“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.”

“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.”

Santiago froze. Did Gaius simply sense that he was being hunted by the Commission? Or did someone—or something—whisper in his ear that the powerful Oracles were a danger to his dead mate?

He carefully considered his words. “Why would they be a threat to Dara?”

“Because she’s . . .”

“Gaius?”

“Because she’s not supposed to be here,” Gaius whispered in low tones, acting as if he feared his words might be overheard. “That’s all I know.”

Santiago studied the vampire’s gaunt face and the shadows beneath his eyes. Despite the blood staining his face that spoke of a recent frenzied feeding, he appeared like a man who’d been starved for weeks, if not months.

There was more wrong with Gaius than his missing sanity.

“What do you want from me?”

He again held out his hand. “Your forgiveness.”

Santiago deliberately folded his arms over his chest. Not even to gain information could he offer absolution.

“You didn’t kidnap Tonya for my forgiveness,” he pointed out, his frigid voice making Gaius drop his hand in defeat.