Darkness Avenged (Guardians of Eternity #10)(73)
Author: Alexandra Ivy

As it was, all Santiago wanted to do was chop off his head and be done with the nasty business.

But not yet, a voice warned in the back of his mind.

Nefri had insisted they needed information. And for now, Gaius was the only one who could tell him what the hell was going on.

“Dara has returned from the grave?” he repeated, making sure he hadn’t misunderstood.

“Yes.”

“You know that’s not possible.” He searched Gaius’s expression for some sign he was being controlled by another force. At the moment he couldn’t sense anything but the vampire’s seething madness. “You watched her burn.”

Gaius pressed a hand to his unbeating heart. “It’s a miracle.”

“Vampires aren’t capable of regenerating once they’re dead. They don’t even produce ghosts.”

An abrupt anger tightened Gaius’s gaunt face. “I was promised this. She is my reward for my faithful service.”

Santiago hissed in pain. Dara was a lovely, astonishingly gentle female who had blessed them all with her unwavering love. She wasn’t a damned reward.

“A reward from who?” he forced himself to ask.

“From the Dark Lord.”

Santiago shook his head. He’d known that Gaius had betrayed them to the evil deity for the opportunity to be reunited with his dead mate. But he still didn’t understand why.

“I know you were grieving, Gaius, but you’ve never been stupid,” he managed to point out, his voice coated with ice, but his weapons still sheathed. Kudos to him. “You had to suspect that it was a scam to lure you into the Dark Lord’s power.”

The once decisive, always-in-command vampire blinked as if confused by the question. “I had no choice. I had to . . .”

“What?”

“I had to bring her back.”

Santiago stiffened his spine, refusing to acknowledge the soul-deep loss that flickered through Gaius’s eyes. The same loss that he’d felt when Dara was taken from them.

“No matter what the cost?”

“No matter what the cost.” Gaius turned to pace across the floor, his gait oddly unsteady. “I had no choice.”

“So you keep saying, but we both know that’s a lie.”

“You don’t understand.”

A prickle of desperation crawled through the air. Santiago frowned. It wasn’t the pervasive violence that had choked the air in Louisiana or even the fear around the schoolhouse where they’d found poor Melinda. But it was without a doubt coming from Gaius.

A new talent like his shape-shifting? Or a warning that the strange spirit was working through him?

Instinctively he shifted closer to Tonya. If things went to hell he wanted to be near enough to make a grab for her.

“What’s to understand?”

“It was my fault.”

Santiago frowned. “We all feel guilty for Dara’s death. If I had been there then—”

“No.” Gaius abruptly turned to face him, his eyes burning with a bleak regret. “The attack was my fault.”

Santiago halted the denial on the tip of his tongue. Maybe this was more than the typical survivor guilt.

Maybe there was a deeper reason for Gaius’s madness.

“Why do you say that?”

Gaius turned his head, as if unable to meet Santiago’s steady gaze. “I had decided that our clan had grown powerful enough to expand our territory.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “After all, why be content with Rome when I could rule the entire empire?”

Santiago lifted his brows in surprise. “An ambitious plan.”

“Oh, I intended to begin small.” He waved a dismissive hand. “A simple takeover of the neighboring clan.”

“You never said anything about expansion,” Santiago accused him, belatedly accepting that he had never truly known this man. “I thought I was your most trusted soldier.”

Gaius turned back. “You were my son, not a soldier.”

“But you didn’t trust me with such vital information?”

A hint of impatience rippled over Gaius’s face. “Only because I hoped to achieve my goals without involving you or any other clan member.”

Santiago shook his head in disbelief. “You expected the clan chief to hand over his territory if you asked nicely?”

“I expected a quiet dagger in the back to avoid a messy war.”

Santiago curled his lip. Assassination. The coward’s choice.

“Et tu, Brute?” he mocked.

Gaius waved aside his scorn. “A bloodless . . .” He grimaced. “Well, an almost bloodless coup is always better than war.”

“Who was to hold the dagger?”

“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.”