Instantly Rowan was at her side, taking her shoulders and gently easing her back, guiding her toward one of the cushy chairs in the living area. "Here," he said, all the anger vanished from his tone. "Just relax...let me get you some water. Or tea? I can put some of the mojo honey in it."
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and waited, eyes shut against tears, listening to the Elf in the kitchen. A moment later he was pressing a cup into her hand. He knelt in front of her with a cool, wet rag and wiped her face as she sipped.
"There," he said, taking on the soothing tone she'd heard him use with traumatized people. "Is that better?"
Her hands were shaking, but she drank, and after a few minutes the feeling started to fade. She opened her eyes again and saw that Rowan's were damp.
"I'm sorry I upset you," he told her. "I guess we should have been talking about this stuff this whole time--both of us. I know you're scared...so am I. Something big is coming, Sara. Something big, and probably bad, and you and I are right in the middle of it. I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm terrified."
"Me too," she whispered. "I want to run away too."
He smiled a little, sadly. "That's exactly what I'm doing, isn't it? You're right...I'm scared of that too. I'm afraid of how he makes me feel. I've never felt like this before--not even close. I used to look at people in relationships like they were Pygmies on National Geographic. Fascinating but ultimately a world apart from mine."
Sara leaned her forehead against his. "I think it's time we both quit trying to hide," she said. "But first I think I need a nap."
"Okay." He helped her up, and she sank back into her bed gratefully, her hands coming to rest on her belly. It was almost reassuring knowing it was still there.
Rowan laid a light blanket over her, then kissed her on the cheek and left her to rest. A moment later she heard a faint beep, then the Elf speaking: "Hi, baby. No...nothing's wrong. I just...wanted to hear your voice."
Part Six
There was really no way to make Lex comfortable inside the Agency base, but they did try. A backless stool from one of the R&D labs was brought into the conference room, and the long table was moved back to allow him more space, as if they expected him to knock things over with his wings like a bull in a China shop. Still, he appreciated the effort, and sat at the end of the room waiting for the meeting to begin, pretending not to notice that the other Agents--and the Director herself--were all staring at him.
Not that he could blame them. Vampires looked mostly human; Elves did too, aside from the ears and their coloring. Lex knew that the Agents routinely ran into demons, but that ninety percent of the demon breeds looked more like animals than people. Most of the criminals the SA brought down were human.
He couldn't be boxed into any category. He was human in shape, except for the wings; his skin was almost translucent; he had a vampire's sharp blue eyes, an Elf's pointed ears, the powerful muscles of a werewolf, and dark auburn hair that was growing rapidly down toward his shoulders. He knew what he looked like, and what they were all thinking.
"All right, let's go over what we know," Ness said, calling everyone to attention. "We have in custody one Joshua Cohen, who claims to have been visited by a Seraph. That same Seraph attacked Lex and was killed. The knife the Seraph used in the attack has been confirmed by Frog's people to contain a particularly nasty kind of binding spell. What else can you tell us, Frog?"
The researcher pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. "Er...well, the conjuration symbols can be traced back to the Enochian texts of an eighteenth-century French astrologer named Luc Pierrault, the self-proclaimed Hound of God. According to historical account, Pierrault was convinced that God had abandoned humankind, and that it was up to men like him to strike down evildoers in God's name. His journals describe his efforts to invoke and control angelic beings that we believe were Seraph. He used ritual knives like the one we found, carved with the same symbols, and dipped in his own blood as well as that of the human host to the Seraph's spirit."
"So this isn't the work of the Almighty," Jason said, sounding gratingly self-satisfied. "Just a lone nutjob with a library card."
"That nutjob is still out there," Ness pointed out. "He or she also used the body of an innocent to invoke his Seraph, commanded him to mislead Joshua Cohen, and then to kill Lex here. SA-8, what are we doing to find him?"
