The Agency, Volume III Read online

  If Alex was disappointed at the word “lover,” he didn’t show it. “What is your career, then?”

  “I’m in law enforcement.”

  He looked taken aback. “Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  Jason gave him a sideways look. “What would you have guessed, then?”

  A grin. “I don’t know—something that involves being gorgeous and brilliant all day and surrounded by fawning admirers all night.” Alex looked around the street, which was really a campus avenue with dormitories on one side and the Art Department on the other. “Do you have any idea where we should go? I’ve never been to Austin before. The only bar I know is at my hotel.”

  Jason paused, drawing close to the boy, who stared up at him with eyes that knew far too much for his age. Again, the swell of pity, and a rush of attraction, and a decision was made. “I think your hotel would be ideal,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes locked on the human’s. “I was hoping for somewhere more…private…than a bar.”

  Alex looked away, his expression darkening. “I should tell you…I mean, I…I’d like very much to take you home with me, but…”

  Jason lifted his hand and touched the boy’s face, letting his fingertips graze that lower lip; he indulged himself and leaned down, just barely kissing where he had touched. “I know,” he murmured against Alex’s mouth. “I’m not afraid.”

  A tremor ran through the human’s body. “I am.”

  Jason stepped back, smiling reasonably. “You know, plenty of Positive men have sex lives. You don’t have to abstain as long as you’re careful and honest.”

  Alex shook his head. “I know. It’s not so much that as…well, it’s a long story.”

  “Tell me which hotel we’re going to, and then start telling it.”

  Alex’s smile was hopeful and sweet, and reminded Jason of Rowan in those rare moments when something truly delighted him, unclouded by depression and history. “The Radisson on Congress,” the violinist said. “It’s near the bridge.”

  Not a long walk by Jason’s standards, but in deference to the boy’s health and the late hour, Jason reached into his pocket for his Ear. To outward appearances it was just like any other digital phone headpiece, so Alex didn’t bat an eye.

  [Shadow Agency Dispatch, I need civilian transport sent to campus outside the Mueller Auditorium, non-emergency. Authorization Adams, Jason, 47075-9.]

  A moment later he heard, [Acknowledged, SA-7. Yellow Cab ETA three minutes.]

  He switched off the Ear and smiled at Alex. “There’s a cab on the way. Now, begin this long story of yours.”

  *****

  It was tragic, to a human, but a story whose like Jason had heard a hundred times: boy thinks he’s straight, boy goes to music school, boy meets boy, straightness of boy becomes decidedly swerved.

  “We were together for almost a year before he found out,” Alex said, his eyes on the streets of Austin as the cab made its way along Guadalupe. “We weren’t really exclusive, but I thought he was being safe, and I guess he wasn’t safe enough. It hit him really fast—the test came back positive, and inside of six weeks he was in the hospice. I took a leave of absence from school and spent every day there for three months. When my results came back, I never told him. He already felt guilty enough for dying on me. I got sick once after that, from the stress and everything, and since then, I…it just hasn’t seemed worth it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said. “How long have you had the Rose?”

  “Only a couple of months. My teacher, the one I was telling you about, loaned her to me—she said it was a gift, but only because she didn’t want to say ‘you can play this until you die.’”

  Jason looked at him, eyes sweeping from his head down the length of his body to the way his hands held onto the Rose’s case like a life preserver. There were tendrils of energy connecting the boy to the instrument; he wondered if perhaps the violin sensed she was needed, and was feeding Alex enough to sustain him.

  “Did you know that the deLuca violins are said to possess healing powers?” Jason asked. “And that, in the right hands, they have been known to bring back the dead?”

  Alex laughed humorlessly. “Well, I wish that were true. Although, I’ve heard a few legends myself—my favorite is that they’re cursed, and that no mortal who plays one can survive. Only an immortal can bind his life to a deLuca and live to play more than a year.”

  “Immortal?” Jason asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what it means either. But it’s a good story. I can’t decide whether it means I’ll die before the year’s out, or I’ll become immortal—all I need is to meet a vampire or something who has a thing for terminal redheads.”

  Jason smiled. “Perhaps you’ll get lucky.”

  Alex blushed and looked up at Jason with a shy smile. “I think I have.”

  “You have no idea.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, until the cab came to a halt in front of the Radisson and they disembarked, Jason giving the cabbie his Agency Visa for the fare and waving away Alex’s cash.

  “Seventh floor,” Alex said as they got on the elevator. Jason pushed the button before anyone else could get on. Alex, suddenly nervous, said, “My teacher said that there are only 27 deLucas ever known to exist, and that all but one have been accounted for. Ten were destroyed, and most of the rest are in private collections. The one that’s missing was said to be the finest he ever crafted, and one of the last. Supposedly it was destroyed in a fire, but for the next century rumors circulated that it had been seen in Asia, Europe, and America, always in the hands of a dark young man—and by the descriptions, always the same man. There was never any proof, of course. But the violin was easily identified by a swirl in the wood that looked like—“

  Jason, amused, lifted his case, opened it, and flipped the violin over. “Like this?”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Oh my god. Is that…”

  “She is called the Tempest,” he said, closing the case again. “She was commissioned by a Parisian emigrant to New York in 1883 as a gift for his young lover. When the man was murdered and his estate burned to the ground, the Tempest alone survived.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Jason smiled a little. “Do not ask questions whose answers you’d rather not know, Alex.”

