The Agency, Volume I

by Sylvan, Dianne

  “Well, I’ve learned my lesson,” I said, my irritation deflating into humiliation. I’d warned him, and I’d warned Beck, that I was going to suck at this. My second month of training and I had seriously screwed up.

  “I hope so,” Jason said. His tone was still harsh, and there was ice in his gaze now that the humor had faded. He seemed a lot less patient with me lately. I didn’t blame him. Thank god he didn’t know about me and Rowan; as far as I knew nobody did.

  “I expect to see significant improvement by the end of next week,” he informed me, making a notation in my file.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, aside from your ineptitude in weapons, you’re doing passably well in everything else. Carlos says your stamina and strength are both improving quickly and that you’ve got promise in martial arts. He did recommend that you join the staff yoga class twice a week to work on your flexibility.”

  “I have no idea how I’m going to fit that in with everything else,” I said, trying not to whine. “I barely have time to sleep as it is.”

  “So I hear,” he said without looking at me.

  A cold hand gripped my stomach.

  He knew. Oh shit, he knew.

  “It’s up to you to manage your time,” he went on. “If this is too much for you, you can always go back to Admin.”

  Was he trying to get rid of me? Surely not. I was being paranoid. He was an Agent, and over a century old. He had to be above that kind of pettiness. “No, I’ll handle it. I’m just venting.”

  “Fine. Obviously with your injury you’ll have to scale back on your workouts for a couple of weeks—I’ll speak to Carlos. For now we’ll stick with three weapons sessions per week, but if you don’t start hitting the target by next week we’ll up it to five. You still have your psionics sessions as well; hopefully we can start you with Tanya in dispatch before long. SA-5 has been…pleased with your progress…thus far.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up. How had he found out? And if he was as in love with Rowan as I knew he was, why wasn’t he saying anything? I didn’t want to hurt him, or anyone else. If he’d ask, I would tell him what was really going on. God knew I could have used someone to talk to about it…although Jason probably wasn’t the best choice of confidante in this situation.

  “Now, if you don’t have any questions or concerns, I’ll see you again in two weeks.”

  I was dismissed. I limped out of the office, feeling…ashamed, and alone. Intellectually I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault that Jason and Rowan were both too blind to see they belonged together, or that Rowan was so broken inside that the thought of being with the one he really loved terrified him beyond all reason.

  If Jason had any idea what we were going through, he wouldn’t envy me at all.

  Sad how the best sex of my life was also the worst.

  Nothing about this place was turning out to be what I’d expected, or hoped for. I had hoped I’d have some kind of aptitude for being an Agent, but so far I was only good at the psychic side of things. Everything else was proving harder than I had thought possible, and I was exhausted most of the time, barely able to stay awake while the Policies and Procedures instructor droned on and on about this Code and that Occult Act.

  I wanted desperately to go to my quarters and go straight to bed, but I'd said I would check in on Rowan first, and I wasn't about to start breaking my word to him. I took the long hallway to his place, thanking every god I could think of that tomorrow was Saturday and at the very least I didn't have to get up early.

  I sighed and ran my badge over the door scanner; we were allowed to have up to three additional IDs programmed into our locks, and there were of course security overrides. So far I only had one. Frog hadn't asked yet, and truth be told I barely saw him anymore except about once a week for a quick breakfast before I dragged myself to the gym to get bitched at by a muscle-bound Agent who believed in things like wheat germ and spirulina.

  Then there were endless hours in classes, learning about the inner workings of the Agency, and even longer hours with an impatient female vampire who, for whatever reason, seemed to have decided not to like me, and who may have been a great Agent but was a terrible teacher.

  Although now that I knew Jason was onto us, I was pretty sure I knew why Beck looked at me like I was some sort of plague rat.

  My body was being worked more, and harder, than it ever had been in my life…and that was before I got off duty.

  The door swung open, and the second I saw the Elf dozing on the sofa, I forgot everything—the aches in all my muscles, the pain and embarrassment of my stupid foot, my frustration, everything. The whole world dissolved into a puddle of rainwater and dried up in the sun.

  It turned out that Elven pheromones, once unleashed, were a force of nature that no human resolve could defeat.

  We'd discussed the matter and agreed that this was certainly not love, at least, not in the romantic sense. This was probably the least romantic relationship I'd ever had, and yet…

  I closed the door behind me and went over to the couch, kneeling beside my sleeping lover, who didn't stir, a testament to how exhausted we both were—after years of resting at half-attention with ears primed for the sound of footsteps, he was a light sleeper, often starting alert when the air conditioner clicked on or off.

