Summoning Sebastian (17 page)

“It's a theory people take seriously?”

“Some people.” She still looked irritated.

“Let me guess,” I went on. “Tesla was a vampire?”

“Not as far as anyone knows. It's like Wayne Gretzky—lots of theories, no proof.”

“Gretzky? Really?” Okay, Tesla and Gretzky were both badass motherfuckers, but that didn't necessarily make them vampires.

“Off topic,” Roland said curtly. Colin, I noticed, seemed to find the exchange amusing. Typical. He seemed to be entertained when I annoyed people. Even when the person I was annoying was him. Maybe especially when the person I was annoying was him.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Please go on.”

We'd left the blood bar to stay away from any prying ears. Not that it had been that busy, but since the vampire population here was so small, it was best to discuss controversial things as far away from other people as possible. Roland had led us away in the dark to a small park, where we were still strolling leisurely. Keep moving was another good rule of thumb for staying more or less un-eavesdropped-upon.

Back to Tunguska. Roland took a moment to regather her story, gave me a look that meant I shouldn't interrupt her again, and resumed. I listened closely, waiting for the opportunity to interrupt her again. Because I'm just that way.

“It wasn't any of those things, although it served our purposes to let people think it was. By now, most of the human population figures it was a comet or a meteor. The meteor in Chelyabinsk has brought that theory to the forefront and left it there.”

“It wasn't a meteor?” She had paused, so my question didn't count as an interruption.

“No. It was a science experiment.”

She had my attention now, so I kept my mouth shut for a while to listen.

The vampire stone, as I knew, had been around for a long time. No one knew how long. There was considerable debate in the vampire community regarding the information. Even the apparently ancient stone tablets I'd been translating, seemingly with some help from the stone itself, or whatever molecular remnants it had left behind, were widely debated, questioned and argued over. Maybe they dated back to Ancient Egyptian times, or earlier. Maybe somebody had cobbled them together in their garage in the 1950s. Nobody knew. Carbon dating had proven inconclusive. The Church of the Eternal had kept much of the information locked down. So it was all a conundrum.

What those with an interest in the matter
did
know was that the stone was a powerful artifact, and everybody with fangs who knew about it wanted to get their hands on it. Or on something similar that would convey the same power. In 1906, a group of vampires consisting of a bishop from the Church, a half-dozen scientists of various backgrounds—at least one was more properly an alchemist—and a shaman-type who may or may not have studied in mystery schools in Babylon, had converged on an isolated Siberian village to study the issue. Their goal? To make a vampire stone.

In 1908, they gave it the old college try. Things exploded in glorious fashion. The group cleaned up after themselves hastily, not knowing it would be twenty years before Leonid Kulik embarked on his first expedition to the area. By that time, the vampires there had hidden any indication they were ever there at all, not to mention any evidence they'd had anything to do with the explosion. Even those very few who knew anything had happened at all weren't sure what it had been.

The settlement was still there, not far from Vanavara—at least, not far in Siberian terms. A cadre of about twenty vamps lived there in shifts, each group staying for three months or so at a time. They were still doing experiments. These experiments were still more accurately characterized as alchemy than mainstream science. Attempts to recreate a vampire stone remained unsuccessful. Rumors held, however, that a number of other experiments had been.

“What kind of experiments?” This was Colin. I was blinking, trying to sort out everything I'd just heard. It was a lot to absorb. I was glad Colin had asked the question, though. I wanted to hear the answer.

For the first time since the discussion started, Roland looked cagey. “It's probably better you don't know.”

I'd heard those words directed at me so many times I couldn't help but be amused to hear them directed at Colin.

Colin reacted much the way I usually did. “And why is that?”

“It's all very touchy. I had a hell of a time getting them to let me on-site. And her…” She broke off, her gaze falling on me and then narrowing. “You know what?” she said abruptly, her tone sharp. “Fuck them. I'm not taking you in there uninformed.” Her gaze narrowed on me again. “Either of you.”

“I appreciate that,” I told her. That was an understatement. Frankly, it shocked the hell out of me that she was willing to tell me anything.

“Well, they're leery of humans. They don't know what you've been through, or how close you've been to all of this. And we can't leave you behind. Not if we want this to work.”

I still wasn't sure why I was so necessary, but I knew she was right. I needed to be there. Otherwise I might have saved them all the debate and stayed here with Mom and Dad while they dealt with the vampires and the weirdness and everything else. Or just stayed the hell home, for that matter.

But Sebastian needed me, so I'd make this trip, do what I had to do and hope like hell I lived through it.

Roland was rubbing her forehead, as if trying to physically move thoughts around in there so she could relate them to the rest of us.

“The things they were doing in 1908—they're still doing them. Experiments. Trying to recreate the stone, or at least its effects. It's all very hush-hush. It's like…I don't know. The vampire equivalent of Area 51.”

