"Hold on, Rowan. Help is coming."
Distantly he heard rushing footsteps and anxious voices, and the hands that held him slipped away. A presence moved next to him, and cool hands touched his forehead, drawing a shimmering power out of themselves and letting it flow into him.
Something loosed in his body and almost instantly the pain evaporated, the relief almost enough to make him sob. He curled up on his side, his breath coming in half-whimpered gasps, and when someone offered him water he managed to swallow some before collapsing back onto the floor.
They were talking above him, Aven's voice tight with tension, the Healer's businesslike but definitely worried. As many refugees as she tended to she had probably seen something like this before.
"Easy," Mellis murmured to him, bending close to his ear. "Sleep now. When you wake you'll be in a warm bed and feeling much better."
He knew better than to argue with a Healer. He gratefully released his hold on wakefulness and slid into oblivion with a sigh.
Part Three
Rowan's cell phone started to ring before Aven, Ardeth, and Mellis even had him settled in the bed.
Sara stood out of the way feeling useless until she heard the familiar wind-chime-esque sound of the ringtone, then darted into the kitchen and dug for the phone amidst the various techno-toys they'd brought from Austin to send information back to the Agency.
"SA-9 speaking," she said.
"God damn it," Jason's voice crackled through the aether, "If he's in another fucking coma I'm going to fucking kill somebody."
Sara smiled in spite of the situation and ventured back into the bedroom, where Rowan was starting to regain consciousness but looked absolutely hellish despite the pain-blocking energy Mellis had dosed him with. It had been months since he'd had an episode, so long that they'd all stopped stocking morphine in their quarters.
"He's okay," she said to reassure herself as much as the vampire. "I'm not sure what happened--he had some kind of seizure and passed out, but he's all right. No damage, Mellis says. I promise I'll call you when we know more."
"Put him on," Jason demanded.
"But--"
"Just do it."
She sighed. There was no reasoning with Jason when he had the bit between his teeth about something, especially when it came to Rowan. She sat down on the edge of the bed and held the phone up to Rowan's ear.
She could hear Jason speaking, and whatever it was he said, Rowan actually smiled as his eyes started to open, and murmured a little hoarsely, "Promises, promises. No...no, love, I promise, I'm fine. I'm not sure yet. No, I'm not going to get kidnapped. I swear. Now, if you'll excuse me I think the Healer wants to find out what happened."
A moment later there was silence from the phone, which Sara interpreted as Jason hanging up; she took the phone from Rowan and set it on the bedside table. "He sounded pissed," she noted.
Rowan rolled his eyes slightly, but with more affection than she'd seen at the mention of his partner the entire time they'd been there. "Well...Frog's theory was that the psychic link we have would alert either of us if something happened to the other, even if we weren't actively using it. Remind me I owe him a Coke."
Aven had been keeping his peace the whole time, but said worriedly, "Rowan...please let Mellis look you over now."
Mellis clucked her tongue. "I already have," she said. "I read him thoroughly while he was speaking into that device." She gave Aven a motherly look, and Sara remembered that she had been the one treating the Gardener when he was first rescued from the slavers. "As he said, Aven, he's fine. His energy is somewhat depleted from the pain, but by morning he should be right as rain. Now, can you tell me what you saw when this happened?"
Aven took up position opposite Sara, carefully taking one of Rowan's hands. If Aven had been human she would have sworn he was in love with Rowan, but among Elves it was nearly impossible to tell. They wore their emotions completely differently than mortals did. They all seemed to love each other deeply on a level that Sara was pretty sure her own race couldn't possibly understand.
The thought slipped into her mind: would the baby feel that same connection to the Elves? Would it have anything at all in common with her?
Would its hair and eyes change color like its father's, or stay the same season to season like hers? It was odd that a race known for immortality was so changeable. Did the baby...tramera, she reminded herself...have pointed ears already, floating around in her belly? How soon would it know what was happening to it? Was it--
Aven took a deep breath, the sound bringing her back to the present with a shiver. "We were sitting beneath the Tree, talking, about to get up, and his face...went blank. He wasn't in his body anymore. I couldn't say where he went, but...a moment later he fell back, and then the pain seemed to hit."
