Summoning Sebastian (5 page)

C
hapter Five

Not your everyday blood bar. Visit after 11 p.m. and choose your own donor! Guaranteed fresh. All blood types not always available—call ahead for today's menu.
—Ad in
Westword
magazine

W
e met Roland at DIA the next night at midnight. She was dressed in her usual casual chic—black skinny jeans and a loose black tunic over a sapphire-blue shirt. They complemented her terra cotta skin nicely. Her straight black hair was drawn back into an untidy braid. She was one of those stunningly attractive women who never seem to have to work at it. Even knowing she was a friend, I had a hard time not feeling intimidated, messy and inferior in her presence.

“How was the flight?” Colin asked her, dealing with the necessary niceties as he took her carry-on bag from her and headed for his car.

“Typical.” She made a face. “I hate flying.”

Most vampires did. There was too much danger of getting caught in a sunbeam if your flight was later than you expected. Which was why Gwen's vampire passenger list had burgeoned once she'd decided to fly bloodsuckers in general. Private flights are always more convenient for the sun-sensitive. On the other hand, commercial red-eye flights did excellent business with vampires shuttling here and there for work.

“Thanks for coming out,” I told her, trying to be sensitive toward her proclivities. I knew it took a lot of time out of her day, her life, her job, to come jaunting out to Denver at a moment's notice.

“Anything for Bastian.” Her tone was quiet and sincere. “You know that.”

Well. Actually, I hadn't known that. There was something new here I hadn't heard before. I wasn't sure I liked it. I glanced toward Colin, hoping for some kind of enlightenment, but he didn't answer my silent inquiry. Instead, he stayed focused on Roland.

“Did you bring the notes with you?” Roland asked, directing her question at me.

“I brought the tablet where I have everything compiled. I didn't know if you'd want to jump right in or take some time to chill out first.”

“I'll take a look at it while we drive.”

As requested, I passed her my tablet as soon as we were all buckled in. I'd let her take the front seat next to Colin, trying to be a gracious host. But her comments about Sebastian still niggled. I knew she and Sebastian had known each other for a long time; she'd been Sebastian's go-to source for information on the vampire stone that had eventually killed him. It hadn't occurred to me that their relationship might have gone past that common interest—or that it might have existed before the stone had brought them together professionally.

No point brooding about it. Colin and Sebastian were both old. Really old. And, compared to the human dating pool, the vampire dating pool was fairly small, particularly if you were looking for somebody of a similar age and with similar interests. If they'd danced the hokey pokey back in medieval times or something, there was no point getting my panties in a bunch over it.

There wasn't much to do but brood, however, with Colin focused on the road and Roland reading through my notes on the tablet. She made a sound every now and then, talking to herself. I could only hear partial or not-quite words, and they weren't all English.

Finally she straightened and stretched her shoulders. I could hear her joints pop from the back seat. “Mind if we stop for a drink somewhere?”

She'd directed that question at Colin, but he glanced at me in the rearview mirror before answering. I shrugged in response to his silent inquiry. I'd prefer not to sit around in a blood bar while they had snacks, but if Roland needed a post-flight pick-me-up, I wasn't going to argue about it.

Colin pulled off I-70 at Youngfield, heading for the vampire side of town. He drove down some side roads until he parked along the curb in front of a nondescript-looking building with a sign over the front door that said “Blood and Circuses”. Clever.

“Ooo, I hear this place is nice,” Roland said as Colin shut down the ignition.

“
Westword
gave it five stars,” Colin confirmed. He gave me another quick look in the rearview. “They serve appetizers too. Human appetizers, I mean. I mean, for humans to eat.”

I nodded, appreciating his clarification. I'd actually read the
Westword
article. The restaurant had a special, experimental dual license so they could serve both vampire and human food. The food was prepared off-site and made available for humans who might be accompanying a vampire friend, relative or date. It seemed like a reasonable compromise.

