Darkness Avenged (Guardians of Eternity) (29 page)

Sally braced herself, muttering an attack spell beneath her breath. She didn’t believe it would actually damage the vampire, or whatever the hell was controlling him, but it was all she had.

Then, even as she felt a massive power beginning to build in the room, Gaius was suddenly turning toward the door, his hiss of annoyance scraping over Sally’s raw nerves.

“I warned you, Santiago,” he growled, seeming to forget Sally. “Now Nefri will pay for your arrogance.”

Santiago didn’t do helpless.

After he’d been pulled out of the Gladiator pits beneath Barcelona, he’d sworn that he’d never again be in a position where he was at the mercy of another.

A mistake, of course.

He should have known that the minute he’d made that bitter pledge, it would curse him. Life was nothing if not perverse, and what could be more destined to force him to face his worst nightmare than declaring it could never happen again?

Now he stood next to Nefri, his muscles quivering as he battled his urge to charge across the floor of the warehouse and rip off Gaius’s head.

He told himself he was biding his time.

That was why he’d agreed to kidnap the witch despite his grand pronouncement he would never, ever betray his brothers. And why he was standing here like a damned mannequin while the bastard revealed the truth of his reason for traveling to the warehouse.

He’d left his clue with Styx on the off-chance that the Anasso would be able to track them. And then positioned himself so he would be able to grab Nefri and escape if the opportunity presented itself.

Tonya, after all, had been left behind in Wisconsin and by now should have been able to create a portal to take her back to his club. So all he had to worry about was the female standing like a statue beside him.

But, while he could pretend he had some sort of control over the situation, the moment Gaius glanced in their direction he knew it was an empty lie.

He’d become a helpless pawn who had not only used his connection to the Anasso to kidnap an innocent young female, but he’d led his brothers to this warehouse all because he was willing to sacrifice everything and everyone to protect Nefri.

And now . . .

Now he could sense Styx and at least four other vampires approaching the warehouse and Nefri’s power beginning to swell in an awful tidal wave of looming destruction.

Rock, meet hard place
, a voice mocked in the back of his mind.

For all his efforts he’d done nothing more than make matters worse.

So what the hell was he going to do now?

Styx and his vampires would be breaking through the door in less than a heartbeat. At the same time Gaius would send Nefri into a mindless bloodlust. The battle between the vampires would be epic and violent and lethal.

Which meant that he had less than a nano-second to choose between two very bad, very awful decisions.

He picked the very awful one.

And more importantly, the one that Gaius would never have prepared for.

Not giving himself time to think, he reached down to snatch a stray piece of rebar off the floor. Then, as Nefri trembled beneath the surge of bloodlust, he stepped behind her and with one smooth motion he slammed the bar against the back of her head to send her crumpling to the ground.

The blow was hard enough to knock her out, but not hard enough to cause permanent damage. Which meant he would only have a few minutes to come up with a better plan before she was awake and on the rampage.

Using the fury that boiled through him at being forced to hurt the female he loved, Santiago turned and charged Gaius. With a roar, he pinned the vampire to the wall by the simple process of shoving the rebar through his heart and into the brick wall. Then with a twist he bent the rebar so it would be damned painful for Gaius to pull his way free.

Without missing a beat, he’d raced to slam shut the steel door that was the only entrance into the room beyond the windows covered by thick boards. Then, grabbing the handle, he yanked it upward, feeling the lock twist until it was jammed.

Only then did he spin on his heel to return and glare at the creature who’d caused nothing but pain and misery since its arrival in this world.

Pinned against the wall, the . . . thing seemed impervious to the rebar that was stuck through his heart, his eyes glowing with a hectic light even as the sluggish blood dripped from the hole in his chest.

But Santiago didn’t miss the grayish hue of his skin and the way his clothes hung on his limp frame, almost as if he were shrinking with every passing second.

“Brutal, yet efficient. You make me proud,” Gaius taunted. “Unfortunately, it will do you no good.”

“I’m not done,” Santiago growled, reaching behind his back to pull the
pugio
from where he’d shoved it into his jeans pocket.

