“I approached the neighboring chief ’s general,” Gaius admitted. “I had heard rumors the vampire lusted after the chief ’s mate. It was a simple matter to convince him that once his chief was dead he could have the mate in his bed. I gave him my weapon to perform the deed.”
Santiago pulled the pugio from the pocket of his jeans and tossed it in the middle of the floor. The silver blade of the Roman dagger shimmered in the light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“This weapon?”
Gaius frowned, as if trying to figure out how Santiago had gotten his hands on the dagger.
“Sí,” he said in a clipped voice. “Even though I wasn’t going to be the one striking the killing blow, I wanted the clan to know who was behind the plot so they would bow to me.”
Not only a coward, but a delusional coward.
Idiot.
He rolled his eyes. “You trusted a vampire who would betray his own leader?”
“A mistake.” A surge of fury slammed into Santiago with enough force to send him reeling backward before it abruptly shifted to a vast, grinding sorrow. “But at the time I was blinded by my own arrogance. I was so certain I was stronger and smarter than any other vampire. I felt invincible.”
Santiago heard Tonya’s soft sobs even as he battled against the urge to fall to his knees beneath the weight of the choking sadness.
“What went wrong?” he asked between gritted teeth.
“I’ll never know for certain.” Gaius scrubbed his hand over his face, his shoulders bowed with a weariness he could no longer disguise. “Perhaps the general lost his nerve and confessed his sins to his chief, or he was foolish enough to brag of his plans to a fellow clansman. But it was two nights later when we were attacked. Dara was burned, my clansmen slaughtered, and I found that”—he pointed toward the dagger lying on the floor—“stabbed into my pillow.”
“And so you sold your soul to make up for your bungled attempt to become emperor?”
“Dara paid the cost of my conceit,” Gaius said, a visible shudder wracking his thin body. “I would have sold my soul a thousand times over to bring her back.”
Santiago furrowed his brow, assuming the seeds of his sire’s madness must have been planted in that moment. “Even knowing it’s a futile dream?”
“I will admit that I began to fear that I’d been taken for a fool. The Dark Lord”—he spit out the name of his former master—“proved to be a disappointment. Or so I thought.”
“What do you mean?” Santiago pressed. Not because he gave a damn. Gaius had proven over and over he was unworthy of Santiago’s forgiveness. But he needed to understand how the vampire could have become infected by the dangerous spirit.
“I awoke in the warehouse to discover that Dara was with me.”
Santiago shook his head. He’d been in the warehouse during the bloody battle with the Dark Lord. Even with all the chaos he would have known if Dara was near.
“You mean with you in spirit?”
“No . . . she’s here,” Gaius insisted. “In this house.”
Okay, enough. The vampire was either trying to trick him or so Froot Loops that he was imagining his deceased mate had been returned from the dead.
“I searched the house before coming into the cellars,” he said, his flat tones warning he wasn’t in the mood to be jerked around. “There’s no one here beyond the humans and Tonya.”
Gaius hesitated, his eyes shifting toward the open door as he used his senses to search for his missing mate. “She must have . . .”
“What?”
The older vampire frowned in confusion before at last giving a shake of his head. “She must be hiding until we’re certain that you can be trusted.”
“Me?” Santiago glared at the man who’d caused so much pain. “I’m not the one who betrayed my people.”
Gaius winced, holding out his hand in a silent plea. “There hasn’t been a night that has passed that I haven’t regretted leaving you behind, my son.”
Using the legitimate excuse to shift away from the gesture of reconciliation, Santiago edged to the side. Still, Gaius remained poised between him and the silent Tonya. He needed to get closer.
“It’s too late. . . .”
“But it isn’t,” Gaius harshly interrupted him. “Dara has been returned. We’ll be together as a family again.”
Santiago swallowed a growl of impatience. Obviously his sire’s insanity went beyond just thinking his mate was hiding nearby if he thought Santiago would ever consider him a part of his family.
“And that’s why you kidnapped Tonya?” he snapped.
Gaius glanced over his shoulder at the trembling imp. “In part.”
“What’s the other part?”
There was a long silence before Gaius turned back. Almost as if he was debating how much to confess.
“Dara is in danger,” he at last said.
Santiago didn’t bother to try and argue that Dara couldn’t possibly be in danger. He could only hope that they were at last getting to the point of Tonya’s kidnapping.
“In danger from what?”
“The Oracles.”