The second the inhibitor was off of him, Rowan’s actual energy rose to the surface, and Jason, hovering at the door, went pale and grabbed Sara’s arm.
They shared a look, and Sara inclined her head in acknowledgment.
[Can he do this?] he asked her silently.
[I don’t know.] Her own mental voice was halting; she was still getting the hang of projection, and her telepathy wasn’t nearly as good as her empathy. [I think he has to…but afterward…]
His voice was determined. [We’ll take care of him.]
Rowan’s hands trembled as he placed one on either side of Doyle’s head. He was trying with all his might not to let his fear show, but Sara knew better, and so did Jason. The combined stress of the night and a slowly-mounting headache from wearing the inhibitor longer than he ever had before was telling on him.
Still, she had no intention of saying so. “You’re tired,” she said simply. “Why don’t you let me help you from the beginning, and that way you don’t risk overdoing it? Nava and Ness would both be really pissed if you burned yourself out.”
“I won’t,” he said sharply.
“She’s right,” Jason agreed. “We don’t know how much of your personal energy the inhibitor used up, and you’re still running on adrenaline from earlier. Nobody would fault you for taking extra precautions—in fact I would strongly recommend it.”
She could tell Rowan wanted to tell them both to fuck off, but he knew there was too much at stake, and bowed to their advice in spite of himself. “Very well. Sara, just do as we’ve practiced.”
Sara thanked every god she could think of for his good sense, and stood behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders the way, seeming a century ago, Jason had done to teach her how to shoot. She opened her shielding to Rowan, visualizing her energy as a stream of light flowing from her body to his.
He caught it and shored himself up, and instantly his tension eased and so did her worry. They were used to working together, and the familiar intimacy of the touch relaxed him; she tried to project comfort, and the thought that this was no different from dozens of sessions they’d had and all the nights spent sharing body and bed.
Without the specter of fear in the way, his bravado became actual confidence; he had, as he’d said, done this before, even on her.
[Now, watch what I do,] he said. [There will be a quiz later.]
Doyle was no longer truly in his body, but he was still bound to it as long as its heart continued to beat. There was electrical activity in his brain according to the monitors, but he was unconscious, the active part of his mind shut down permanently. The rest had perhaps an hour before the damage to his body caught up with him and his heart simply stopped.
Telepathy dealt with the thoughts that played across the mind’s surface, and perhaps a layer or two below that; to reach deeper required a combination of telepathy and empathy, to burrow past the immediate memory and into territory that was less about words and more about emotions, images, and senses. All the various psychic gifts overlapped in their use; Rowan’s combination of talents gave were what suited him to become a rethla, and Sara’s let her communicate with buildings and objects.
She watched, passive, while Rowan carefully threaded his energy into Doyle’s mind, parting layers of thought and recollection like curtains, creating openings and sliding deeper, deeper. She could see that it would be a painful process to the object of the search, if done by a clumsy or uncaring hand, but even with a comatose man Rowan was still gentle, his touch so light that when he had read Sara that first time, she hadn’t even been aware of it. This time, he was going much further—Doyle’s present was fading, his future nonexistent, and the past getting harder to hold onto as he moved away from his broken body.
There was a point at which the average psychic would have to stop and retreat. Rowan passed that point easily, reaching deeper and deeper, anchored firmly in his body and fed by Sara’s continuous stream of extra energy. It was remarkably like watching Sage with her cupcakes—the Elf made it look so easy.
“He’s fading,” Rowan murmured. “I might not be able to get much.”
“Do what you can,” Jason said, coming closer. “Just don’t hurt yourself.”
Rowan continued to push his way into Doyle, at last finding what he was looking for; Sara couldn’t really see deeply enough to follow him that far, but she sensed that he was absorbing memories and information directly from the informant’s brain, sifting through the images, keeping some, discarding others.
Moments later, she felt him withdrawing. How he had the patience to come out so slowly when he was already exhausted, she had no idea, but centuries of practice had honed his skills so that he eased backwards, leaving no trace that he’d been there at all.
Before emerging, Rowan held Doyle’s mind in his hand, turning it this way and that, examining it for something.
“I can’t do anything else,” the Elf told Jason regretfully. “There’s no way back for him. The best I can do is help him go ahead.”
Jason took a deep breath and let it out, nodding. “Go on.”
Sara was confused, and nearly jumped back and broke contact when Rowan took hold of Doyle’s mind, reached beneath it to where it connected to his body, and cut the cord with an audible snap.
Alarms all around the bed shrieked to life. The heart monitor showed a flatline. Seconds later, Dr. Nava came running in, but Jason held up a hand, and she stopped, sighing.
“Thank you, Rowan,” she said, and flipped the master switch that controlled life support.
Doyle released his last breath, and that was it.
