Necromancing Nim (26 page)

“That is just fucking stupid. He’s a vampire. He doesn’t need to worry about infection. They could put the damn thing in with a rusty knife and dirty kitchen tongs, and he’d have no problems with it.”

“Probably a bit less painful this way,” Sebastian commented.

“Wussy is what he is,” Colin stated.

I blinked, frowning as more images formed unbidden in my head. This was why they’d been moving from place to place every night. We’d assumed it was to stay hidden, but that was just a lucky side effect. It was more to distract searchers from this place, where he’d set up a permanent facility, waiting for the stone to come back into his possession. “He’s been preparing this for weeks. Working on it the whole time—” I broke off, staring.

Because suddenly the room, which had, swear to God, been empty when we walked in, was filled with vampires. Okay, there were six. But six against two was not good odds. Except they were all standing perfectly still. I sucked in a breath of surprise. Colin and Sebastian stared at me, obviously clueless.

“Glamour,” I said, hoping the word without context would mean something to my vampires and nothing to Pieter’s vampires. I tried to work out a way to tell them where the hidden vamps were without being obvious about it. And of course I had about an eighth of a second to come up with something. I stretched out both arms, each hand pointing at a vamp, and said, “Where’s the glamour? There’s supposed to be glamour, dammit, not just a bunch of fucking vampires.” I swung my arms like a windmill or a crazy person, pointing at the other four. The hidden vamps stared at each other with “what the fuck” expressions on their faces, but before they managed to work it out, Colin and Sebastian exploded.

I’d like to say they moved with deadly catlike grace that ignited some sort of fire in my loins, but mostly they just blurred out of my range of vision. I saw the glamoured vamps take solid hits and crumple up, unconscious, but very little of Colin or Sebastian other than the effects of their rapid attack. I wasn’t even sure how they oriented themselves well enough to the other vampires to knock them out, but two seconds later, all six were unconscious on the floor, and Colin and Sebastian had returned to center stage. Colin wiped blood from his knuckles onto his coat.

“That was the lamest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told me, trying very hard not to grin.

“It worked, didn’t it?” I shot back.

“It did,” he conceded. He moved toward the glass doors, stepping right on an unconscious vampire’s chest on the way. I heard a cracking sound and winced.

Colin tweaked aside the blinds carefully and peeked past, then waved for us to join him. Sebastian glanced in on the other side, and I slid up next to Colin to peer through his part of the window. Figures were gathered on the other side of the glass-paned door, past the staging area into the main part of the house, which had been done over into a makeshift but surprisingly organized operating room.

Pieter was spread out on the operating table. A woman bent over him. She wore a stereotypical white nurse’s uniform, out of which stereotypically large breasts tried to burst forth into Pieter’s face as she sewed shut the open wound in his chest, the tip of her tongue protruding pertly between pouty lips. Pieter watched the breasts intently. Apparently, their perkiness worked well in lieu of anesthesia; he barely flinched as the needle wove in and out of his skin.

Sebastian gave Colin a meaningful nod. They seemed to have a plan, or at least an agreement. I hung back, letting them do the dirty work.

Colin kicked the doors in and burst through into the operating area, body blurring as he phased into vampire-speed. Sebastian moved a breath behind him. Kicking in doors, being competent, moving at untrackable speeds—my libido was definitely sitting up and taking notice at this point.

“Get it,” Colin said sharply, and Pieter jumped at the sound, jostling his upper body enough that the needle went astray.

“Shit!” said Pieter. We had, indeed, managed an element of surprise.

“Sorry!” squeaked the nurse.

Another figure lunged toward me threateningly. He had on full surgical attire, complete with mask and gloves. Not sure if he was human or vampire, I jerked the Taser out of my pocket and shoved it right into his face. The result effectively slowed his forward momentum, leaving him twitching on the floor.

