Summoning Sebastian (6 page)

“I'm afraid so.”

“But it's cold there. Like, really, really cold.”

Roland chuckled. “Yes, that it is.”

I sighed. “First Illinois, now Siberia. You whisk me off to the most exotic places, Colin.”

“Next time I promise someplace sunny.”

“Right. Where you'll have to stay inside all day and then we can walk on the beach at night and get eaten by sharks.” Dating a vampire was just not the easiest thing.

“We'll talk about that later. In the meantime, Roland, how about you see what you can do about arrangements, and Nim and I will…see what we can do about Sebastian.”

I could tell he'd skipped right over whatever rude, lewd joke had been on the back of his tongue. I was grateful. Maybe, just maybe, he was learning how to be a good boyfriend, after all.

I
n something of a change of pace, Colin had to handle the conversation with Sebastian because my mouth was…otherwise occupied. I'm proud to say it was very difficult for him to achieve anything approaching coherence. Sebastian seemed to be having the same problem, but I couldn't take credit for that.

“Can you tell if somebody else is controlling you?”

“I don't know.” I couldn't see him, since I was facing Colin. Also I had my head buried in his manly bits, which would have made it hard to see even if I had been facing the right direction. I hadn't done this in a while. I had to say it was more enjoyable trying to tune Sebastian in with Colin's dick than it was to have Colin trying to tune him in on me. Well, maybe not more enjoyable per se. Less pressure.

“I can't tell really…” Sebastian's voice faded in and out, then became more distinct. “There are times…long times…when it's just dark…nothing. But sometimes I wake up and I feel so angry…”

There was a vague choking sound. At first I thought Sebastian was struggling with something, then I realized I'd gotten a little too enthusiastic with my mouthful of vampire cock. Colin grabbed my hair and held me still.

“You don't know what happens to make you angry?”

“No. I can't remember. I can't remember much of anything… I can remember when I see you. Everything else is just a blank.”

I decided I wanted to actually see Sebastian at this point, so I slid my mouth free, replacing it with my hand so Colin wouldn't wilt in the interim. Sebastian floated past the end of the bed, his outline a bit firmer than it had been last time we'd talked to him. “You don't remember anything except being with us?”

“Yes. I remember before… I remember the stone. And that's all. Except when I see you.”

I exchanged a glance with Colin, who was frowning intensely. I couldn't tell if it was out of thoughtfulness or because he was trying hard not to jizz all over me and thus potentially break our connection with Bastian. When he spoke, though, his voice was remarkably even.

“So there are long stretches when you really don't know what's happening at all?”

“Yes.”

Sebastian faded a bit again. He seemed to have a slightly better hold on himself than he had before. When his outline firmed up again, his eyes were wider. “I can hear… Someone's calling me.”

This was important. I jumped on it immediately. My fingers tightened in my flash of excitement, and Colin twitched.

“Sorry,” I said, then, “Can you tell who it is? Do you recognize the voice?”

“No. Nim… Nim, I think there's something very bad going on.”

“We're working on it, love.” I reached out for him with my free hand, but there was nothing to touch, and he was too far away from me. “I promise. We're going to take care of you.”

Colin's hand on my head shifted a little, stroking my hair. “Roland's helping us. We're making progress.”

“Thank you.” And then he disappeared.

I turned back to Colin. He seemed not at all opposed to my finishing what I'd started.

So I did, and then I asked the question that had been nagging at me. “Do you really think it could be him?”

Colin hadn't quite recovered yet. He wasn't short of breath—that was a human thing—but he definitely was having some issues getting his concentration refocused.

“It's looking more and more likely.”

I'd been afraid of that answer. I tucked down closer against him, taking comfort in the strength of his chest under my hands. Remembering my insistence that it couldn't possibly be Bastian, and that Colin had been stupid and horrible for even suggesting it, I considered apologizing. I didn't, though, because that hadn't been a condemnation of Colin but an expression of my trust in Sebastian. And if there was anything Colin really, deeply understood, it was loyalty.

He pulled me a little closer, stroking my back as if sensing my mood. “We'll get him back,” he said firmly. “I promise.”

