The Agency, Volume IV

by Dianne Sylvan

  "And now the end times have come, and we must awaken again. Long have I seen the signs, long have I waited to call my siblings and friends forth from the blood of the new world, seven of us to return, to remake what we once made."

  "How will we do that?" he asked.

  "When the last Clan falls, when war tears Mortalkind asunder, it will be time. We will reclaim the Earth as our own, and help the God and Goddess to scour it clean of the creatures that have nearly destroyed it."

  Rowan blinked and looked up at the Sibyl sharply. "Wait...what?"

  "So it was written, so it was ordained. The future of our people has been carved into these very walls. Read it if you will."

  "Carved--by you?"

  "There has been no one else. I have been alone."

  Rowan shook his head and stepped back from the well. "You're insane," he said. "You're mad if you think I'm going to help you kill off humankind--and worse, just sit by and wait until the rest of the Clans are slaughtered so we can start fresh. That's not why we were created. That's not what Elves do. We're healers, not murderers."

  The Sibyl might have laughed; it was impossible to tell. "Speaks one who has killed many, and will kill many more in the future. Speaks one who had a hand in the death of his own daughter."

  "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret that," he said. "But I don't regret defending myself or helping to liberate Clan Yew. I've taken life, yes, but I've given it too."

  "And you have a daughter now," the Sibyl replied. "A daughter who will one day become the Singer, and who you will bring here to reclaim her birthright, and join in our sacred purpose."

  "No."

  The Sibyl actually had the good grace to look surprised.

  "I'm not bringing my daughter anywhere near this place if that's what you want from her. She'll be raised to love all people regardless of blood. If that means she never becomes a true Jenai, so much the better--and neither will I."

  Anger choked him, and he looked around the room for a way out. "Send me back. We're done."

  The Sibyl's face did not change, and she didn't reply. Instead, she waved her hand over the water's surface again. "Perhaps before you make a choice you will regret, you should see what is at stake."

  Against his better judgment, he did as she said.

  He saw the Earth burning; he saw the slavers attacking what few Clans remained and murdering, raping, and maiming the rest of Elvenkind. He saw humanity fall into chaos and the sky ripped apart by nuclear war. He saw the forests turn to ash, the soil turn barren as it was systematically raped of its nutrients, the oceans and rivers filled with the dung of factory farmed animals and the corpses of his people. Famine spread over the planet, and everyone he had ever known, or ever would know, died in pain, while he endured, immortal in a world without any hope, powerless to stop the inevitable.

  The water changed again.

  Now he saw the clearing beyond the Dreaming Gate. Four Seraph, armed and brainwashed into bloodlust, attacked Lex and Jason, who had sent Sara to safety in the trees. The two were strong, and Jason was a skilled warrior, but they were outnumbered, unarmed, and cornered.

  Rowan watched, frozen, as Lex went down first, bleeding but still alive, his arm hanging useless and one wing shredded limply by his side. He clawed his way out from under the two Seraph who slashed at him with their knives, but both blades struck home and he bled, and bled, pinned back against a tree.

  Jason was faster than any one Seraph could hope to be. He kicked one in the head, spun around, and threw himself back into a second's chest, seizing the knife and whipping the Seraph around into the first one. They came at him again, and he slit one's throat and dodged the other's knife in time to drop to the ground and plunge his stolen blade into its gut. The knives were enchanted somehow, or poisoned--both Seraph fell screaming to the ground, foul black smoke rising from their wounds, blood bubbling dark green and slimy into the sunlit grass.

  The vampire tackled one of the two remaining Seraph, distracting the fourth from Lex.

  "Go!" he yelled. "Find Sara and get out of here! I'll hold them off!"

  Lex was too badly injured to argue--he knew he couldn't fight any more, but he could make sure Sara was safe. He pulled what remained of his wings tight around him and ran into the woods, disappearing into the blurry background in seconds.