“Alien technology?” I had to throw it out there.

Roland's eyes started to roll. It looked like it physically pained her to restrain them. “No. That's not what they were doing at Area 51, anyway.”

“Suuuure it's not.” I waved off her incipient protest. “Never mind. Go on. I'm sorry.”

Roland was silent a moment. At first I thought maybe she was debating whether to bite me, or considering whether I deserved to hear any more of her story. Then she rubbed her forehead again and went on.

“There are several places where they do similar things. Where they experiment with tech specific for vampires. Tunguska is just one. Maybe the first, or at least the first in the modern era. The others… We don't need to talk about them. But you need to know—the security here is tight. They're going to be watching every move. And we need to keep watch too.”

Colin joined the conversation again. “For what?”

Roland stopped walking, and her voice became low and urgent. Her shift in posture made me glance back over my shoulder. She was acting as if someone might be watching us.

“Someone
wants
you to be here. They
want
us to try to reconstruct Sebastian. And the stone.”

“We're not reconstructing the stone,” I said. I didn't much like the sound of that word applied to Bastian either. It sounded like we were trying to pull a Victor Frankenstein. I kept my own voice low, following her lead.

“But the process is likely similar. And they don't know how to do it, so they've…lured you here. Sort of. To see what you do, so they can do it too. Except instead of bringing back Sebastian, they want to make a vampire stone.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Will they try to stop us?”

Rolland's shoulders relaxed a bit. I had the feeling she'd been trying to get something across to me, a warning, and I'd gotten it. If not perfectly, then enough for her to feel she'd delivered the message. “They might,” she said. “Or they might try to coerce you into doing something else. Into telling them how to make another stone.”

“I won't tell them.” It seemed like an easy enough solution. Of course it wasn't. These were vampires we were dealing with, and vampires had their ways. Many, many ways. My gaze moved to Colin almost involuntarily. Colin was a vampire. Colin also had ways.

So did Roland. And both of them, for their own reasons, were as dedicated to my safety as I was. Or nearly so.

I trusted them, I realized. We were going to get this done. Colin's hand moved to clasp the back of my neck, and the single, wordless touch made me certain of it. We would have Sebastian back, and God help anybody who got in our way.

Chapter Sixteen

“W
e have conclusive proof Edison was a douchebag, but there is no concrete evidence Tesla was a vampire.”
—Jacqueline Blachek, Twitter feed

T
he next morning, we said good-bye to Mom and Dad and got on a plane to Vanavara. Which town, somewhat to my surprise, had an airport. Not a very big one, but an airport nonetheless. There were no direct flights from Chelyabinsk, but Colin had arranged a charter flight. If you couldn't get a direct flight, then you just bought one. The extravagance seemed over the top to me, as it had throughout this venture.

In this case, though, I was grateful I had rich vampires to bankroll the trip. No dodgy Russian airlines or stuffy overnight trains. Our flight was nicely appointed, with comfortable seats and premium sunproofing. I sat by the nonexistent window and read more about the Russian language and how to mangle it.

I lost track of time, fell asleep, drooled on Colin's shoulder, and woke up with sticky armpits and a mouth that tasted like a rat had died in it. Magical.

I hadn't been sure what to expect of Vanavara. Small, I was certain. Backwater—or back-taiga—definitely. But no matter what you expect from a place or a person, it's never what you find in real life.

It was dark when we arrived, of course. A ground crew of two met us, one with sharp Slavic features, the other with the flat, round face and epicanthic folds of a First Peoples type. Evenk, I assumed. They spoke little, mostly just doing what needed to be done and then disappearing into the dark.

“Where are we staying?” Colin asked Roland. She hefted my luggage and headed toward a car. Blockily built, it looked like something out of the Soviet era.

“I've rented a room,” she said. “Digs aren't too fancy here. We won't have a helicopter out until tomorrow night.”

Colin nodded. My stomach did a little flip—I'd wanted us to get things moving a little faster. Obviously it wasn't to be. We loaded up the car, climbed in, and Roland drove us into town. There were streetlights of sorts but not much in the way of streets. They were mostly dirt roads, winding through small huddles of wooden buildings, the majority of them on the small side and made of wood. From what I could see, it reminded me a little of a Midwest farm town. Or maybe that was just me trying to make the unfamiliar more familiar. Part of my brain was still freaking out at the knowledge I was in the middle of bumfuck Siberia.

There wasn't much to our temporary lodgings—either the room itself or the building that housed it. All we really needed to do in it was sleep, though, so fanciness wasn't required. Just beds, lightproof windows and warmth. It consisted of the upper level of a medium-sized house on
Meteoretnaya Ulitsa
. Which was the best name for a street ever.

