Fangs and Fennel (The Venom Trilogy #2) Read online

  He leaned back, a big booming laugh rolling from his mouth. His fangs flashed in the flickering torchlight, reminding me that I shouldn’t underestimate him.

  “My blood.” I paused and glanced at Dahlia, who shook her head. “It—”

  “Tastes good? All blood tastes good. Did you think you were something special? Something I’ve never seen before? I’ve been around as long as Remo, and I’ve seen it all. You’re just a souped-up version of a naga.” He made a dismissive wave with his hand, and I frowned.

  All around us, vampires shot from the darkness, weapons in hand.

  Dahlia pressed against me. “If you’re going to lead, now is the time to do it.”

  She was right. I gathered what courage I had left to me and swallowed hard.

  “Listen here, hamster balls, I am special.” I took several steps until we were so close I could see the violet-blue flecks in the darkness of his eyes. I lowered my voice and pushed power into the words, knowing they were true, and knowing he knew it too. “I am special.”

  His eyelids fluttered, and he lifted a hand that slowed the advance of his troops. “You . . . are special.”

  I lowered my voice to a bare whisper, banking our lives on what I said next. “And you want to talk with me and Dahlia in private.”

  He raised his other hand and waved it around. “Leave them to me; I want to talk to them in private.”

  So apparently he had already wanted this? Or was I getting stronger? Sweating, I fluttered my eyelashes up at him. “Tell them not to disturb us.”

  “You will not disturb us!” He bellowed right in my face. He did not smell like Remo at all. The scent of licorice hovered in the air between us. The same smell I’d picked up on the oil that had burned me. I had to fight not to step back. Santos stepped to my side and curled an arm around my waist, tugging me tight to his side.

  “Come along.”

  I glanced at Dahlia. She shrugged, her eyes wide. What choice did we have if we didn’t want to fight our way out? And we’d come for a reason; I needed to find out just what Santos had on me.

  How had he been able to find something that could hurt me so badly, so fast? I mean, it was like he’d been just waiting for me to show up so he could use it. Which made no sense. I’d been a Super Duper for such a short time.

  “I asked you what it was exactly that Remo did to you, to turn you against him?” Santos tightened his grip on my waist, and I realized I’d zoned out on him.

  “Oh, well.” I cleared my throat and made myself look around. We approached a two-story wood cabin that was, from what I could see, easily a ten-thousand-square-foot house. “He tried to push himself on me. Dahlia stopped him, and he hurt her. I realized then we’d chosen the wrong side.”

  The words were stilted, and without a lot of emotion or detail, but Santos nodded. “He’s a complete control freak. Always has been. Here, let’s go to my office.” He opened the main door to the monster log house, and we stepped inside. The warmth of two large fireplaces, one at either side of the entrance hall, curled around me.

  Though I wasn’t bothered by the cold, the warmth called to me. I rubbed my hands over my arms. “This is lovely.”

  Dahlia snorted.

  “Yes, rather lovely, the previous owner had, oh, shall we call it excellent taste.” He winked as if I were too stupid to get the pun. “He and his family were exceptionally delicious,” Santos said and then frowned at me. The fog that had slid over his eyes faded, and I smiled up at him as my belly clenched with fear.

  I pushed my siren ability into my words. “You were going to take us to your office?”

  His smile widened once more, a wicked smile that might have curled my toes if I hadn’t met Remo first. Good grief, what was wrong with me? Was this part of being a siren, wanting the bad boys? I sure hoped not.

  “Yes, this way.” He headed to the main staircase that spread up into the second floor. Santos led the way and we followed. He glanced back several times, a slight frown on his lips. He was pushing off my suggestions faster than the Viking had.

  Down a hallway to a set of double doors, and we were inside his office. Nope, wrong again.

  He shut the doors behind us and locked the door with a chuckle. “Multiuse room. Please make yourselves comfortable.”

  The master bedroom was so big even the king-size bed looked tiny. Across from us was a pair of French doors that led onto a wide balcony, where I could hear the bubbling of a hot tub. A thick rug covered the wooden floor near the bed, and the smell of stale sex whispered over my nose. Oh dear, this was worse than burning a million-dollar square. And yes, that was an actual recipe.

  I couldn’t make my feet go farther into the room. Dahlia stayed behind me. “Now what, oh mighty leader?” she whispered.

  Santos turned as he unbuttoned his shirt.

  “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.

  I stared at the vodka in my hands and made sure my voice was loud enough they would hear me. “Dahlia, Santos said to get to get the good Russian vodka, right?”

  She stepped up beside me. “Yeah, we better hurry. We don’t want to disappoint him.”

  The two figures fled back up the stairs, leaving before they even asked what we were doing. Their fear of Santos worked in our favor.

  I led the way, vodka in hand. Just in case we were stopped. We emerged from the stairs into the kitchen where the two vampires waited. I didn’t recognize either of them. Both were men, both big with overgrown messy brown tangled hair and eyes the color of mud. Twins.

