The Agency, Volume III Read online

  One foot placed carefully on the tile floor, bare, in the same blue scrubs Jason had worn, but the skin had taken on a shining ivory undertone that was neither vampiric nor human in appearance. The boy looked like he had been carved out of marble, a pale living statue, moving with the otherworldly grace of a newborn dragon.

  As he stood, a dark grey cloak fell down over his shoulders, held shut at the front by two hooks that looked like they were made of horn or bone. It looked almost comical over the scrubs, though Jason could see newly-chiseled muscle beneath, and fingernails that were slightly curved and, he sensed, retractable like a vampire’s teeth.

  Overall, he looked like Alex, was the same height and build, but stronger, far more powerful. And whatever he was, he was not human, or vampire.

  Rowan was the first to be able to speak. “Are you a Seraph?” he asked.

  The creature looked at him, seeming taken aback that he knew the word, but then bowed to the Elf. “I am, my Lord Weaver.”

  Rowan took a step back. “What?”

  The Seraph tilted his head sideways again. “You are Rowan, once of Clan Oak, now a legend among all Clans, born of the Fires of Beltaine, first of the newly awoken Jenai, the Weaver, father of—“

  “How do you know all of that?” Rowan demanded. “Who are you?”

  “And what happened to Alex?” Jason asked. “Did you kill him? Is he still in there?”

  “Kill him?” it asked, politely incredulous. “How could I kill my own body? I am Alex,” the Seraph continued, taking a step toward Jason, who took a step back. “I share his memories, his emotions. Perhaps there is some distance now, but it will fade with time. I remember his love for you, night-walker. In time I will feel it.”

  “So you took over his body,” Rowan confirmed.

  “When we were strong enough. He offered himself to me long ago. He understood why I am here, our greater mission together. His own life was an empty one before I woke within him, but I was not strong enough to complete our joining.”

  Ness cleared her throat and stepped up. “Seraph, I am Vanessa MacMillan, Director of the Shadow Agency, Texas branch. I am in charge here and I have questions about your intentions. We have strict regulations regarding the activities of supernatural beings in areas populated by humans, and we know next to nothing about your species.”

  The Seraph swung his wide, dark eyes over to her, and she went a shade paler. Jason understood—it was uncannily like looking into Rowan’s eyes for the first time, but Rowan at least was closer to human than this…thing…could even attempt to be. Jason couldn’t begin to quantify the difference, but his entire being knew that he was looking at a very old, very powerful creature whose motivations and morals they knew nothing about.

  “What do you wish to know, Vanessa MacMillan?”

  “I want to know why you’re here, and why you used my Agent to gain control of the boy’s body. I want to know what your intentions are. What you eat, what your habitat is. If you’re a danger to this base or to this city. If not, we’ll need to find someplace for you to stay where you won’t be seen. We have very little information on the Seraph and, assuming you are not a threat, we want to see to your needs as well as we would any other Elder Race visiting us.”

  The Seraph stared at her, or rather through her, for a long minute. Then, it said, “I am sorry that I manipulated my sire’s emotions. I was afraid that the body would die before I had a chance to awaken. We were weakening quickly and the drugs he took kept me mostly dormant—until he met you, night-walker. His desire for you overrode sense and reason, and gave me enough of a hold that I could reach out to you for both our sakes. It was not done with malice.”

  “Do you have a name of your own?” Ness asked.

  It considered the question, frowning. “I do not know. This is a thing unheard of among my kind—we are never seen by anyone but our chosen. No one is meant to know we exist. We come to do our work, and we die, and are reborn when called again.” The Seraph looked them all over, and shrugged fluidly. “You may continue to call me Alex if it pleases you.”

  “No,” Jason said quietly. “I don’t think we will.”

  The Seraph moved closer to him, and Jason could feel it—even though the thing’s alien aura, there was still something there so warm and inviting, so familiar. So Alex. He remembered feeling it that night at the hotel, holding the boy in his arms, their minds and bodies mingling for hours. Was that still here, somewhere? Was Alex really alive? Would he ever look at this creature and see anything of the young human he had taken to his bed?

  The Seraph lifted one hand and touched Jason’s face, and his fingers were warm, his voice just as soft and gentle as Alex’s had been. “I’m still here,” he said. “You healed me, and you loved me. You wrapped me in the arms of your music and brought me home with you. Whatever happens, my sire, that was real.”

  Jason let the Seraph lay his head on Jason’s shoulder, and its arms moved around him, gripping as tightly as Alex’s once had. “I remember how to play,” he whispered. “I remember the way you touched me, the taste of your blood. You held me as if I might break in your hands. After the diagnosis, and after my lover died, I never thought I would feel such joy again. The only time I felt anything beautiful was when I played, and even then the magic was leaving me…but you brought it all back.”

  The Seraph looked up. “Where is the Rose? Is she safe?”

