There was a beep, and he heard Ness—she was in her office, speaking into the intercom. “SA-7?”
The Ear translated his thought into a text message that would appear on her computer screen. [SA-5 is awake. I would advise coming down here to avoid further exhausting him.]
“On my way.”
“There,” he said, stuffing the Ear back in his coat. “She’s coming. We should get you into the living room. She’ll probably have Sara and possibly Frog with her.”
Rowan nodded his agreement, and Jason helped him up, dismayed at how weak the Elf still seemed. “I didn’t think interrogations took this much out of you,” Jason observed. “Was it the inhibitor?”
“I’m not used to the energy drain. I think next time I’ll be able to manage it better, provided I don’t have to kill anyone.”
Jason settled him on the couch and sat next to him. “You were right. I could have hit that man from where I stood. I just…I panicked.”
“You, panic?”
“Apparently it’s possible. The thought that he might hurt you…” Jason trailed off, looking away, but let himself be pulled back by Rowan’s voice.
“It’s been a hard night,” Rowan said, lifting a hand and closing it around Jason’s wrist, the touch more comforting than he would have thought possible.
“Yes, it has, especially for you.”
Slowly, impishly, the Elf smiled at him, looking at him through lowered silvery eyelashes. “You didn’t even have time to go to Whole Foods.”
Jason blinked. “Um…what?”
He chuckled, the sound making Jason’s spine attempt to curve in on itself with desire. “I finally had a look at Beck’s patrol route the other day. It doesn’t go anywhere near 6th Street. It doesn’t even hit Lamar.”
Jason found himself laughing too. “It took you long enough.”
Sobering, Rowan met his eyes again. “You never told me.”
“Well, I was a coward. And you were celibate.”
“I’m not…I can’t make you any promises, Jason,” he said, barely loud enough to hear.
“I’m not asking for any.”
Jason curved his hand around the Elf’s chin, leaned in, and kissed him, meeting soft lips parted with surprise. His eyes fell shut and he allowed himself for once to savor that precise moment in time, not caring about an hour from then, or even five minutes ahead. He wound his fingers in long, silken hair, tracing the inside edges of Rowan’s mouth with his tongue, and the Elf’s hands tightened around his arms, clearly resisting the urge to climb into the vampire’s lap.
There was an urgent pounding at the door, but for one bare, precious second longer, they ignored it. Jason smiled against Rowan’s lips.
He’d been right.
Elves did taste like sunlight.
Part Ten
Sara knew the minute she crossed the threshold into Rowan's quarters that something very important had changed, even before she saw the Elf sitting on the couch leaning against Jason's shoulder as if he did such things every day.
In spite of the urgency of the situation he looked almost blissfully happy, and even Jason, who rarely let outward emotion show on his face, was half-smiling down at Rowan before he looked up at the four bustling into the room.
Seeing Ness, Sara, Frog, and Beck, Rowan straightened—as least, as much as he could, which meant basically that he moved away from the vampire and leaned back into the cushions. He was still tired, but something had boosted his strength considerably since they'd left, and she could feel traces of Jason's energy all over him…not in a sexual way, exactly, but if she hadn't known better she would have sworn Jason had cast some sort of healing spell over the Elf.
Rowan met Sara's eyes. She raised an eyebrow, glancing pointedly from him to Jason and back, and he smiled. [I'll tell you later, I promise.]
[You'd better.]
Ness took the armchair, leaving Sara and Frog to hover—Sara could have fit on the empty couch space, but Frog already looked uncomfortable enough without being the only one left standing. "All right," Ness said, "Tell us what you've found, Rowan."
The Elf nodded. "Doyle was dealing," he began, earning a disgusted noise from Beck. "He realized he couldn't get any information about Pentecost without getting inside the network. That, and…well, he wanted money. Pentecost is selling for twenty a pill to the raver kids and frat boys, and they can't sell enough of it. The sixty percent who aren't destroyed by it want more, and more."
"What did he know about the network?" Jason asked.
"Not much. They're incredibly secretive, even for drug dealers. He made his buys from a woman on the East side off Cesar Chavez. He followed her once to a seemingly abandoned warehouse nearby—East 4th Street and Bolivar. Doyle didn't know if that was their base of operations, but his supplier went inside. I suspect based on his memories that the base is actually underground, beneath the empty warehouse."
"Did he know anything about the drug itself?" Frog piped up. "Like how to reverse its effects?"
"He was afraid of asking too many questions, but he did find out that they're dosing the sugar before the pills are made, not after. There was a plan to widen distribution, but they were having trouble controlling the dosage that way. The syndicate behind it was working on an experiment, according to Doyle's supplier, to smuggle the tainted sugar into a self-contained environment and test the results."
Ness looked stricken. "You mean somewhere like the SA?"
Rowan shook his head dubiously. "I don't know. They'd have to know we exist, and how to find us, and be able to get the sugar into the building—and they'd need an informant of some kind to report back."