  I licked my lips and held the vodka up. “Bottoms up.”

  Their eyes were dead—no pun intended—as though there was nothing going on behind them. Dahlia squeezed my arm. “Whatever you do, don’t look back.”

  “What?”

  “Go, up to Santos’s room.”

  “What?” The second time was far more strangled. Why in the world would we go back to Santos’s room?

  We stepped into the living room, and I knew why. If I’d been paying attention to all the signals my extra-special senses had been giving me, I would have smelled the vampires; I would have been aware. But my fear had gotten in the way.

  “Sugar biscuits.” I breathed the words, and Dahlia grabbed my arm, all but dragging me up the stairs. The vampires didn’t move, only watched us go. We were down the hallway and back in Santos’s room in a matter of seconds, though with the weight of the eyes on us, it felt much longer.

  Dahlia slammed the door. “Shit, this couldn’t get much worse.”

  A groan behind us spun me around. Santos sat up, a hand to his head.

  “Dahlia, we’re in trouble.”

  She glanced at Santos. “Just put him under again.”

  He lurched back, his eyes glancing off mine and then away. “Guards!”

  I leapt for him, swinging the bottle of vodka. It crashed into his head and he went down again, blood pouring from the side of his face. “Sorry!”

  “Don’t apologize to him!” Dahlia yelled as she ran past me. I didn’t think, just ran after her. She crashed through the double doors that looked down the mountain. Even when I jumped out and off the balcony I wasn’t really thinking, because if I had been, I would have remembered we were on the second story. I screeched as I fell, instincts tucking me into a ball. I hit the ground hard, but it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should. Flat on my back, I stared up at Dahlia. She still had the flask.

  “We’ve got to teach you to land on your feet.” She grabbed my hand and hauled me up. “Time to run.”

  Behind us came the sound of yelling and gunfire. Not good. But at least this time they didn’t have the oil. Score one for our team. I ran for the gondola, but Dahlia grabbed me. “Are you crazy? They’ll cut the cables the instant they figure it out.”

  She had a point.

  So we ran down the mountain, using the path that had been cut into it for years of hiking pleasure. The switchbacks wove down in a tight zigzag, which meant we weren’t getting as far as it felt.

  A vampire landed in front of us, underlining the point I’d been about to make. I shoved him hard with both hands, sending him over a side cliff.

  “That won’t stop him,” Dahlia said.

  I looked back the way we’d come, and it seemed that the sky above was filled with what looked like flying vampires as they leapt their way down the mountain. And here we were, staying on the designated path like a couple of nincompoops. “Jump!”

  Dahlia leapt first, and I followed. The first jump took me down three levels of switchbacks, and I landed on my knees. I glanced back in time to see the vamps already back in the air with their next jump.

  “Go, go!” I yelled at her. The worst thing to happen wouldn’t be dying, as far as I was concerned. It would be having that oil land back into their hands and used on me in some form of torture. I wasn’t sure I could handle knowing it was out there and ready to be used
against me again.

  Fear for my life and skin drove me. Fear for Dahlia slowed me. I could take the vampires. But I knew Dahlia couldn’t, not this many.

  Dahlia jumped, and this time I waited for the vampires. She screeched at me. “Alena, no!”

  I didn’t look at her. “Get it home! Get it to Remo!”

  I stood and squared my shoulders. Time to put on my big-girl panties if I wanted Dahlia and me to both get out of here alive, and that dang oil free of Santos.

  I pulled out the two wooden spoons I’d snagged from the kitchen. The first vamp landed in front of me, shirtless, blood all over his chest, as terrifying as anything I’d seen in the Super Duper world. His buddy landed behind me with a thump. I turned so I could keep eyes on both of them. It was the twins we’d seen in the kitchen. The one to the left of me took one look at the wooden spoon and laughed, going so far as to throw his head back.

  His twin on the other side of me mimicked him. I had a split second to do something before they would be on me.

  I braced my legs wide, clutched the fat scooping end of my weapon, and thrust the wooden spoon forward like a spear, aiming straight for the heart of the twin on the right, between two of his ribs that flexed with his laughter. Not really expecting it to do much more than snap off in my hand, I did it anyway.

  What else could I do? The weapon at hand was simple; I had no other choice.

  The wooden spoon slid between his ribs, and his whole body jerked. The laughter stilled and he stared at me. “Killed with a wooden spoon?” Like he couldn’t believe it, even though it had happened. Blood bubbled out over his lips as he slumped, his fingers brushing along the edge of the spoon.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and pulled the spoon out with a slurping plop, like a too-thick batter that wouldn’t let go. I spun and, with a backhand, drove the second spoon handle through his brother’s chest as he stood there staring, shock keeping him in place. “Not possible,” the big vampire spluttered.

  “Tell that to my spoon.” Instinct took over, and I hammered the handle through his chest as if I’d been staking vampires my whole life instead of mixing batter.