  Jason snapped the third Seraph's neck with a sickening crunch that echoed through the well, but he wasn't fast enough to stop the fourth, who leapt sideways, retrieving a spear gun that one of his comrades had dropped, and firing a wooden shaft.

  The stake thudded dully into Jason's chest.

  Rowan heard himself crying out, but there was nothing he could do.

  With the last of his strength, Jason lifted his knife and threw it, a perfect shot--it buried itself to the hilt in the last Seraph's eye, and with a shriek of pain, the creature tumbled dead to the ground.

  Jason toppled forward into the bloody grass, his hands too weak and unresponsive to pull the stake from his sternum. He lay on the ground halfway on his side, his breath shallow and wet, blood trickling from his mouth. A violent shudder ran through him...and he was still.

  Rowan screamed into the vision, and felt his knees colliding with the stone floor, his hands gripping the edge of the well. "No! No!"

  The Sibyl watched him in silence, her seamed face showing not a trace of pity. When he finally raised his eyes to hers, he knew his were burning with rage, and hers were placid.

  "The Weaver had the power of life and death," she said. "If you take up your true identity once more, you can bring him back."

  Rowan bowed his head until his face touched the cold stone. "And I'll be a part of your holy crusade."

  She seemed almost reluctant to say so, but finally, "You alone can choose what to do with your power. If you and I must be enemies, my brother, then that is what we must be. I admit I have not foreseen what will become of us should you take the road of evil."

  "Evil is a relative term," he said, his voice flat even though his insides were shaking. "What will happen to me?"

  "You will remember. And, in time, you will become. This life you have now will cease to be. There will be pain, and sorrow, and one day you will die--in pain, in darkness. The rest is yet unwritten."

  "Tell me what I have to do."

  She didn't. She merely pointed.

  He looked up at her one last time. "Hope, for your own sake, that you and I never meet again, sister."

  Then, he bent his head and drank from the well.

  Part Eleven

  The second Sara's feet carried her beyond the edge of the clearing, she felt her body--her real one, the one back in Clan Willow--moving, trying to wake up around her. The dream world fluxed and flickered, and she had to fight with all her will to stay asleep; she couldn't wake up, she couldn't leave, until she knew the others were all right and Rowan had come back. She had to know.

  She stopped short and clung to a tree, breathing hard until things made sense again. Colors spun around her and the forest morphed into the bedroom, then back, and back again, and back, until she forced herself to ground and center in the reality--if it was reality at all--that she wanted to stay in.

  Distantly she heard shouts and the sounds of fighting. She had to hold onto the tree to keep from running back toward the clearing. There had to be something she could do--she wasn't some useless barefoot pregnant woman! She wasn't going to stand by and let people she cared about die.

  Sara left the tree and headed back, angry at herself for even letting the others convince her to run in the first place, but before she made it ten steps, something large and heavy blundered into her, knocking her back and onto the ground.

  She struck out, thinking one of the Seraph had found her, and in a way she was right--in a split second she realized it was Lex.

  "Get off!" she grunted. "Damn it, get--"

  Then she saw the blood, and the tattered ruins of his left wing. She gasped and slid out from
under him, helping him turn onto his back. He groaned.

  "I'm all right," he panted, which was absolutely not true. "Jason is in trouble--he sent me to find you while he kept them busy.”

  "We have to go back!" she said. "Come on!"

  "I'm not going to let you get hurt," Lex insisted.

  "What exactly are you going to do to stop me? Goddamn it, I'm not just some breeding mare, I'm a fucking Shadow Agent! Now, you can come with me and help me save him, or you can lay there in the dirt."

  She started running, and a minute later heard him behind her; she knew he was in bad shape but there was no time to take stock of his injuries until she found Jason and got those things away from him. She didn't really have a plan, but there had to be something, anything--

  Sara exploded out onto the sunny grass, and instantly the stench of blood overwhelmed her, sending her puking into the nearest tree trunk. Waves of nausea battered her from all sides and she doubled over.

