The Agency, Volume III Page 19

  They collapsed onto the bed still joined together, and he might have worried that the weight of body and wings was too much for his lover if it had been anyone else. For a long time they lay in silence, listening to each other's breath and heartbeats coming down, the crescendo of energy ringing in their ears.

  Finally, reluctantly, Lex drew back, letting himself slip out, falling down beside Jason and automatically folding a wing around them both again to keep out the chill. The outside of his wings was essentially leather, still sensate but tough and resistant to cold and wet. They were basically like a third and fourth arm, like a bat's wings, run through with bones like a finger's but hollow like a bird's bones. He was not a bat, not a bird, and not a man; he still didn't know what he really was.

  Gradually his awareness returned to the room, and the moment, and he knew it was only two hours till dawn. Dawn had a smell all its own, and he could sense the change in the air pressure.

  Blue eyes were watching him. He met them.

  "How much longer?" Lex asked in a whisper.

  Jason was whispering too, as if to keep from breaking the spell. "Another hour, perhaps. I can take the basement tunnel back, but I have to report to Ness at 0600."

  Reality again. Jason wouldn't sleep here today, or ever again. The last time they'd fallen asleep in each other's arms had been the last time.

  "I'm going to miss you," Lex said.

  "You, too." Jason kissed him, and they let it linger, holding each other, hands etching every inch of each other into memory. They rested in the dark quiet cave of curtains that surrounded the nest, neither one able or willing to speak.

  Too soon, much too soon, Lex was watching him dress.

  Lex drew his knees up to his chin, sitting on the bed, wrapped in a blanket; he rarely felt cold, but he did now, an ache down to the bone.

  Pants, socks, boots, knife and pistol. Belt. Phone, Ear. Shirt, not tucked. Sidearm and concealed blade. Knife. Guns.

  Coat.

  They stared at each other, neither wanting to make the call, but the morning was growing beyond the gate, and it was time.

  Jason came to him and kissed him, and they embraced, hard and long.

  Lex wanted to tell him that if things ever changed...if he and Rowan talked and it was okay...if...but he couldn't bear to leave even that much of himself open to the inevitable hurt, not anymore. Alien as it seemed he had to take care of himself for now. There was no one else to do it for him. No sire, no lover. Only the hope of purpose and the city below.

  Jason squeezed his hands and gave him one final kiss, then stood up again and walked across the room.

  He stopped at the doorway, one hand on the gate, and turned his head back toward Lex.

  "I love you, too," he said...and was gone.

  Altitude

  I have a heart too, you know.

  It beats and it bleeds. I just don't let it bleed for other people.

  "Come out with me to the club tonight," I said. "You need to get off that couch."

  He snorted. "Why? I'm off duty. If I want to lay around in my boxers and watch reality television, I'm entitled."

  I raised an eyebrow. "You're wearing jeans and watching QVC."

  Jason turned his head toward the TV, which was on mute, and immediately groped for the remote when he saw the enormous fake diamond ring the big-haired model was sporting for only $39.99 plus shipping and handling. "I wasn't paying attention," he said, switching it off. "I was--"

  "Moping," I supplied helpfully. "Just like you've been moping since you broke it off with Angel Boy, which I'm still not sure why you did before you talked everything over with Rowan. I don't get why you can't have Lex if he can have Sara."

  "You wouldn't understand," Jason muttered irritably. I rolled my eyes. How many times had I heard that over the years?

  "You poor, poor bastard," I replied a bit waspishly. "Two hot guys love you. Must be rough."

  He put his arm over his eyes. "Go away."

  He can be such a child sometimes. It amazes me that nobody else ever sees it. They think we're both tough as nails, with nerves of steel and balls of bullets. For the most part they're right, but everyone has a weakness. For Jason it's always been boys. Every time he's fallen in love it's been head over heels and he's landed facefirst on the pavement. I figured that once he and Rowan finally got together, things would be different at least for a while, but that pretty little fiddle player he brought home screwed everything up.

  To hear him tell it I've never had a broken heart--in fact I've never hurt a day in my life. He's tried to make sure of it, protecting me, or thinking he's protecting me, from the kind of shit he's been through, but if he'd stop and look, or listen, he'd know better.

  I couldn't help but wonder how the fiddle player himself was dealing with all of this. He'd only been a vampire, or whatever he was, for a couple of weeks, and now he was alone. If he was half as much of a wreck as Jason was...where was his building? 11th Street?

  "God, you're emo," I said, setting down my bag on the coffee table and digging around until I came up with my black eyeliner. "Here, put some of this on so you'll look the part."

  Without looking up he shot me the finger.

  "Fine," I sighed. "Stay here. Pine away for your husband while he's on vacation figuring out how to love your sorry ass. I'm going out and actually living life. You remember life, right? That thing you keep not having?"