I nodded, my cheek stroking his chest. I wanted that more than anything. But if we couldn't get him back, at the very least maybe we could get him free.

C
hapter Six

The presence of the vampire in Siberia may predate the presence of the modern human. The earliest form of the vampire retrovirus, combined with the earliest evolution of humanoids able to subsist solely on blood, may have occurred in caves beneath the ice as long as 50,000 years ago.
—Dr. Jacqueline Blachek, University of Chicago

W
e caught up with Roland again the next evening. I'd spent a good part of the day staring at my ceiling, wishing I could sleep. Unlike the vampires, I didn't lapse into a coma as soon as the sun came up and instead had to wrestle with my insomnia. I wasn't a good wrestler.

“Did you sleep?” Colin snipped at me when I nodded off over my breakfast, almost pouring Jamaica Blue Mountain all over the table.

“I tried.” With a sigh, I set the cup back down on the table. It was overflowing with caffeiney goodness, but it still didn't seem to be enough to wake me up.

He made a huffing sound. Maybe he thought I hadn't tried hard enough. I carefully picked up the coffee cup and took another drink. “I can't just pass out like you do.” At first I'd thought it was weird and disturbing—now it was a skill I envied.

“Guess I'll have to work harder to tire you out.”

“Ha. Ha. Also? Ha. Don't quit your day job.”

“I don't have a day job.”

“Your night job, then.”

I shook my head. Vampires. Comedians they weren't. I finished my coffee, a couple of pieces of toast and a handful of vitamins, then Colin and I went to fetch Roland.

Colin had put her up in a nearby vampire-friendly hotel. He had extra bedrooms in his house, but I was glad she wasn't staying there. It just seemed like the kind of situation that could go from seemingly convenient to horribly awkward in a heartbeat or two, depending upon how loud Colin managed to get me to howl. Or vice-versa, because, yes, I can make him howl too. I'm sure Roland appreciated the privacy, as well, since she was undoubtedly conducting all kinds of super-secret vampire activities to figure out how we could move forward in our quest to help Sebastian.

She was waiting at the blood bar in the lobby, sipping from a tall glass garnished with a celery stick. Bloody Mary, I thought. Another poor attempt at vampire humor. We joined her at the bar, where Colin ordered himself a drink.

“We should head upstairs,” Roland said by way of greeting. “Fewer ears.”

Colin nodded. When he'd gotten his drink and tasted it—“Too much Tabasco,” was his assessment—we headed up to Roland's room.

The utter mess she'd managed to make of her room in less than twelve hours gave me yet another reason to like Roland. She had papers spread everywhere, the bed looked like five people had slept in it and the bathroom counters were covered with sample bottles of hair products and small paper cups stained with blood. Maybe she'd ordered room service? Did they have blood in the mini bar? I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Ignoring the clutter, she moved directly to the desk and woke up her snoozing laptop. “I have a plan of action,” she said, plopping down in the chair. “Question is, can we execute it?”

“I guess we'll find out,” Colin said. He went to stand at her elbow. I pulled up another chair next to her and wondered if they had things in the minibar that weren't blood. Maybe a Red Bull.

Roland ran her finger absentmindedly over the touchpad on the laptop, making the cursor jump randomly across the screen. “There's a lot here I've been asked to keep under wraps. Stuff that's been going on for decades. Centuries, in a couple of cases. I don't actually have the go-ahead to pass it on to you.”

Colin nodded soberly. “Is this a do-not-disclose-under-pain-of-death kind of situation?”

“Sadly, yes. Literally.”

“So what are we going to do if you can't tell us anything?” I sounded snippy. I hadn't meant to sound snippy. Roland either didn't notice or didn't mind.

“I'm going to tell you anyway,” she said, then smiled a little. “Well… After I get one more phone call. Then I'll feel like I've covered my ass well enough not to worry about it. Or not to worry about it excessively, anyway.”

“Phone call from who?”

“Whom,” said Roland. Wow. Linguistics expert was a grammar Nazi. Go figure. “I can't actually tell you.”

“What
can
you tell us?” Now Colin sounded snippy.

