Summoning Sebastian (23 page)

Help me.
Sebastian's voice, his
presence
, rose in the back of my mind, as tenuous and yet real as it had been since we'd bound him to the bottle.

“I don't know how,” I said aloud.

And then I did.

I didn't know where it came from. It could have been Sebastian, communicating directly into my head, or it could have been my own brain putting pieces together with the help of whatever strange bond I had with the stone and its essence. It could have been all those combined, or something completely different.

Whatever it was, I did what it told me to do. I closed my eyes again, took a deep breath, and stopped thinking.

I didn't even consider what I was doing as I cleared my mind, making room for him. I didn't know what the implications might be. I just knew I couldn't let Sebastian drift into the ether. It wasn't safe to let a disembodied spirit float around unsupervised. And if he was going to complete this process, he needed room.

I was sure Sebastian didn't mean to hurt me. I didn't even think he knew what would happen, or that he would have been able to stop it if he had. That didn't change the fact that it hurt. A lot.

The smoky-gray substance that was all that was left of him billowed toward me, like clouds piling up, ready to unleash a storm. I barely had time to register the roiling gray before it swarmed me.

The symbols must have attracted it. Like magnetic iron filings on my skin, dragging more iron filings out of the air. The smoke lined itself up along the inked drawn on my skin. And then dug in.

I didn't scream. I was too surprised. And by the time I registered the pain, it was so intense I couldn't even draw a breath. And by the time I could draw a breath, I cared more about actually breathing. The pain made its way along my spine, and I sat down in a heap.

I think I blacked out for a second. Sebastian's voice dragged me back.
“Nim. Nim. Nim.”
He was just saying my name over and over. It was annoying as fuck, but it did the trick.

“What? What? What the fuck?”

“Nim. Nim. Nim.”
Maybe he couldn't say anything else. Another searing wave of agony washed through me, but this time it felt like it was coming from him instead of from me.
“Nim. I'm sorry sorry so sorry hang on please please just hang on Nim sorry.”

I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as I could. Sebastian was being dragged along in this thing just as I was. All we both had to do was wait until it was over.

It didn't take long. I felt like I'd been sitting there for hours, but it was only a few minutes before I felt him settle into the last series of markings—the ones that trailed down my spine. Sebastian's essence slid into the ink, and I felt more of it trickling down my back, binding as best it could to the marks there. It felt strange. Like I'd gotten a terrible sunburn and all the skin where the ink lay was peeling away. But I could also feel Sebastian, his presence amorphous, but like a vague, constant whisper just behind my ears. Relieved, the pain beginning to recede, I looked at my hands. Both the cuts had stopped bleeding. They'd hurt later, but for now they were all right.

“Nim, no, why?”

I jumped and looked toward the door before I realized the voice was coming from my own head. Behind my ears, to be exact. It was Sebastian.

“Because you asked me to help you, dumbass,” I responded aloud. I pushed to my feet, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass. I was woozy, barely able to keep my balance, but something managed to hold me upright. I think it was Sebastian, more than anything else. If he hadn't been bound to nearly every inch of my skin, I would have faceplanted in the middle of the shattered glass and made a god-awful mess of myself.

“Why did you listen?”

“Why do you keep bitching whenever I save your life?”

There was a moment of silence.
Truth hurts, huh, Bastian?
I moved toward the door. It would probably behoove me to get the hell out of here. Maybe get the hell all the way back to my room, and to Colin and Roland.

“Nim.” The voice was gentle now, laced with concern. “I don't know what will happen now.”

“None of us does.” I was still answering him out loud, as if he wasn't a mumble of thought inside my head. “Don't worry, though. We'll figure it out.”

“I'm bound to you now,” he went on. “What if…what if the unbinding takes you with it?”

I stopped. In the sudden rush, the frantic nature of the attack, I hadn't thought of that.

No, actually, I had. I'd thought as he'd bound to the ink of my skin that maybe he was killing me, mindless and out of control, as he'd been when he'd killed the vampires in Denver. It had entered my thoughts—vaguely, to be honest—that once he bound himself to my skin, I had no idea how he'd unbind. But the thought hadn't rattled me enough to make me stop helping him. It hadn't been enough of a concern to keep me from doing what I could to save him. To hopefully preserve him. To bring him back.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he said inside my head.