Rowan had broken out in a cold sweat and was shaking like a leaf. “You can step back now, Sara,” he said, sounding like he had it together, but when she did as he asked, his knees buckled.
Jason was faster than she was, and had the Elf in his arms, lowering him to the floor as if he were made of glass. “It’s all right, I’ve got you,” Jason said, holding him close. “You’re safe.”
Rowan smiled weakly.
Ness reappeared, her mouth in a thin, pale line. “SA-5, did you just fry yourself?”
“Extra crispy,” the Elf said in a bit of a slur. “Be okay in a day or two.”
“Dr. Nava, get him in a bed. Immediately.”
Rowan waved the doctor away. “Nothing you can do...just need rest.”
Nava looked at Ness. “He’s right. His body is designed to deal with this kind of thing in its own way. If I interfere too much I’ll make it worse. The best thing is to keep him warm, fed, and somewhere quiet for a few days.”
“Fine, we’ll get him back to his quarters. First, though—Rowan, did you find out anything useful?”
“Yes…”
“What did you see?”
Rowan was on the verge of passing out, and could barely form words. “Pentecost…”
Ness bent closer, straining to hear. “Yes? What about Pentecost, Rowan?”
He summoned all that remained of his strength, and whispered, “It’s here.”
Part Nine
Jason, Sara, and Ness stood at Rowan’s bedside, each lost in his or her own thoughts—Jason knew that Sara’s concern was all for the Elf, and that Ness’s was focused on the case. Jason stood in the middle, in more ways than one.
Whatever Rowan knew, they needed to know, soon. Under normal circumstances it would take him most of the night to wake up; Jason had seen him overextend his powers before, although not quite this badly. The problem was, every minute that he slept was a minute that the situation could crumble.
Reports were coming in of more victims of Pentecost scattered across the city. In the last few weeks there had been less than half a dozen, and of those only two had been hit by the drug’s true purpose. The rest reported a three-ring circus of hallucinations and euphoria, lasting four to six hours, followed by an intense need to do the drug again that peaked after two more hours, after which it completely left the system. The pill itself left no trace behin
d, any more than would eating a mint; the only way to know someone had taken it would be to examine their energetic traces, and that took more psychic talent than it was really worth.
Since the sugar shipment had been stolen, however, Pentecost was suddenly everywhere, distributed at parties and underground raves instead of Ecstasy. There had been ten cases of speaking in tongues already. Jason had them all brought to the base for observation, but the infirmary was filling up, and they were no closer to the source than they had been. The victims rocked back and forth, voices droning in that godawful chant, and the rest of the SA psychics were trying to read them, trying to get any information they could.
“What do we do?” Sara asked, her voice startlingly loud in the peaceful room. She looked embarrassed to have broken the silence.
Ness ran her hand over her face. “We can’t wake him up—literally, we can’t, until his body is ready. We hope that they need more than a dozen chanting to summon the Devourer, and we hope that whatever’s in Rowan’s head is worth the wait.” She leaned over and, in an uncharacteristic gesture of affection, patted the Elf’s head. “In the meantime, we eat dinner, and enjoy it while we can.”
“I can’t just leave him,” Sara said, but Ness took her arm and pulled her toward the door.
“SA-7 will watch over him. Come on, Sara, you don’t know when you’ll have a chance to eat again, and you’re already shaky enough from all this.”
The Director led the trainee out of the room, passing Beck as she came in, worry on the vampire’s doll-like face.
“I came as soon as I heard,” she said. “What the hell is going on? Is Doyle really dead?”
Jason sighed and ushered her out into the living room, where he sank heavily into the chair and gave her a recap of the night’s events. When he finished, he raised his eyes from the floor to see she was grinning.
“What’s so funny?”
Beck leaned back, propping her feet up on the coffee table, an act Jason was fairly sure would horrify Rowan. “You asked him out,” she said. “That is so cute.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, Beck, but we do have bigger problems right now.”
“But this is what life is about, bubba. Yeah, there’s the big bad to fight, and the world may end, but the whole point of doing this is so that we can have moments like that—holding hands with your guy in a coffee shop, making eyes at each other. We have to steal what little bits of happiness we can get in this life. That’s the difference between you and me. I steal, and I enjoy. You steal and feel guilty. But happiness? It’s a victimless crime.”
He rolled his eyes. “Now isn’t the time for your carpe noctem crap.”
“Okay, so, your Elf is in there asleep, all vulnerable and cuddly, and there’s nothing you can do to wake him up early, and your job is to keep him safe. You could totally be in there right now all snuggly wuggly, but instead you’re talking to me. And you wonder why I’m the one who gets laid. I mean, what if this all goes south and we all die? Do you want to regret not giving yourself ten minutes to at least watch him sleep?”