Gaius’s face remained slack, but Santiago sensed his surprise at the sight of the ancient dagger with its lethal silver blade.

“You can kill this host, but I’ll simply take another,” he warned.

Santiago’s lips stretched into a humorless smile as he pressed the tip of the dagger to the center of his chest. “I’m betting that you can’t take control of me before I stick this in my heart.”

Gaius hissed, the glowing eyes narrowing at Santiago’s threat. “Harm yourself and I will simply use the witch.”

“I doubt it. You need her dead.” Santiago shrugged. “Not the best qualification for a host.”

Gaius shifted his head to stare at the mutilated door, his frustration battering against Santiago’s emotions. “Your fellow vampires are swiftly approaching. Once they realize the door is blocked they’ll find another way in.”

He clenched his teeth against the swell of irritation, savagely reminding himself he was being manipulated. “But soon enough?” he managed to rasp.

“Time is meaningless,” the creature smoothly countered. “We have an eternity.”

Santiago gave a slow shake of his head, his gaze lowering to where the flesh around the rebar remained a raw, bleeding wound. It should have been healing by now.

“I don’t think so. You’re starting to fray around the edges,” he said. “The question is . . . why?”

The hesitation was so brief that it would have been easy to miss. “I need to feed.”

Santiago gave another shake of his head. Vampires might take longer to heal when they needed to feed. And even begin to look skeletal if they’d been starved long enough.

But they didn’t begin to decompose.

Besides, if this . . . thing needed to feed, why wasn’t he feasting on the witch’s tangible fear? Or even his own fury?

“No.”

“No, I don’t need to feed?”

Santiago narrowed his gaze. “It’s more than that.”

Without warning Sally took a step forward, her arms wrapped around her slender waist. “The book,” she said.

Santiago jerked his head toward the gaping hole in the wall where Gaius and this witch seemed to be convinced a book was hidden.

“Of course.” He grimaced. He should have suspected the book was the culprit from the minute he noticed Gaius’s impression of a zombie. If the bastard was willing to risk everything to get his hands on it, then it was obviously his kryptonite. “It must be draining him.”

Gaius didn’t bother answering. Instead his attention shifted to the sound of footsteps outside the door.

“Go away,” Santiago shouted as the steel door shuddered beneath the impact of Styx’s size-sixteen boot. There was another shudder, before the cement above the door began to crack and buckle.

Roke.

It had to be.

There was no other vampire who had his particular effect on physical structures. The powerful vampire was a walking, talking (okay, not so much the talking) earthquake machine.

“Dammit, go away,” he shouted again, sensing Gaius’s seething anticipation.

“Santiago, what the hell is going on?” Styx called through the door, his own power making the lights flicker.

Another crack appeared along the side of the door, making Santiago curse at Roke’s persistence.

He had to keep them out of the room. Gaius wouldn’t dare take one of them as a host when it might mean he was trapped on the other side with no way to reach Sally or the book.

He glanced toward the witch, who was studying the crumbling wall with an odd expression.

“Do you have a phone?” he demanded.

She blinked, glancing down at her clinging outfit that clearly had no place to hide the clichéd thin dime let alone a phone. Thankfully she resisted the urge to point out the obvious, and instead caught him off-guard when she squared her shoulders and tilted her chin. “I can reach them.”

He frowned. “A spell . . . oh shit.” He blinked in shock as she turned her arm over to reveal the distinctive tattoo that crawled beneath the skin of her inner forearm. “Who?”

A blush touched her cheeks. “Roke.”

Taciturn, I-am-an-island-so-don’t-screw-with-me Roke mated with a witch?

Fairly certain the entire world had gone mad, Santiago gave a nod of his head. “Warn them to back off.”

“I’ll try.” She rolled her eyes as yet another crack appeared. “They haven’t listened to me yet.”

Trusting that the witch could convince the vampires to halt their assault on the door, not to mention Roke’s seeming determination to bring the roof down on their heads, Santiago turned back to Gaius.

He hid his stab of shock as he realized that Gaius was a shade paler and several pounds frailer.
Mierda
. Even his hair was beginning to fall out.