Sebastian and Colin both leapt forward in blurs of motion. Sebastian grabbed the nurse, holding her arms behind her while she struggled. Judging by her lack of strength, she appeared to be human. She still managed to wiggle enough in Sebastian’s hold to send her tits dangerously close to popping out of her low-cut uniform. I really didn’t want to see that. I’d had a bad enough day already.

“Let me go!” she squeaked. I couldn’t believe that was her real voice. If it was, she should think about having a transplant. You know, if they actually did voice transplants.

Sebastian didn’t let her go. Instead, he held her tighter and peered over her shoulder down her enormous cleavage, apparently as concerned about its safe containment as I was. She continued to struggle but made no headway.

In the meantime, Colin was focused on Pieter. Moving with that preternatural vampire speed, he had caught the Russian asshole off guard enough to wrap his legs in the sheet from the operating table. This functioned to immobilize the other vampire sufficiently for Colin to pin him to the table, ripping at the stitches with one hand, holding Pieter down with the other. Pieter fought to shake him off, spitting and swearing as one bloody stitch after another came out of his skin. Colin was hard put to hold him still, but he did it. I stayed where I was and poked the guy at my feet with the Taser again when his twitching eased off.

With the last stitch removed and flicked across the room, Colin shoved his hand into the open incision. Pieter howled with pain, and I winced as Colin tore his bloodied hand free, fist clenched around what I assumed was the stone.

“Got it,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Sebastian tossed the nurse toward the wall, while Colin took a moment to punch his fist hard into Pieter’s incision. Blood splattered, and Pieter screamed like a girl. Colin grabbed Pieter’s head and wrenched it sideways, trying to tear it from his body. “Die, Goddammit!” he growled at the other vampire. Pieter didn’t. In spite of Colin’s superior weight and size, and the death-grip he had on Pieter’s skull, the head remained stubbornly attached to the rest of his body.

Another vamp lunged toward Colin, a big knife flashing in his hand. Machete, bayonet, scimitar—whatever it was, it was sharp. Sebastian tackled its wielder from behind, sending him to the floor.

“Let him go,” he said to Colin. “It’s too soon.”

“Fuck,” said Colin, but he let Pieter go, and we hightailed it for the car.

“Should have killed him, dammit.” Colin demonstrated a remarkable talent for running and bitching at the same time. “Can’t just leave him behind. Shit.”

“You couldn’t have,” Sebastian explained quite calmly as we approached the car. “He nearly completed the procedure. He’ll remain quite resistant to any sort of harm for at least a quarter of an hour, and partially resistant for a matter of days.” His precise wording and the primness of his accent made me think he was royally pissed.

I flung myself into the backseat of the car while the vampires took the front seat this time. “We’re not done yet.” I sat up, scanning the road to confirm what I thought I’d seen on the way out of the crappy little house. Sure enough, a good dozen figures were moving toward the car from behind the house. They weren’t particularly speedy—I suspected at least some of them were zombiefied rather than regular vampires. But two of the figures drew ahead, moving more confidently toward the car. Not zombies, I’d bet. Also, they had guns.

“We could, um, like, leave any time now,” I suggested. I hunched down in the seat. Colin and Sebastian could survive a hail of bullets, if such were coming our way, but I wasn’t quite so invulnerable.

“Fucking thing won’t start.” Now Colin was preparing to demonstrate his ability to drive while bitching.

“Why not?”

“How the hell should I know? You put gas in the damn thing?”

“Of course I did. Wiggle the key.”

“Wiggle the key?”

“Wiggle the key,” I repeated. “Sometimes it helps.”

“Wiggle the goddamn key,” Sebastian put in, just as the first bullet cracked the front windshield.

“Shit! You’re paying for that,” I shouted at Colin, who wiggled the key. The car roared to life. He screeched away from the curb—he was totally buying me new tires too—and plowed straight into the first gunman. The vampire slid over the hood and smashed into the windshield, just like in the movies, then slid off onto the ground. Colin plowed through the line of vampire zombies and kept going.