“Keep your panties on,” Roland told him. “I'm moving this forward as fast as I can.” She flicked the touchpad and brought up a map. As she zoomed out, I started to recognize outlines. It was Russia, then the east coast of Russia, with Alaska drooping over as if trying to shake hands. Japan dangled in the way as well, but I was pretty sure we weren't headed there. There was a variety of little map-pin graphics scattered across the map, most of them concentrated in an area just east of the Urals and a bit farther north than I'd been hoping. Something about the location seemed vaguely familiar. She zoomed back in again, into the map-pinned area, and Alaska disappeared.

“Siberia,” Roland confirmed. “Weird shit happens there. A lot of that weird shit has to do with the universe flinging meteors at the planet. Some of it has to do with vampires.”

I sensed a lecture coming on. “Can I get something to drink that doesn't have corpuscles in it?” I asked.

Roland twitched an elbow toward the minibar. “I think there was Coke in there or something.”

I opened it and nosed through the drinks. There was a row of carefully packaged blood that looked like juice pouches. Next to it were two Cokes and a Dr Pepper. I grabbed the Dr Pepper. Life was looking up.

“There's a vamp settlement here…” Roland pointed to the map where about six of the little map pins clustered together. “It's in the Tunguska area. The settlement is more of a research facility than a regular cabal. If we go, that's where we'll be going.”

“Tunguska,” Colin repeated meditatively. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“There was a meteor strike there in 1908,” I provided. I hadn't quite recognized the location, but I did recognize the name. Score one for my devotion to
The X-Files
. “Made a mess—knocked half a forest flat to the ground in a nice, neat little circle.”

“Not really a strike,” Roland corrected. “An explosion a short distance above the ground. But… Well, anyway. We can get into that later. Right now we need to find out what kind of paperwork we need to get in order to go over there if everything gets okayed by the cadre.”

“I can get our paperwork sorted,” Colin said. He had that cagey look in his eyes. I decided not to ask. If whatever paperwork he had got us into the country and kept us out of prison, I wasn't going to complain about it.

“Mine's already sorted,” said Roland. “I travel quite a bit with my work, so I have a Russian passport and visa. I'm worried most about Nimuë.”

“I have a passport, but that's it.” I'd gone to Canada for a week when I was pretending to go to college, so I still had up-to-date documentation. Still, there were visas and things to consider. Could they pull enough strings to get me into Russia without proper documentation? Or was I going to end up in a gulag? That could be unpleasant. It certainly wasn't how I'd planned to spend my declining years. Which was to say the years after thirty. Did Russia still have gulags? Maybe they didn't. I couldn't remember.

“I suspected that might be the case.” Roland frowned at the screen. “Under normal circumstances, we could be sitting here for a few months waiting for you to get your documents sorted. I think I can expedite a few of the pieces through my channels. But do you have any strings you could pull on the human side that might help us get you sorted more quickly?”

“I can ask my sister. She flies out of the country all the time.”

“Yeah, but does she have any kind of influence?” Colin sounded skeptical. I didn't blame him.

“I have no idea. She flies diplomats around sometimes. I could ask.”

“Go ahead and get in touch with her.” Roland zoomed the map in a bit again, almost as if by accident. The map pins were labeled with words, but I couldn't read them because they were too far away from me, too small, and apparently written in Cyrillic. I wondered if they were names of vampires or something else entirely. “Were you guys able to get in touch with Sebastian?”

“Sort of.” Colin had answered, so I sat back and drank my Dr Pepper while Colin related the conversation of last night.

“We need to get a move on this,” Roland concluded. “And fast.”

“I agree entirely,” Colin said. He glanced at his watch. “Nim, I need to go take care of some things at the office. Why don't you stay here and see what you can arrange with Roland and with your sister? Just give me a call when you need me to come pick you up.”

I blinked and hurriedly swallowed the pop in my mouth. He was leaving me here? Stranding me with a vampire I didn't know all that well? More importantly, who had banged my other boyfriend? I didn't like this idea. “Stay here?” I repeated.

