"Shut the fuck up!" the man yelled, jamming the gun into his head even harder, forcing a pained noise out of Rowan that aroused instincts in Jason that were likely to get them both killed. His vision went red, as it had with Beck in the practice ring, and the dark sonata of bloodlust and rage played through him. He could almost feel the man's skin ripping beneath his nails, taste the hot spill of his blood as it spattered and pulsed out his last breaths.
But what part of him was still logical knew that by the time he got there, the man could send a bullet through Rowan's skull, and his rescue would become vengeance.
"This is really getting ridiculous," Rowan said, still calm. "Sir, I think it would be a very good idea for you to let me go now. Let me go, and put down the gun, and we'll discuss what you've done here like rational people."
The soothing timbre of the Elf's voice was getting to the man through his drugged mental haze—he wavered, his grip on the gun loosening barely a fraction—
--which was enough for Rowan to slam his arm sideways, knocking the pistol from his hand, and spin around, wrenching the man's other arm around behind him, at the same time driving one knee into the human's groin. The man tried to stand up, but Rowan punched him twice in the head, and he went down with a cry of agony lay shuddering and sobbing in the fetal position, blood dripping from his broken nose.
Rowan gave him a disdainful glance, then looked up at Jason. "You're the one with the Ear," he pointed out. "Call an ambulance."
Jason, too shocked not to do as he was told, hit the emergency switch on his Ear and told Tanya, [We need an ambulance at these coordinates. Human down, GSW to the right shoulder and possibly another to the chest. Suspect temporarily neutralized.]
[ETA three minutes,] she replied instantly.
Rowan looked amused, watching Jason grope in his coat for his cuffs. "Did you think I slept my way to my SA credentials?" he asked. "I went through the same training you did, you know."
"Well, I know that, I just…you're the last person in the world I'd expect to see with such a mean right hook."
"I'm full of surprises," Rowan said with a grin. "Now, let's get our friend here back to base and find out what he was doing here with a bag full of Pentecost."
The human whimpered, wailing something like, "No, they'll kill me!" and scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling desperately for his pistol. "They'll kill me, they'll kill me!"
He got his hand around the revolver and took aim at Rowan's head.
A shot.
Jason froze, the world falling in on itself…and then froze again, as the human fell over sideways, a perfect round hole in the center of his forehead, a spray of blood and brains on the alley wall behind him.
The vampire looked at the Elf, who had fire in his eyes as he lowered his gun.
In the silence, they stared at each other, more passing between them than the simple acknowledgment of a job well done.
Finally, Jason said, "Are you still going to want that date?"
Rowan gave him a grim smile and holstered his weapon. "After this you'd damn well better bring flowers."
Part Eight
Sara couldn’t seem to stop giggling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Let me try again.”
Sage, too, was bright pink, her eyes watering from laughter. “Okay. Even pressure. Treat it like a penis.”
Sara cackled, and accidentally squeezed the icing bag around the middle, causing it to sploot white frosting all over the counter. Both Witches laughed so hard they doubled over.
“I feel sorry for Rowan,” Sage panted, wiping her eyes with her apron. “I meant, a penis, as in, if you squeeze it too hard—“
“I know,” Sara wheezed. “Here, I’ll do it this time. Don’t make me laugh.”
Sage bit her lip against another bout of giggles, and watched, as Sara took a deep breath to calm herself and, once again, held the bag with its star-shaped tip over a cupcake. She tried doing as Sage had showed her, starting in the center and piping her way out in circles, lifting the tip to create a conical mountain of frosting, but hers ended up looking like someone had let the air out of one side.
“That’s better. It still sucks, but it’s better. Here, I think you’d better stick with the sprinkles.”
“That, I can do.”
They switched jobs, Sage manning the frosting, Sara taking possession of a large tub of chocolate sprinkles that she would have happily dunked her whole head into if she weren’t already full to bursting with batter, frosting, and filling. In the past few hours they’d gone through several bags of flour making enough cupcakes for 119 people, in two different flavors: white with chocolate filling, and chocolate with cherry filling.
Sage made it look effortless. Her capable hands danced spirals over the cakes, leaving each one perfect, its cap of frosting just the right height to fit in the racks that they’d wait in until it was their turn on the dessert line. She passed each one to Sara, who sprinkled each one, then set it in the rack.
“Where were we?” Sage asked, nodding her head at the half-page of meager notes they’d made for their SAPEA ritual, which was only two days away and almost ready to go.
“Let’s see. We’ve got the meeting room, we’ve got catering for the feast after, we’ve got you baking a massive ass loaf of bread in the shape of a sun to pass around to everyone…what are we missing?”
“Quarter calls?”
They brainstormed ideas for the last few unfinished ritual sections, working their way through a forest of cupcakes, the conversation meandering off-topic as such conversations tended to do.