“How did he know it wouldn’t absorb the right way?” Sebastian muttered as we tore up a clear stretch of street, headed for the highway. “He had to have known, to set up an operating room. He shouldn’t have needed it.”

“No.” Colin agreed, taking the exit ramp up onto the highway. “It should have absorbed right away.”

They were silent for a moment as Colin merged into traffic, mulling this development. I mulled too and finally sat up in the backseat. My front windshield was cracked but not shattered, like one of the cars that came down the hill from the mountains, windshields spider-webbed with cracks from the stones that lurked in the sand they used at the higher altitudes when it snowed. So not at all unusual.

“You mean he shouldn’t have needed surgery?” I ventured.

Colin glanced at me speculatively in the rearview mirror. He could see my reflection; his wasn’t so clear. “Yeah. He should have been able to absorb the stone straight through his skin.”

“But it didn’t work that way,” Sebastian put in. His voice sounded thoughtful too. “Why not?”

“Well…” Colin drew the word out, as if buying himself time to consider his answer. “You’ve had it for a good long while—maybe the separation broke whatever bond he had to it back then.” Colin frowned his deep, thinky frown. I didn’t really want him regarding me that way, under the circumstances. “You connected to him too. You felt them open his chest up.”

I shifted uneasily in my seat. “I felt something. And it wasn’t fun.”

Sebastian nodded. “She bonded to the stone. Just enough.”

“Enough for what?” I persevered.

Sebastian turned to speak directly to me over the seat. “Enough for it to not appreciate being shoved into someone else.”

“But…isn’t it a vampire stone?”

Sebastian nodded. “It is.”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“But the stone healed you, so it was partially attuned to you.” Colin took up the explanation. “So when Pieter had them implant it, your bond fucked things up.”

“It would have settled in eventually.” Sebastian seemed certain of this assessment. “But what I want to know is how he knew it wouldn’t absorb directly. He has to have found something somewhere, some lore, or…” He trailed off into a long moment of cogitation.

“Maybe he just tried it and it didn’t work,” I suggested. Why did they have to assume everything was so complicated?

Sebastian’s eyebrows rose. “Ah. Maybe he did, at that.” He cleared his throat. Embarrassed, I was sure, that the ignorant human in the car had come up with a reasonable explanation. “In any case, it gave us more time.”

Silence fell again. Colin crossed three lanes to exit—why the hell he hadn’t gotten over earlier was beyond me. When we’d made it onto the main road leading into his subdivision, I asked, “What’s next?”

Sebastian’s answer came firm and sure. “We have to destroy it.”

“Right.” I saw Colin’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “How long has it been around? And nobody’s gotten rid of it yet.”

“Because everybody just wants to use it,” Sebastian explained patiently. “The stone is pure power. You don’t destroy power.”

“Or maybe it can’t be destroyed.” Colin still sounded grim.

“Anything can be destroyed.” Sebastian’s decisiveness made it clear he had no confidence at all in what he was saying. “It’s just a matter of knowing how.”

Colin gave him a lifted eyebrow. “You think Roland’s that close?”

Sebastian’s mouth folded into a stubborn line. “Yes. The information we sent out—it closed most of the gaps she had left.”

Colin started to say something but stopped and shook his head a little instead. He pulled into my driveway and stopped the car.

It wasn’t until we got back home that I remembered we’d left Eric hogtied and unconscious on my living room floor. I remembered mostly because Eric was still hogtied on my living room floor. Not so much unconscious anymore, though.

“What the fuck?” he snarled when we came in. I stopped short and stared at him, wide-eyed. “What the fucking fuck?”

“Adding repetitions of ‘fuck’ doesn’t make your question any clearer.” Colin was being a smartass. The approach didn’t seem wise to me, considering Eric was a cop and all.

Eric convulsed on the carpet, jerking at the ropes holding him securely bent in half. He had red marks on his wrists, as if he’d been trying to wrench his way free for a while. “Untie me, you stupid fucking vampire. I’m going to throw the fucking book at you, you fucker—”