The Agency, Volume II Read online

  The Agency

  Volume II

  By Dianne Sylvan

  Text copyright © 2013 Dianne Sylvan

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  The Tempest

  Breathing Lessons

  Watching Him

  Umbrella

  More Than Kin, Less Than Kind

  Anywhere He Wants

  Sage

  The Lost

  The Tempest

  She is called the Tempest.

  Giovanni deLuca was a rail-thin man who towered, and leaned, over everyone in New York. He hated America, Americans, the Irish, the French, even other Italians, for their petty squabbles and their coarse urban filth. He spoke rapidly with a punishing staccato accent and made wild gestures with his long, spidery hands. Everything about him was harsh and ugly.

  There was only one thing deLuca loved, and it was the only reason Fox had anything to do with him--or vice versa, come to that. Fox knew genius when he saw it, and deLuca knew a virtuoso when he met one, and the one thing both loved above all else was enough to unite them, on occasion, despite their mutual enmity.

  "Good evening, Signore," Fox said, welcoming deLuca into the parlor. The tall man wore his dark overcoat, and carried in his arms an object that made my heart leap with anticipation.

  "The piece is finished according to your desires," deLuca said. His voice sounded like a creaking old door.

  "Is it, now?" Fox asked, sitting down opposite the man, who set the case on the table and unsnapped its clasps. "Let's see it."

  I stayed hidden where I was, just outside the parlor doorway in the shadows, but I could see the gleam of the varnish, the ebony fingerboard, almost glowing in the firelight...my fingers itched to trace over its curves, polished to silken smoothness and stained a deep red-gold. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

  Fox lifted the instrument from its nest, turning it over in his hands, examining every inch of it as he had once examined my skin, years ago, when my flesh still bore the warmth and eventual decay of humanity. I thought of all the measurements the luthier had taken of my hands, the length of my arms, and how he had protested that as young as I was, those measurements might still change, and then all his careful custom work would be null and void. I thought that was amusing--I was hardly a child, though people often mistook me for younger than I was. Fox had merely laughed and insisted that I wasn't going to grow, or shrink, ever, and that he wanted an instrument that would last through time, its tone and finish growing more and more beautiful and pure with the passing of years.

  "I must say, Giovanni, you have quite outdone yourself," Fox told the luthier, who understood the rarity--and therefore the absolute truth--of the compliment. "If she sounds half as perfect as she feels, I will be sure and add another twenty percent to your payment."

  DeLuca nodded. "Let your...young prodigy...try it out, you'll see."

  I felt myself blush. Fox was discreet, but there were always some who knew I was more than his apprentice, and certainly more than a servant. On the rare occasion we went into town together there were whispers and knowing glances. I wondered how deLuca had figured it out, given that I had met him only once and hardly spoken the whole time.

  "Excellent idea," Fox agreed. "Jason, come out and meet your Christmas gift."

  I left the cover of the shadows reluctantly, and when deLuca saw me, he went pale.

  "My god," he breathed, more emotion showing on his face than I'd ever seen him display. "You look...different, boy. Have you been ill?"

  "Yes, Maestro," I replied with a smile, lifting my eyes from the floor to meet his. He didn't flinch, but I could see that he wanted to. "I am feeling better now."

  I looked over at Fox, who smiled at the luthier's fear. When last we had met I had been mortal, unremarkable. My playing had been the same--skillful, bordering on inspired, but nothing destined to win accolades. When last we had met, I had never lain with Fox, never surrendered to his lips and hands and teeth, and knew nothing of true hunger, nothing of the kind of darkness and desire that were a part of my every cell, aching, calling out for release.

  I stared at deLuca, watching the pulse of the blue vein at his neck, the branches of veins in his hands--if I listened I could hear the blood flowing within all of them, and I wondered if he would taste as dry and creaky as he sounded, or if his one love, that thing we three shared, would bleed true, and flavor him with the sweetness he drew from his instruments.

  "Show the Maestro how you've improved since he last heard you," Fox said.

  I nodded, and he handed me the violin.

  I touched it at first as they had, my hands running over the body, the wood alive beneath my palms. It was more than beautiful, it was a masterpiece, sized perfectly to me, designed to live as long as I did. I ran my fingertip around an odd swirl in the wood that brought to mind a whirlpool or a funnel cloud. Such a thing should have weakened the wood, but I could feel its density, flawless.

  "I call her the Tempest," deLuca said, a note of pride in his voice. "The power she can unleash...I am not sure, Duvalier, that your charge here can wield it. Perhaps you should keep him on his student instrument a while longer?"

  Fox laughed. "I assure you, Signore, he is more than capable. He has...blossomed under my tutelage."

