The Agency, Volume III

by Sylvan, Dianne

  He threw the covers aside, his skin hot and clammy, and went into the kitchen, padding barefoot over the tiles to the fridge where he retrieved a glass of ice water to clear his head. He leaned on the counter, blinking in the darkness, trying to make sense of what he had dreamed.

  By all accounts his mother was dead. Depending on who was asked, she either perished in the slaughter of Clan Oak or shortly thereafter, succumbing to grief and taking a blade to her wrists. There were even a few stories in which she survived only to vanish from the refugee camp, wandering half-naked into the woods in her madness to drown like Ophelia. No two stories were exactly the same, but they all shared an ending.

  He had dreamed of her often the first few years of his enslavement, but gradually the horror of the present had poisoned even the sweetest recollections of his old life, just as it had burned away his identity and even his name. Since his rescue he hadn’t dreamed of her once, until now.

  “Seek the Sibyl,” he murmured. Only Neneva would have said something like that to him; few others even knew the Sibyl had ever existed, believing her, like all the Jenai, to be a myth. He supposed that the Sibyl’s story had passed into the dust of their history like everything else. There was so little left of what had once been a beautiful and magnificent civilization, and he felt its loss every day.

  He could have dismissed the dream given the amount of stress he'd been under, but something about it clung to his heart, and he felt shaky and deeply sad, almost despairing. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, then took a Xanax, something he hadn't done in a while; he was still on antidepressants, but a much lower dosage, and emotions were much easier to moderate now that he could shield again. His wellness team--and he still found it both disturbing and amusing that he had an entire team of professionals looking after his welfare--was pleased with his progress. Still, he swallowed the pill without hesitation and returned to the bedroom, wishing beyond anything that Jason was there, or that he could go to the research suite and crawl into the vampire's arms.

  But Nava had begun her tests, and she had placed Jason and Alex under 24-hour quarantine until the first round was completed. Rowan would be able to see him in the morning; the doctor had threatened mayhem unless he went home and got some sleep, and Rowan knew he was driving her crazy hovering around the researchers while they tried to work, so he bowed to her directive and sought the oppressive silence of their apartment.

  He missed Sara. He knew she needed the break, and was happy that she sounded like she was enjoying herself, but he couldn't help but long for the simple warmth of her company in the peace of Clan Willow's forest, and he also couldn't help but resent losing his time off because of Jason's horrible lapse in judgment.

  He tried not to think of it that way. Jason, who had a soft heart beneath all the armor and firearms, had wanted to protect something precious, and Rowan could hardly blame him. Whatever Alex really was, there was no malice in him anywhere; the creature had manipulated Jason, true, but out of the fear of annihilation, not a desire to harm.

  At least, that's what Rowan, and Jason, were both telling themselves until Nava and Frog could prove otherwise.

  It was six in the evening--his internal clock was all akimbo after a couple of days on a day-walker's schedule, and he had until Monday to get himself back on track before he was on duty again. Friday...it seemed like an eternity before Sunday would roll around and Sara would come home, and he would have someone to talk to about all of this. In the meantime he was alone with his bottle of Xanax, an empty apartment, and a partner who had apparently gone temporary off his nut and brought a world of trouble to their door that they didn't need.

  Rowan knew better than to expect a peaceful life--he was an Elf, living with a vampire, working for a secret government bureau that enforced occult law. That was enough to keep life exciting even without his entire race being systematically wiped from the Earth. And now, there was the boy to deal with, and this dream that still disturbed him deeply even though the initial impact had worn off thanks in no small part to the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals.

  Then there was the other thing...and Rowan curled up on the sofa with a blanket and a book, hoping to read himself back to sleep and not think about the implications of what had happened on Beltaine night.

  The whole experience, from following Sara into the forest to waking up on the leaf-and-clothing-strewn ground the next morning, was a blur to him. He knew that, in essence, his body had been hijacked by Another, and that Other was the One who had met Sara beneath the trees that night. She knew it, too; she had seen Him in Rowan's eyes. There had been a touch of the otherwordly in her as well, and she was aware of that too. They had both acted with full knowledge, if not full understanding. Ardeth, too, had felt the Presence within them, and he had come to them quite willingly. But what did it mean?

  Rowan stared sightlessly at the book in his lap, wishing that he'd thought to go fetch Pywacket to stay with him until Sara returned. To his mind, that settled it--they were getting a cat. Jason had objected the first time he'd brought it up but Rowan had a feeling that just now he could ask the vampire for a million dollars and a pony, and he'd get both with in the hour.

  Just then, the phone rang, jarring him out of his contemplations. Rowan reached over the coffee table to snatch up his phone just before it went to voice mail. "SA-5," he answered curtly without looking at the screen.

  "Hey," came the answer.

  He smiled. "Sara. Are you all right?"

