Necromancing Nim (32 page)

Sebastian blinked. “Oh.”

“Technology,” Roland said to him. “Embrace it.”

“I suppose so.” He took the tiny drive and turned it over in his hand as if he couldn’t quite get his head around the idea that all the contents of the tablets were there in his hand for his eventual use. “Has it all been translated?”

“Part of it. I figured getting in touch with you was more important than finishing the translation at this point.”

Sebastian nodded. “Reference texts…?”

“All scanned. Dictionaries, notes, everything we have about the language is on there. Oh, and the information you sent too, all compiled. You should be able to work it all out, given your knowledge base.”

“Ought to just have a program that’ll translate it all on the fly,” Colin put in, because God knew he had to find something to bitch about.

“We’re working on it,” said Roland without rancor.

“This is perfect.” There was a strange weight in Sebastian’s voice. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Roland’s voice sounded odd, too, suddenly soft, in a way that made me wonder if there was a history between the two of them.

Colin apparently had the same thought, because he glanced from one of them to the other with an eyebrow tilted.

“Back to the hotel, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Sebastian. “I think we have just enough time to get back before sunrise.”

“If you skedaddle,” said Roland. “Go on. I’ll touch base with you later.”

Sebastian nodded. Roland locked up, then escorted us back out to the main part of the library. With dawn creeping relentlessly closer, we traversed the tunnels back to the hotel.

Once we were back in the room, Sebastian settled at the desk, pulling out his computer and sliding the USB drive in. He sat tensely, hands folded under his chin, foot tapping the floor impatiently, as the computer opened the drive. I could tell he still wasn’t convinced the little plastic disc was going to be the answer to our problems.

When he opened the first file, though, he let out a slow, “Wow…” and quickly opened a few more files. I came to stand behind him, snooping over his shoulder.

The tablets had, indeed, been thoroughly scanned, every minute detail of the carefully carved script reproduced perfectly. More than perfectly, because the images were such high resolution that Sebastian could zoom in on single letters, so close I could make out the textures left in the grooves of the clay by the writing instrument that had made the marks however many hundreds—thousands?—of years ago.

“This is amazing.” Sebastian grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, both supplied by the hotel, and began to scribble. “I’d traced the stone back as far as the eleventh century, but this analysis of the alphabet pushes it back several hundred years more. Maybe as much as a thousand.”

Somehow, the idea the stone was thousands of years old made the whole situation seem that much more hopeless. If it had been around that long, was there even a way to get rid of it?

“Depends on when this was written,” Colin put in. “Just because it’s on clay tablets written in Linear V doesn’t mean it dates back to the time of the pharaohs.”

Sebastian nodded.

“You’re right. I don’t have the tools to determine how old the actual clay is, but Linear V on clay tablets has been used up to the present day to encode this kind of thing.” He paused, adjusting the view on the computer to enlarge a different section of the text. “I think this is reasonably old, though.”

I sighed. “Let’s hope it has what we need.”

Sebastian clicked on another file, opening a text document with a partial translation of the writing. “I’d say it’s promising so far.”

“You should sleep,” Colin stated. “Let me work on it for a while.”

Sebastian glanced up at Colin in surprise. “You can read this?”

“Do I look like an idiot?”

“Sometimes,” Sebastian answered.

Colin made a snorting sound. “Yes, I can read it. Probably not as well as you can, but I can get the basic gist down while you get a few hours of sleep.”

Sebastian mulled, then nodded. His acquiescence made me fear for him again. “All right. Wake me up in four hours. If you can. If not, I guess we can stand to let it go until sundown.”

“We need you rested; we need this translated. Both priority one, so we do what we can.”

That seemed reasonable to me. I stepped back, feeling suddenly out of place as Sebastian pushed out of his chair to let Colin take his seat. And even more out of place when Sebastian leaned down to kiss Colin gently on the mouth.

“Later,” Sebastian said.

“Sleep well,” responded Colin, and neither of them acknowledged me as Sebastian headed for the room where his luggage sat. Colin focused steadily on the computer screen and acted as if I wasn’t even there.

Well. Fine. I could use some sleep too. I dragged my suitcase into the other room, ignoring Colin’s luggage on the floor, and stretched out.

With my mind whirling out of control, I was certain I’d never manage to drift off. But exhaustion trumped worry and overactive imagination, and it wasn’t long before it dragged me down into sleep.

I woke to the sound of low voices. I grabbed a hoodie from my suitcase and pulled it on. Colin’s luggage was gone. He must have moved it to the other room. I allowed myself a brief thought about Colin and Sebastian sharing a bed, then shook it away and peered out into the living room area.

The two vampires were nose to nose over the table, discussing the computer display in quiet but impassioned tones. Relieved they weren’t making out, I decided not to disturb them.

It was nearly dark outside; I’d slept away the daylight hours quite handily. Tired, I supposed. Though who wouldn’t be after the week I’d had?

When I returned to the room, silence had fallen between the two vampires, and Sebastian was typing furiously, forehead deeply furrowed. Colin stared blankly at him, teeth clenched.

“What’s going on?” I didn’t even want to ask the question, afraid of what the answer might be.

Colin slid a look up at me, then away. The non-response made me very nervous.

“Everything’s fine,” Sebastian said, too quickly and too firmly. “Everything we need is here.”

“That’s good, right?” I moved hesitantly toward them, shoving my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie.

“Yes.” Sebastian again. While he studiously refused to take his eyes off the computer screen, Colin stubbornly glared at the side of his head. Sort of at his ear. “It’s good.”