  The human stared at him until the elevator arrived at their floor, but there was no fear in his face, only disbelief gradually turning to wonder. His eyes seemed to go through Jason for a moment, and as he led Jason down the hall to his room, then paused outside the door to dig out his card key, Jason could feel what he was thinking: some part of him, perhaps the part that was connected to the Rose, knew, and understood, and accepted what was to come.

  Alex locked the door behind them and said, very quietly, “You really are a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  The boy gestured weakly at the mirror that hung on the wall, where Jason’s lack of a reflection was plain. “I think I knew as soon as I saw you onstage.”

  “Some part of you probably did.”

  “I didn’t care. I don’t. I…I never wanted anyone so much. But you could kill me if you wanted to.”

  Jason set the Tempest down on the table next to the Rose. “So could any stranger you invited back to your room.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Alex said, eyes closed, “but I’m not afraid of death. Not after I watched Chris waste away in front of my eyes. It’s the prelude to death that frightens me—the pain, the loneliness. You…if you wanted to…you could make it quick.”

  Jason considered that. “It would be a matter of minutes, and you would feel no pain—quite the opposite, in fact. But I can’t, Alex. Your blood would hurt me, at least for a while, and it wouldn’t nourish me even if I could swallow it. I’m sorry.”

  There were tears shining in the boy’s eyes, and he stared at the floor. “Don’t be.”

  Jason approached him, until they were barely touching, and he could feel A
lex’s longing, six months without being touched, his broken heart in the way of even a moment’s pleasure. “There is something I can do.”

  Alex swallowed hard. “Oh?”

  He leaned down and breathed against the boy’s mouth, “There’s more than one way to be healed.”

  Alex was trembling slightly as their lips met, but he didn’t pull away. Jason kissed him softly at first, questioning, and waited until he sensed the answer before pushing further, slipping his tongue into the human’s mouth, tasting the sweetness of youth that even disease couldn’t diminish. Such hunger…Alex’s hands gripped his arms as tightly as they’d gripped the violin case, seeking solace and strength where he had none, and his mouth was hot and wanting, the need for both comfort and release hard and insistent against Jason’s thigh. Jason let him set the pace, and was a little surprised at how urgent it was, the human’s hands all but tearing into his shirt, nimble fingers snaking beneath buttons, choosing kisses over breath.

  “Easy there,” Jason murmured. “We have time.”

  Alex looked up at him, his eyes dark and dilated, a bitter twist to his smile. “Speak for yourself.”

  He seized Jason by the shoulders and pushed him backward toward the bed. Jason chuckled but obeyed readily, sitting down while Alex reached over to switch off the bedside lamp, leaving only the edges of moonlight around the curtains to illuminate the room. That was more than enough for both of them; they stared at each other for another moment, and Jason could feel the future tipping around them as he reached out and took the human back into his arms.

  *****

  Hours later, Jason slid reluctantly out of the tangle of limbs and sheets, and lay his hand on the boy’s head, gently urging him deeper into sleep. He went into the bathroom and showered, admiring the bites and bruises all over his shoulders that would be gone by dawn if he didn’t rush them, and pulled his clothes back on, eyeing the window where, in three hours, the sun would rise.

  He stood looking down at the slumbering human, his skin still afire with sensation—Alex lacked experience, perhaps, but certainly not desire, and had been an apt pupil. He had a great heart, and such potential...given time…oh, if only there was time…

  Jason looked over at the two violins on the table. The Tempest had cured cancer. It had resurrected the dead. Surely they could do something for a frail young musician who had barely even begun to live.

  He lifted the Tempest from her velvet nest, and didn’t even have to ask—he could feel her approval. In the last year she had become more and more alive to him, her presence more distinct in his mind when they played. She wasn’t conscious, exactly, but like a tree or a stone, she had her own kind of knowledge and her own power, and shared it with him, as her chosen partner, lover, and friend.

  And so he played.

  He reached deep into the reservoir of power that had become a part of him, and merged it with that of the Tempest, then extended a hand to the Rose as well, and found her eager to assist them. She was old and unused to working magic, but she had power, and offered it, for the sake of her young master, whom she already loved deeply.