"But you said it was here," Ness insisted. "We all heard you."
Rowan frowned. "I did? I don't…I don't remember that. Doyle didn't know any more specifics about the plan."
"It's here…you said it's here," Sara muttered…and her heart fell down to her knees. "Oh, God. Oh God."
All eyes turned to her, and she said, "Sage."
*****
"Stay back," Jason said, pressing himself back against the wall, gun drawn. "Wait here until I tell you."
"Let me go in first," Sara hissed. "We don't know what's really going on—you can't just run in and shoot her."
They stared each other down for a moment, and she added, "Do you want information, or not?"
Jason rolled his eyes and jerked his head toward the door. She nodded and moved around him, glancing back down the hall where the others were waiting for an all-clear. Ness hadn't wanted to raise an alarm until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. In the cafeteria it was business as usual for a late night, but there shouldn't have been anyone in the part of the kitchen where Sage did her baking.
Sara took a deep breath, swallowing hard, and crept around the doorway, poking her head in. The lights were on, but she didn't hear anything moving at first. "Sage? It's Sara. I've been looking for you everywhere—Chef Didier said you were back here."
At first there was no answer, but then very, very softly, she heard a whimper, and Sara moved forward, fully into the large, steel-and-white room. As she approached the sound, she looked at the ingredients shelves—sure enough, there were four bags of Imperial Sugar. Sage was in charge of ordering baking supplies; she could slip Pentecost-laden sugar into any of her recipes at any time.
Sara saw a shadow move in the corner, and ducked behind a shelf where she could peer through the neatly-stacked rows of muffin tins and loaf pans. There was someone there…someone in chef's whites, curled up in a ball on the floor.
Sara left the shelter of the shelves and, with another deep breath, stepped around the counter.
"Sage…"
The girl had her knees pulled up to her chest, and her arms folded over her sweaty red hair. She was shaking violently and making little mewling sounds of fear or pain. Sara dove to her side, kneeling next to her, and tentatively reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. The baker didn't acknowledge the touch, and
didn't respond when Sara called her name and shook her.
Sara took careful hold of Sage's face and lifted, trying to get the girl to look up.
"Oh, no…"
Sage's eyes were open but dull, her expression slack, and every few breaths she made another pitiful noise that Sara decided had to be from fear. Her energy seemed to have gone haywire, her personal barriers fluctuating, her aura swelling and shrinking as if she were flailing her arms to ward off an attack. Sage was fighting something…and losing.
"Jason! Rowan! Help!" Sara yelled.
Feet thundered in through the doorway, and before she knew it Sara was surrounded by guns, exactly where she'd hoped she never would be again. "Put those down," she snapped. "She's hurt. She needs a doctor."
Rowan, stowing his own weapon as he pushed past Jason, came forward and knelt beside Sage as well, touching her lightly, both with his hands and his energy. He reached into her, trying to draw her out, his face a mask of concentration.
“Fight it, Sage,” he said to the girl. “Let me help you.”
Sara watched with both mundane and psychic sight. Sage was trying—she stretched out all her strength to try and take the hand Rowan offered her, but she was weakening, the onslaught of the drugs and the magic too much for her. Sara could sense, almost see, the dark energy of the Pentecost that coated the girl’s insides like an oil slick, covering everything that was Sage, everything beautiful and alive, in its inky, slimy desires. It taunted her with visions—demons, her loved ones in torment, her grandmother being raped, skinned alive, and eaten by creatures with forked tails and long saliva-dripping teeth. Anguished wailing battered Sage from all sides, the wailing of the damned, dragging her down with it.
And beneath that agony, another voice, this one guttural and pitch-dark, repeating the same words over and over, telling her that there was only one way to save her grandmother, only one way to deliver her from her eternal punishment…only one being powerful enough to scour the world of its sins, only one power…only one to deliver them all…only one to devour...SUMMON ME, CHILD, SPEAK MY NAME, I COME FORTH FROM THE BLACKENED LAND, I WILL CONSUME THE SCREAMS AND FROM THE ASHES OF THIS WORLD SHALL ARISE A NEW EDEN…
Sara put her hands over Rowan’s, one on either side of Sage’s face. “Sage! It’s Sara! Listen to me—it isn’t real! What they’re showing you is just a dream—you’re a Witch, Sage! A priestess of the Goddess! You don’t believe in hell!”
Her voice, both mental and oral, echoed over the tortured landscape of Sage’s mind, and there was a flicker; the incongruity of being shown so much that diametrically opposed her own beliefs caused a tiny crack in the visions, like a skipped frame in a film.
[Nana…] Sage whispered, grasping for the vision, as if she could pull her grandmother’s soul across paradoxical distances away from hell and into someplace safe that Sage herself couldn’t find.
Sara switched to telepathy, hoping it could go places her voice couldn’t. [Sage… that isn’t really her. God loved your grandmother. God wouldn’t let that happen to her. Show her to me, Sage. Show me your grandmother. Show me the truth.]