"We're running a trace on the knife," Beck replied. "Assuming he didn't hand forge it, there are only so many dealers who work in the grade of silver Frog found in the blade. I've got calls in to all my sources and I'm waiting for a nibble."
Another woman in a lab coat spoke up. "We're also working to identify the host body, but so far it's proving difficult. The transformation from human to Seraph destroys many of the usual ID markers. Plus we have no way of knowing how long he was a Seraph, so that makes it harder to narrow the search of missing persons--he might not have been gone long enough for family or friends to report it. Right now we've got samples running through the ecto-chromatograph for an energetic fingerprint, and the DNA sequencer is taking apart his genetic code to look for traces of the human."
"What about Joshua Cohen?"
All eyes turned to Lex.
"Has he said anything else? Does he know what happened to his angel?"
Ness frowned. "Not yet. He's still here on base being assessed."
"I'd like to speak to him," Lex said.
The Director looked dubious, but shrugged. "I don't see how it could hurt."
"There’s no point to that. What do you intend to say?" Jason asked. "Hi, nice to meet you, I slit your angel's throat?"
Lex shot Jason a look that could have cut through diamonds. "I want to know why his angel came to kill me. I'd also like to know if he's all right. We don't know anything about the sort of connection that forms between my kind and theirs. For all we know he may have felt its death, or know something else. Don't dismiss the boy so lightly just because he follows a creed you don't believe in, Jason. Not all believers are delusional."
Jason's eyes narrowed. "This one is."
Everyone else in the room was watching the exchange as if it were the world's most bizarre tennis match; Lex suspected that people didn't regularly contradict SA-7.
"Even so," Lex said, "I want to meet him. He's the closest link I have to my own kind now that I've murdered the other."
"It wasn't murder," Beck interjected. "You acted in self-defense. He fully intended to kill you."
"I know," Lex told her, gentling his tone, "but it still felt like murder to me."
"Good thing you're not a Shadow Agent," Jason muttered.
Lex fixed him with a steady glare. "Yes, I suppose it is."
"All right," Ness broke in. "Everyone, continue with your search. You're all doing excellent work and I want you to keep it up. Lex, SA-7 will escort you to the assessment suites to meet Joshua Cohen, but I want it kept brief, and for you to be careful how much information you divulge to the kid. From what I hear he's very charismatic and invites confidence; he’s also untrained and could probe your mind without meaning to."
"I'll keep that in mind, Director MacMillan," Lex replied. "I'm assuming our visit will be recorded."
"In every way I can think of," Ness said with a smile. "Be careful."
Even after having met the Director only a handful of times in less-than-ideal circumstances, Lex liked her. She was direct, firm, and had no use for pretension or equivocation. Compared to the vampires she was a welcome breath of no-nonsense air.
"Yes ma'am," he said, bowing slightly and returning her smile.
Lex waited until the rest of the crowd had departed and only he, Ness, Jason, and Beck remained before hopping down off the stool. “Shall we?” he asked.
Jason, resigned to the situation, nodded. “This way.”
Before they could leave, however, another SA member—this one in business clothes so probably Admin staff—appeared at the doorway. She did a double take
when she saw Lex, but tore her eyes from him to Ness and said a bit nervously, “Director MacMillan, we just received word from SA-22’s Ear that she’s en route to the base with another human who claims to have been touched by an angel.”
“Another Jesus?” Beck asked, eyebrows shooting up. “God, they’re like rabbits, aren’t they?”
“No, Agent—this one is a young woman who claims to be an incarnation of…” The human checked a notepad in her hand. “Kali.”
“Shit,” Lex said. He’d studied enough mythology to know that they were in trouble. “How was she found?”
“Covered in blood,” came the answer. “The Agent apprehended her just after she decapitated a pimp downtown with—get this—a scimitar.”
“Let me guess,” Lex added tiredly. “She was dancing on his remains.”
At the Admin’s nod, Jason asked, “How did you know that?