"Was it only his expression that went blank?"
He frowned. "No. His energy did as well. For a moment, he was simply...elsewhere. And there was...there was something else. Just before he fell he said something I didn't understand."
"Was it in English?" Sara asked. Aven looked dubious, so she repeated the question in English to let him know what it sounded like.
"No. Definitely not. It sounded like Elvish, only..."
In the corner, leaning back against the wall, Ardeth spoke up. "Older?"
Aven, surprised, nodded. "Yes. Older is the word I would choose. How did you know?"
Ardeth looked like he immediately regretted saying anything, and looked helplessly at Rowan, who closed his eyes for a moment. "Aven...I don't want you to worry about me. I'm fine. A little foggy around the brain, and tired, but fine. I promise."
Aven stared at him hard, and then gave a slow nod. "I believe you...but I am not leaving you until you explain to me what happened."
Sara held back a smile--the lad was perceptive, and was quite possibly as stubborn as Rowan himself. She'd seen glimpses of it in her few meetings with the Gardener, and she knew that only someone with an inner well of great strength could overcome what he was working to overcome even with a Rethla's help. He was a quiet, serious young Elf, but there was far more to him than there appeared. She liked him.
As if to confirm her thoughts, Rowan started to dissemble, and Aven shook his head, his long hair falling around his shoulders in a cascade of pale greens and lavender. "I know something is going on," Aven insisted. "I want to help."
"I know you do," Rowan told him, smiling a little. "And if I can think of a way, I'll let you. I'm just...I'm not sure how to explain it."
"You might as well try," Mellis informed the Rethla. "As your Healer I have to insist you tell me what happened--whatever you remember. I need to know how your experience compares to Aven's observations."
"Why?" Rowan asked, sounding pained. "Can't you just accept that I wasn't hurt and let it go?"
The Healer crossed her arms, and Sara suspected that Aven wanted to do the same. "You must be joking," she said flatly. "You come here and tell me that you've managed to father a tramera with a human woman on Beltaine--and don't fool yourself into thinking I don't know what that could mean, I am far older than you--and coincidentally you start having blackouts involving strange languages, and I'm supposed to let it go?"
Rowan's smile returned, this time a little more sincere. "You remind me a lot of my mother."
"She's right," said Sara. "I think we've been putting this off long enough. We need answers, and we've barely even started looking. Vacation's over, sweetie."
"I know. I'm just...not entirely sure where to start."
"Then I will," she replied, looking up at Mellis. "Have you ever heard of the Jenai?"
Aven sucked in a breath, and Mellis's eyebrows shot up into her hair. Sara's gaze flicked over to the Gardener, whose expression cycled rapidly from concerned to shocked to appraising.
"Of course," Aven muttered.
Mellis, for her part, looked skeptical. "Yes, I've heard of them. I knew Neneva, after all."
"You did?" Rowan a
sked, genuinely taken aback. "How is it you and I never met?"
The Healer shrugged fluidly. "I only met her a handful of times, each among my own Clan."
"You come from Cypress, if I am not mistaken," Ardeth noted. "The accent is still fairly clear."
Mellis nodded. "Neneva visited Cypress a number of times over the years, researching the Jenai. It was something of an obsession with her, and we were one of the oldest Clans, so she was looking for evidence. She claimed the Jenai were to return within the next century and save the Elven race from dying. As she was a High Priestess there were few who openly questioned her, although..."
"Everyone thought she was a bit touched," Rowan affirmed. "I loved her dearly, but I felt the same way...until Beltaine."
Sara took the thread of the discussion back before he could come up with an excuse to change the subject. "Neneva believed that Rowan was Jenai."