  "What do you want me to do, Beck?" he asked, facing me and sitting up. "Am I supposed to go out on the town, hook up with a stranger, drink until I fall down? I'm not like you. I can't just shake this kind of thing off without a hair out of place. I miss him. I miss them both. If I go back to Lex it'll just make things worse for him in the long run anyway. I have to survive the next three weeks, and if I have to do it staring at a television screen, by god, that's how I'll do it. You don't get to judge me for this. When was the last time you missed anyone?"

  When you grow up with someone they learn how to push all your buttons--hell, they install a few themselves. If you're lucky you learn how to push back or at least how to act as if you haven't been pushed at all.

  I'm really not that lucky.

  "Fuck you," I said quietly, and left.

  The thing is, he really has no idea. Nobody does.

  There's no big tragedy. I'm not hiding a deep dark secret past, at least not really. But I've been in love before and obviously it hasn't worked out. He only looks ten years older than me. I'm every bit as old as he is and I've seen just as much.

  He wasn't the one who had to hold him together after Fox died. He wasn't the one who lay awake during the day waiting for the stench of burning flesh when he finally decided to give up. He wasn't the one who booked our passage from place to place, or arranged our lodging, or flirted with (and sucked off a few) innkeepers who noticed our odd habits. I know things, and I've seen things, I never told him. He thinks I'm so fucking fragile.

  I left the base, taking one of the tunnels downtown toward Sixth Street where all the bars and clubs would be crowded and the noise would be deafening on a warm Friday night like tonight. I had a show the next night, down at the Plague Rat on 3rd, but tonight I had intended to wander from club to club soaking up music and life and possibly a few shots, or maybe a nice redhead or college quarterback.

  I shifted the weight of my messenger bag, a concession to the trendy hipster Austin lifestyle I'd finally bought when I realized I needed something to stash my crap in but purses are so not my style. I called it my douchebag, although nobody else seemed to think it was as funny as I did. It was at least up to my standard of cool: black leather with silver studs and skull-and-crossbones clasps.

  Normally when I hit the clubs I wear a short skirt and a corset top, but tonight I felt like walking, and fishnets rubbing together lead to raw thighs. I'm small but have load-bearing Irish hips, and my thigh muscles are pretty hardcore. They've scared men. Women, for some reason, are never scared of my muscles. I think the power inheren
t in my body makes them feel powerful too, as if the potential that exists in the female body is like a fairy tale until they see and touch it.

  Yes, my thighs make me philosophical. They do that to most people.

  That said, I'd opted for my more casual wide legged black pants with chains and rivets, a corset made of black and charcoal grey camo material (not just some trendy fashion crap, we use it all the time--in fact I had the corset made out of my very first ballistic vest, so not only did it look hot in the bars, it would stop a bullet), leather coat, and knee-high buckle boots with, of course, stiletto heels. Anything to make me taller. I had redyed my hair that week so it was back to its usual black with red streaks.

  An interesting side effect of immortality is that if you can manage to get over the Anne Rice self-hating vampire crap, you learn to completely accept yourself as you are, especially your body. You see what your body is capable of and how high you can push it; you understand your effect on humans and on others of your kind. I know, even without a mirror, that I'm the hottest thing walking around on two legs in this city--okay, the hottest thing on two legs with a vagina between, since the honor must be split with my brother when he's not playing Mopey the Saddest Muppet on Sesame Street. We're both a sight to behold.

  But tonight...I couldn't get into it. I wandered up along Sixth Street, pausing in the doorways of several bars where music poured out into the streets, but nothing grabbed me. I didn't feel like dancing; I didn't feel much like drinking. I was horny, but nothing that I couldn't handle myself without any messy side effects. Usually the appreciative stares of the mortal men make me strut a little, but tonight it just made me feel...alone. Not one of those men had any idea who I was, or what I was, and I couldn't tell them.

  The feeling of creeping loneliness had started ever since Jason and Rowan hooked up. I was happy to see them together--I'd been rooting for it for years, after all--but suddenly all his time went to his Elf, and we hardly saw each other anymore. I don't really have friends in the Agency; I talk to most everyone, and everyone knows who I am, but nobody knows me. I could call Sara a friend, I guess, but now she was knocked up and off in Glitter Land with Himself the Elf doing whatever it is they were doing.

  That left me walking up and down the lamplit streets of Austin, feeling like a fool for coming out at all.

  Just then I felt...something. A shadow passed over me, somewhere high above, and I tipped my head back to look just in time to see a dark shape flash across the sky and vanish. Too big for a bat, too small and silent for a plane. It moved far too quickly for human eyes but I saw it, and moreover felt it. It had a distinctive energy signature I recognized.

  I smiled to myself and set off for 11th Street.

