Necromancing Nim (39 page)

I wedged the stone into a front pocket, figuring the closer I kept it to myself, the harder it would be for anyone to get it away from me. We headed down the stairs to see how bad it was.

It was bad. Full dark had fallen hard and violent, and several of the occupants of the house had been attacked and mauled, left bleeding and broken on the stairs. They weren’t dead, though, and that, perhaps, was the worst part. Their throats were torn open, blood pooling under them in puddles that made my feet slip out from under me on the wooden stairs. Stomachs sliced open, chests—none of it was enough to kill them, but it was enough to incapacitate them, leaving them writhing on the blood-slick floors.

I put my hand over my face, trying to block out most of the raw smell. It wasn’t quite like fresh blood; it smelled older, ranker, like meat that was aging but not quite rotten. Vampire blood, I supposed, carried a different makeup after flowing through an undead body long enough. I focused on keeping my feet under me, with the wooden floors slick and dangerous with blood.

Sebastian grabbed my hand, steadying me. Another scream rose as we rounded the bottom of the staircase. Roland. I knew a split second before I saw her, knew a breath before that exactly who had her.

Already wounded, she’d been in no shape to fight, and now Pieter himself held her against him, teeth deep in her throat. His glamour had fallen away, and he looked strong again, powerful. The vampire blood, I thought. Drinking his own kind had given him his strength back. It wouldn’t last, though. He still needed the stone.

Four other vamps fell upon us as we headed into the main room. Pale, dead-eyed, they were obviously part of Pieter’s zombie retinue. One groped at Colin; he grabbed it by skull and shoulders and literally wrenched its head from its body. I stared as the broken pieces fell to the ground, then disappeared.

A few feet away, farther into the main room, Pieter let Roland’s limp form slump to the floor.

“You’re too late,” he said, mocking. “She’ll come back as one of mine. And you—” He swiveled to face Sebastian. “The stone is mine. My claim is stronger—you have no hope of absorbing it.”

“I have no desire to absorb it.” Sebastian spoke calmly. I moved closer to him, aware of the weight of the stone in my pocket but not reaching for it, not yet. I heard the swift, wet crunch from behind me as Colin tore another vampire to pieces with his bare hands. That’s so hot when he does that, I thought vaguely. Hot but really, really gross.

Focused on Sebastian, I almost missed the sense of movement behind me as another vampire closed in. I wasn’t able to duck quite in time, and she grabbed my arms, pinning them behind me. Then Colin was just there, descending on both of us, teeth bared. He hit his target just behind me, and both figures fell out of my sphere of awareness. Another wet, ripping sound followed. I didn’t want to know.

Pieter ran his hands over his face, wavering a little. Absorbing Roland’s blood, I thought. He bared sharp, white fangs and growled. “It’s mine. It’s always been mine.”

Sebastian only gave a small, sad smile. “Not today.”

I knew right away that it was time. I shoved my hand into my pocket and retrieved the stone.

“Colin,” I said firmly, not sure where he was but certain he was close enough to hear. “Get out of the way.”

And I went to Sebastian.

It was a simple enough thing. Fighting every urge that told me not to do it, not to kill this man I’d come to care for so much, I lifted the stone and pressed it hard against the center of his breastbone, between the swells of his pectoral muscles. I’d kissed him there, more than once. He grunted, his body bowed backward, and then he threw his head back and howled as the stone entered him.

There was no surgery necessary. Pieter’s makeshift ER, the rib spreaders and knives had been the last-ditch hope of a man whose tie with the stone was no longer strong enough for him to take it in. If he’d gotten his hands on it earlier, before he’d infected me, before my healing, maybe it would have worked for him. But Sebastian had been strongly bonded to it even before Pieter had stolen it back, and everything that had happened between him and me in the meantime had made it his. It sank into his body, through bone and flesh, and I could see the glow as it descended. Could see it settle against his silent heart just before his flesh closed around it again.