  I had to bite back a laugh as well. True, my master had taught me the violin, to read and write in six languages, to appreciate art and literature; but thinking of all else I had learned at his side...or beneath him, or in the hay in the stables, or on my knees in this very room...I banished the thought as my body began to burn, and lifted the violin to my shoulder, where it settled against my chin as if it had grown from seed there.

  I touched the bow to the strings, my left hand pressing into them tenderly, then harder, testing, almost teasing. I smiled and closed my eyes.

  Oh, she was a skilled courtesan, my Tempest, and I swayed with her as my right arm worked through the air and my left fingers danced over her, slow at first, drawing moans of delight from her building gradually to rapid cries.

  By the time I was finished I was sweating, panting, and the last note sounded into utter silence. I could hear Fox's heart pounding, see his fingers digging into the chair's arms as he resisted the urge to come to me and tear my clothes at the seams. I let my gaze find his, and I smiled, knowing that the minute deLuca left, that's exactly what would happen.

  For his part the luthier was gaping at me, openmouthed, rheumy eyes wide with shock. It was the better part of a minute before he could say, "Good God, Duvalier, this boy needs to be on every royal stage in Europe. He could make you an even richer man, and famous all over the world."

  "I have no need for fame nor money, and I have no love for Europe," Fox replied. "America deserves beauty just as much, and needs it more, for we brought very little with us when we fled the old world. Thank you, Signore deLuca--you have earned every penny and more."

  I stood silent through their conversation, my attention full of the Tempest, feeling her swell and reside in my grasp. There were things I could do, Fox had said, with the right instrument--he had seen it when he turned me. Only deLuca built violins that were capable of channeling the energy I might one day be able to raise. I believed him--I had popped dozens of strings on the graceful violin he had taught me on, and when I asked to try out his master instrument, a Stradivarius from 1703, he refused. It was too valuable for me to leave scorch marks on with my fingers, he'd said with a laugh, and he was only half joking.

  I didn't move until I knew the luthier was gone, and heard Fox's footsteps returning to the parlor.

  "What do you think?" he asked, lowering his voice to its usual softness. He was charming and erudite, even cheerful around o
thers, but this was the timbre he used with me and me alone, and it sent a shiver through me. "Will it do?"

  I chuckled. "I think so, Master." I smiled at him. "Although I do pity you now, stuck with that antique of yours."

  He swatted me on the backside with a laugh. "Shut up and play for me, boy. Remember I just sunk a good bit of my fortune into that beautiful creature you're fondling."

  "I shall have to repay you, then," I replied. "Shall I begin with the new Paganini you brought me last week?"

  "No, no. Make something up. Compose something to thank me with."

  I complied, opening myself to the place in my mind where the music lived, a corner of my consciousness that was never silent, filled with strains of melody. I imagined those strains as thread, or waves, washing over Fox as he stood watching me, taking in the essence of my sire, my patron, my lover, and finding expression in string and wood. It was slow, and hypnotic, almost mournful, the endless waltz of darkness and light, love and death, and I gave myself to it, letting it work its will through me.

  I had a brief flash of memory, of the first month I had been his student, of being locked in a pitch black closet, naked, with only my violin and bow, left there for days, food and water pushed through a flap in the door but otherwise alone, blinded, to learn the contours and nuances of the instrument with my other senses. I had fumbled over the flame of the body, made horrible screeching noises the first day and cacophonic plucking sounds the one after, but by the time he had let me out, I knew the instrument's every millimeter, and was ready to learn real music. I was also so desperate for touch that I had fallen to my knees before him in the hallway, my hands clumsy but my mouth eager, and not risen until he hauled me up to fuck me hard against the wall.

  I played until my arms ached, which for me was a good long while, and gradually I became aware of hands touching my shoulders, a body pressed warm against my back. I felt his hands slide around to my chest, up beneath and out of the way of my arms, unlacing my shirt, skimming over my skin. I smiled, but ignored him, weaving layers and layers of shimmering melody together around us.

  I touched my mind to his. [Play with me.]

  A mental chuckle, and he broke contact, stepping away from me. I heard him cross the room, heard the familiar sounds of him picking up his own violin, Stellara. He returned to where I stood, facing me, and listened a moment, deciphering the structure and rhythm of what I was playing, and a few measures later joined in, adding an effortless harmony that followed me up and down in lazy spirals like two hawks drifting on a thermal in the summer heat.

  Yes...oh, yes. I had dreamed of a violin like this, that felt like liquid and sang like flame, and she and I were going to rip creation apart together.

  Electricity, like before a lightning strike, rose from my feet all the way out my fingers, and our two joined songs soared higher, until I forgot where I was, who I was, forgot everything but the burning eternal present.

  I do not remember when I stopped, or when the intimacy of harmony became the intimacy of touch, but I remember the heat of his mouth taking mine, and I remember that somehow both violins made it to the table before we made our way deep into the house, to the bedroom.