  She heard Lex arrive, and heard him gasp. "Jason!"

  She forced herself back up, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and shoved herself away from the tree, following the Seraph's voice past the bodies of the four creatures that had come to kill them.

  Near the Rune Tree, still bathed in warm sunlight, lay Shadow Agent 7.

  He was dead.

  "Oh, god, no..." Sara went to her knees beside him, with Lex on the other side, the Seraph gently removing a long pale shaft of wood from the vampire's chest.

  No blood followed the stake's withdrawal....there was no blood pumping. His heart had stopped beating before they even reached the clearing.

  Sara wept, touching Jason's face, trembling fingers closing his lifeless blue eyes. Lex was crying too, silently.

  Oh, god, this can't be happening...Rowan...what's Rowan going to do? What are we going to do? He died here all alone, he should have been with Rowan. They should have been together. What are we going to do?

  "I'm so sorry," Lex whispered. "Twice now you've saved me, and I can never repay you."

  "We're going to have to tell Beck," Sara sobbed, and the answering look on Lex's face was so full of grief that she couldn't say anything else.

  Behind her, Sara heard something.

  She turned around, terrified suddenly that there were more Seraph, her mind cataloging where she'd seen the discarded weapons--but there was no need.

  As it had done before, the Rune Tree's bark was fading, turning to mist; the image of the carved bark seemed to twist in on itself, and went dark.

  Sara and Lex stared, openmouthed, at the figure that emerged.

  It was Rowan...and yet it wasn't. He looked the same, and was wearing the same black pants and t-shirt he'd been wearing when he'd gone to bed earlier that night. He was still barefoot and still wore the stone around his neck. But though his hair was still its summer shades of brown, green, and grey, and his eyes were still green, something in them had changed irrevocably.

  They were luminescent, filled with fire, and with a quality Sara could only describe as life--not the life of a single individual, but all life, waxing and waning and spinning round and round again, from birth to death and on to rebirth.

  He stepped forward, and the dream world seemed to bend around him, changing as he moved.

  He looked around the clearing, his expression perfectly calm, detached.

  He lifted a hand.

  Sara felt something in her stomach lurch, and when the feeling stopped, and she followed Lex's gaze, she gasped.

  The four dead Seraph had disappeared. The blood had evaporated.

  Rowan came to them, and knelt beside Sara, who almost passed out under the onslaught of his aura even as she remembered this very feeling from the night of Beltaine, the night the Singer had been conceived.

  Understanding dawned at last.

  The Weaver leaned over Jason's body, smiling softly. The look on his face was one hundred percent Rowan, full of love and regret. "Sorry I'm late, culisen," he said, laying his hands tenderly on Jason's ravaged chest.

  Again, the lurch in her stomach, and before she could even let out her breath, Jason gasped hard, his body spasming into the ground, eyes flying open as he coughed and drew a hungry, ragged breath. The blood all over his chest was gone, as was the wound left by the stake. His death had been erased...no...rewoven.

  "Now," Rowan said, still serene, with a gently ironic touch to his voice, "I think it's time we all woke up."

  Sara blinked.

  Then she sat bolt upright in bed.

  *****

  Jason woke shaking, his entire body in agony that centered in his chest--he thrashed in the covers for a moment, confused and scared witless, until he realized he was home in bed, not bleeding out on the forest floor.

  He was drenched in sweat and could barely hear anything over the sound of his heart trying to shatter his ribcage from the inside. He curled up in a fetal position, trying to breathe, trying to make sense of anything he'd seen or felt.

  I died. I felt it. But then...what happened? I saw Rowan. He was all right. But...

  His cell phone on the bedside table rang, the sound oddly shrill in the near-silent room and loud enough to startle him out of his panic. He rolled over, groping for it, and mashed the keypad with numb fingers until he hit the "talk" button and got it to his ear.

