The Agency, Volume II Page 9

  "Can I go home now?" she asked.

  Fighting back emotion, he knelt beside her. "What's your name, pretty lass?"

  "Melanie. I'm a junior at Rice University. Melanie Krnavek. My mom…my mom will want to know where I am…" She trailed off, crying, shaking so violently he called a medic over to check her next. The doctor gently turned the girl on her back and started his work, and Melanie reached out and took Jason's hand.

  "I want to see my mother," she whispered. "My head hurts…it hurts…they hurt me so much…when can I go home?"

  "Soon," Jason told her, squeezing her hand. "We'll need to take you to the hospital and get you well again first. We'll call your mother and have her meet you there, all right?"

  Melanie nodded, satisfied with his answer, and drifted off as the doctor gave her a sedative; aside from a cursory check to make sure the victims were travel-worthy, all that could be done in the field was first aid and sedation to get them to the Medical Center where they could receive full care. Melanie looked to be one of the more fortunate, if such a distinction existed here; she was coherent, her vitals weak but stable, and would probably survive provided her organs didn’t go into shutdown before they could get nourishment into her.

  Few of the rest would be so lucky. One of the children died on scene, and Beck had to excuse herself again so nobody would see her cry. She'd never been maternal, exactly, but something about little girls always got to her, perhaps because she'd been an abandoned little girl once and she remembered how it felt. That was another problem with being a vampire: they remembered every moment clearly and completely. Nothing ever became hazy, nothing was consigned to the distant past. It was all there, all ready to be accessed.

  Jason gave the doctor the girl's ID and told him to be sure and find her mother, then moved back out of the way as the teams carried the victims, stretcher by stretcher, out of their prison. He sagged back against the wall, at that moment wanting nothing in the world more than to be home, to walk into his quarters and find Rowan there, to take the Elf in his arms and hold him, and let himself feel all of this, no matter how many tears it cost. Only Rowan would understand what had been done to these people.

  He was almost alone in the room when he heard the noise.

  "We're good to go," Beck said, coming back in the room. "Everyone here was human except for one dead Naiad in the corner. We're taking her remains back to the base for identification and burial, but the rest can go with the temporal authorities if…you sign off on it…what are you doing?"

  He held up his hand for her to be quiet. "Listening. Do you hear that?"

  She came to stand beside him, eyes narrowed. "Hear what?"

  "Listen."

  There it was again—someone crying.

  Jason followed the sound to the wall, and then remembered John Smith's words about the back room—as well as Ness's, and the hidden room on the satellite images. "Damn it--there's one more alive in here!" he yelled back over his shoulder. "Get me a pry bar!"

  "No need," Beck said, pulling something from her belt. "Frog gave me this new gizmo to try out—it uses sonic wave technology to open almost any lock. Very Doctor Who. Stand back."

  She pressed the rectangular device against the wall, and there was a dull thud and a click. One panel of the wall was suddenly a quarter-inch out of kilter from the others. Jason grabbed its edges and pushed, sliding it out of the way, revealing a closet-sized chamber beyond the main room.

  He unclipped the flashlight from his belt and whipped it up, aiming the beam into the room.

  The crying noise stopped, replaced by…

  An energy signature he'd only ever felt once in his life.

  The energy reached toward him, curious, though it was half-formed and very basic, like a…

  "Fuck me running," Jason said, borrowing the phrase from Sara. "It's a baby."

  He moved toward it, trying to project calm energy of his own. "Hello there."

  The infant was curled up in the far corner, in a pile of baby blankets and a crib mattress thrown carelessly on the floor; she had made it into a nest, and had her few meager toys arranged nearby. A set of alphabet blocks on the floor spelled out words that were certainly not in English.

  She was chained, a single metal band around her neck tethered to the wall, but otherwise looked unharmed…just as Rowan had said, she was too valuable to break.

  Beck had moved up behind him, and was gaping openmouthed at the little creature, who showed no signs of alarm at their approach. "Is that what I think it is?"

  Jason went to his knees at the edge of the mattress and looked the infant in the face. "Hello," he repeated. "Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you."

  She couldn't have been more than two years old, but she sat calmly, watching them through pale grey eyes under an unbrushed snarl of hair the watery greys and browns of winter in this part of Texas. Her skin was a soft nutty brown, lightly freckled across her nose, and the tips of her ears poked up through her hair. She was playing with a stuffed elephant. Jason remembered, oddly, Rowan saying he’d never seen an elephant, and he wondered what the child must think of it.

  She considered them a moment before asking in perfectly clear, if accented English, “Do you know the words?”

  He smiled and repeated the Elvish phrase that Rowan had taught him long ago.