  "There is so much in you that you don't even see yet," he murmured, kissing my belly, tongue dipping into my navel. "One day you will be a force of nature, my darling."

  I smiled into the darkness, and my words were half a groan. "Like you?"

  "Oh, much, much greater." His talented hands freed me from my clothes, and his mind nudged into mine, parting my shielding as easily as he parted my thighs.

  His fingers closed around me and stroked, and I arched beneath him with a gasp, my mouth closed off with another kiss before I could draw breath. I could still hear the music we had played. It carved itself into my memory along with the dozens of other compositions I had created and thousands more waiting their turn.

  He pinned my hands up above my head, and I surrendered to our sonata, and old favorite that was somehow always new.

  *****

  I shivered in the snow-cluttered air, tears frozen on my face, my breath catching in the frost, a dragon's breath. The stench of smoke and waves of searing heat broke over me even at this distance.

  "Here," she said, wrapping something heavy around my shoulders. We'd gotten away with the clothes on our backs and whatever she could carry--ever sensible, she'd grabbed blankets and clothes, and at the last possible second before the flames leapt over the parlor's shelves, my most recent folio of sheet music.

  I had saved only one thing. Two, counting the bow.

  I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. I stood watching, the screams of the servants reaching me as if from a thousand miles and a thousand years away.

  Her hand was hot on my arm, and I could feel that she was crying. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

  I dragged my eyes from the fire to my sister's face. The winter wind blew long black strands of hair across her eyes, and even with the strength of the immortals she looked vulnerable, frail, and so young.

  I had been young, too, before tonight.

  She saw something new and hard in my eyes, and fresh tears fell from hers. "We should get out of here before they come for us too."

  I looked back at the fire. An entire wing of the house fell in on itself with a deafening crash, sending clouds of sparks up into the night sky. They could have come during the day when we had nowhere to run, but they too feared the sunlight, feared the light of day falling on their deeds.

  "Jason," she said, pleading, "Jason, come away."

  I took one step back, and another, and slowly held up the case in my hands, not sure whether to throw it or tuck it under my arm and run, run and run, until daybreak caught me and turned my bones to ash. I wanted it. I wanted death, craved its touch, there was nothing else, nothing, nothing…

  "Please," she said, voice breaking.

  Nothing, except for her. I couldn't leave her behind, when she'd given up her humanity for me.

  "Wait," I said softly. "Not yet." I let the blanket she'd wrapped around me fall, and she moved to pick it up, hugging it to her chest. "They can't see us from here. The trees block the view."

  I knew that, of course, because he and I had made love here once, beneath the full moon, wet leaves and grass sticking to my back, a twig stuck in my hair. We'd laughed…god, we had laughed so much, he and I.

  I nearly fell to my knees, but held myself upright by sheer force of will and opened the case, dropping it in the snow. She snatched it up as she had the blanket, and moved as if to stop me, but she sensed of course what I was going to do, and with a sigh moved back and away, casting a hunted glance around despite my words.

  Every song had been our song, once, and there were so many, so many. For a long time I stood there in the cold, unable to find one, all the music in me dried up and burnt to a cinder, blown away by the uncaring wind. Finally, I dragged one note from the strings, then another, the sound eerily like a sob. I let the pain come, let it take me. Together the Tempest and I wailed out our grief on the hillside, my sister weeping quietly in the cover of the trees, until my hands were so numb I could no longer hold the bow, and it fell from my hand, useless, landing softly in the drift.

  She came forward and retrieved it, then carefully took the violin from my shaking hands and placed it back in its case, closing the lid reverently. We stared at each other for a long moment, she in her soot-smudged dress and I so beyond broken there was no word, and at last she asked me, "What do we do now?"

  I looked back at our home, and I wondered if he still lay there, or if the fire had already done its work. How long did it take a vampire's body to crumble to dust in a fire? Would there be anything left to identify?

  They had destroyed the house, the art, the library, all the instruments, even…even Stellara, I realized, choking back a sob. She was worth more than the entire house, and now there would be nothing left of her but cracked ribs and broken strings, if anything at all. She sh
ould have been buried, even if he could not be. They both deserved better than this.

  But they were wrong in thinking this would destroy us. All of Fox's accounts had me as their heir, and I was still young enough to be alive by human reckoning. I had the information we needed to access all the money. Whatever those men had wanted to believe, Fox was loved here in New York, and I had only to give my name to any establishment in the city to get us a place to stay.

  A place to stay…and a place to plan.

  I turned to her, and now there was iron determination in my voice that frightened her. "I'm going to kill them," I said, colder than the winter itself. "I'm going to kill them all."

  She straightened, and I saw the kindling of wrath in her blue eyes, her jaw set as she nodded. "I'm going to help you."