The Agency, Volume II

by Sylvan, Dianne

  He had believed, he told me more than once, that the world could still be saved, that humanity wasn’t an irreversible blight upon the Earth, not while there was still beauty in the world. As long as people were making music, offering it up to love or God or whatever muse inspired them, there was hope for mankind. He wasn't human--had not been, for nearly three hundred years—but he still loved them, deep down. He loved their capacity for creation and through his arts patronage tried to encourage as many as possible away from destruction. Strange, really, a vampire so in love with creation…a balance, perhaps, to what we had to do to survive.

  But there were some things that could not be saved with harmony. There were some statements that, once made, had only one answer, and that answer was not music, it was blood.

  First…first we had to find them. That must begin with planning, and cunning, and a safe place to get warm. A bed for Rebecca. Clean clothes. A bath.

  My jaw itched with hunger, but I would not feed. Not until the throat at my teeth belonged to one of the Brotherhood. Not until I heard them beg for mercy.

  I reached out and took my sister's arm, and acquiesced to her will to leave, to take the long road toward town, toward safety.

  *****

  "Twelve," I panted, letting the body fall in a heap to the floor. The man landed on my boots, and I shoved him away in disgust, pushing him onto his back where his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling in perpetual surprise.

  Blood pooled in my stomach and then rushed through my veins, leaving a bitter satisfaction in its wake. I closed my eyes a moment and enjoyed the sensation. There was little other pleasure left to me now, and I allowed myself to bask in this one. The sheer number of lives I was filling myself up with had brought me to a whole new level of strength--I was gaining power quickly, perhaps too quickly, but I didn’t care.

  Rebecca was pale with shock but not with horror. "I can't believe you did that," she said in a loud whisper. "Do you see where we are?"

  I looked around and shrugged. "A church. That's good, they don't have to move him to perform the funeral."

  She stared down at the dead man, a smile spreading slowly over her mouth--a predatory smile I had never believed her capable of, but had come to like. "We should leave him in the confessional."

  The man's blood had tasted like rancid wine and guilt--definitely Catholic. He might have been here to confess in the first place. Forgive me father, for I have sinned…I murdered a good man because an imaginary being in the sky said he should burn for loving another man…

  "How many does that leave?" she asked. I held up three fingers.

  "I think they're onto us," she noted as we walked out of the church, just in time to hear screaming as the nuns discovered the body behind us. "They're getting harder to find and harder to kill."

  She was right. So far we had relied on our strength and speed to give us the advantage, but it turned out a terrified human fighting for his life was a good match to our rudimentary skills. We could finish what we had started, I knew, but after this…I needed more.

  "What would you think of going to Japan for a while?" I asked. People scampered out of our way when we walked down the street. I liked it.

  "Why?"

  "In my reading I found that they have ways of fighting over there--they think of it as an art, even a spiritual practice."

  "What good will that do you after this is all over with? How many more people do you intend to kill?"

  I paused, taking in the busy city streets, the citizens taking advantage of a brief warming spell before the next snowstorm. Did I want to kill them? Did I really care at all about their meaningless little lives, when it came down to it? Or were they just food to me now, like cows?

  "None, necessarily," I answered her, starting to walk again. "But if we're going to live for centuries, it stands to reason someone else might try to kill us. Humans fear us, there are factions among vampires that will hate us, religious fools will justify our deaths by any means they can. I think we should be able to fight back. If these Japanese teachers can give me the knowledge to keep us alive, I would say it's a trip worth taking."

  She thought about it most of the walk back to our apartment, but said, "All right. It sounds like fun. You go to study, I'll go to live, and you can teach me whatever's worth knowing."

  I smiled grimly, the only way I could smile anymore. "It sounds easy enough for you."

  "This is your adventure, brother, not mine. I would be satisfied with vengeance. I agree that self-defense is a good idea, but what do I need with fighting skill when I have you?"

  I turned to her and stopped again. "I may not be there," I said, and she looked away. Fox had been alone when they killed him. I couldn't always be right by her side.

  She took my hand. "Will my being safe make any of this worthwhile?"

  I laughed humorlessly. "Rebecca, nothing is going to make any of it worthwhile again. This, this city, this world--aside from you, standing here with me, none of it is worth anything to me. I want to keep you safe, and I don't particularly want to die today, so we need a plan. We kill the last three of the Brotherhood, and then we sail for the Far East. I'll try to find what I need there, and then we'll return to America to face…whatever it is that God wants to fuck me with next."