“How long until you’re a fully-fledged SA?” Sage inquired. “The program’s a year, right?”
“Yep. I just finished the first quarter—I actually passed all my exams, which is a damned miracle.”
“How’s it work? Do you do an internship or something?”
“Sort of. In three more months I get a field mentor and start going out on patrols once a week to learn field protocol. Next month they’re starting me on the Ears—apparently it takes a while to get the hang of.”
“I’ll bet. That whole idea kind of creeps me out. I don’t like anybody mucking around in my head, much less downloading and uploading stuff like I’m a walking laptop. Is it true that the Ears can turn your head into a camera?”
“I don’t know exactly how it works, but the psychic uplink records the images in your mind and transmits them to the server as if they were data files. Whoever designed the system was a genius. And insane.”
Sage held up a perfect, decorated cupcake. “I think I’ll stick with my baked goods, thanks.”
“You’re a wise woman.”
She shook her head, one of her flame-colored curls coming loose from under the bandana she wore to confine it. “I don’t know, Sara. I admire you for wanting to get out there and do something important, but I just don’t think I’m the hero type. I like being behind the scenes and taking care of people.”
Sara shrugged. “That’s its own kind of heroic, you know. Rowan said it was a ‘high calling.’”
“That’s what my Nana used to say. She was Catholic, sort of, really really devoted to Mary. Her favorite Bible story was the one where Jesus fed the masses; she said she was doing God’s work.”
“How’d you end up a Pagan, then?” Sara wanted to know.
A laugh. “It’s a long story.”
Sara gestured at the rows and rows of naked desserts around them. “We have time.”
Before Sage could start her story, though, the kitchen intercom buzzed, and a woman’s voice said, “Sara Larson, please report to the infirmary immediately.”
Sara’s heart shuddered in her chest—she hadn’t felt anything, psychically, but something had to be wrong for them to track her down in here. “Fuck,” she said, unable to move.
“Come on.” Sage untied Sara’s apron and peeled it off, grabbed a wet rag from nearby and wiped her face and hands. “You’d better go. Do you need me to come with you?”
Sage put a hand on her shoulder, and Sara felt the younger woman pushing energy into her, shoring up her whirling mind, helping her to ground. Sara laid her hand over Sage’s, and breathed, forcing herself away from the edge of an anxiety attack.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Everything will be fine,” Sage replied, steering her out of the kitchen. “Let me know, okay?”
“I will—I’ll call you later, I promise.”
The kitchen door swung shut behind Sara, and she took off for the elevators at a dead run.
*****
The sight that greeted her when she thundered into the infirmary was not exactly what she was expecting.
She burst through the double doors, sure she would see Rowan bleeding in one of the beds or at least bandaged up in pain, but he was standing up, still in uniform including an incredibly sexy black coat, and didn’t have a hair out of place.
Jason stood beside him—closer than he normally would have, she noticed—with his arms crossed, staring pensively down at the hospital bed.
Dr. Nava was on the other side, checking some sort of monitor connected to a tube that ran into the body of a large, tattooed man Sara had never seen before.
“Are you all right?” Sara demanded, all but running up to Rowan and pulling him into a rough hug.
The Elf chuckled despite the gravity of his expression. “I’m fine. We just ran into a bit of a situation, is all.”
Sara started to ask for an explanation, but Ness arrived, the rapid click of her heels the only outward sign that she was in a hurry. “Report,” the Director ordered.
SA-7 looked up from the bed. “Our informant has been compromised,” he said, probably unnecessarily if the man in the bed was in fact the informant. “Gunshots to the shoulder, chest, and abdomen.”
“And the shooter?”
“Dead,” Jason answered. “We caught him in the act and he attempted to fire on both SA-5 and myself.” He pointed at a second bed, where a human shape was covered head to toe in a sheet. “Dr. Nava is about to start an autopsy, but I can already tell you he was jacked up on Pentecost. We recovered forty-seven pills from the scene. As far as I know, Doyle wasn’t on it. One of the two is a dealer.”
Ness crossed the room and lifted the sheet, and Sara felt immediately queasy. The man’s skin was bluish-white, waxy, and his eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. There was blood in a dried rivulet down from his forehead to his mouth, and a single dark hole in his skull.
Sara had never seen a dead body before, not like this. Her parents had been cremated; the accident left them both too badly burned to identify without dental records. She sagged back, a ton of frosting threatening to make a rapid and unwelcome exit from her stomach.
“Easy there,” said Dr. Nava, catching her and planting her in a chair. The doctor’s kind hands wrapped around Sara’s wrist, checking her pulse. “Let’s get you some water. Just try to breathe slowly and steadily for me, all right?”
Sara nodded. “I’m okay.”