  "Don't know, really," she said. She sounded a little confused, almost as if she had been drinking. "And I haven't been drinking!" she insisted before he could even ask. "I had a glass of watered wine with dinner and after that Ardeth and Elora kept giving me juice and water. If I eat one more honeycake I'm going to turn into a bee, Elora, but thank you."

  "I take it you are staying at the metalsmith's house tonight," Rowan noted with a smile, hearing the shuffling of small feet in the background. He would have liked to spend more time with Elora this trip, too.

  "Yes," Sara answered after a moment. "He's finishing up some Secret Squirrel project he won't tell me about so I volunteered to help with dinner for the--get this--eight kids. I'm lucky, though--they've never heard of pizza. We'll be commandeering the Bakers' ovens in an hour."

  Rowan laughed at the thought of Sara surrounded by Elflings making pizzas, but it was an appreciative laugh, not a mocking one. "I miss you," he said.

  "I miss you too. I wish you were here. How's Jason?"

  "I don't know. They're under quarantine until tomorrow and I haven't been able to see him. We can't even use telepathy because the room is shielded. They haven't found anything yet, although Frog was out sick today so he couldn't do any serious evaluations--he and Sage both have that stomach flu that's going around. They're as green as their names right now."

  "Yuck. Remind me to cancel my Monday dinner plans with her." He heard her sigh.

  "Sara...what's wrong?"

  "Nothing, nothing...I've been having some weird dreams since the other night, is all, and they've got my brain all addled, and I’m really tired, I guess because I’m not resting. Other than that I'm having a really great time, I promise."

  "Dreams...about what?"

  She paused, and he could feel her struggling with herself over how much to tell him. "Promise you won't wig out or anything."

  "I promise."

  "I don't know why, or where it came from, but...I dreamed about your mother."

  Rowan sat back hard against the couch cushions, his heart doing a shocked somersault. "About...how can that be?"

  "I don't know. Her name was Neneva, and Ardeth told me she was your mom. It fits with what I saw--it was from her perspective, on the day the Clan was raided. She was...she was trying to find you. Calling for you."

  Rowan shut his eyes against sudden tears, gripping the phone. "She was?"

  "I don't understand how it's happening. I never knew her name...or yours."

  Hi
s eyes opened. "Sara..."

  "I know--I won't say it. Ardeth told me I'm not supposed to. But is that...is that why your daughter was named Kaeli? After you?"

  He could barely speak, but managed, "Yes. It's tradition, if someone asks you to help them have a child but you aren't going to act as a parent, that they name the child after you. She was all that was left of my old life, and now even her name is gone."

  Sara took another deep breath, and said, "There's more."

  "Go on."

  "It may not make any sense to you, but...have you ever heard the word Jenai?"

  "You heard it in your dream?"

  "Yes. Do you know what it means?"

  He remembered sitting in the grass at his mother's feet, out in the gardens, her smooth rich voice wrapping around the words as she told him the legends of their people's origins, stories that few Elves still knew, even then. "It's Old Elvish," Rowan replied, his mind halfway lost in the memory...strange how these dreams had brought Neneva close to him again, so that he could remember every detail of her face, the softness of her robes, the quiet power in her slender body. "The Jenai were the first Elves, born from the union of the Goddess and God themselves. They created Clan Oak, and all other Clans grew from it. They were powerful in ways that haven't been seen since the Earth was an infant. They vanished generations ago."

  "Um...is there any sort of legend about them coming back?"

  "Actually there is. Supposedly there will come a time when the fate of all beings--humans, Elves, everyone--hangs in the balance, and the Jenai will return. What exactly happened in this dream of yours, Sara?"

  "Wait--how will they return?"

  The urgency in her words surprised him, but he said, "I have no idea. All of the legends surrounding them are very old and very vague. There were only a handful of Jenai ever known by name, or rather by title. There was the Weaver, the first mage; and the Singer, the first Bard...they were archetypal, which is why so few believe they really existed. One…one was known as the Sibyl, the great prophetess.”

  “I don’t understand, Rowan. I never met Neneva. I could pick up impressions from her home, but she never lived here. I might even get something about her from you given how close we are, but the dream was from her point of view. Why am I dreaming about her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I am too.”

  *****

  Jason was alone for the first time in days, and while a part of him was aching from it, another part of him was distinctly relieved.

  He took the opportunity, while the medical staff had Alex in an exam room and were hooking him up to every physical and metaphysical monitor the Agency owned, to take a long hot shower, by himself, in the Spartan bathroom connected to the research suite. There was only about an hour before he could see Rowan again, and the least he could do was not smell like the boy who had been curled up against him for three days.

  They had taken his clothes, leaving him with standard-issue blue scrubs, so he pulled on the flimsy pants and ignored the shirt, then grabbed the stack of clean linens the staff had left when they brought the day’s blood supply and changed the sheets.