The vampires slept, at least. They drifted off to happy undead dreamland while I lay awake on the bed next to Colin, cradling Sebastian's blue glass bottle as the morning light crept up outside. Not that I could actually see it—the little room was equipped with vamp-friendly blackout curtains. Which were probably handy for humans too, during the summer. The bedroom was lit with only a weak, pitiful nightlight plugged into one outlet.

Finally, tired of staring into the near-pitch black, I got up and went into the sitting room. This part of the upstairs wasn't blacked out, and the light made its way past stained lace curtains, sifting through scratched, smeared glass. I curled up on the couch. There was no TV to watch, so I settled the bottle next to me and dug my Russian book out of my bag.

I was trying—again—to get my head around the vast array of Russian reflexive verbs when I noticed the bottle was buzzing. It had been buzzing for a while, I realized—I just hadn't quite registered it. And as the light grew brighter outside the smudgy window, the buzzing grew sharper, more urgent.

I blinked, suddenly concerned. Was it the light? Could it affect Sebastian even when he was a disembodied spirit inside a bottle? Shit. The last thing I wanted to do was kill my extra boyfriend because I got bored in the middle of a mission to save his life. That would be…I wasn't even sure ironic was the right word. I didn't think there
was
a word.

Whatever the vocabulary involved, the best course of action seemed to be to move away from the window. So I did that. The buzzing got louder. Okay, that made no sense. I shifted all the way back into the dark bedroom, settling close to the nightlight so I could at least partially see the bottle.

The buzzing got even louder. If it had been possible to wake Colin up in the middle of the day, I would have been afraid the sounds the bottle was making would do it.

So why was the darkness making Sebastian more agitated? Or was his agitation not connected to the light levels at all? I settled onto the floor, knees drawn up, and rested the bottle in the trough between my thighs. The buzzing made my skin vibrate. Which brought to mind all kinds of possibilities, but I was too concerned at the moment to think about them. Besides, it was vibrating so hard right now, my thighs were starting to go numb. Not the most desirable side effect.

I positioned the bottle so it sat just below my knees and started to stroke the cool blue surface. The buzzing tickled into my hands, across my palms and up into my wrists. Inside, past the bottle's semi-opaque surface, I thought I could see dark whorls, like smoke, shifting beneath the curves.

The movement inside picked up speed as I caressed the glass. Then I felt Sebastian's presence tugging at my mind, tingling at the back of my neck. It wasn't a pleasant, friendly intrusion either. Something was wrong.

The sensation at the back of my neck started to burn. Then I let out an involuntary gasp as the burning shifted to a sharp, stabbing pain, like someone had rammed an ice pick into the base of my skull. Or not quite like that, because I'm pretty sure an ice pick would have killed me. This just hurt like a son of a bitch.

And something was crawling in, or trying to.

“No.” I said it out loud, driven by the pain and by a sudden burst of rage. “Oh no. No, no, no, I do not
think
so, motherfucker.”

I blinked hard. I could barely see. The edges of my vision had gone bright red, and everything else was a smeary blur. But my hands on the bottle started to move, my fingers not just caressing now, but shaping lines, curls, dots. Making crude versions of the symbols from the stone tablet that had been most of my waking life for the past several weeks, the symbols that still crawled all over my skin. I wrote the letters we'd used for the talisman, plus one more, over and over, all along the curves and lines of the vibrating blue bottle. I wasn't sure why I chose those. They just seemed right. The last one—the one we hadn't used before—seemed the most right of all.

The most intense edges of the pain eased back almost immediately. The unpleasant, creeping sensation on my scalp took a bit longer. But I kept writing, kept inscribing the symbols in warm lines over and around the bottle's surface. Finally the strange tingling began to recede, and after a few more minutes, the frantic buzzing of the bottle began to fade as well.

I could feel Sebastian then, just on the edge of my consciousness. I reached out as best I could—this kind of communication wasn't exactly my forte. I closed my eyes and let myself relax, shifting into something close to a meditative state. I was sleepy enough it didn't take much. Add the fading rush of adrenaline in my system, and I was about a step away from a non-chemically-induced high of epic proportions.

“Sebastian?” I shaped his name with my mouth, not quite speaking it aloud. “Bastian?”

I didn't exactly hear words in return, but I sensed emotion from him, curling into my own stress-addled reactions. He was scared—very scared—but it was fading. Images flashed in my head almost like a slideshow on the backs of my eyelids. But they weren't really pictures—just outlines, like sort of a weird, abstract coloring book filled in with emotions instead of crayons. I don't know. The functions of the brain are weird, and also a bitch to describe.

Someone had tried to grab him. Had tried to set up lines of control through the protection of the bottle and the spell that held him there. If we'd thought he was safe from whoever had been manipulating him just because we'd left the US, we were sadly mistaken. Either we'd been followed, or the person or persons who'd used Sebastian on Colfax had friends here who were trying to do the same thing.

