Summoning Sebastian (18 page)

C
hapter Seventeen

There is no experimentation occurring in Siberia. No official government papers have been filed to allow it.
—Official statement from the Bureau of Vampire Affairs, Russian Federation

I
drank enough coffee to keep an elephant awake for a week. Given that I'd slept like shit and had a lot to deal with over the next several hours, it seemed like a reasonable plan. My bladder begged to differ.

I managed to sneak in one last bathroom break before they loaded us all into the helicopter. The weather was beyond iffy, with a low, dark sky, gusty wind, and spitting precipitation that was more ice than snow, but the vampire pilot, citing 150 years of experience, said it would be fine. I wondered if helicopters had even been invented 150 years ago.

Transportation as a general rule in Vanavara is unconventional. They run helicopters the way most places run buses, and at least some of those helicopters fly regular routes to the Tunguska site to accommodate the influx of tourists looking for alien artifacts or extraterrestrial enlightenment or just trying to beat the world record for largest number of mosquito bites incurred in a twenty-four-hour period. Of course most of those tourists are smart enough to drop by in the summer. Not us. Oh no. We were crazy people.

With Sebastian's bottle once again swathed in bubble wrap in my carry-on bag, which was doubling now as a backpack-slash-ginormous purse, I huddled between Colin and Roland as the helicopter lurched and bumped and twisted and acted like it might crash right back into the ground not five minutes after takeoff. I could hear the icy snow scouring the windows. I closed my eyes and prayed I wouldn't barf. Barfing would be awkward.

Fortunately, it wasn't a long flight. The copter's lurching settled a bit, then we started to descend, until finally we sat down. I peeked out the window to see snow-covered trees and a few buildings not far away.

It looked nothing like the pictures I'd seen online. Of course, those pictures had come from the Kulik expedition in the 1920s. Back then, there'd still been trees spread across the taiga, sprawled in a circular pattern that echoed the force of the blast. Now, the trees had rotted, grown over. Or maybe we weren't where we were supposed to be. It was hard to tell.

“Here we are,” the pilot announced, his English thickly accented. I glanced at Roland. She was the only one of us who had been here already, so if there was something wrong, I assumed she'd notice. She was frowning but otherwise didn't seem rattled or concerned. This must be the place, then.

Colin reached down to collect his bag, his face moving far too close to mine. I realized he'd done it on purpose just in time to stop myself from leaning back to get out of his way.

“Don't look at the buildings,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it. Roland flicked him a glance; I assumed she'd heard him too. I hoped the pilot hadn't. He was talking on the radio, though, and didn't appear to be paying us much attention.

I nodded minutely. The buildings must be glamoured. If I gave any indication I could see them, the other vampires would know I was immune to that sort of protection. Which made things a bit difficult for me, because I had no way of knowing what was glamoured and how unless somebody told me.

So I pretended not to see the squat buildings, maybe fifty yards away, half obscured by the evergreens and the snow. I had more important things to worry about, anyway, such as the fact I was in grave danger of freezing my ass off. Siberia, it turned out, wasn't as inviting as you might think.

There was a rapid exchange of words between Roland and the pilot that might or might not have been an argument. It was hard to tell in Russian. After a few loud sentences, she handed him a crumpled handful of ruble notes and waved at him as he tramped off. Not a friendly wave—more like she was swatting a bug out of her general vicinity. She stepped back to join us, muttering under her breath.

“Everything okay?” Colin asked her.

“Just dandy,” she replied. Based on her tone, everything was not even remotely dandy.

“What?” Colin pressed.

She waved it away, again with that dismissive anti-gnat-like gesture. “Later. We need to get inside. Storm's coming.”

Well. That was joyous. As if the weather wasn't bad enough, it had to go and get worse?

The wind had definitely picked up, though, even in the few minutes since we'd landed. I wrapped my arms around myself. Even the heavy, fur-lined coat I'd bought in Chelyabinsk wasn't enough to stave off the cutting wind.

“C'mon,” said Roland. “We've got to go cut through some vampire red tape.”

