Chapter 28 #3
I’d had enough of being ignored. After a few calls, including a short conversation with Diana Hunter, I left my office for the night and drove to Santos’s home.
I half-expected my father’s guards to send me away, but they stood unreactive as I passed on my way to Santos’ office.
The door was open, but it wasn’t my father working at the desk.
All the words I’d been planning over the past several weeks fell dead in my mouth.
“Lazaro.” Vicente Reyes smiled with familiarity, surprised to see me as he was. I couldn’t hide my shock.
“Uncle Vicente? What are you doing here?” I asked, rude as the clueless child who first met my father’s brother two centuries ago. “I’m surprised to see you.” Here especially, sitting in my father’s chair like he belonged.
“I know. Twice in a decade. You might start to think I’m getting sick of home,” he laughed. Right. He’d come to Uncle Ricky’s funeral just a few months ago. I hadn’t really seen anything but my own red-tinged guilt that night.
Vicente and I caught up on impersonal matters — the politics of Santa Fe that kept him feeling young and alive, and my own business dealing in death.
I sure as Hell didn’t mention Alexander Reyes’ death, nor Gustavo’s, though I suspected if he was here, he’d already heard.
Of course, I was only guessing at why he was here and why my father wasn’t.
“I heard you’ve found your beloved,” Vicente smiled.
He poured two glasses for us from my father’s bar so that we could drink to it.
“It’s good, you being the one to turn her.
There’s a deep connection in that. There’s nothing greater in the world than finding one person you can trust no matter what. That’s what she is to you?”
I needed a long sip of my drink. “I believe so. It was a match made by our families, and perhaps that’s beneficial. I do love her dearly, too.”
Vicente gestured for me to sit, so I took the chair across from his and rested my glass on the grand wooden desk. The silence invited the question that had been between us from the beginning.
“Where’s Santos?”
My uncle sighed and rested against the desk, running worried fingers through his dark hair.
He was Santos’ biological brother back when they were humans, but they hardly shared any resemblance beyond their basic coloring.
I waited for Vicente to collect his thoughts, though it was as if all my years of patience had vanished. I was shaking.
“He’s taken a vacation.” He wasn’t looking at me, his eyes too heavy with sorrow.
“Since when?” I asked, and though I’d tried to hold it back, betrayal crept out into the open. “He didn’t mention anything to me.”
“Santos has been…different. Making moves that I can hardly understand. He’s been hiding things, too.”
“What moves?” I sounded defensive, but the image of six imprisoned newborn vampires was an immediate answer to my own question.
“He’s become paranoid. He’s been testing the loyalty of vampires he’s known for centuries and cutting them out if they fail whatever secret test he puts them through.
Ernest Gallegos came to me in person with this concern not long after his arrest, and perhaps in his case, caution was necessary.
It’s been others, though. Linda, Ramon, the lawyers and accountants.
It’s starting to become a mess.” Vicente’s eyes were shadowed with worry.
He spoke barely above a whisper to keep it between us.
I had to consider that this might be a move against Santos, a careful building of a case to oust him, but the brothers had shared 400 years of loyalty. They’d built this new world together.
“Why? All of a sudden.”
“Have you spoken to your father recently?” I shook my head, and Vicente continued, “When was the last time?”
I finished my drink, barely tasting it, just so I could consider where my own loyalties lay. If I put my cards on the table, I might have been playing into Vicente’s hand if there really was a game happening. I had to be careful, especially around these old knights.
“Will Santos be returning?”
“I hope so. Cibola’s a nice enough town,” he grinned, “but I don’t relish getting too involved down here. I thought if Santos had some space from it all and got some rest, then maybe he could rebuild his empire. I figured you might help.”
I couldn’t see Santos mending a single fence, much less tending to an empire. I had to take the risk and trust my uncle.
“He introduced me to Nemesh for the first time a few months back. That was the last time we really spoke.” Perhaps it was reckless to admit, but Vicente’s knowing stare lulled that anxiety while stoking others.
“Ah.”
I waited for any further explanation, shifting in my seat.
“I suspected Nemesh may be the cause of Santos’ current condition. I fear he may be playing us all in ways we’ve been blind to.”
I shared a long look with my Uncle Vicente.
Superstitious terror tossed around my empty chest at the conjecture he was laying out between us.
If Nemesh had made some clandestine deal with Santos, or if he’d even nudged him to commit acts that endangered his soul, the broken relationship with my father was the least of my worries.
The fight ahead would be bigger than I ever anticipated, and I would be in desperate need of allies if I wanted to make it out alive.