I stroked the bottle gently, just trying to calm him now. My brain was rattling, thoughts and theories bouncing off each other like balls in a pinball machine. I couldn't get the pieces to stick together. But I knew one thing—this was not in any way a positive development. Okay, two things. With number two being that we were still in all kinds of shitty danger.

I had to do something. But I didn't know what. I sat there staring at the bottle without seeing it, trying to work out what—if anything—I could do to keep Sebastian as safe as I could.

The symbols. They'd helped free him before, and they'd helped calm him just now. Maybe he just needed a little more magic to keep him safe while we worked to sort out his corporeal situation.
Genius
, I thought, my inner voice laced with sarcasm. Regardless, it was worth a shot. I rummaged through my bag until I found a Sharpie. I'd carried them with me in case I needed to have my own markings refreshed. My own markings, though, hadn't substantially faded. Now I used the pens to draw on the surface of the bottle.

The Sharpie's mark on the glass was surprisingly dark, but I could tell I'd need to refresh the marks later—I could rub the ink off with my thumb. But hey, you do what you can in a pinch, right? When Roland woke up, I'd ask her if we needed to get a grease pencil or maybe etch the symbols into the glass. Or maybe I was completely off track and she'd have another solution entirely. In the meantime, Sharpie it was.

I did the best I could. As I worked, the fuzzy buzzing inside the bottle seemed to diminish. I panicked for a second, wondering if I'd somehow damaged Sebastian instead of helping him, but if I kept my yappy brain quiet—not the easiest task—I could feel a growing sense of calm coming from him. Okay. It was working, then. Or at least not hurting anything.

I drew a line of symbols vertically down one side of the bottle, then repeated the pattern on the other side. I realized about halfway through that I was talking to Sebastian as I did it, murmuring reassurance and words of affection. I clamped my mouth shut on the sounds, embarrassed, then remembered the only people here to hear were two completely comatose vampires. And Sebastian himself, of course, who probably didn't mind.

When I had finished, the bottle had become quiet again, though if I touched it I could sense movement inside. Faint, like the lightest popping of carbonation bubbles. Sebastian was as safe as I could make him. I settled the bottle back in my lap and waited for sunset.

“
You did the right thing,” Roland announced after I'd related the daytime events to her and Colin. They'd found me curled up in a chair, the bottle in my lap, sound asleep and drooling.

“What do you think was happening?” I scrubbed at my eyes. They still felt sticky from sleep.

Roland peered closely at the marks I'd made on the glass. Or maybe she was trying to see into the bottle. I couldn't tell.

“Trying to draw him out. Or, more accurately, probably trying to draw us out.”

“What do you mean?” This was Colin, who hadn't said much since he dragged out of bed. He was on his second bag of blood, so I was glad he'd been quiet. He's hard to deal with when he's hungry.

“I told you this is basically a trap. They didn't sorcel up Sebastian in Denver to get control over a dingy block on Colfax, dispensary or no dispensary. And whatever they're doing to Sebastian now probably has nothing to do with actually controlling him. So they threw whatever magic they had at us to get our attention. To make you worry. To make it feel that much more urgent that we get him out of that bottle and into an actual body before they can get him under their control again and use him to kill more vampires.”

“This was daylight, though,” I pointed out. “If it's vampires controlling him, then there's something more going on.”

Roland nodded soberly. I'd told her about my daytime encounters with Gregor, whoever the hell he was. “It's still the same basic plan, regardless of who's implementing it. Maybe they're using humans to make us feel that much more helpless.”

“Then we call their bluff,” Colin suggested.

I shook my head. I had a gut feeling we shouldn't go after them. Not yet. Before I could try to put it into words, Roland did it for me.

“That's the problem, though. It isn't a bluff. If we don't get him out of that bottle and back under his own control, then that's exactly what they'll do. They'll pull him out of there and use him to kill more vampires.”

“He'd rather be actually dead than be under their control,” I said quietly. I didn't want to consider it as an option, but Sebastian had made himself clear on that point.

“I know.” Roland's face was as sober as I'd ever seen it. How old was she? I'd found myself wondering more and more lately. She looked maybe twenty-five, but something about her sometimes seemed almost alien. “And if it comes to that…well, that answer might be in Tunguska too.”

Great. So we had to walk straight into a trap set by vampires who were probably five or six sandwiches short of a picnic, and in the end we might still have to abandon Sebastian.

At least he'd be free. It was small comfort.

“Well,” said Colin, squeezing out the last of the contents of his blood bag. “The helicopter leaves in an hour, and we need to be on it. So, Nim, you might want to grab some breakfast.”

And that was that.