Blood and Circuses was a nicely fitted establishment, with low lighting, a log-cabin-style construction with dark wood, and about fifteen tables, four booths and a bar. It smelled more like a regular restaurant than a blood bar, which was a relief. Blood bars could smell neutral or completely nasty. Even some of the nicer places Colin had dragged me to had that unpleasant metallic odor that you just couldn't shake out of your nose.

A conservatively dressed waiter led us to a booth, and we slid in, me claiming my spot next to Colin. He almost absently helped me with my coat, then squeezed my hand as we settled in. Roland noticed, giving me an enigmatic smile.
Suck it, Miss Gorgeouspants
, I thought uncharitably, then mentally took it back. Roland was good people. Good vampire. Whatever. I should quit being so insecure.

The two vampires ordered a blood flight, and I asked for bruschetta and a glass of white wine. I usually prefer red, but in these surroundings, I felt more comfortable with something that didn't look like blood. The food came quickly, and I focused on my wine while Colin and Roland discussed the various bouquets of the small shots of blood. They were displayed in a neat, wooden rack, ten shots of blood that looked identical to me but which apparently carried very different flavors.

Finally Roland turned my tablet back on and turned it toward me, displaying one of the later pages where Colin and I had disagreed on some points of translation and had made numerous contradictory notes. “What are your theories on this passage?” she asked me.

I explained my thinking behind my attempts at parsing the obscure text, then Colin took his turn. Roland nodded thoughtfully, sipping a shot of blood while she mulled. Finally she looked at the translation again, then poked the touchscreen a few times. “What about this?”

Taking the tablet as she passed it back across the table to me, I scanned the changes she'd made. My eyes widened. She'd combined some of my conclusions with some of Colin's, then added a couple of alterations of her own.

“That's it,” I said, my excitement coming out quiet and breathy, because I was afraid to jinx anything. “That's it. That's how it's going to work.”

“What?” Colin asked, leaning toward us and trying to see the tablet. I handed it to him.

My heart had jumped up to the base of my throat, galloping there. This was it. I swallowed, afraid to ask the obvious question, because I knew damn well none of us had the answer.

Colin read the lines, then looked up at me and Roland. He, as usual, had no compunctions about asking questions, even the unanswerable ones. “Okay, that's all well and good, but how the fuck are we supposed to reconstruct the vampire stone?”

“I don't think that's quite what it says,” Roland said, her tone carefully diplomatic. “More along the lines of recreating the power of the creation that leads to the vampire stone.”

Colin shrugged. “Semantics. Either way, we're fucked if we don't know how to do it.”

“I don't know how to do it,” Roland told us, “but I know where we need to go. I know who's been performing experiments with that kind of power. They actually
are
trying to reconstruct the stone, but they'd have what we need to try to follow up on these translations.”

“Who's been working on it?” Colin asked.

Roland's eyes moved sideways, taking me in in that way that indicated she'd never lost her awareness that I'm human and therefore shouldn't be privy to certain information. “Let's decide what we're going to do first. And I'll need to contact some people.”

“Of course.”

It made sense. Something as dangerous and weird and with as many far-reaching side effects as the vampire stone and how to create or re-create one probably shouldn't be bandied about with the same kind of freedom as, say, the location of the best nearby blood bar. Vampires could be quite annoying in their insistence on keeping things under wraps, but in this case, I had to agree it was a good plan.

“I assume,” I put in, “that in order for this to work, we have to have some control over Sebastian. If it's location specific, he'll have to be there.”

“Yes.”

“Which provides a whole new set of complications, since we can't exactly call him on the phone. Or transport him anywhere, for that matter.”

“We need to start with that,” Colin said. “Then, Roland, you can get whatever permissions you need to move on to the next step. Nim's going to have to know what we're up to before we can get everything together. So you'll have to make that happen.” It was nice to hear him say that. I hadn't thought he'd just cut me out of the process, but you never knew with vampires. Even the ones who shared your bed. They were an unpredictable and cagey bunch by nature.

