse, its surface shimmering with the reflection of the morning sun. She dipped a small clay bowl into the water, collecting the liquid that would imbue her wards with fluidity and adaptability, allowing them to shift and change as needed. She invoked the power of water, asking for cleansing and protection.

From a shelf near the entrance, she retrieved a small, fire-resistant bowl and a box of matches. She struck a match and dropped it on a small pile of dried rosemary and sage. The pungent aroma filled the air, chasing away any lingering negativity. Fire brought purification and strength, burning away the darkness. She whispered a prayer to the fire, thanking it.

Armed with what she needed, she set out to check the wards she had positioned at each cardinal point on the grounds. She hummed into the breeze, knowing it would carry her intentions, weaving them into the fabric of her wards. Even if it wasn’t her element, she whispered a prayer to the wind, asking it for clarity.

“Good morning.”

“Jesus!” Zuri cursed when she nearly dropped the heavy burlap sack.

“I’m so sorry. I thought you saw me.” Bambi charged toward her, a mug in each hand. “I really didn’t mean to scare you.”

In the morning light, Marisol’s eyes were the greenish brown of mystical forests. Her face was even more dangerously pretty and dripping with an earnest concern Zuri didn’t want to see.

“I, um, made you coffee.” When Marisol’s cheeks flushed bright pink, the mossy green around her pupils ignited and made her freckles appear to multiply. “I thought maybe you didn’t make any because I was sleeping, and?—”

“It’s fine,” Zuri said to put her out of her rambling misery. “I was focused on the wards.” She continued walking, arms too full to take the stupid mug.

“Elena mentioned those. What are they?” Marisol followed her to the golf cart, offering her a mug as soon as she set the sack down on the passenger side of the cart.

“They keep intruders away from my home,” she said, a little more pointedly than she’d intended, and accepted the coffee.

“I wasn’t sure how you took it, but I thought, who doesn’t like cafe con leche,” her words somewhere between a statement and a question.

Taking a sip, Zuri made a rumbling sound in her throat instead of admitting that it was delicious.

“Can I help?” Marisol asked.

Zuri wanted to say no. To tell her she didn’t need someone who didn’t know anything about anything following her around. But her eyes were so big and her energy was so damn sincere. Zuri couldn’t make her useless mouth move.

With a roll of her eyes, she huffed a “Whatever” before jumping into the driver’s seat. Marisol moved the sack to sit between them then slipped into the passenger side.

“I’ve been meaning to say something,” Marisol started, shifting in her seat to face Zuri while she drove due east. Because of her affinity to water, she always started with the ward facing the ocean, even if it was miles away. “What you walked in on at the hospital”—she gripped her mug with both hands when they hit a bumpy patch—“I would never do that with a patient.”

Zuri chuckled and took a swig of her coffee before she spilled any. “Oh, okay. I must have been having a stroke and hallucinated what I saw with my own eyes.”

“That’s not what happens with a stroke,” Bambi shot back, her full lips in a little smirk Zuri forced herself to look away from. She rolled her eyes for good measure.

“I’m serious, though. I don’t want you to think I’m that kind of person. That was the first time—I normally would never have ever crossed a line—I just?—”

“Yeah, well, Elena has a way of making you do shit that’s stupid, crazy, and dangerous but just seems like the most fun,” she said to put the woman out of her misery.

With everything that happened in the hospital, Zuri hadn’t even thought about Elena being Marisol’s patient. It’s not like Elena was some vulnerable human. Bambi was on the thin end of that power imbalance. The thought settled in Zuri’s chest until she pushed it aside.

“If you knew that about her, why did you come for her and nearly get killed in the process?”

It was a reasonable question. One Zuri decided not to answer. She looked at her forearm instead. Looked at the jagged line that had already thinned and turned white. Zuri would have bled out if it hadn’t been for Marisol.

She’d had half her coffee by the time they reached the eastern ward. Zuri put the mug in the cupholder and jumped out of the cart.

“So what do you do to it?” Marisol said, looking up at the intricate clay, iron, and hemp rope design hanging from a mature mango tree that gave her the full creeps.

Zuri stopped while reaching into the sack, her stomach clenching. “You can see it?”

Marisol looked back at her, blonde hair swaying against her long neck in the breeze. “This big ass thing that looks like it belongs in the Blair Witch movie?” She laughed. “Obviously. Were you trying to camouflage it?” She looked at Zuri like she was a kindergartener with a particularly hideous hand turkey she couldn’t find a way to compliment.

Without telling her that the wards were meant to be invisible to all humans, vampires, and witches that weren’t her, Zuri explained that they worked to disrupt the senses. Different elements affected beings differently, but the sensory disruption was similar.

Using disorienting sounds and smells, the property faded into its surroundings for uninvited humans. Subtle energy barriers physically repelled vampires, making them feel the agony of the sun if they tried to push beyond the discomfort. And for witches, Zuri’s home was armed against magical intrusion, shielding her property from invasive spells and alerting her to any attempts to breach her defenses.

“So why don’t I feel any of those things?” Marisol asked when Zuri was finished with the last ward and they were in the cart, bouncing back to the house.

“Because you’re my guest,” she replied honestly, but that didn’t explain why they were visible to her.

She didn’t know why Marisol could see the wards. Even Del and Avani couldn’t see them until she deactivated them.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Zuri asked when she lurched to a stop in front of the shed affixed to the side of the house.

Marisol’s smile was too bright. “No,” she chuckled. “Why?”

Fleeing from the warming sensation blooming in her belly, Zuri all but sprinted for the shed. When she returned, she tossed the first of many heavy ass tarps at Marisol.

“Come on, Bambi. Let’s put these up before Elena has a meltdown about being confined to the closet.” She turned her back on her, getting away from her disorienting presence.