I looked down at the dark marks on my arms. They seemed deeper. Blacker. With a strange sort of shimmering that almost made them look like liquid moving on my skin. No,
in
my skin. On the surface and a millimeter or so beneath it. A wave of wooziness passed over me again, and I flailed, trying to find something to hold myself up. Something surged in the middle of my chest—Sebastian, probably—and I regained my balance.

“Well, it's too late now,” I said. “Not a damn thing we can do but move forward.”

He could say nothing to that. And neither could I, because the wooziness rose one more time, and this time I passed out.

Chapter Twenty-One

“T
he hell of it is, you know there are vampires out there who can read this. All of it. Who still speak the original languages. But God only knows where they are.”
—C. Roland, presentation on ancient vampire languages, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

W
hen I came to, I was standing in the hallway in front of the door to the room I'd been sharing with Colin and Roland. Sebastian had apparently taken over completely, walking my body out of the warehouse and back to the room. It was disturbing, but also a relief. He'd taken care of me as best he could.

“You're back.” The voice still came from inside my head. “Sorry for taking over.”

“Thanks for not letting me collapse into a pile of broken glass.” I'd finally figured out I could think my words—no need to say them out loud. Or maybe I'd just done it that way because I wasn't quite in control of my mental faculties yet. I blinked and looked down at my hands, lifting them. They were shaking.

Sebastian's attention shifted, dragging mine with it to focus on the door and the symbols I'd scribbled on its surface. The doorknob, covered in holy water and garlic, had a sort of greenish glow around it. That must have been Sebastian's vision filtering my own, because it hadn't looked like that when I'd left.

Good call,
I heard Sebastian say.
I can go through it, though.

Good.
I mouthed the word this time, still not used to having another presence in my head. I reached out to take the doorknob, expecting it to hurt now that I had a vampire spirit fused to my body. But it didn't. I pushed the door open and went in.

I had a matter of about half a second to take in the scene—Colin and Roland lying in their separate beds, both on their backs, silent, still, looking very dead-like, before Sebastian took over. He made me sit in a chair, the movement abrupt to the point where I was pretty sure I'd end up with whiplash, and then he
swooped
—

And we were
inside
Colin.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!
I protested.
A little warning! Holy shit!
And that was about all the thought I was able to produce, because the sensation was so strange and overwhelming that I couldn't think past the shock.

It probably helped that Colin was unconscious. Had he not been, the swarm of images, thoughts, sarcasm, and general douchebaggery that undoubtedly inhabited his brain might have been too much for me to handle. As it was, I got a glimpse of what the vampire brain looks like during the day, and that was plenty.

It was a landscape steeped in deep fog. Strange, uncertain images strained within it, and I suddenly felt like I was stuck in the middle of a vintage Stephen King novel. If I hadn't been stuck inside Colin's brain, I would have shrunk back against Sebastian's comforting bulk. But I was just a thought, and Sebastian had no corporeal bulk, so when the dark tentacle whipped out from one of the thickest layers of fog, all I could do was squeak.

I heard a chuckle from Sebastian. He was damn lucky he wasn't a solid creature at the moment. If he had been, I would have smacked him. Hard. The tentacle, probably sensing my wrath, withdrew.

“He sleeps hard,” Sebastian commented.

“Well, he
is
dead.”

“Point taken.”

“I take it we're here to wake him up?”

“Planning to try.” There was a pause. Something seemed to be gathering in the area where Sebastian's presence rested. “Plug your ears.”

“Um…” I started to say I couldn't, but it was too late. A horrific scream echoed through the space we semi-inhabited.

If my ears had actually been present, I was pretty sure they would have started to bleed.

The effect on the lurking whatever-it-was in the fog was immediate and intense. The tentacles thrashed, whipping at the fog until it cleared enough that I could almost see the mass of blackness they were attached to. It looked like a writhing pile of black snakes. Cold ran down my metaphorical back. What was this? Was this a representation of Colin's personality? His subconscious? Or was it something he'd set up to protect himself during the hours he was comatose? I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Before I could make out much in the way of details—which was probably a good thing—the fog dispersed, taking the tentacles and the seething black miasma with it. Maybe a protective mechanism. What it was wasn't really relevant, but I couldn't get the thought to go away. I'd just seen something horrific inside my boyfriend's brain, and I couldn't dislodge the image of it or the concern about what it represented.