  Jason smiled a little, something in his heart unclenching. “She’s here. Over there, in fact, waiting for you. I kept her safe.”

  “Thank you.” The Seraph took his hands, kissing the back of each one, and the look in his eyes was, for a moment, all Alex, in its intensity. “I promise you I mean no harm. I am here to protect—it’s why I exist.”

  “Who are you here for?” Rowan finally asked.

  The Seraph looked at him, and there was deference in his manner. “I seek the Singer, my Lord,” he said. “One of the Seven who will come together to make the world anew. The Singer is in need of a guardian and that sacred task has been appointed to me.”

  “Who is the Singer? And how do you know all of this?”

  “I was born knowing, my Lord. Each of you must be protected until the hour comes—and come it shall, though not for some time. There is much to be done first, much to be learned. There are five others to find. But it had to start somewhere, and that somewhere is here, and now, and you.”

  The Seraph shifted, and Jason’s hand moved over the cloak he wore; it was a strange material, slightly fuzzy like suede, and oddly warm; it was also ridged in places, almost boned underneath like an umbrella. “What is this?” he asked. “Where did you get a cloak like this?”

  Nearby, he heard Rowan snort softly. “Jason…it’s not a cloak.”

  “What do you—“

  “Show him,” the Elf commanded.

  The Seraph smiled, displaying slightly pointed canine teeth, and moved back; he reached up and unhooked the cloak, letting it fall to either side…

  ….and raised it.

  Jason felt his mouth drop open as the shadow fell over him, spreading out on either side and up, filling the room.

  Not a cloak, then.

  Wings.

  *****

  Sara waited as patiently as she could in the infirmary for Nava to get back from her meeting with the others down in Research Suite 2, but it was hard with the room spinning around her head.

  She felt awful. She’d felt awful since waking up that morning, and though the nausea had abated quite a bit as the day progressed, she still could barely walk without falling over. She’d had a long argument with herself over whether to try and log on for her shift, then sent a sick leave request over her Ear and headed for the infirmary. Even though there wasn’t much the staff could do for a simple stomach virus, she was still obligated to check in, especially if it was something that other people had or could get. The Agency had dealt with too many contagions, both pathological and metaphysical, not to be extra careful. In
a closed environment like the base illnesses had a way of making the rounds.

  So, she leaned against the wall in the uncomfortable plastic waiting area chair trying not to be sick again. She hadn’t eaten anything, but she’d had some Gatorade brought to her by a sympathetic Sage, and that had stayed down well enough. Her stomach was snarling and twisting partly out of nausea and partly out of hunger, and she was weak and shaky and god, so tired. She’d been tired for days already anyway.

  “I need a vacation after my vacation,” she told the nurse who came to take her vitals.

  The nurse made a sympathetic clucking noise. “We’ve had ten people in here this past week with similar symptoms,” she said. “But since you’ve been in a foreign environment I’d like to do some bloodwork on you, just to make sure you didn’t contract any unusual pathogens.”

  “It wasn’t France, it was Lost Pines,” Sara pointed out.

  “All the same,” the nurse replied sternly, already setting out her needles, “We know Elves can’t carry or spread disease, but it’s standard protocol. If you’ll take this into the bathroom and give us a sample, we’ll draw some blood and then I’ll see about getting you something for your nausea.”

  Sara glared at the little cup. “Got any Gatorade? I’m dry.”

  By the time she’d peed to the nurse’s satisfaction and given up two vials of her blood, Sara was about ready to collapse, and she sat on the exam table in her pajamas for a minute before heading back to bed, waiting for the spinning to stop long enough to stand up.

  “So now what do we do?” she heard a familiar voice ask, and a group of people walked into the infirmary’s main room, passing by her. Nava, Ness, Jason, and Rowan were all striding purposefully past her when Rowan seemed to notice she was there and paused.

  “Sara!” He came to her side in a rush. “Are you all right?”

  Sara smiled wanly. “Depends on how you define ‘right,’ I guess.”

  The nurse caught Nava’s eye and said, “Looks like she’s down with the same virus everyone else has had this week. I took some blood since she was out of town.”

  “Good idea,” Nava affirmed. “Just to rule out anything else. A lot of illnesses mimic this sort of thing—we’ve been keeping a careful eye on everyone, not just you, Agent 9. I’ll write you a sick leave form for the next 48 hours, then we’ll want to see you again before you go back on duty.”

  Sara nodded vaguely, leaning her head on Rowan’s shoulder. “Everything okay with you guys?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Rowan said. “I’ll fill you in later, I promise. Right now you need to get some rest and feel better. Do you think you can eat? I could bring…what?”

  He was looking over at Jason, who was staring at Sara as if he’d never seen her before.

  “Oh come on,” Sara said, trying to crack a joke. “It’s only been a week. I know you’re old but your memory must be better than that.”

  Jason’s eyes were wide as he came over to her, standing way closer than he normally would have, leaning over her so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. He bent his head into her hair, and took a deep breath. When he drew back again, he was still staring at her, his eyes narrowed.