  He would be glad when all of this was over, Alex was strong again and placed somewhere else, and life could go back to normal. Fuck if he was ever going to another music conference--or sleeping with anyone else. Let Rowan shag everything that moved, if he wanted; clearly he was better equipped to handle it. From now on he was going to stick to jerking off to Good Eats.

  As he was straightening the comforter, the door beeped, and Nava and Ness walked in.

  Jason turned toward them. “Ness,” he said. “Does this mean the quarantine’s over?”

  They exchanged a look, and Nava said, “For you, yes. In fact you’re welcome to leave—we still need to run some follow-up tests, but all our data confirms that there’s nothing wrong with you. Whatever influence the creature had on you, it’s gone now. You’re fine.”

  He didn’t like the tone of her voice. “What about Alex?”

  Another look between them. Ness cleared her throat. “We think the kid is dangerous, Jason. The initial scans and bloodwork show some very strange things afoot with his physiology—things that don’t match our previous research on vampire transformation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nava produced a black file folder and pulled out a series of MRI-like results. “We expected to see some changes in internal organ function and in his blood, of course. Mature vampires produce completely different enzymes than humans, and your digestive organs shrink to half their original size while others, like the liver and kidneys, are enlarged. Your white blood cells mutate in a way that destroys all disease on contact. There’s a particular combination of chemicals in your saliva—a mild anesthetic and an anticoagulant almost identical in composition to those found in leeches. That's in addition to changes in the eyes, the optical nerves...”

  “I know all of that,” Jason pointed out. “Could you please just cut to the chase?”

  “That isn’t happening to Alex,” Nava said. “The process started just fine, and once he fed on Rowan’s blood it accelerated, just like it’s supposed to. But then it came to a total standstill. Have you noticed anything unusual about what’s been happening?”

  Jason sat down on the edge of the bed, running his hands back through his hair. “I don’t really know. I’ve only done this once and it was a hundred years ago. I didn’t know what to expect, and my sire watched over the process once he was finished being angry at me for almost killing myself. I remember Beck sleeping for days, just like Alex has…but I remember her waking up more often. He’s barely even moved since he fed.”

  “He’s barely moving on the outside—and he’s still unconscious on the table in the exam room, which is probably a good thing, because there’s an incredible amount of activity going on inside his body right now and if he was awake he'd probably be in agony. His chemistry is completely changing—we’re running DNA scans right now, but just based on Frog’s first findings…it looks like his DNA is actually changing.”

  “Changing? How is that possible?”

  “We don’t know. Whatever other kind of being has been sharing his body all these years, it’s waking up, and it’s rewriting his genetic code as it does. It started with his blood chemistry—enzymes, hormones, the works."

  He crossed his arms, shaking his head. "I don't get it. If the creature could do all of that, why did it need me to bring him across?"

  "We don't know," Ness said. "Nava's theory is that it needed something to kill the virus before it could start the transformation process. If it's as old as Rowan said, it might predate AIDS and not know how to kill it. You said yourself the disease was only being kept at bay by massive amounts of drugs; that may also have kept the creature dormant."

  "So this...thing...is taking him over...and it's my fault. What's going to happen to Alex? Will he still be there when it's done with him? Or is he just a shell for that thing to inhabit?"

  Nava sighed. "I wish I knew. Frog's working on it, and he's got a research team trying to find any references to this kind of metamorphosis. But it's slow going since we have no idea what it is."

  "Meanwhile, here's a fresh uniform for you," Ness said, handing him a bundle of black. "You're free to go jump your Elf. Consider yourself off duty until Monday, just like SA-5, but come in Sunday at 1700 for the follow-up tests."

  Jason nodded numbly, still bewildered by what was going on, whatever it was, and started to go into the bathroom to dress, but Ness snorted.

  "Oh, come on," she said archly, as she and Nava headed for the door. "You think after that show you and Rowan put on the other day, you can get away with modesty?"

  Nava was bright pink, and cleared her throat. "Ness..."

  Jason couldn't help it; he snorted. "Enjoy the videotape," he told the doctor as they left, then yanked the black t-shirt over his head and shucked the blue scrubs.

  *****

  Rowan tried no
t to fidget in the elevator to the level where the research suites were located, mostly for the benefit of the admin riding with him, but the minute the doors slid open he practically bolted for the hallway. It was precisely six a.m. and he was going to be with his amori, as the humans said, come Hell or high water.

  The suite was larger than it looked--on the other side of the bedroom wall was another room full of computers and other equipment, where the medical and R&D staff assigned to the case could listen, watch, and evaluate what they recorded.

  It had taken two days for the research team to stop giving him funny looks, and one of the junior doctors still blushed and stammered when she saw him. Apparently he and Jason had been the day's entertainment--Frog had said there was popcorn, and at least two of the team had vanished immediately afterward and returned half an hour later much more relaxed.