“Bastard!” Pieter screamed and threw himself at Sebastian, clawing at the other vampire’s chest as if he could rip the stone back out of his body with his bare hands. “It’s mine! Mine!”

Sebastian grasped Pieter by his wrists and jerked his hands back, turned him around, bent him over and pinned him to the floor. “It’s not over,” he said.

I think it was only in that moment that Pieter really realized what was happening, what had happened. He thought Sebastian had just taken the stone, taken it into himself to absorb its gifts. But Sebastian’s voice came stretched and broken, strained with pain, and as he pressed Pieter hard against the floor, curled around his body almost as if he were fucking him, Sebastian’s spine began to glow.

It was starting. I wheeled around, searching out Colin, but saw no sign of him. Hopefully he’d gotten himself out of the danger zone. As for the others… They weren’t dead, not even Roland, and I wasn’t sure what would happen to them. I certainly couldn’t get them out of harm’s way. I took a few steps back, wondering if even I would be safe. There wasn’t much time to worry about it or to find other options. There wasn’t much time to do anything at all.

Sebastian glowed from the inside out, the fire seeming to trace from his spine out to the tips of every extremity, following the lines of nerve strands and tissue. His eyes flared orange, and he arched his body, the howl coming from his throat more animal than human, laced with unutterable pain.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from him. I had helped him come to this place; I wasn’t going to abandon him now. He seemed to need nothing from me, but I could provide one thing, and that was my presence, giving him whatever strength I could just by being near him.

The orange light moved out from his body, then spread through the room. It puddled at his feet like water, poured out of the rest of him like a liquid orange wind. It coalesced into tendrils that wound through the room, wrapping around the supine vampires, absorbing the blood that had pooled on the floor.

As it passed, it left healing behind it. Wounds closed, blood disappeared, and the vampires who had been dismembered or torn open began to revive. Those who’d been bitten seemed to change color somehow, as if a smoky haze were lifted from them. This was the removal of the taint, I knew—they were no longer fated to become zombies. And they hadn’t had to suffer through the sheer agony of drinking holy water to do it, either. The light found Roland and blanketed her, caressed her, brought her back to health and her own, vampiric version of life.

But Pieter. The light had a very different effect on Pieter. The long tendrils moved like invading hands up inside his clothes, then seemed to penetrate him, one of them moving straight through his chest, one piercing his eyeballs to emerge from the back of his head. He screamed, and the orange light poured into his wide-open mouth. It riddled through him, skewering his body in slim lines of power, until suddenly all the laser-sharp lines expanded to meet each other, vaporizing the flesh that lay between them. Pieter simply disintegrated between the needles of light, reduced to a sort of orange motey dust, then disappeared altogether.

So Pieter was gone. With him went most of the threat to us and to the stone. Was it too much to hope that perhaps Sebastian might survive this all, now that everything was taken care of?

He had gone to his knees, still straining with the intense bars of light pouring through his body. But as I watched, they faded, coalescing and gathering back together in the center of his chest. He folded his hands together over his heart, folding in on himself.

Suddenly Colin was there, kneeling next to his lover, stroking a hand down his back and drawing him close. I got my wits back together and went to join them.

“Sebastian?” Colin’s voice was strained and thready. I reached out to touch Sebastian’s face and was startled by the cold of it. He wasn’t exactly warm to the touch on the best of occasions, but this was worse, as if every drop of heat had been drained out of him by the gathered power of the stone.

“Just—” Sebastian broke off, unable to speak. Colin put his arms around him and held him, gently kissed the top of his head. The light limned his lips, and he winced but didn’t let go.

The power took Sebastian, piece by piece, folding in upon itself inside him, sliding over the surface of his skin. His face contorted with pain. Then it shifted to one of easy peace, just as light bathed his features.

Then he just…disappeared.

I pressed a hand over my mouth. He was gone. How could he be gone? But where Colin had cradled him, there now was nothing.

Slowly, Colin raised his gaze to mine. “It’s over,” he choked out.