  Even in sleep, he didn't lose his pain, as dreams darker and more horrific than I could even imagine played through the theater of his mind, reliving moments he had buried or forgotten in a haze of endless misery. We shared a lot, but I was grateful we didn't share memories, at least not so far. I was teetering perilously on the edge of sanity already.

  One hand hung over the side of the couch, and I took it gingerly in my own, kissing the palm. In spite of it all, just being here, watching him sleep…I felt warmth and serenity whispering through me, the quiet beauty of his presence, and again my resolve strengthened. He needed me, and I was happy to be needed…I just wished it didn't have to be so awful, for either of us. I wished we could just have mind-blowing sex and curl up watching movies and talking about mythology and philosophy, without everything else, without my having to watch him suffer, or having to shoot him full of drugs just because he'd fucked me. Celibacy seemed the kinder alternative, but we both knew that, in the long run, this was the right thing.

  He murmured something in his sleep in Elvish, and his eyes fluttered open. I noticed that tonight their deep green had just the slightest tint of brown. If it weren't for him I would have no idea what season it was, outside. My whole universe was indoors and underground.

  "You need to get out more," he said with a smile, and I smiled back, tsk-ing at him.

  "Get out of my head," I admonished, not meaning it.

  "I'm serious." He turned onto his side so he could look at me squarely. "You're a Witch, Sara. You need to be outside. The people here will forget that. They forget everything that isn't related to work."

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe next week we can have our sessions up in the labyrinth again."

  I chuckled, tracing the lines of his palm with my index finger. "You mean instead of coming here and having sex?"

  "We've been working," he insisted. "You're…very good at absorbing knowledge as long as your mind is open, and clearly, the best way to keep it open is—"

  "With your head between my legs, I know," I interrupted with a laugh. "I'm not arguing. I'm just wondering what the powers that be would say if they knew about your unorthodox teaching methods."

  We hadn't really talked about that, and I instantly regretted bringing it up. His face clouded, and he looked away, levity fading.

  "This is the most unethical thing I've ever done," he said tiredly, putting his free hand over his eyes. "I'm abusing my authority and taking advantage of you."

  "As I recall, Agent 5, this was my idea."

  A spark of humor returned. "And all of your ideas are such good ones."

  "Come on," I said. "Let's go to bed. We
both need sleep."

  He grunted his assent and let me pull him up off the couch by his arm. "How's your foot?" he asked.

  "Hurts like a motherbear. And I'm not exactly getting sympathy from the masses."

  He paused in the doorway of the bedroom, looking thoughtful. "I wonder…"

  "What?"

  "I might be able to help you now. Help you heal faster. We've made a lot of progress—"

  "No," I shook my head. "I'll be fine. It's my own fault. Besides, if all of a sudden I start healing faster than a normal human people will start asking questions."

  "I want to do something for you, Sara. I owe you so much already."

  I waved the comment away, going over to straighten the sheets where we'd left them in a tangle that morning. "You don't owe me anything."

  He didn't agree, but didn't press the issue. I always won the argument, but I always got the feeling like he was humoring me; there were times when, in the midst of one of my passionate diatribes about something or another, I would catch him looking at me in a way that reminded me very solidly that this person I was sleeping with, who made me scream and claw the sheets and left me soaked and sore and feeling like the most cherished creature on Earth, was not human, had never been. He was 420 years old, and in heart even older than that. It shouldn't have been so easy to forget. I only had to look in his eyes, or at his ears or hair or the deceptive slenderness of his body, to see the difference.

  Nights like tonight, we undressed and fell into bed together without any attempt on either of our parts toward anything more. I was spoiled, even after a few weeks, to the warmth and safety of him next to me. I had been a restless sleeper, tossing and turning, but now my body was content to twine itself around him like ivy with his face buried in my neck and his hands—god, those hands—curved around my hip and arm.

  The only thing that still bothered me despite all his insistences that it had nothing to do with me, personally, was that I didn't get him hard, at least not involuntarily. He was always ready when the time came, but that was an act of will.

  Every man I'd ever slept with had woken me up jabbing me in the ass, grinding into me in his sleep (or so he claimed), or had pressed against me when we danced. Rowan had complete conscious control over his entire body dating back centuries. He rarely made any demands on me for his own pleasure; in fact, he only seemed to care at all because I cared. The tit-for-tat approach to sex was a human thing, he said, but in his line of work it was all about the client.

  He could control his body, but not his power; it still went rogue with alarming frequency when we were together. At least I knew from the empathic link between us that he did find me attractive, despite evidence to the contrary. Still, it wasn't terribly good for my ego.