Ness put the sheet back down, thankfully. “Excellent shot,” she remarked. “Did we recover the bullet, SA-7? We’ll need to match it to your weapon for the official record.”
Jason started to say something, but Rowan interrupted him. “The round was discharged from my weapon, not SA-7’s.”
Sara gaped at him. “You have a gun?”
The Elf gave her an odd look, reached behind him, and pulled out an SA standard-issue 9-millimeter. “I’m a Shadow Agent, Sara. Of course I have a gun.”
“And you shot him?”
Rowan looked around the room, exasperated. “Yes, I shot him. He was about to kill me. Why does everyone seem so astonished that I’m capable of doing my job?”
Ness smiled. “Not astonished at your capability, SA-5. Simply surprised at your initiative your first time out.”
“I’m not,” Jason said, almost to himself. “The night we met I saw him kill four people.”
He and the Elf stared at each other, and Sara expected Rowan to react to that statement, but…something had changed between them, she could sense it. They held each other’s eyes, and Rowan said, equally quietly, “They weren’t people.”
Jason smiled slightly. “You’re right. They weren’t. And if you hadn’t shot them, I would have.”
“All right,” Ness said, “back to business, please. Rowan, obviously our informant here isn’t going to be forthcoming about the details of his involvement with Pentecost, so we need you to get it from him.”
“I figured you would say that. That’s why I had Sara called in.”
“Huh?” Sara managed, still a bit dazed. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Observe. This is part of your training, as it will be part of your job as a psychic Agent. If you’ll remember the first night you were here, I ascertained that you weren’t a threat and that you were telling the truth. That’s the easiest part. It gets more difficult when, as in this case, the person you’re to interrogate can’t speak for himself.”
“Can’t we just wait and see if he wakes up?”
Dr. Nava spoke up from where she was getting ready to wheel the gurney with the dead man out of the infirmary, probably to an autopsy lab. “He’s had massive internal bleeding and several ruptured organs. Basically we’re keeping him breathing long enough to interrogate. There’s nothing further that can be done.”
“God,” Sara said, glad she was sitting down. “And this guy…he’s a friend of ours?”
Jason turned toward her. “An informant. He gave me information, and I kept him out of jail.”
“Even on the off chance he survives, which he won’t, we don’t have time to waste.” Ness put her hands in her pockets. “I received a call from the shipping manager at Imperial—two days ago an entire truck full of sugar disappeared from their Sugarland warehouse. Two tons, gone.”
“That’s a lot of Altoids,” Jason said, alarmed. “Do we know if they’re putting the mojo on the sugar before, or after the pills are made?”
“According to Frog, the smart thing would be for them to do it afterward—otherwise they risk overdosing people. We’re attempting to track the truck, but what we really need is information about who’s behind all of this, or at least a dealer we can trace back to the supplier. So, Rowan, you’re up.”
The Elf nodded. “I need everyone out of the room except Sara and Jason. Sara, you bring your chair over by me so you can watch what I’m doing. There’s a chance I’ll need energy backup, in which case I’ll reach for you, so be ready to open a channel to me. Jason, you’re on guard.”
Nava hauled the body out of the room, and Ness retreated to the hallway. Rowan, showing no reservations whatsoever, locked the main doors of the infirmary; there were no other patients there at the moment. He returned to the bed and used the remote to raise its head slightly. Sara flinched—Doyle’s ghastly, dead face was suddenly staring at her, and though his eyes were closed with all the tubes and wires he was a gruesome sight.
She didn’t want to move any closer, but her orders were clear, so she scooted her chair up beside Rowan.
He gave her an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
“I can tell.” She thought, but didn’t add, that he seemed to be in his element, more confident than she’d ever seen him. Had a short trip into town followed by shooting a bad guy in the head done him that much good? And was it really so easy for him to end a human life, self-defense notwithstanding?
Tentatively, she extended her energy toward him, touching the outer edges of his aura lightly, curious.
Her heart broke at what she found—he wasn’t unaffected, he was holding himself together by sheer force of will, afraid that if he didn’t seem in control, Ness would stop testing on
the inhibitor and Jason would tie him down to keep him from ever going outside again. His mind kept flashing the image of the drug dealer’s face as he died, expression going from crazed to slack, then flashing back into the past—dead men hitting the ground, blood on his hands.
Sara stood up and laid her hand on his arm. He started.
“Hey,” she said.
There was pleading in his eyes: Not now. Let’s get this over with.
She nodded, and said, “Do you need to take that thing off first?”
He sighed, reached up, and removed the two pieces of the inhibitor at his ears, followed by the wrist strap. She took them from him and set them carefully on a nearby table, mindful of the fact that she was holding thousands of dollars’ worth of technology, not to mention his best hope for leading something like a normal life.
The Agency, Volume I Page 23