I nodded. He seemed to shrink into himself, his shoulders shook, and suddenly my own stunned grief disappeared, faced with the opportunity to comfort his. I walked to him on my knees, wrapped my arms around him and held him while he cried.

The only destination for a vampire’s soul—if a vampire indeed has a soul—is hell.
—Statement from the Vatican, 1971.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Four other vampires from Roland’s cadre had died in the encounter. We weren’t sure how many of Pieter’s had been caught in the blast, aside from Pieter himself. Nobody really cared, too shell-shocked from the attacks and from Sebastian’s death.

I felt a bit guilty for not being more concerned about the other deaths. But I was too numb. Even knowing what was coming—and truthfully, it had seemed like it was on the way from the very beginning, from the moment I’d met Sebastian—his loss had hit me hard. Harder than I’d expected.

Though there were no bodies—there aren’t, with vampires—Roland and the rest of her small community held a ceremony recognizing the dead. It had never occurred to me that vamps might hold funerals. I don’t know why. They’re human, after all, in more ways than they’re not.

The outpouring for Sebastian surprised me. I’d never given any thought to how many people he might have known, though I suppose in three hundred or so years of life, you could collect a large circle of friends.

When Colin stepped to the front of the room, I held my breath, afraid of what he might say. I didn’t know why. I think I was more scared of how much it might hurt him to speak than of anything inappropriate that might come out of his mouth.

He stood silent for a moment, hands folded behind his back, as if considering his words. The silence stretched too long, but the others in the room held quiet, waiting. Finally, he tipped his head forward and spoke, his voice low, barely audible even in the small room, at least to those of us with inadequate human hearing.

“Sebastian was a good man,” he said, then stopped. His head remained tilted forward; I could tell more was coming, but it was several long seconds before he finally made the words. “And I loved him.”

He was still for a few more breaths, then straightened and left the room.

From across the room, Roland caught my attention, gesturing that I should follow him. I shook my head. He’d need time.

I waited until the ceremony had ended before I slipped away, leaving the others milling about the room, talking quietly among themselves about the comrades they’d lost. A hard knot had risen in my throat, but I held it back. I didn’t want to cry. Not yet.

Colin was upstairs in the room the three of us had shared, sitting on the bed, staring at nothing. He looked up as I came in.

“We should go,” he said quietly. “Our stuff’s back at the hotel. We can go pack up and get the hell out of here.”

I nodded. “If that’s what you want. I mean, if you don’t want to stay to visit.”

He shook his head, his mouth twisting sideways. “No. I don’t want to stay to visit.”

There was a moment of silence; then I moved to sit next to him on the bed. Carefully, I stroked a hand down his back. It seemed strange to touch him, even after what we’d been through, what he’d done to me in this bed not so many hours ago.

“He knew what would happen,” I said, as much to comfort myself as Colin. “He went in with his eyes wide open. He saved a lot of people.”

Colin shook his head slightly, and for a moment, I thought the sneer on his face would explode into invective, cursing me for being patronizing. But he just ducked his head then and, after some time, said, “I’m going to miss him.”

“Me too.” I leaned toward him; then, daring but feeling like it was the right thing to do, I pressed my lips to his cheek.

He turned his head as I drew back and ducked toward me, catching my lips with his.

The kiss was gentle, and he closed a hand softly on my upper arm. But as his eyes lifted and met mine, they went dark and angry, his jaw clenching. His fingers tightened on my arm.

“Just not right,” he managed, and I nodded.

“Yes.”

The yes meant everything he needed it to mean, and he shoved me down into the bed, kissing me hard.

He was rough and fast and intense, and I let him be. I needed it too. Hard, mindless rutting to shut out, if only for a moment, the dark shadow of death. I thought he might bite me, but he didn’t, only tonguing the still-raw wounds at my neck, easing a drop or two of blood from them, only a taste. The sucking pull of his mouth against my neck was as sweet as a kiss between the thighs. I’d never dreamed I could want him this much.