The intense noise disappeared as abruptly as it had begun. I started to relax, relieved, but then Sebastian created another noise.

“Colin!” It was a huge sound, pounding into my ears, nearly as intense as the previous one had been. It didn't last nearly as long, though, thank God.

Hell of an alarm clock.
I thought it offhandedly rather than directing it at Sebastian, but a tweak of amusement came from him.

“It takes quite a bit to wake up dead people.”

“Right.” I wasn't going to revisit that topic. I didn't need yet another reminder that my boyfriend—both my boyfriends—were dead. One somewhat deader than the other, point of fact. Not something I wanted to dwell on.

Around us, the fog continued to withdraw, leaving something more like a haze behind.

“Colin!” Sebastian roared again. I winced in a disembodied, uncomfortable way.

“What the
fuck
?” That was definitely Colin's voice, nearly as intense and penetrating as Sebastian's had been but laced through with irritation and anger—not that much different from his natural voice, to be honest.

I moved automatically to soothe him, unsure what I was about to do since I couldn't actually touch him. But in the end it didn't matter, because Sebastian cock-blocked me. Somehow. Obviously he had a much better command of how to navigate this landscape than I did, having been incorporeal for quite a while now.

“What?” I protested.

“Fine line,” Sebastian said quickly. “He can't wake up quite yet.”

“Why—” I started, then realized why. We'd entered his brain in a sleeping state. We'd have a hard time hanging around if he woke up. I fell silent immediately, realizing time would be of the essence.

It was a good call. Sebastian took over, not so much talking as blasting a rapid, condensed series of pictures of our predicament directly into our surroundings—Colin's brain. I saw the images flash through my own consciousness, concise and clear beyond what I'd imagined such communication could be. It basically said, this is what happened, this is what you need to do, wake up immediately. His precise, succinct broadcast impressed me. And was exactly what was needed for the situation, because as soon as Sebastian had flashed the last picture, Colin woke up.

The return to myself was so abrupt, I couldn't parse it at first. My eyes popped open, and I was on my knees in the middle of the room where we'd been staying. The abrupt shift in surroundings made me dizzy, and for a few seconds I thought I would either throw up or pass out. I lowered my head to the floor, keeping my ass in the air, and waited for some blood to move into my brain.

Sebastian was still inside me, his consciousness twinned with mine, and I could feel a sort of comforting motion, or a sound—my brain couldn't quite interpret it as any one thing. “You'll be okay,” he said. “Don't worry.”

Then I heard Colin's voice, coming in through my ears like voices are supposed to, and looked up hesitantly to see him leaning over the foot of the bed. “Nim. You okay? What happened?”

I took a deep breath, not sure how I would explain, but the breath made me dizzy again. I lowered my head. “A lot of shit happened,” I said from between my knees. “Get Roland.”

He immediately rolled off the bed and crossed the few steps to where Roland still lay unconscious. He shook her shoulder. It was going to take a few minutes to roust her, I knew. I used the delay to let the spinning in my head settle.

That's my fault, I think,
Sebastian offered.

“I think you're right,” I muttered. Colin looked my way, decided I wasn't talking to him, and turned his attention back to Roland.

I'm not sure I can do anything to fix it,
Sebastian went on.

Yeah.
I didn't have much to say, but I might as well say it in my head so I didn't confuse Colin.
It's okay. We'll figure it out.

By the time Colin finally managed to get Roland sitting up in the bed, staring blearily at me as I sat on the floor. I'd managed to get my head upright and could look at them both as I spoke.

“What?” Roland muttered, her voice thick and strained. “What's going on?”

“I'm not sure,” Colin told her quietly. But there's something—” He broke off. “Where's the bottle?”

“Gregor smashed it,” I said.

That got Roland's attention. “Shit. Sebastian…”

I made an uncoordinated wave. It was supposed to be reassuring, but it probably just looked like I was being attacked by a gnat. “I still have him. He's…” Okay, how the hell did I explain this?