  The little girl's eyes lit up. "Paladin," she said, looking from Jason to Beck, beaming. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  He took the unlocking device from Beck and held it clumsily to the padlock on the wall, which clicked open and fell off.

  The child set aside her toy and held out her arms. "Up!"

  Jason rose, lifted her up into his arms, and carried her out of the dark little room; automatically she laid her head on his shoulder where she couldn't see what they were walking through as they made for the outermost doorway.

  The minute the Child Protective Services people saw them, they descended like locusts, each of the social workers citing a different reason why the child absolutely must be remanded into their care, immediately.

  "No," he said simply. "This one comes with us."

  "But Agent 7, this is a child—"

  "This is an immortal child," he said over them, "and as such she belongs to us. Your department has no idea how to care for a baby Elf. Now, if you'll please see to the human victims, we'll see to our own."

  He carried her over to where Dr. Cunningham was hovering near the van. The doctor looked shocked to see the child, then smiled broadly—the girl was insanely cute, after all, and he imagined even harder to resist than a human baby.

  “Um…do we actually know how to take care of a baby Elf?” Beck asked as Cunningham climbed into the van. "What do we do with her?"

  Jason shook his head, shrugged. “I don’t know. Run tests to be sure she’s all right, then find her a home, I suppose.”

  “You don’t think Rowan’s going to want to keep her, do you?”

  The idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “God, I hope not. I don’t really think he’s the paternal type.”

  Beck giggled girlishly and said in a singsong voice, "You're gonna be a daddy…"

  He rounded on her. "You do remember why we're here, right? Dead rotting humans, people who've been tortured and raped?"

  Her grin faded. "Fuck you," she snapped. "Like you're so in tune with humanity."

  She stalked off, and he felt bad for taking a shot at her sincerity; this kind of thing affected them both the same way, she just let her emotions hit her as they came instead of dwelling on them for months the way he did. This was why she laughed so much more than he did, and why she drank so much less.

  He turned back to the scene. The last of the victims was being carried out, the forensics people had made their evaluations; they already knew who was at fault but needed hard evidence to indict them. That was the part he hated—the American legal system, such as it still applied to the Agency, was an antiquated piece of rusty machinery that let evil slip through past
its cogs every day. His preferred way of dispensing justice involved bullets and the occasional roundhouse kick.

  For that reason, and knowing how easy it was for people like "John Smith" to worm their way out of punishment, he felt no guilt whatsoever for leaving the human's blood in a smear over the sidewalk.

  The only shit thing about it was the paperwork.

  Part Four

  Rowan stood on one side of the window, staring into Isolation Room 1, his brain having difficulty processing what he was looking at. Sara stood beside him, arms crossed, wonder plain on her face.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said with a slow shake of her head. “She doesn’t even look real.”

  He continued to stare, thinking back to the last Elfling he’d seen…it had been so long ago. There had been celebrations long into the night, the entire clan moved to joy by the rare, precious creature Olisa had brought forth that day—her daughter, and his, the last child ever born to the clan.

  Dr. Nava, who had a good deal of experience with Elven anatomy but none with their young, was still best qualified to treat for the girl, and was recording something on her computer as she walked around the bed. Dr. Cunningham was acting as the child advocate in the case, and sat in the corner, watchful, even though there was nothing to object over. Nava was treating the baby—and baby she was, she might be two if a day—as if she were made of spun glass.

  The child, for her part, was sitting patiently and quietly, answering questions in her unnervingly clear English. Rowan thought it amusing that everyone was so surprised at how articulate the child was; they expected her to act like a human child and babble and coo. Elven children were able to speak in full sentences at six months, and could learn languages intuitively, absorbing information telepathically the way he’d taught Sara to use her powers. He would have told them that, if they’d asked him, but at the moment they were too busy making sure she was healthy for the idea to occur to them that they had an expert on Elven babies right here in the building.

  Well, he wasn’t necessarily an expert, but he was the closest thing they would find. He’d never had much interest in children, and had been involved in Kaeli’s life more as a friend and confidante than a parent—she had come to him when she needed to talk, the way most people did, but less because he was a rethla and more because he was her kin.

  He thought of her as an Elfling, tiny and sweet like this one was, and then as the strong, brilliant woman she had grown up to be…he had been privileged to see her grow up. The last child of the clan, and now she was gone…they were all gone.

  Finally, Dr. Nava looked up at the window and nodded.

  Rowan said to Sara, “You can come in if you want.”

  She nodded mutely and followed him into the isolation room, but hung back near the doorway while he approached the bed.

  The little girl caught sight of him and a sunny smile spread over her pixie-like face. He could practically hear the others in the room thinking, “Aww…”

  “Blessings upon you this day, young one,” he said in Elvish, the greeting she would be used to.