He stared at her, unwilling to admit that she was making any sense, but he had to acknowledge that the idea was…quite possibly the best he’d ever heard.
“Would you do me a favor?” he asked.
*****
Beck brought him what he asked for, then hugged him and left, promising to keep him updated. He locked the door behind her and returned to the bedroom.
For a moment he did as she had suggested, and leaned against the doorframe, just watching. He had been in Rowan’s quarters many times over the years, but never in the bedroom; it had a serene, sylvan feel to it, the way he imagined Elven homes would have when they all lived in the great forests that were no more. The smells of incense and candle wax lingered in the air, as did the hint of Sara’s human scent, no more than two days old.
Rowan had turned onto his side facing the door, his exhausted unconsciousness having lightened into regular sleep—that was a good sign. He might be awake within the hour.
Jason crossed the room and bent down, brushing the long strands of gold-streaked hair from Rowan’s face. His heart was pounding, but he leaned down anyway and kissed the Elf, very softly, on the lips.
“Listen,” he said into his ear. “Follow me back if you can.”
Then he straightened, turned to the chest of drawers, and laid his violin case on top. He flipped open the clasps, revealing the gleaming wood of his oldest friend, the one thing he had carried with him no matter where he ran. More than once he had lost the bow, but the instrument itself was never farther away than his bedroom, waiting in its cushioned nest to release his demons, soothe his mind, or lift the weight of history.
He never played for anyone except, occasionally, his sister. She had more than once expressed dismay that he kept his talent to himself—he could be the pride of any symphony he walked into, and in her mind hiding musical genius was tantamount to sacrilege. By her reckoning he should be performing before thousands, his left pinkie finger insured for some astronomical sum, not hunting down mystical drug dealers and demons. The violin alone, old as it was, was worth millions.
He smiled to himself, regarding the slumbering Elf before him. He never had to wonder what to play; he had long ago left behind the compositions of others, though melodies and motifs of the masters sometimes wove through his own work. With few exceptions he never played the same piece twice. He lifted his old friend and touched bow to string, eyes on Rowan, filling himself with the quiet beauty of his presence, and began to play.
Jason was a strong telepath, but had a secondary gift that fit nowhere but beneath the “unclassified” header; he did something with music that the average human couldn’t do. It was nothing obvious, nothing flashy, but the subtle and pervasive touch of the mystical, guiding the music into the listener where it was needed, touching something deep and authentic that had brought a woman out of a coma, restored a man’s hearing, and once in Tokyo revived a stillborn baby. He didn’t control it, or try to; it wasn’t in his personnel file or on record with Ness. To try and quantify and harness it would cheapen the gift—one of many things that his sire, his first great love, had awoken in him.
He leaned into the instrument, starting softly at first, letting it build; the violin had long been his voice, an extension of his being, and he let its slow, sweet melancholy say to the Elf everything he had longed to say for the last ten years.
When at last he lowered the bow, finally bringing his awareness back to the room, he lifted his gaze to find Rowan watching him, his luminous eyes wet with tears.
“Thank you,” the Elf whispered.
Jason took a deep breath, placed the violin back in its case, and closed it. Then, he went to sit down on the side of the bed, reaching out, one hand touching Rowan’s face, carefully thumbing the tears away.
“How do you feel?” Jason asked, pressing a hand to Rowan’s forehead—it was a human gesture that didn’t do him much good, as he had no idea what “normal” was for an Elf.
“Better. Whatever you…whatever it is you do with the music, it’s…I had no idea a vampire could be a healer.”
Jason snorted softly. “I’m not a healer. Sometimes I can fix what’s broken. Sometimes I can’t. That’s all.”
They were so close together, hands around arms, foreheads almost touching, and it felt so right that there was no need to even remark upon it. But then, Rowan’s palm slid up over Jason’s heart, an odd half-smile on the Elf’s face.
“Your skin is cool,” he noted. “Not cold, but cool.”
“Yours isn’t.” Jason tested his forehead again, and then echoed Rowan’s movement, drawing his hand down around the Elf’s shoulder. “You could melt butter on your neck.”
An arched eyebrow. “We’ll save that one for another time.”
“We should…we should call Ness and tell her you’re awake.”
“Yes, we should.”
“I’m sure you have a lot to report
.”
“Vital information that could save lives.”
“I’ll just call her, then.”
“Do that.”
Neither of them moved.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a long, torturous silence, before Rowan said, “We have to call Ness. I’m sorry, but it can’t wait.”
With a sigh, Jason dug in his pocket for his Ear, which he’d taken off but never put away—he was, in fact, still armed and in uniform but was so used to the feeling that without the usual routine of returning from shift it hadn’t even occurred to him to change. He switched the Ear back on and said, [Emergency protocol 1, direct connect to SAD, authorization Adams, Jason, 47075-9.]
The Agency, Volume I Page 24