Mellis blinked, and Sara saw her start to laugh, but she then became thoughtful, frowning. "And do you believe this too, Rowan?"
"I didn't. I don't want to. But she appeared to both Sara and me in our dreams to say so again, and then, weeks ago a creature that had never seen me before and knew nothing about our people said so as well. On Beltaine somehow after millennia of infertility an Elf and a human managed to conceive. Then this evening...as I passed out I heard a voice, a strong one, calling me Jenai, and...Weaver."
"The Clans are dying," Aven said quietly. "If they were to return, now would be the time."
Mellis shook her head. "The Jenai are a myth. The myth is so old it's practically a myth about a myth. It cannot be. There is no real evidence, only coincidence."
"This isn't a coincidence in my uterus," Sara pointed out.
But Aven, too, was shaking his head. "Honored Healer, I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with you."
Mellis was looking at them all as if they'd lost their minds. "Based on what, exactly?"
Aven looked her in the eye. "He healed me. Intimately. Our bodies have been joined together and so have our minds. I have partaken of the services of a Rethla before in my life, and while she was powerful, she was nothing like Rowan. The things he can do...I should have died, Mellis. I should never have come out of myself, much less so far in less than a month. You know it's true. All of you were ready to give up on me, and rightly so. An hour of his touch and I wanted to live. How would you explain that?"
"I won't deny that Rowan is powerful..."
Ardeth spoke up again. "I have been touched by his...er, magic...as well, Mellis. It felt like the entire universe poured through my body."
Sara added, pointing at her stomach, "Oh, and also? Pregnant."
"All right, all right," Mellis all but snapped, her Healer's serenity nearly buckling under their determination. "Let us say for a moment that you're right. What is it that you need, then, Rowan? Clan Willow is entirely made up of refugees--we fled with the clothes on our backs, some of us not even that. We have no archives, no tomes of ancient Elven history. Most of the records were lost with Clan Oak. We are left with only tales and songs."
Rowan, who had been listening to the others with bemused surprise, took a breath. "In my vision my mother said I should seek the Sibyl. She said I must go to the Temple--I'm assuming that means the one here. I also heard something about a Rune Tree and a Dreaming Gate, but I haven't the faintest idea what those are. And we need to ask everyone in the Clan if they know anything, or know anyone living who knows anything, about the Jenai. If...if it's really true, and I am one, there must be more, or more coming. And its' reasonable to assume that if I am, the tramera will be too, or at least half."
"You've been called a Weaver," Sara said. "Which one was that?"
"I don't know. We also need to find all the legends we can about how many there were, what their archetypes were. The Seraph said something about a Singer, and Mother had mentioned that title in her stories. That can't be a coincidence either."
The Healer was again shaking her head, this time in resignation. "Very well. I will help you question the others in the Clan. I will start tomorrow, and you can go speak to Deisa at the Temple. But I expect you to rest tonight."
"Thank you, Mellis," Rowan said, relieved.
She bowed. "I still think you are mad," she said as she departed, "But then, your mother was mad too, and we would have done well to heed her warnings decades ago. Perhaps there is something to this, perhaps not. We will see."
Aven stood, finally releasing Rowan's hand as he did so. "I will ask among the Gardeners. Please let me know if I can do anything else."
"Thank you." Rowan smiled up at him. "Thank you for vouching for me, as well. We may win her over yet."
Aven smiled back. "We may. But regardless I have my own reasons for helping you. Perhaps one day I'll even tell you what they are."
Sara caught Rowan's raised eyebrow as she followed the Gardener out of the bedroom, through the common area of the house, to let him out. He had brought over a wreath of fresh-cut herbs for their kitchen door earlier that day, and she wanted him to see she'd hung it.
She paused in the doorway and asked in a low voice, "Are you falling for him?"
Aven turned to her, and he chuckled; it was the first time she'd ever heard him laugh. "No, my lady," he answered sincerely. "I could, very easily, but I know not to sow the seeds of my heart in overburdened soil."