  “Did you just smell me?” she asked.

  Silver-edged eyes met hers and became piercing. “Sara…”

  Rowan held tight onto her shoulder and laid his other hand on Jason’s arm. “What are you doing?” the Elf wanted to know. “What’s wrong?”

  Jason looked from Rowan to Sara. “You don’t know. You can’t tell?”

  “Tell what?” Sara asked.

  “I can smell it,” the vampire said. “I could the minute I walked in the room.”

  Sara’s heart fell like a chunk of lead down into her stomach. Vampires could smell disease. He’d smelled AIDS in the boy he’d brought over. “God…Jason…what’s wrong with me?”

  Jason shook his head, and his eyes cleared. Once more he looked at Rowan, then back at her. “Sara…you don’t have a stomach virus. You’re pregnant.”

  Dead silence fell. So did the clipboard in Nava’s hand, clattering off the floor with a sound like a gunshot.

  “Wait a goddamned second,” Ness said. “That’s not possible, is it?”

  “Of course not!” Sara cried, cringing at the way her voice came out close to a scream. “Elves and humans can’t breed, everyone knows that!”

  “Then who else have you had sex with?” Nava asked.

  Sara felt her face turn beet red. “That’s nobody’s fucking business,” she snapped, “but as it happens, nobody but Ardeth. It’s just been Rowan as long as I’ve been working here. Okay, and that new assistant baker, Tom, after the Christmas party. But it was only once. And I think if I were five months pregnant I’d have figured it out by now.”

  Jason shook his head and said, “It’s not him. She’s perhaps a week along, if that.”

  “You can tell after a week?” Nava asked. “Just by scent?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “And look at how off her energy is. It’s already dividing, something drawing on her. She’s probably been feeling exhausted for days—she hasn’t been eating or sleeping enough to replenish her energy. How did you not notice, Rowan?”

  Rowan had sunk down into one of the chairs and was shaking his head, unable to speak at all.

  “This is impossible,” Sara insisted, fighting down hysteria. “I can’t be. There’s no way. They’ve tried in R&D and they can’t make it work. It’s just not possible. We’re not genetically compatible.”

  “We were once,” Rowan said softly without looking up. “Many generations ago.”

  “That’s only a legend!” Sara’s nausea had been replaced with something dangerously like panic. “There’s no proof it ever happened. No gods ever walked the earth in Elven form. You said everyone thought your mother was nuts for believing it. It’s only a myth.”

  “Most myths have a basis in fact,” Ness pointed out, earning a hostile look from Sara and a pleading look from Nava, who didn’t like drama in her infirmary.

  “But Sara’s right,” Jason agreed. “You told me so yourself, Rowan—an Elf can’t knock up a human.”

  “No,” Rowan said, lifting his eyes to Sara’s. “But a Jenai could.”

  Part Ten

  Two hours and an endless round of tests and exams later, Sara sat down heavily on Jason and Rowan's couch, a blanket wrapped around her and a cup of hot mint tea in her shaking hands.

  The Elf and the vampire sat down on either side of her, watching her solicitously. Aside from holding her hand through all the tests, Rowan had said very little, looking as bewildered as she did that the rug had been unceremoniously yanked out from under all their lives.

  “What do I do now?” Sara asked shakily.

  Rowan was still speechless, but Jason shrugged and fielded the question for her. “Wait and see what the test results are.”

  “But what if…what if I’m really pregnant? What do I do? I mean, this…they’re going to want to study me. They might lock me up in a research suite like your friend. I’ll be a giant lab rat. And what if I don’t want to have a baby? They can’t make me, can they?”

  Jason looked at her, frowning. “Are you seriously going to abort the first Elf/human hybrid in written history?”

  “So I don’t have any choice at all? I have to be somebody’s mom because someone else’s god decided I do?”

  “We should name it Jesus,” Jason mused.

  “You’re not funny!”

  The vampire sighed. “Sara, calm down. It’s far too early to be thinking about this. No one is going to force you to do anything.”

  "Fuck," Sara groaned, "I think I'm going to be sick. Excuse me." She set her tea down abruptly and stumbled off to the bathroom, where a moment later Jason heard her retching.

  He reached over and put his hand on Rowan's knee. "Are you all right?"

  The Elf didn't respond at first, but finally shook his head. "I have no i
dea. I don't know what to think or what to feel. I keep thinking this has to be some kind of mistake."

  Now Jason shook his head, and said, "No, love. I know she's pregnant. There's no guesswork involved in it for me, whatever tests Nava thinks she needs to do."

  "What does it smell like, then?" Rowan asked.

  Jason thought about it a minute. "Kind of like...the way a kitchen smells when it's warm and there's bread rising on the counter. But only in the late Winter. There's an undertone like...like snow just about to melt."

  "And you're sure...you're sure it's not human?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think Sara would lie to you?"