Colin smiled. “Don't worry. She won't bite.” He stood, bent to kiss my forehead. “I'll be back in a few. Or call me, like I said.”

And, without another consideration, he ushered himself out the door, leaving me alone with Roland and a giant, awkward elephant that sat in the room and looked a lot like Sebastian.

“So…” I said after Colin had departed. “Siberia, huh? A fine vacation destination.”

“Actually, some areas are quite nice. The scenery can be amazing.”

I'd always pictured Siberia as a vast, flat, ice-crusted plain littered with Soviet dissidents, criminals and prisons, so I'd have to take her word for it. About all I knew about Siberia was that everyone who ever pissed off anyone in power in Russia got tossed into it. And Tunguska, of course, and the meteor that had buzzed Chelyabinsk. And mammoths, but I was pretty sure there weren't many of those trotting around the countryside these days. I could be wrong.

“If you say so,” I conceded. I still wasn't looking forward to it. It was still winter. It was going to be cold. There was just no way around that. “Why do vampires even hang out there? Don't they have problems with torpor and, I don't know, becoming frozen?”

Her smile was amused but not patronizing. “They stay warm. The nights are long in the winter. Vamps like places where they can stay awake twenty-four seven three months out of the year. They don't like the cold, but it's a trade-off. Me? I'd rather sleep than freeze, but what do I know? I was born in much warmer climes.”

Oh, nice. An opportunity to ask her something more about herself. “Whereabouts?”

She frowned. “I'd have to look it up. I honestly don't know what it's called these days.”

So much for that. I decided not to push any farther. It would seem weird. “Well, if you'll give me a second, it might still be early enough to get hold of my sister and see what we can find out, if anything.”

“Okay. Good plan.”

I stepped to the other side of the room and sat on the edge of the bed to call Gwen. I had serious doubts she could help me get a visa posthaste, plus I was pretty sure I'd need some additional miscellaneous documentation to get into Russia. Stuff probably beyond her scope entirely. But with Gwen, you never really knew.

She answered on the third ring, which I hadn't expected. “Hey, Nim. What's up?”

I roughly outlined the situation while she made
yes, I understand
and
I am sympathetic to your plight
noises. When I had finished, she said, “I can talk to somebody about the visa. But you're going to need a couple other bits and pieces.”

“Any idea where I might be able to scare that up quick-like?”

“Well, yeah.” There was a definite “duh” in her tone. “Dad.”

Well, there was a twist that hadn't occurred to me. I knew Dad—and Mom, for that matter—ran all over the world researching topics for the books and articles they wrote. Last I'd heard, they were in Alaska researching one of Dad's books, which might or might not have been about polar bears. Not too far from Siberia, point of fact. But it hadn't occurred to me that he might be able to pull strings that could get me into one of the countries he'd traveled through.

“Dad? Really?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. He spent about a year in Siberia when he wrote that book about the Soviet labor camps. Seriously, do you pay any attention to what your parents do for a living?”

“Not if I can help it.” If I did, they'd make me read their books, and I didn't care much about either polar bears or Soviet labor camps.

Gwen made a noise of severe sisterly disgust. “Anyway, yeah, he got all hobnobby with some muckitymucks in the Russian government while he was out there. I'm sure he could get you into the country, no problem. There'll be a catch, though, I'm sure.”

Uh-oh. “And what might that be?”

I could hear the smug in her tone. “They're visiting Chelyabinsk right now. Dad's writing an article about the meteor and its aftermath. If you go to Siberia, you're going to have to visit them.”

I banged my head against the wall. “God, Sebastian had better appreciate this.”

Colin returned after a time to find Roland and me poring over the Internet, trying to find out what documentation I would need in order to get into Russia. It was a last-ditch effort on my part to avoid talking to my parents.

No, that wasn't it. I didn't mind talking to my parents. I didn't even mind seeing my parents. What I did mind was having to introduce them to my vampire boyfriend in a backwater town in the middle of Siberia that had recently been strafed by a meteorite. I didn't think I was being petty about that.

He handed me a cup of coffee and lifted an eyebrow. “You look…twitchy.” It was an accurate enough assessment. “Not making any progress?” he went on.