  It had always been a point of pride with me that I'd been good in bed. Chubby girls usually are, after all, and not out of some pathetic form of gratitude, but almost out of spite. It's a shake of the fist, so to speak, in the face of all the men who ignore and belittle us. I knew I was good, and I had always had plenty of takers; not necessarily to my taste, perhaps, but offers abounded, especially from other Pagans, who tend to be more open sexually than their mainstream counterparts. I'd been going through a dry spell when I moved to Austin, but that was rare for me. I'd made men thrash and curse and beg, and I couldn't even get so much as a quiver out of Rowan.

  I lay facing him, the two of us settling in for the night with sighs and murmurs, arms seeking each other out until we were wrapped tightly.

  "Hipbones," he said.

  "Huh?"

  He squeezed my side. "I keep finding new muscles and bones where there was softness before."

  "I imagine so, since all I ever do is work out and try to shoot things. Is that good or bad?"

  "I will think you're beautiful no matter what," he told me, and I knew it was true. "I did like you rounded off at the corners, though. Elven women are a bit pointy compared to humans. It's something I've always appreciated about your race."

  I looked at him, taking in the subtle differences between his body and that of a human male's—nothing immediately obvious, in fact I hadn't noticed it at all the first time we'd had sex, but there were little distinctions. He had no body hair, for one thing. The line of his body was almost serpentine, curving just a little more than a man's would, but not enough to be feminine exactly. He was thin, but not skinny; someone his size should have looked frailer, but there was hard muscle there, flat like a dancer's. He moved like a deer, all careful steps and perked ears, and if I had to sum him up in one word, that word would be "grace."

  There was also the fact that the first time I'd seen him naked I had thought he was a eunuch—after everything he'd been through it wouldn't have surprised me—but it turned out that male Elves had internal testicles. The difference in body temperature was one of the things that made our species incompatible when it came to breeding. In a natural setting his sperm would die the second they hit my uterus. Theoretically, if combined in a lab, the incompatibilities could be overcome, but so far experiments had yet to result in an actual baby, just embryos that died within a few weeks.

  It had taken some getting used to, and I'd expressed puzzlement over the idea—if part of the plumbing was indoor, why not all of it, like other animals?

  "Where would be the fun in that?" he had asked with a mischievous grin. "It's a mystery of our evolution. We also have two fewer vertebrae than a human, no tailbone, and our gestational period is a full year instead of nine months. There's a whole constellation of differences, but the theory most researchers subscribe to is that where humans evolved from a common ancestor with other primates, Elves are a completely different kind of animal. There aren't enough of us left to do extensive studies, but the SA research center in DC has my x-rays and so forth in their library."

  That was the most he'd really spoken about his people since we'd met, so I didn't push; I was trying to encourage the good memories, but I had to be careful. He'd lived 400 years in peace and only twenty in slavery, but those twenty had caused so much damage it was as if there was no amount of happiness that could outweigh them. I hoped that eventually we could tip the scales, if I could keep him from going completely batfuck insane.

  Or myself, at this rate.

  "Tell me about being a rethla," I said, keeping my voice down in the quiet, dark room. It always took him about half an hour to drift off once we were in bed, and it was either steer the conversation or venture into dangerous territory with his brooding.

  He didn't sound at all bothered by the request, which was a good sign. "What do you want to know?"

  "How did you become one?"

  He nuzzled my ear, and his voice was low and almost a purr, a sign that he was feeling comparatively well and had probably had a good, if long, day. The sound brought heat rushing through me, but I ignored it.

  "At the age of thirteen every Elf is sent to a House—a college, more or less, where they learn whatever calling they were born to. There's a ritual, a sort of divination, that identifies that calling, but usually by the time we come of age it's pretty clear what we're suited for. Every House has its own requirements for graduation. Ours was an eight year training program followed by a two-year novitiate."

  "You started learning how to get people off when you were 13?"

  "Not exactly. We started with basic magical techniques, energy work, learning our own bodies. After a year we moved into our erotic education, but even then we didn't lay a hand on another until we were sixteen."

  "So what happens if someone decides she doesn't want to be something? Are you allowed to change your mind?"

  A bit surprised by the question, he paused, and then said, "You know, I don't think that's ever happened."

  "That's too bad."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well…are you going to want to go back to your old life, once this is all over? You said that rethla don't have life partners or even real relationships, that you live for those you serve b
ut aren't monogamous. Where does that leave you?"

  "I don't know. Honestly I'm trying not to think about it. There's not much of a precedent for a rethla falling in love, if that's what it is."

  "Oh, it is," I informed him. "Trust me, I'm psychic."

  "Are you? I had no idea."

  I flicked him in the shoulder, and he nipped my ear good-naturedly. "I don't know," he repeated, starting to sound like he was about to slide into sleep. "I'm not really sure what I am anymore."

  I stroked his hair, guiding his head to my shoulder. "You're Rowan. The rest, we'll figure out."