  She was still grinning. “And on you as well, elder.”

  “What is your name, and what clan are you from?”

  “Elora, from Clan Birch,” she replied. “May I ask yours, elder?”

  “Rowan,” he said. “Clan Oak.”

  She looked puzzled. “That’s not an Elvish name,” she pointed out.

  He smiled. “No, it isn’t.”

  “Why did you change it?”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, and her tiny hand sought his, her fingers wrapping around his thumb; they were so small, so perfect, and had the faint shimmer of an Elf’s hands…he hadn’t seen it in so long…one of his own kind…

  “When my clan was killed, in their honor I let my old name die as well.” The girl nodded, understanding, and squeezed his hand in sympathy. “Where is your clan?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They were sending me away, somewhere safe. There were six of us together, and we were attacked on the journey. I don’t know what happened to the others…or my father. We got separated.“ Her voice shook a little as she added, “My father’s name is Ardeth. Please…please find him.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to find your father, and the others,” he assured her. “In the meantime you’ll be safe here with us. I think the doctors want to keep you here for a day or two to make sure you’re all right, and then you’ll stay with me.”

  He looked her over as he spoke, noting that she was not starving but was still far too thin for her age; she also looked exhausted, worn out by habitual fear and the psychic echoes of unspeakable violence, though she was perfectly calm. Elves were usually calm, even when dragged in chains to the stake to be burned. They were endlessly polite even to their killers. It was one of many attributes of his people that Rowan knew he had lost. He might be more tranquil than ninety percent of the humans here, but he had been angry, and he had hated.

  He had killed, more than once, and try though he might he no longer felt any remorse. Would Kaeli even know him now?

  Certainly not by name, he reflected, and his heart ached at the thought. So much gone. So much had been murdered…even him. He had only told Elora part of the truth—he had left behind his old name not just because of the clan, but because as he lay in his own blood in a cell waiting to be taken out and used, waiting for what he knew would happen again and again, he knew also that even if he survived, whatever creature he became would not be the same as the one who had lived, and died, in the forest. Most days, he barely even remembered his birth name; there were times that he would try to speak it, and find himself unable to summon even the first sound.

  Elves had a cultural taboo against speaking the birth name of someone who had changed it for traumatic reasons. Beyond that, though, part of him was afraid to invoke his own ghost.

  He felt a small hand on his face, and looked at Elora, who had tears shining in her eyes even as she gave him her babyish smile. “Don’t be sad,” she said. “You’re all new now. That’s good.”

  An empath, he realized, and a damned strong one. “Thank you, Elora,” he replied, placing a kiss on her forehead.

  Just then the isolation room door opened, and a member of the Food Service staff entered with a cart bearing several covered trays. Rowan stood and went to check them over—they were used to feeding him, but Elora’s needs would be a little different, and she wouldn’t be able to tolerate some of what he was used to.

  Still, it looked like they had done right by the girl, bringing her mostly fruit and some vegetable soup, juice, and hot cocoa made with almond milk and nectar rather than sugar. He’d requested that they add some ginger to it to help soothe her stomach.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing her the warm cup. “Try this—it’s sweet.”

  She sniffed it experimentally, then took a cautious sip and grinned again. “It’s good.”

  “Go slowly, little one. You’ve been a long time without good food and there’s plenty here. I’m going to leave you to it now, and afterward you must sleep—if there’s anything you need, just let the doctors know. I’ll check in on you soon.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her hands already reaching out for a fat strawberry. There were many drawbacks to human agriculture, but he had to admit he liked being able to get fruit all year; it might not be as delicious out of season, but it was more appealing than living off winter melon, preserves, and root vegetables the way he had in the forest.

  He left the room, Sara in tow, and she asked, “So what did she tell you? What’s her name?”

  “Elora,” he answered, realizing that he hadn’t been speaking English at all while they were in the room with the child. When he switched back, he could hear his accent more strongly than usual. “She’s from a different clan than mine—one that was still intact when ours was destroyed. I don’t know if they’re still alive. It’s going to be hard to find her a permanent home if we
can’t locate her father.”

  “She seems awfully smart for her age…or is she? Do Elves mature faster?”

  “Much. A two year old like Elora would be the rough equivalent of a seven or eight year old human. We have a longer gestational period so we’re born with a more developed brain; plus, we can learn telepathically.”

  “Wow. Are you okay? You seem a little…freaked.”

  “I’m not sure.” Rowan headed toward the elevators, knowing there was only one place he wanted to be right now. “It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen another of my kind, and it’s stirring up some memories…”

  “Memories of your daughter?”

  “Yes, and of the clan, and my life before this. It’s…a lot to take in.”