  "Jason?"

  The warm, familiar voice flooded him with relief, banishing the pain and fear.

  "Baby, are you there? Talk to me."

  "Rowan..."

  "Yes, it's me. Just breathe...are you all right? Are you hurt?"

  Jason sat up, pulling his knees up to his chin and holding the phone like a lifeline. "I'm okay. Are you?"

  "I'm fine. A little...freaked. Well, extremely freaked. But I'm okay."

  "Sara?"

  "She's here, she's fine too. We both woke up at the same time."

  Jason's free hand went to his chest, feeling for the hole that should be there but wasn't. "What happened to me?"

  "It's...it's complicated, amori. Just try to relax, and try to rest. Everything's okay now."

  He shut his eyes tightly. "Come home."

  He could hear Rowan smiling. "I am, my love. Tomorrow. I'll be home to you by sunset. For now, just rest. Call Lex to make sure he's all right, and then rest, and I'll see you soon. I promise."

  *****

  As Rowan hung up the phone and lay it down, Sara was still weeping into his shoulder. He put his arms around her and held her close, murmuring to her in Elvish, letting her touch and squeeze him wherever she needed to to affirm he was alive, and they were safe in the real world where they belonged.

  Gradually she calmed, and before long had fallen asleep again, this time peacefully.

  After a while, when he was certain she wouldn't wake, he eased out from her embrace and left the bedroom, making his silent way out onto the guest house's porch.

  The world was all ashimmer to his eyes. He could see glimpses of past, present, and future, and how the slightest touch could alter worlds. He could feel the potential of everything around him, flowing through his veins, singing from end to end of his being. He would have to learn how to work with that magic, but he knew that in time, once he remembered it, it would be effortless.

  He was still Rowan. He chose to be. But as Clan Yew had once filled his head with false memories, now there were entire lifetimes dancing before his eyes--he remembered a thousand years ago, and a thousand before that. He remembered the first breath he had ever drawn, when the world was still so young and humans so innocent. Some things were clear, and some still shrouded in the elusive gossamer of time. The past and the future had always been the Sibyl's province. The present, and transforming it, was his.

  Once, they had all worked together. His sister had been able to see all the consequences of every action--perhaps that was what had driven her mad, spending millennia alone with nothing but the entire world’s karma to keep her company. He remembered when she had been young and full of hope, like t
he Maiden, the daughter of endless possibility with her blossoms and baby animals. The Sibyl had been the oldest of their triumvirate.

  Once, his people had faded from the Earth. They had been too powerful, too lonely. Their gifts had been disseminated among their children and children's children, the magical genetic birthright of the Elves. Some of that magic had passed on to humans as well, back when they could interbreed, and now it was all but gone.

  But something had brought them back. Something, or Someone, had decided it was time.

  Rowan knew in his heart that it had not been the Sibyl's doing. She was an instrument, like they all were; their power came from the Divine, and only the Divine could reawaken it.

  One way or another he would find out. One way or another, he would find the others, and he would stop them from turning on the human race.

  He'd start with the Singer.

  But first...first, he would go home, back to his lover. It was almost funny now, thinking of his fear and doubt. Of all the future possibilities he should worry about, love was not one of them.

  Rowan smiled into the dark, one hand touching the silver band around the opposite wrist. Home, and Jason. Passionate lovemaking followed by pizza and sleep. Real life, beautiful life, his life.

  Saving the world could wait. He was going home.

  *****

  SA-7 waited alongside Dr. Nava and Ness while the van pulled up to the ramp inside the Agency's underground parking garage. Outwardly he was all business, but on the inside his heart was turning somersaults and cartwheels in amongst the butterflies--no, bats--in his stomach.

  He had no idea what to expect. He'd only spoken to Rowan for a moment the night before, and then briefly to Sara later, who had said that Rowan had changed, but was still himself, and that he shouldn't worry. For some reason that made him worry even more.