This sounded unpleasant. But Roland undoubtedly knew what she was doing. Colin motioned me ahead of him, letting his wide body block some of the wind. I followed them. Behind us, the two vampires watched, then trailed after us, a twinned bloodsucking shadow. I touched Colin's shoulder, getting him to lean down.

“We've got a tail,” I told him.

He didn't turn to look behind us—he'd lived too long and was far too paranoid for that—but I could tell from the twitch of his brow that he hadn't known.

“Thanks for the tip,” he mumbled back and put his arm around me, drawing me a little closer against the wind.

Though I hadn't been able to tell the buildings were glamoured, I could tell when the glamour disappeared. It's hard to describe the sensation—sort of a click behind my eyes, maybe a little like when you can actually see the individual frames of a movie shifting forward. In any case, I knew it was safe to acknowledge the three low, squat, mostly white buildings. I was, however, too tired, cold and annoyed to do so. Plus I had to pee. Again.

Roland stopped at the door to the foremost building. It was a little wider but a little squatter than the others. A pellet-like snow had begun to whip up, scouring my face, and even she hunched against it. Colin remained unperturbed.

Until our two shadows suddenly decided to come up right behind us. I didn't hear them so much as smell them—sort of—and I could tell the abrupt approach caught both Colin and Roland off guard. It could have been disastrous if I hadn't already warned them.

“No humans!” one of them announced, obviously planning to scare all three of us into blabbering submission. But Colin, who knew how to hide his reactions like nobody I'd ever met, just looked blandly over his shoulder. Roland offered a sidelong glance before returning to the code she was punching into the door panel. I almost pissed myself, but that was because of the coffee, not because the little punks had actually scared me.

“This has all been cleared with Armand,” Roland said. She finally deigned to look at the other vampires, her entire face managing to convey an eye roll without any actual rolling of the eyes. Colin shifted his posture ever so slightly—just enough to make it clear that anyone who wanted me would have to go through him first. I huddled in my coat.

The vampire who'd spoken peered at me. He was an ugly fucker. At a guess, he'd had his nose broken at least four times before he'd been Turned. An ugly scar pulled down one corner of his mouth. I didn't know much about Russian ethnic groups, but something about him screamed Cossack to me. Hell, he could have been
actually
Cossack, like from the times when men were men, women were women, and Cossacks were Cossacks. Hard to say. Whatever the case, I didn't want to make eye contact.

His companion was less imposing, a slimmer man with finer features. He had an Asian cast to his face, and he was almost pretty. I didn't want to make eye contact with him either.

“No humans,” the maybe-Cossack repeated. He didn't seem to have much of an accent, but I still had to wonder if that was the sum total of his English vocabulary.

“Talk to Armand.” Roland hauled the door open. “Come on. We're going that way, ourselves.”

Inviting these two along with us didn't seem like the best idea, but Colin said nothing, and Roland gave the Cossack a look that was nothing short of a blatant challenge to his manhood. I just waited. After a few seconds, Roland shook her head in disgusted dismissal, then headed into the building. I followed her, Colin behind me. I didn't look back to see if the other two had joined the parade, but I was certain they had.

There was nothing welcoming about the building's interior, any more than there had been about its exterior. The corridors were stark and bare, and I didn't feel much in the way of heat wafting through them. I found it surprising, given Colin's penchant for comfortable quarters. And cold wasn't the greatest thing for vampires. I'd think they'd have gone to more effort. Maybe it was part of their cover, though. Yet another way to stay off the radar. I wasn't going to spend too much time trying to figure it out. There was no point. And it was starting to dawn on me that I didn't know if these vampire-friendly digs offered anyplace to pee, much less a nice spread of human-appropriate foods.

I huddled into my fur coat, letting the flaps of my new
shlepka
hat cover half my face. It wouldn't keep anyone from recognizing me, of course, but I felt a bit less exposed.

Roland led the way with a surety that made it obvious she'd been here before. She strode to the end of a stark corridor and pushed open a door. “Armand,” she said, moving inside and taking a seat in a chair near the door. Colin and I followed.