  Jason understood that love. Had he allowed himself he could have felt it, too, but he kept distance between himself and the human by sheer force of will, drawing him just close enough to let the energy flow between them. From here, moving in and out of the edges of Alex’s life, he could see the boy’s entire past, the lonely little boy who found refuge from a drunken father only in music, who spent more time at his aged teacher’s house than at home, betting his entire future on a scholarship that offered the only escape he could hope for. So great was his joy at finding a home in the consortium that he finally opened up his heart enough to love, only to be led to grief, left alone again…but this time with the Rose, whose strength had given him the courage to walk up to a total stranger that he yearned for, by an instinct older than anything he would ever understand.

  Carefully, using the lightest touch he could, Jason felt his way through the boy’s body, over smooth skin and muscle, around the curve of his hip where there were still marks from Jason’s nails, deeper, through flesh and around bone, into blood…he wove music around every single cell, seeking out the invader and burning it away, electrical pulses of rhythm and melody shattering and scorching. Fever rose in Alex’s body and he cooled it, feeding more and more energy into him.

  The longer he worked, and the more of the virus he destroyed, the more dismayed he became. He could kill every single cell but more would come. No matter how much power he flooded the boy with, the virus would have its way eventually, and there was no way to stop it…a human immune system was simply too weak to fight the onslaught. The best Jason could do was to restore him to health, for now, healthy enough even to be palatable to his own kind…

  Oh god.

  Jason didn’t drop the melody, but only decades of practice kept it from faltering; the realization was painful in its finality, and he sensed the Tempest knew, and agreed.

  A choice. He could finish his work and let Alex sleep, awakening to a body that would stay alive for another two or three years, bolstered by the Rose’s magic…or…

  Jason drew the song to a close, gently fading it as he set a seal on the work, and finally lowered the Tempest, eyes still locked on Alex, who still slept. He could see the bloom of health in Alex’s pale face, and he knew it should be enough. He should leave, now…return to the base, forget about this lovely young creature, let his potential and his beauty both be yielded up to death, the fate of every human no matter what caused it…there was Rowan to consider, and he had no idea if the Elf would understand…and the Agency had its own rules…Ness had looked the other way too often already…

  He knew what the answer should be. The very idea was lunacy.

  Oddly, the memory flashed in his mind that it was Beltaine, and that Elves and Pagans alike claimed the world of the unseen was very close to the waking world at this moment. Well, if the veil between worlds was so damn thin, perhaps Rowan’s Goddess might spare a thought for her dying human child, and for the undying immortal standing over him, weighing two terrible alternatives.

  He didn’t really expect any sort of help, and the longer he stood there the crazier it all seemed. He had done more than enough for Alex, more than any human medicine could. It wasn’t his responsibility. They’d had their night, and now Alex would go his own way, and Jason would return to work and in a few days Rowan would be home and all of this could fade into memory…

  Jason backed away, but as he turned to place the Tempest back in her case, he heard movement, and looked back at the bed.

  Alex shifted in his sleep, turning onto his side, and in the darkness it seemed there was a faint light hovering over his skin, a nimbus of pale silver, almost like protective wings wrapping around him. Jason’s breath caught—he had seen that aura before, but he couldn’t remember exactly where. It was…something…

  He took a step closer to the bed, and another, and sat down beside Alex, touching his skin lightly, lifting a hand to see that the light now surrounded his own fingers as well. At the contact he felt peace, even joy, moving quietly though him, and he breathed it in shakily. It was old, very old…older than time, older than anything save the Earth and sky. And while it held the kiss of a very mortal urgency, it was not human. Oh, it might wear a human body just now, but only so that it could touch and be touched; like the Elves, it was rare and precious, ancient and yet still so young and uncertain in the world.

  Not an Elf. And not human. Jason could sense it, could taste it: power and age, life and light, containing shadow and reaching beyond. Fallen and forgotten…no…lost.

  And he had found it.

  And, unless he acted, it would die.

  Jason looked back at the Tempest for reassurance, but all he got from the violin was a satisfied silence. He had to wonder, suddenly, if she had been leading him here.

  “You and I are going to have words when we get home,” he muttered, then turned his
attention back to the sleeping…being…before him.

  Alex’s eyes opened, and they too were shining with that otherworldly light, but the boy didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he thought he was still asleep. “Are you leaving me?” he asked softly.

  Jason sighed and removed his coat, letting it pool on the floor. He stroked Alex’s forehead with wondering fingers.

  “No, my dark angel,” he whispered. “I’m going to help you, if it’s your will.”

  He knew he wouldn’t have to explain. Alex smiled, the expression cutting right down to Jason’s heart, and tilted his chin upward, exposing his throat.

  Jason leaned down, nuzzling the warm skin where he could feel the pulse beneath. He so rarely fed from a live human that his senses went into overdrive, his body aching, his teeth pressing hard into his lower lip. He pulled the covers aside and drew Alex against him, groaning softly with a sudden, overwhelming hunger. The boy’s heartbeat filled his mind and beat within his own veins, and he kissed Alex again, mouth and neck and shoulder, nails digging in where they already had before. He wrapped one hand around Alex’s neck and the other around his waist, breath coming out in a low hiss.