“Oh dear.”
His grin widened.
This was getting out of hand. I put everything I had into the words I spoke, fear driving me. “Santos, sit down.”
He dropped to the floor so fast it looked like his legs had been knocked out from under him. Dahlia slid to the floor beside me, her eyes clenched shut tight.
I whipped around. “Dahlia?”
“Ask him,” she managed to say, though her lips looked like she struggled to form the words. I drew a big breath and hurried to where Santos sat on the floor, his eyes fogged with confusion.
I crouched in front of him, my hand seeming to lift of its own volition as I cupped his face. He leaned into my hand with a sigh.
“Santos, where did you get that oil from? The oil that burned me?”
He purred into my hand before answering, the vibration of the sound trickling along my skin in a not unpleasant way. “Was brought to me, a week ago. A man in a suit told me if I used it on you, he would reward me. He will help me take out Remo.” He leaned harder against me and licked the palm of my hand. I forced myself to sit there and let him.
“A man in a suit?” I didn’t like where this was headed. If Theseus got his hands on the snake oil . . .
“Yes.”
I struggled to keep my voice even. “What did he look like?”
“Handsome, bright-blond hair like the sun, blue eyes like the ocean.” He sighed and nipped at my hand.
I put my hands on both sides of his face, squeezing him. “Did he have a name?”
“Theseus.”
While I wasn’t surprised, I didn’t like that he’d been planning things a week before he’d even met me. Then again, it lined up with what Ernie had said. Theseus was playing a game, like chess, but only he could see the board and the pieces.
“Can you tell me what he said exactly?” I knew I was pushing my luck. Touching him, I could feel his mind begin to revolt against the control I was exerting. I went to my knees and brought his face close to mine, so close he could see nothing but me. The struggle in him slid away.
“He said to hang on to the oil, to use it if I stumbled on a great large snake, and to keep it safe for him. He wants to humiliate you, to make you suffer.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips over mine. I pulled back.
“I need to know how much of the oil you have and where you keep it.”
“Not a lot, only a flask. We diluted what we used on you to not waste it. Theseus told us to do that. I didn’t think it would still hurt you, to be honest.” Like he had a choice in his current honesty.
I jerked at the thought of the oil, the pain that had sent my mind into complete shutdown, being diluted. “Where is it?” I repeated, my words hard.
“In the cellar, behind the vodka.”
I started to let him go, and Dahlia put a hand on me. “Tell him to go to sleep.”
She had a point. It would buy us time. “Go . . .” A thought hit me, and I glanced at Dahlia once before I changed my mind.
“Why do you hate Remo?”
Dahlia sucked in a gasp. “Oh, that’s gossipy. I forgive you for everything earlier.”
My lips twitched.
Santos breathed out a tired sigh and leaned in so his forehead was on my shoulder, and I kept my hands on the back of his neck, touching his bare skin. “He was always my boss. In charge of me since we were children. I couldn’t stand it any longer. And I killed his favorite girlfriend, which probably didn’t help.”
Since they were children? I pushed him off my shoulder and stared at his face. Mentally I took away the long hair and added the piercings Remo had. “Fricky dicky, you’re his brother, aren’t you?”
Dahlia gasped and Santos grunted. “Not that I like to tell people, but yes. Remo’s my older brother.”
CHAPTER 10
“Go to sleep for one hour,” I commanded and let him go. He slumped to the floor, his head hitting the wood hard enough to make the thump echo in the room. I backed away from him, my mind racing.
“Holy shit on a Ritz Cracker! They’re brothers! That explains so, so much. Talk about sibling rivalry to the max.” Dahlia gasped and I grabbed her arm.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry. I don’t know if that’s actually going to hold him.”
“What do you mean? He was totally under.”
I unlocked the bedroom door and pushed her out ahead of me. “That’s the thing. He fought me all along. I don’t think we’ll have an hour.”
“How long?”
“Minutes,” I breathed.
“Shit.”
I nodded. “My thought exactly. Do you know where the basement is?”
She bolted ahead of me. “Through the kitchen.”
We ran down the stairs, and I tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong. The flask not being where Santos said, the other vampires coming in to check on their boss, Santos waking up. Any one of those things would spell disaster for us.
The gargantuan house was quiet as we leapt from the first landing of the staircase, dual thumps as we hit the floor in the main hall. Dahlia turned to the right, and I kept at her heels. We bolted through the kitchen . . . okay, she bolted and I slowed. The kitchen was my dream kitchen, and I couldn’t help but stop and stare. I ran my hand over the marble countertop with flecks of silver veining through it and found myself stopping at the high-end utensils. I grabbed two wooden spoons, longer than normal and used for large vats. I tucked them through my jeans’ belt loops. Not exactly weapons, but maybe in a pinch they would give me something. I ran my hand over the customized stove, and the—
“Alena, not now!”
“Right.” I snapped my eyes away from the pretties and followed Dahlia through a door I’d not noticed. The stairwell was narrow and nothing like the rest of the house. Old, dusty, musty.
“Cold storage isn’t really the same as a basement,” I said.
“Whatever. This is the only basement I know about.”
At the bottom of the stairs there was a click as Dahlia pulled a string and light flooded the tiny space. At least, tiny compared to the rest of the house.
“Look for the vodka,” she said.
I nodded and started checking the different labels. Very quickly I realized it was more of a wine cellar than a pantry. “Why would they keep so much booze? You can’t drink it.”
“But our victims can. If a vampire wants to get a real buzz on, they drink down a drunk.”
“Oh.” I breathed the word out and kept looking. “Here, I think this is vodka?”
Dahlia hurried to my side. “Yeah, Russian brand.” We pulled the bottles off and threw them behind us. They crashed into the far wall. Behind the last bottle, the glittering of a large flask beckoned. “You’d better grab it.” I took the bottle of vodka and clutched it to me.
Dahlia grabbed the flask and spun the lid.
I squeaked and took several steps back. She breathed it in. “Smells like licorice.”
“Yeah, that’s it, then.”
Time to go. I spun and froze. Two shadowed figures slid down the stairs. Apparently our luck had run out.