Armand was a smallish, dark man, eyes shrewd as they took in his guests. The narrow gaze flitted past Roland, settled on Colin for a moment as he too took a chair, then landed on me and stuck there. Uncomfortable under his regard, I moved to Colin's side and slid into the chair next to him.

After a moment, Armand turned his attention toward the door. “Leave us,” he said, I assumed to our shadows. “Fetch Luca for me.”

There was a soft click as the door fell shut. I had to fight the urge to turn to see what was going on behind me. If I'd tried, I probably would have ended up strangled in my own coat, anyway. But I would have liked to have seen the reaction from the other vampires, having Armand smack them down.

“This is the human?” Armand's gaze turned back toward me, and I didn't feel quite so smug anymore.

Colin dropped his arm across the back of my chair. I didn't at all resent his implied claiming of my person. Not this time.

“She's under my protection,” Colin told him. “She's copacetic.”

“So I've been told.” Armand's eyes narrowed. He still hadn't taken his gaze off me. It felt oily, unctuous. I didn't like it. “There's something…strange about you.” He tipped his head and drew in a hissing breath through his nose, undoubtedly smelling me. Vampires do that a lot. I think it's rude. “Are you sure you're human?”

“She's human,” Colin shot back before I could formulate a reply.

Roland leaned forward abruptly, hands on knees in a starkly masculine gesture. “You're still prepared to abide by the terms of our agreement?”

Armand blinked, let his gaze move over me one more time, then turned slowly to face Roland. I shivered, hiding the reaction inside my huge coat. I felt like I needed to rub hand sanitizer everywhere his eyes had touched.

“I am,” he told Roland.

“
All
the terms of the agreement?” she pressed.

He blinked again, slowly, like a lizard. Did the chill here make them torpid? If so, why the hell didn't they just turn up the heat?

It was a moment before Armand spoke again. I had the feeling he was mentally reviewing said agreement, checking to be sure he hadn't missed anything. Not torpid, just filing through encyclopedic brain entries.

“The agreement as we negotiated it before you returned to Chelyabinsk,” he finally answered. “All the terms.”

Roland straightened with a firm nod. “Good.” She pressed to her feet, the movement so fluid it was hard to follow even though it had been executed at a normal speed. “There are rooms prepared?”

“Yes.” His head tipped slightly, indicating the door behind us, which had just opened. “Luca will escort you.”

Colin and I turned. Roland did the same a few seconds later. There was another vampire behind us, this one tall, slim and androgynous, with black hair and gray eyes. A gesture indicated we should precede our new guide out the door.

“After you're settled,” Armand went on, “I'll show you the rest of the facility, and we can discuss the timing for the procedure.”

Roland gave a curt nod, and we followed Luca out the door.

O
ne advantage of our hosts knowing I was human, although they obviously weren't happy about it, was that they'd anticipated that I'd have some needs. Long story short, I was escorted to a bathroom almost immediately. I'm not sure I've ever been so relieved to take a piss in my life.

“What about food?” I asked when I emerged, feeling much less like the entire lower half of my body was about to explode.

“If you can wait a short time, we'll have something available for you,” Armand said. “In the meantime, I've arranged a tour of the facility.”

There were no objections. I think we all were of the mind that the more we knew about our surroundings, the better chance we'd have of escaping if necessary.

It all struck me as very Soviet—stark, unfriendly metal and concrete. It was my experience that vamps liked to be comfortable. I wondered why they hadn't spruced the place up.

“This place is a shit-hole,” Colin commented as we turned down yet another unfriendly corridor. “Why don't you—I don't know—hire a decorator or something?”

Armand's immediate reaction looked like anger, but then his expression softened into a rueful half smile. “Unfortunately, the nature of our work means things blow up and/or catch on fire on an uncomfortably regular basis. Surrounding ourselves with metal and concrete is more comfortable than you might initially assume.”

Colin's eyebrows rose. “I see. Well, that makes sense.”