"So you want to help, why, out of gratitude? I can understand that."
There was something mysterious in his smile that she'd never seen before, and it occurred to her that she knew next to nothing about him, not even his age. "More than that, my lady. Much more than that."
With that, he stepped off the guest house's front porch and disappeared into the calm, clear night.
*****
Regardless of what might be happening miles away in Clan Willow—regardless of the hard stone of dread that had taken up long-term residence in the pit of Jason’s stomach, and the sexual and emotional frustration that seemed to stab a little deeper with every breath—life at the Agency went on as it always had, and the business of occult crime would not be deterred by the angst of one vampire.
He crossed the Floor on the way to the lockers and armory, grateful that his reputation kept anyone from trying to make conversation; the Ears and the Admins watched him pass with varying degrees of awe, fear, and fascination, but with the exception of the Agents themselves and the high ranking management, they knew better than to approach him. He was already in uniform, just unarmed, and the long dark length of his coat swept out behind him as he walked with his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes on the floor.
Halfway to the hall, someone fell into step beside him, and he lifted his eyes to SA-14. “Yes?”
She was fairly new, even newer than Sara, and when their eyes met she turned pink and stammered a second before she could get a sentence out. He waited patiently; he was used to it. She might be attracted to him or she might simply have seen the predator in his eyes—or both. It was usually both.
“Um…I brought you the case file on the subject you’re supposed to interrogate tonight,” she said, handing him a black file folder with the Agency seal embossed on it. “I managed the transfer from ASH yesterday. Sir.”
Jason nodded, opening the folder and scanning the first page with a groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “What was your impression of the subject?”
“Lucid,” she replied. “Respectful, very calm—even peaceful. I wouldn’t classify him as an immediate threat. But if you’ll pardon the language, sir, he’s definitely crazy as a shithouse rat.”
“Thank you, SA-14. Dismissed.”
She didn’t question the order; few people did. He took the folder with him to the armory, where he dropped it on the bench before coding on shift and unlocking his weapons drawer.
For a basic interrogation he didn’t need much, just something to intimidate the subject; his standard-issue 9mm would do, along with the usual hidden knives just in ca
se. He’d had one or two of these sessions go wrong and had to subdue the subject or worse. He clicked his Ear into place and sat down on the bench briefly to look over the file.
The door to the armory swung open, and Beck appeared, looking breathless and disheveled. She started when she saw him. “Oh—shit—hi.”
He took in the unkempt state of her stage clothes, most likely from the previous night, and the way her hair was slightly mashed on one side. “Rough night?”
She shrugged. “You know how it is.”
He smiled. Some things never changed. “Vampire, hot young goth, or fawning Fang Porn admirer?”
“Vampire,” she said right away.
“What happened to your wig?”
Beck put her hands on her head, wincing. “I think I lost it.”
Now he laughed. “Must have been some night.”
“Yeah, it was…I’d better get a shower and suit up, I’m on patrol.”
She vanished, and a moment later he heard the water running in one of the shower stalls. He felt a twinge of envy; at least one of them was getting laid these days.
Again he thought about going to the Winchester…not expecting anything, and not wanting to start anything again, but…he had failed Lex as a sire, failed him as a lover. Perhaps he could try being a friend to the Seraph, helping him through whatever it was he was going through. He had to be lonely up there in that drafty room, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but read and watch the world go by.
Later, he told himself. He’d drop by later just to say hello. For now he had work to do.
Jason pushed himself up off the bench, closing the folder. This was going to be good.
The interrogation rooms were actually on the ground level of the base, though they were windowless and gave the impression of being as sealed as a bank vault. Subjects were usually sedated for the trip and often bagged if they were considered dangerous, so that they couldn’t learn the location of the base or its inner layout on the off chance they won free of custody.
Jason arrived at room 1 to find it guarded by two Agents, including SA-14, who gave him a questioning look after glancing at the file under his arm.
The Agency, Volume IV Page 3