“I paid attention in college,” Lex replied.
“I’ll see your 'shit' and raise you an ‘oh fuck,’” Ness said to Lex before turning back to the Admin. “Thank you, Sharon—let me know immediately which containment cell the woman is brought to. Get her sedated if necessary and have SA-22 get her report to me about the situation ASAP. Also get the Eyes on a search for any other signs of these rogue Seraph and pounce on any, and I do mean any, lead.”
“Yes ma’am.” The Admin bounded away, leaving the four of them staring at each other.
“We have to find the bastard doing this and take him down,” Beck said. “Otherwise it’s going to be Clash of the Titans all over the city. Who knows—they might all be after Lex.”
Jason sized him up, then concluded, “I think it’s time you had a weapon.”
*****
Neneva of Clan Oak had been a formidable woman: tall for an Elf, with strong shoulders and an imposing presence made all the more impressive by her magical power. She spent most of her time cloistered in the Temple complex which, in Oak, consisted of several buildings connected by breezeways, with courtyards, the labyrinth, and its own garden for Temple herbs. The beehives had been in their own courtyard adjacent to the Apiary Priestess’s room. The Archive, the largest repository of Elven history and lore ever known to the Clans, had its own building. Neneva had spent a large percentage of her time there, chasing the shadows of the long-dead Jenai.
She had hoped that her son would follow in her footsteps to the Temple, but having a Rethla in the family was no poor substitute, and she’d been immensely proud of him for aspiring to such a high calling even if it wasn’t her own.
All Elves were deeply spiritual, and much of their daily life was devoted to devotion. Even in the refugee Clans the Temple was the first building erected, and the first prayers said were over its cornerstone.
If a hundred years ago anyone had asked Rowan about a crisis—or loss—of faith, he would have been confused by the very idea. How could he lose something that was as natural to him as the rhythms of his own body? The day began with the inhalation of prayer and ended with the exhalation of song. It had been so for all of them since time began.
Now, in the soft light of early dawn, he stood outside the Temple doors, thinking back to when he had stopped breathing.
The night after his Clan had been massacred, when the stench of burning flesh still hung in the air, five men had climbed into the tent where he was caged and gang-raped him for hours, some going so far as to pretend he was a woman. Though that first night of brutality had been merely a taste of what was to come, until then he had no idea such a thing could happen, and that the most sacred part of his life—his reason for existence—could be twisted into such a mockery of anything loving or healing. When they were finished with him they left him naked and bleeding in the truck, and he had curled into a ball and wept, praying with all his heart for deliverance, or death.
There had been no answer. He had called and called to Deity for help, and there was never an answer. After the first year, he finally stopped calling. Either the God and Goddess had abandoned him, or they had never existed in the first place. The latter idea was unthinkable to his people, so he had concluded that for whatever reason, the Hands that had created him had left him to suffer at the hands of cruel humanity and turned Their backs on him.
He hadn’t had to think about it much since then. The day-to-day hell of survival took all his will, and after that, he lived in the Agency base where, if there was any religion going on, it was behind closed doors. He kept an altar in his bedroom but gave little time to it, and once he and Jason moved in together he’d spent even less time in meditation—just enough to keep a check on his powers and to stay centered.
After 150 years of similar experience—seeing too much evil and never the good to match—Jason had declared that God was a figment of the desperate human imagination. Rowan had never been able to bring himself to agree; the world was still full of spirit, in his experience, but he had come to doubt whether that spirit actually gave a damn about individual lives.
But if all of this was true, it was possible he and Jason both were very, very wrong, and the prospect, which should have been wonderful, scared the hell out of the Elf.
He sighed. He was spending far too much time afraid these days.
As he steeled himself to go into the Temple, one of the heavy oak doors swung open, and the High Priestess, Deisa, walked out to meet him. She wore a light robe and cape against the coolness of the forest morning; she had hair down to her knees, as was the fashion among the priesthood even now, with the sides braided with ribbon and wrapped around her head. A silver chain around her neck held the leaf-shaped insignia of her office, and there were matching leaves hanging from her ears. She was willowy and tall and brought to mind a gazelle or other graceful pale animal.