  *****

  Most vampires are afraid of heights. They've never really bothered me all that much, although I definitely hate helicopters. Planes, at least, move high and fast enough that it doesn't feel entirely real, and most of the time it's a pretty smooth ride. Helicopters are loud and shaky. Even the slick-as-shit looking Black Hawks that we have scare the bejesus out of me. I went up in a little twin-engine Cessna once that didn't make me want to piss myself nearly as much as the last airlift I did in a helicopter.

  That being said, there's something inherently creepy about being on top of an old building that, if we can get over the altitude thing, is comforting for vampires. Old things, things built to last as long as we are or things that have lived longer than we have, feel like home to us. We're comfortable beneath the earth in tunnels and caves, but also in mountainous regions (cliffs notwithstanding) and ancient forests, assuming adequate protection from the sun. Castles. Cemeteries. Anything that makes us feel less alone as we stand outside of time.

  I got off the freight elevator and looked around with interest, examining the weathered old gargoyles and concrete walls that were designed to look castle-like. A building like this was kind of ridiculous in a city like Austin, but Austin has a flair for the ridiculous, so it works out.

  It was a cloudy, dreary night, warm and humid on the verge of a front, with the taste of rain in the air that would probably hit by dawn. I shifted my bag on my shoulder and ventured along the walkway, peeking over the edge; it was a long way down, and I had to laugh at the idea of Jason up here trying not to act like he was about to throw up from nerves.

  I felt before I saw something move ahead of me--had I been mortal I might have dismissed it as a trick of the shadows.

  "Who are you?" came a soft voice.

  I held up my badge. "Beck Adams, Shadow Agent 8," I called. "Don't be afraid."

  A pale, almost luminous hand wrapped around the stone arm of one of the gargoyles, and the broad expanse of a wing came into view, then the edge of an angelic, deceptively young face. A vampire's blue eyes settled on me, sharp and suspicious, sweeping from my head to my feet, analyzing.

  I watched him emerge from the darkness, remembering how he'd looked the first time I saw him, when he was still human and being slowly gnawed apart from within by the virus. It was quite a contrast. The shape of his body had changed, muscles appearing where there had been none before, his skin pale and gleaming like a marble statue with the faintest grey cast beneath it. His auburn hair was growing down over his ears now, and was a bit wind-blown. His ears weren't as pointed as Rowan's, but they still had a slight taper to them. I didn't remember his mouth being so full and soft-looking, but then, he'd been unconscious and I'd been shocked as shit at the whole situation, so I hadn't really checked him out.

  He stepped down from the ledge to face me, and I was reminded that my brother has obscenely good taste.

  "Adams," Lex said, still barely above a whisper, but the timbre of his voice somehow moved through the wind instead of disappearing on it, and I heard him perfectly.

  "Yes." I nodded. "Twins."

  "Have we met before?"

  "Not really. I saw you a couple of times but you never saw me. I'm Beck," I repeated, walking over and extending a hand.

  He drew away, staring at my hand like it was a scorpion, but after another measured look at me, he took it. His hand was very warm; his body seemed to generate a lot of heat. No wonder he was up here in the wind sleeveless--and barefoot, I noticed. He was wearing a long dark brown shirt that laced up the sides and a pair of jeans, no shoes.

  Okay. So he was smoking hot. Every guy Jason's ever slept with has been; I don't know why it still surprises me. Me, I have very Catholic tastes in men; they all have something to offer. The best lay I'd had that decade was this 350 pound black guy with a disappointingly small dick (stereotypes are usually based on truth, but not always true--remember that, kids) who did things with his tongue that no human should be able to do. The only man Jason had ever brought home that didn't do it for me was Fox, and that was mostly because he was so disgustingly in love with my brother that I couldn't picture him in the sack, which is really saying something. No matter how gay a guy is I can always imagine what he's like in bed.

  This one, for example. What did he do with those wings? He was probably a top out of necessity.

  "Did..." Lex was looking for words, and I knew what he wanted to know, so I took pity on him. He shouldn't have to sound like a jilted girlfriend after everything he'd been through.

  "He didn't send me," I said. "And in case you want to know, he's a mess."

  I would have felt some grim satisfaction hearing that, but Lex didn't appear to. "Why have you come?" he asked me.

  I shrugged. "I don't know, really. I was out, and I had this wild hair to come check on you. How are you doing? Do you need anything?"

  He drew his wings around himself and hooked them in the front--it was pretty impressive seeing them move, just like...well, the only thing I could think to say about it was "just like they were real," but of course they were real. I'd never seen anything like a Seraph, in fact nobody at the Agency had. R&D was still trying to figure him out from all the test data they'd gathered and a handful of anecdotal sightings throughout histo
ry.

  "No," he answered. He sounded so much older than he was. And tired. "The Agency brings me blood every three days and I'm allowed to order books and whatever else I need online. They're delivered to the offices below and left on the elevator by a clerk. I have...I have everything I need."