“Well, for starters,” Roland said, “I think we need to have a chat with Sebastian. Can we do that? Maybe tonight?”

I gave Colin a sidelong look, which he answered with severely raised eyebrows. Okay, so I'd forgotten to give Roland all the details regarding exactly how we contacted Sebastian on those occasions when we were able to. Or not so much forgotten as just hadn't told her. I didn't think Roland needed to know about our sex life, frankly.

“I don't think that's going to be an option,” I mumbled, staring resolutely at the wall. Roland seemed taken aback.

“I thought you'd been able to communicate with him.”

“We can sometimes. It takes some effort and some…particular circumstances.”

Colin was getting himself all amused over my discomfort. I didn't even have to look at him to tell. He exuded it like a particularly obnoxious smell. “Very particular circumstances,” he added.

Roland looked back and forth between us, obviously confused. “Then we can reproduce those circumstances—”

“No.” Maybe I said it more vehemently than I should have. “Just…no.”

Indignantly, Roland crossed her arms over her ample chest. “This is a sex thing, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's a sex thing, okay? Just…I'm not doing it on command. And I'm sure as hell not doing it in the middle of a blood bar.”

I fully expected Roland to join in the mocking, since Colin was doing it already, albeit silently and mostly with his eyebrows. It was better than being mocked aloud, I had to say, but it was still pretty damn annoying. Instead, Roland put on her thinky face. “Well…do you think it only works with you two, or do you think anybody who's had a sexual connection with him could summon him if the circumstances were right?”

“I have no idea…” I started, then I stopped. “Are you thinking you…?” Goddammit. I'd had my suspicions, but there was nothing like getting slapped in the face with the fact your dead ghost vampire boyfriend had, at some point in his hundred-plus-year history, slept with somebody you knew, kind of liked and who was hotter than you.

“I'm sorry,” Roland said. “You're upset. I thought you knew.”

“I kind of did.” I took a deep breath. “Look. I don't really want to get jiggy in front of company. It's just not my thing. If there's some other way, well…” I trailed off again as I realized some other way could possibly involve switching partners around. For example, pairing Colin and Roland. I didn't much care for that idea either.

I was surprised Colin didn't jump on that thought, since he delighted in annoying me. But instead he said, “Our current theory as I see it is that someone else is summoning Sebastian in some way and making him commit these crimes. So there has to be another way to bring him to some level of corporeality—corporealness?—and I'm assuming whoever's doing it isn't having to get naked every time they do it.”

“Why would anybody do that, though?” I queried. I still wasn't willing to accept the idea that Sebastian had committed the murders we'd been seeing on TV. Having someone else in control of him made it a little more plausible, but it still stuck in my craw.

“Vampires are assholes,” Colin suggested, which was his answer to anything vampires did that was unsavory.

“Yes, I'm aware.” I made sure my tone lacked any implication of present company excluded, because present company was in no way excluded. Except maybe Roland.

“Who even knows about him?” Roland's contribution was more useful, I thought.

“It would almost have to be someone who was involved with Pieter.” Colin frowned. “Did we track down his whole group?”

“I don't think so. Considering Pieter had the stone for so long, back in the eighteenth century, and was probably studying it all that time, I'd assume he scared up more information about how it worked and what might happen when someone did what Sebastian ended up doing. He might have passed that information on to someone else.”

“So do we look for who's behind it?”

Roland shook her head. “No. I don't think that's necessary. We just need to find Sebastian, get him where we can interact with him, and do something to make it possible to transport him.”

“I gather reconstructing the vampire stone isn't something we can accomplish, say, in the basement.”

“Sadly, no.” She hesitated. “We'll have to go to Siberia.”

That was way more than she should have told me. I could tell that just from the way she'd said it. However, the importance of her statement and the fact she'd shared with me at all didn't keep me from wrinkling my nose. “Siberia? Seriously?”