Like he was a dog with mange.

“What’s in the book?” he rasped, resisting the urge to reach up and make sure his own hair wasn’t beginning to shed.

Surely he would sense if the book was starting to make him rot?

With a slow, deliberate motion Gaius turned back to study him with his glowing gaze. “Do you know who I am?”

Santiago shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

“There are some who claim I’m your god,” the creature informed him with an arrogance that he’d clearly bestowed on his children. “Without me you would never have existed.”

Santiago was sublimely unimpressed. “God or not, we’ve done just fine without you for the past few millennia,” he mocked.

“Not without me—I’ve been sleeping,” the creature corrected him. “But what if you destroy me?”

“Can a god be destroyed?” Santiago demanded with a lift of his brows.

There was a low hiss. “The Dark Lord proved it’s possible.”

Santiago made a sound of disgust. “He was never a true god.”

“Maybe not to you.”

“And neither are you.”

There was a calculating pause as Gaius no doubt considered the best way to manipulate Santiago into destroying the witch. The fact he wasn’t using his ability to provoke Santiago into a bloodlust spoke volumes about the power of the book.

“But I am your creator,” he at last said, his voice the dry hiss of a viper. “Can you be certain that my end won’t also be the end of all vampires?”

No. He couldn’t be certain.

Which was precisely why he wasn’t going to let himself consider the possibility.

For now he wasn’t going to concentrate on anything beyond destroying this monster and getting Nefri safely back to his lair.

“Sally.”

He could smell the female’s terror, but with an admirable display of courage, she moved to stand at his side.

Maybe Roke hadn’t completely lost his mind in choosing this female.

“What?”

He slid a questioning glance in her direction. “Can you get the book?”

She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m not sure.”

“I told you, only her death can break the spell,” Gaius snarled, the glow from his eyes filling the room with a malignant light. “If you’re truly determined to get your hands on the book, then you’ll have to kill her.”

Santiago refused to allow his gaze to waver from the witch’s youthful face. “Sally?”

She was shivering, but with a grim determination she studied the hole in the wall, as if she were actually able to see the strands of magic woven around the opening.

“If it’s sorcery, then it can’t be broken by magic.”

“Kill her, Santiago,” Gaius commanded, weakly attempting to stir Santiago’s fear. “She’s a danger to Nefri.”

Sally lifted her hand, her breath hissing between her teeth as she sent Santiago a startled glance.

“What is it?” he asked.

“When I was considering how to get the book, I assumed it was guarded by a spell.”

“And now?”

“If it’s sorcery, then it can’t be broken, but it can be—”

“Don’t listen to her,” Gaius sharply interrupted her. “She’s a witch, my son. Her very essence is a lie.”

Santiago ignored the disruption. “Can be what?” he pressed.

“Manipulated.”

“Listen to me, Santiago,” Gaius tried again to twist Santiago’s emotions. “She was created by the Oracles to destroy me.” He lifted a feeble hand. “To destroy
us
.”

 

 

If anyone had told Sally that one day she would play the role of hero (or was it heroine?) she would have laughed until she peed her pants.

All she wanted was to lay low and keep her head buried in the sand when bad things were happening.

Even her days as the conduit for the Dark Lord had been nothing more than a desperate attempt to survive. She certainly hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, and the minute she had the opportunity she’d given up all ties to her former allies.

Now, however, laying low wasn’t an option. Which meant that she had to somehow figure out a way to manipulate the sorcery spell while keeping the vampire that was pinned to the wall from sensing her considerable power.

She didn’t doubt for a second that the nasty creature would do whatever was necessary to stop her if he realized she might actually be one of the few witches alive today capable of gaining command of the spell.

Not vanity, just the simple truth.

“You keep changing your story,” she accused the creepy vampire even as she tentatively opened a small crack in her magical barriers. Barriers she’d created and kept wrapped around herself since she’d nearly been killed by her mother. Nothing like a near filicide to keep a girl on her toes. “First you said I was born from a long line of witches to protect the book and now you claim I was created by the Oracles to destroy vampires.”