Rowan fed power into the girl, who groped in the darkness, past the demonic images, toward the warm comfort of the woman she had grown up with. One layer at a time, she built the picture—a cozy kitchen, the smell of bread baking, wrinkled hands that were nonetheless steady as they punched and kneaded dough. Long white hair in a trailing braid wound around her head. An apron stained with years of pie filling and butter. A cracked voice singing an old Irish drinking song way too bawdy for the child at her elbow to understand.
The drug tried to fight its way back in, but now it had to contend with the memory of the grandmother as well as the power of Sage’s will, rising back up from the black, and the wrath of an Elf who came to stand squarely between Pentecost and the Witch until she could face it herself. Sara, too, lent her energy, sending it through Rowan, adding her own memories: she and Sage making cupcakes and talking about the old woman, the two of them laughing as women had in kitchens for centuries.
[GET OUT!] Sage suddenly screamed into the black.
And something…or Someone…wrapped protective and imperious wings around the girl, driving out the last of the nightmares, banishing every last grotesque and gory atom. There was a flash, as of moonlight on snow, and the sound of a thousand feathers that stirred up a wind, a gale, putting the shadows to flight.
Sage’s body, now held in Rowan and Sara’s arms as she writhed and cried out against the horror, went rigid, and her last cry trailed off into silence as she fell back, going completely limp.
Sara was panting, feeling both scalding hot and freezing, the room spinning all around her. She grounded herself as best she could, and then pulled out of Sage’s mind, leaving Rowan behind. He was busy bolstering Sage’s shields, protecting her, spinning the traces of that moonlit power that had banished the vision into a healing sleep that would gently erase the memory of what she’d seen. Sara nearly smiled—it was so easy for him to do for Sage what he couldn't do for himself.
Distantly Sara heard Ness giving orders to Jason to send Agents as well as local law enforcement to the warehouse at 4th and Bolivar, and telling Frog to call up to the infirmary to get a stretcher and medic down here at once.
Meanwhile Rowan was absorbing everything he could about the drug, about what had happened to Sage both before and during the fight. Sara marveled at him—she had known, of course, that he was powerful, but seeing him do four things at once without breaking a sweat, not hours after he'd done much the same with Doyle, after wearing the inhibitor out in public for the first time…she could never hope to have half his strength. It was multitasking on an order no human was capable of.
Sara looked up at Ness. "We have to be sure whatever Sage was making doesn't get fed to anyone."
Ness stepped back and looked at the counters. "There's nothing here. The bowls are empty—they look like they've just been washed."
Nearby, Jason swore, and they turned to look where he was pointing.
Sage had been sitting down to her own dinner at the end of her shift, not baking. She probably hadn't wanted to go out in the cafeteria all sweaty and covered in bread dough—the bread itself was still rising in the back, so it could be easily destroyed.
"The bread's clean," Jason remarked, staring down at something. "If she used this recipe, it's vegan—that means she had to use the organic sugar on the second shelf. Imperial's conventional, it would be bleached with bone char, but organic sugar is considered cruelty-free."
Ness lifted her eyebrows. "How the hell do you know that?"
He shrugged. "Alton Brown."
Sara got shakily to her feet with Frog's assistance and examined the remains of Sage's meal—grilled chicken and vegetables, not a likely culprit.
But there, at the side of her plate, was a half-eaten cupcake.
"Fuck me," Sara gasped. "Fuck me running." She gestured helplessly. "It's in the cupcakes. The ones we made. They've already been served. People were eating them hand over fist." She looked up, throat constricted with horror, at the Director, who had actually gone pale. "We're too late."
As if the gods had heard her pronouncement, from the other side of the door in the cafeteria, the air suddenly shattered with screams.
Part Eleven
Witches might not believe in hell, but as Jason surveyed the scene before them, he couldn't think of a better description for what he saw.
There were about twenty-five people in the cafeteria, and twenty of those had fallen to the floor, screaming and writhing, wheeling their arms in the air against invisible assailants, weeping, tearing at their clothes and faces until they were bloody. One man crossed himself repeatedly, tears streaming from his eyes. A small handful looked absolutely blissful—whatever religion they were, Jason envied them.
Another victim, a woman in her forties with an R&D badge, lay on the floor where she’d fallen from her chair, and her eyes were glassy, fixed—dead.
There were two cupcake wrappers and a half-empty cup of coffee at her place at the table. An overdose, and given Sage’s reputation as a baker, probably not the only one in the base.
Amid the twenty who had been hit, half a dozen were curling up on themselves, beginning to rock forward and back, their faces blank, eyes huge and surrounded with white. One had already begun to murmur rhythmically to himself…and Jason knew the other five weren't far behind.
"Right," he said, maintaining his calm by inches. He had seen torture, and death, and had experienced both, but this…he shoved the thought away, focusing on the practical. They had to get these people restrained somehow and figure out just how bad things were.
The Agency, Volume I Page 25