“Rowan,” she said warmly, her voice deeper than her appearance would suggest. “Are you going to come in, or shall we talk out here?”
He shook his head and approached her, bowing. “I’m sorry, my lady. I was…having a weird moment.”
She smiled. “We all have our weird moments. Please, come in.”
She held out her arm, gesturing for him to pass her into the Temple, and as he did he caught the scent of lavender. Neneva had favored the same scent, and he was overwhelmed, for a minute, with memory.
Again, Deisa seemed to understand how he was feeling, and waited for him at the entrance, saying quietly, “So much lost, so many gone. Sometimes I wish the Goddess weren’t so mysterious in Her ways, and that I could see, even for a second, the greater design behind all our suffering.”
Rowan looked at her. “What if there isn’t one?”
One thing he had always appreciated about Elven clergy was that questions never threatened them; they were perfectly willing to hold a differing opinion from others, for the most part, though many—his mother included—would argue their points for hours if given the chance. Though dogma did exist, there was no holy book, and no ecclesiastical law. Clan Yew had been the dark exception to the shining soul of Elvenkind.
Deisa considered his question, which was really more of an accusation, then said, “If there isn’t one, then it is up to us to create our own. We were given free will and the power to change things.”
“Aren’t free will and a divine plan inherently contradictory?”
She led him through the Temple vestibule and into the sanctuary itself, a large open room very much like a human church but with a subtle difference in energy and open windows instead of stained glass. Branching off from the main room was a number of smaller niches for personal devotions, each with a cushion and shrine; to the back were doors leading to the Priestesses’ offices and quarters.
Deisa spoke again as she led him toward the back. “I like to think that a person’s highest will, as opposed to a momentary whim, is always in line with the divine plan, and that we have a choice to listen to our highest will or to our whims. The choice to act in accord with the Goddess—with nature—is always ours to make, but turning away from Her w
ill lead us farther from our sanctity and closer to evil. As with everything there are beneficial choices and detrimental ones. But I believe you have come to talk history, not theology, yes?”
They crossed the sanctuary into one of the side rooms that served as her office; it, too, had an abundance of light and air, and the floor had been tiled in a mosaic of spirals and leaves.
Deisa saw him admiring it. “We’ve been slowly but surely embellishing the plain building materials the Agency gave us,” she said, beckoning him to sit across the modest desk from her. “We may never reach the grandeur of the Temple you grew up in, but I think what we lack in opulence we make up for in sincerity.”
“I agree,” he said. “I would feel much more at home here nowadays than I would in the Temple of Oak.”
She offered him tea, and he accepted. “I understand you have a number of questions.”
“Yes. I don’t know how much you’ll be able to help, but I had to start somewhere. The visions I’ve been having instructed me to come to the Temple, and this is the only one I know, so here I am.”
Over the course of two cups of tea and some honeycakes, he told her as much as he could about the dreams, about Beltaine, and about Sara. She was, of course, bound by confidentiality, as were Rethla and Healers, so he knew that neither Deisa nor Mellis would spread the word about what was going on; they had much more subtle methods of finding information than that.
She listened, asking for clarification here and there, and then said, “I wish some of the old Archives had been salvaged. We have so little to go on—for centuries our people treated history as if it were no more than a bedtime story, when we should have been taking its lessons to heart. Your mother was one of the few who refused to forget the majesty and beauty of what had gone before…before the slavers, before we began to fade. I hate to say it but I don’t know of anyone else with her knowledge.”
“Isn’t there anything you can tell me? About this Rune Tree, or Dreaming Gate, or anything?”
"I wish there were, Rowan, but neither name means anything to me."
The Agency, Volume IV Page 6