“Where?” Roland's voice was clipped. She sounded afraid, almost panicky. “Where is he?”

“He was with you when you woke me up.” Colin's comment seemed to be aimed at calming Roland, keeping her from jumping to conclusions. It worked, if only marginally.

“He's here.” I laid a hand against my chest. “And here. And there and there and wherever else there's ink.”

Roland opened her mouth, closed it again. “What?”

I explained exactly what had happened, from Gregor's temper tantrum to his destruction of the bottle to Sebastian melding with my skin and then my brain. It was more than apparent that Roland had never heard of such a thing and probably had no idea what had happened exactly, much less how.

“I think it's a good thing you decided to redo the markings,” she finally said to Colin.

Colin, though, had hit upon the opposite side of the matter. “If he's…in your skin…” He made a face, as if unhappy with his wording. “Can we still get him back? Reconstitute him or whatever?”

“I sure hope so,” I said, “'cause he itches like a son of a bitch.”

Apparently when vampires are awakened before sunset, they have a bitch of a time getting back to sleep. At least Colin and Roland didn't seem inclined to relax again. Rather, they paced agitatedly from one side of the room to the other, occasionally indulging in a rapid burst of conversation. They were like hyperactive kids who hadn't taken their Ritalin.

I, on the other hand, was exhausted. I missed most of what they were talking about because I kept drifting off. But then I'd awaken with a start, shards of pain stabbing through the lines of ink on my body.

The interludes of dozing and waking to stabbing pain began to change their pattern, with less dozing and more hurting. When I jerked awake with a noise that sounded to me like a cat hacking up a hairball, Colin and Roland stopped chatting and looked at me.

“Nim?” Colin asked.

“This hurts,” I managed. “I mean, it hurts a fuck of a lot.”

Colin came to me, kneeling next to me where I had settled onto the floor by the door. Roland approached, as well, but stood back a few paces, arms crossed over her chest. I couldn't tell if her frown indicated concern, apprehension, or irritation. I decided to assume concern, since it was most comforting.

Colin was obviously concerned, his forehead creased with a focused frown. He reached toward me and gently touched one of the inked marks. I jumped. The sensation was strange—not just like he'd touched me, but as if the marks sizzled under the contact. He looked back over his shoulder at Roland, and I could see his throat move as he swallowed.

“There's something really wrong here.” He said it quietly, almost as if he thought I might not be able to hear him. But I heard him. And I had to agree. Something was seriously fucked up. But I'd known that for a while. Since the first time Sebastian ever looked at me, in fact.

Roland nodded soberly. Her expression had shifted more toward concern. That worried me. “We need to get him out of her.” She shook her head, taking a step forward and kneeling next to me, shoulder to shoulder with Colin. “Dammit.”

“What?” Her saying dammit couldn't be a good sign, and I couldn't keep the fear out of my voice.

“They played us,” she muttered, again as if she was trying to keep me from hearing her. “They played us so hard.”

“What do you mean?”

She shifted so she was sitting flat on the ground. It wasn't a graceful shift either—her ass went “flop” on the uncomfortable floor. One hand went to her face, rubbing her eyes, then down her cheekbones.

“This was never about a turf war in Denver. It was all about getting us here.”

“We knew that.” Colin's voice was hard. I had to agree with the tone—we'd discussed this already.

“Yeah. But I thought it was about getting us here so they could try to reconstruct the stone.”

I blinked. She was right. Except… “Armand still thinks that's what it's about. He played us, yes, but Gregor played him.”

Roland gave me a frown. “You mean—”

I interrupted, because it wasn't every day I got the jump on Roland, of all people. “He played Armand by convincing him they could reconstruct the stone if they had Sebastian. But what he really wanted to do was reconstruct Pieter.”

Colin was trying very hard not to look puzzled. I could tell because his frown was about to swallow his eyes. “Is that even possible?”

“Gregor thinks it is.”

“I mean…” Colin was working through it, his frown changing from irritated to thinky and back to irritated again. “We know what we have is Sebastian—I mean in some form or another, it's him. What does he have that's Pieter?”