I nodded. Obviously, something about it wasn’t good, or at least Colin thought so. He shook his head, then suddenly, his hand whipped out and he smacked Sebastian on the back of the head.

“Fucktard,” he said shortly. “I’m going to sleep.” He stalked toward their bedroom.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked as Colin slammed the door behind him.

Sebastian’s typing had stilled at the smack from Colin, and he sat unmoving for a few seconds before he resumed. “He’s an asshole?”

“I mean besides that.”

“Nothing.” He paused, peering closely at the computer screen again. “He’s just…not happy, I guess.”

Typical of Colin. “Why do you put up with him?” The question just popped out in all its poorly timed, inappropriate glory. Appalled at myself, I tried to backpedal by adding, “Is he really that good in bed?”

Sebastian shook his head with a wry smile while I finally sat on the edge of the bed behind him. He turned around, sobering. “He is, but that’s not the reason.”

His eyes, suddenly filled with memories older than I could properly understand, made me uncomfortable. “I…you don’t have to answer that. Really.”

But he regarded me directly. “He saved me from going feral. Found me crazed and half wild in the woods, dragged me out and taught me how to function as a civilized vampire.”

“You were feral?” Not many feral vampires existed these days. Many had been slaughtered by their own kind in the pogroms of the early sixties, as I understood it. The vampires who wanted to join civilization didn’t want wild vamps ruining their reputations when they came out.

“I was. And it’s as ugly as you might think. But he…” He trailed off. “He is an asshole. I know that. He was raised as some sort of minor nobility, and he still thinks he’s better than the unwashed masses, but…” Again, he stopped.

A tremor of fear passed through my chest. Why was he stalling? “So…” I ventured. “How goes the translating? Is it done?”

“A good chunk of it.” He sighed and leaned back, cracking his neck. “Most of what we need to destroy it, I’ve worked out.”

“Good, then.” I tried to peer over his shoulder to read what he’d typed, but he’d set the text document to the back while he examined the scans of the tablets and the translation keys.

“Yes.”

“So how do we do it?”

His gaze slid back at me over his shoulder, and cold fingers walked up my back. I’d been right. Something was wrong.

“I have to die,” he said quietly, “and you have to help me.”

The only good vampire is a dead vampire.
—
Fangs in the Old West
, Warner Brothers, 1984.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Well, that’s bullshit,” I burst out, taken aback.

Sebastian just shrugged. “It’s about what I expected, actually.” His eyes had gone gray with fatigue. “Although your involvement was a bit of a surprise.”

“Why do I have to be involved at all?” Panic crawled up my throat. I didn’t want Sebastian to die. I liked Sebastian. A lot. And if Sebastian died, it would upset Colin, and I didn’t want Colin to be upset, and for once it was because I cared about him, not just because he made my life difficult when he was grumpy.

“Because you’ve had contact with the stone. Because it healed you. There’s a ceremony of sorts, with near-death and pain and suffering, and then the vampire sacrifice at the end.” His demeanor was light, as was his wording, but it did nothing to dispel the dark weight settling in my chest.

“I still don’t understand what I have to do with it.”

Kindly ignoring the fact that I was close to tears, he said, “Your blood helps destroy the stone. I have to feed from you before the final part of the process.”

“When you die.”

“And destroy the stone, yes.” He was very matter-of-fact about it, as if he was discussing having a cup of tea.

“I still say it sucks ass.”

“Actually, in my experience, sucking ass is considerably more pleasant.”

I had a sudden image of him rimming Colin and made a face. “Just… I don’t need to know that.” I met his gaze, which carried affection that would have been encouraging under other circumstances.

“It’ll be all right, Nimuë,” he said, his voice careful.

I shook my head, a few of the tears spilling hot down my face. “How can it be all right?”

“It just will.” To my surprise, he laid a hand on the back of my neck and pulled me toward him, kissing my forehead. “It’ll all be fine.”

I doubted that. In fact, I doubted it a lot, but I didn’t argue.

I left him alone for a while with his work and headed out again, this time to hunt down something to eat. I could have ordered room service, but after the encounter with Sebastian, I really just wanted to get away. Not that I didn’t enjoy his company. I just didn’t want to be in the same room with him while he worked out exactly how he was going to die. Never mind it would save the world from vampire-zombie apocalypse or whatever the hell. I didn’t want him to die. And it was weird being there while he figured it all out.

Not feeling much up to driving, I headed downstairs to the food court. There was Chinese food and sandwiches, an Espresso Royale, and the ubiquitous Nip/Suck fang bar that seemed to pop up on campus everywhere the equally ubiquitous coffee shop did. Seriously, there were so many of the two outlets there didn’t seem to be room for a Starbucks or a Fangs You Very Much on campus anywhere. The Nip/Suck blood shots were crap too. I shook my head at myself, a little disturbed that I could tell that from the menu on the wall.

Still, there was a place for crappy food, especially on a college campus. I ordered a seriously greasy burger and settled into a chair, where I munched my French fries, mulling my confusion of feelings for Sebastian.

Or about Sebastian. Was it the same thing? I mean, if I had feelings for him, didn’t that mean I was attracted to him or wanted to sleep with him or something? I definitely had feelings about him…but they seemed muddled up now with what had happened when he’d bitten me and the way his lips had felt pressed against my forehead. And how did all that fit in with whatever I was feeling for Colin? Or whatever they felt for each other? Somebody had to be the third wheel, didn’t they? Was it me?

I wiped burger grease and ketchup from my face and tried not to cry.

When I got back to the hotel, Sebastian had let the computer go idle and was sitting instead on the couch, paging through printouts. He made marks with a green highlighter, scribbled notes on the hotel stationery pad.