  Once we had gained the quiet of our rooms above the pub, I stripped off my coat and the long knife I carried and hung both behind the door. As I took the doorway to my bedroom my eyes fell on the violin, resting on a shelf on top of the stack of music we'd salvaged, waiting for me.

  I had not touched her since the fire. I did not touch her now. I went into my room and closed the door.

  *****

  “Why are you here?”

  I lay facedown on the dirt floor, my breath coming in gasps, sweat pouring from my entire body and doubling the mud that covered my bare chest. I looked up at the placid white-haired man seated at the far end of the room, venom coating my words as I hissed, “To learn.”

  The old man snorted softly. “You could do that anywhere.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “But why are you here?”

  I pushed myself back up to standing. “You know why. To protect my sister.”

  “You lie, night-walker.” He gestured to one of the others, his assistants, who came at me again, but this time I was ready. I spun around, dodging the staff that sailed toward my head, and dropped low to kick the man’s feet out from under him. He jumped, twisted in midair, and landed, catlike, swinging the staff again and catching me hard in the ribs. I felt one crack.

  The pain made me react before I could think--I charged the man, going for his throat, but he was of course too fast for me and between one breath and the next I was on the ground again.

  The assistant stepped back in line with the others, not a hair out of place, and I forced myself up again.

  “You are here because of rage and hatred,” the sensei pointed out, calm as ever. He was the perfect stereotype of a martial arts teacher—wizened, stooped, but able to kill a man with three fingers, not that he would ever choose to, as he was also perfectly at peace with himself and the world, even speaking of anger. “I cannot tell you how many men have climbed this mountain looking for revenge against the entire world, and gone away empty handed. White men are the worst, it seems. They all think their pain is unique. That nobody else has ever suffered as they have, or lost what they have.”

  “What do you want from me?” I demanded. “A noble cause?”

  “You have already killed the men who killed your beloved. You have your vengeance. Yet it is not enough, is it? It will never be enough. You cannot take enough lives to fill the hole in yours.”

  “I hate philosophy,” I muttered.

  “Then you will hate this even more. You will never be a warrior, night-walker, until you have let go of your anger. Perhaps your kind cannot die by sickness, but you will poison yourself slowly over however many centuries you live, and the purpose of your life will be lost
.’

  “There is no purpose. Not to me or any of this.”

  “Again, you lie.” He studied me in silence for a while, and then said, “I will teach you nothing until you are ready to learn.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “Play music,” he replied, and I felt ice in my veins, a fist squeezing the air from my chest. “You must fight as you play--with passion, and power, but also consideration and reflection. There has been no music in your head for years. You will find it again, and when you do you will come and play for me, and then I will teach you.”

  I felt myself locked in that dark room again, all my determination and arrogance swept into the darkness with the smell of a snuffed candle. Just me and the music, all over again, with no way out until I gave in to it. The very thought felt like a violation. I had boarded up that part of me and left it derelict with no intention to return, and now this old man, this mortal, wanted to force me back there, back to the smoke and the flame and the breaking of the world.

  “No,” I said softly. “No.”

  I turned and walked out into the night, grabbing my shirt from the branch it hung on as I passed, my steps becoming a run by the time I hit the path down the mountain. I ran, and I ran, needles of pain stabbing into my lungs, and I didn’t stop running until I was back at the village.

  *****

  “I’m thinking of getting tattooed,” she said, holding another kimono up to her chest, seeing how the colors matched her pale skin. “No, too bright…there aren’t enough black ones, and I don’t think I could conceal a weapon in this one.”

  My sister had changed since we left America. She had cropped her hair short. She had developed a taste for fine clothing that showed off her petite figure. She looked men directly in the eye, which made the Japanese rather uncomfortable given how they treated their women.

  “This world isn’t like our old home,” she had said. “Fox…he never treated me like I was inferior because I am a woman. The rest of them try to. But I’m through living small. I eat their kind for breakfast and it’s time I acted like it.”

  I had smiled at her. It was such a thoroughly Rebecca thing to say. The world was uncomplicated for her--she was very intelligent, but didn’t care for details. There was too much to see and experience to let such a silly thing as the opinions of men keep her from enjoying herself.

  So while I hunted for a teacher, she traveled, soaking up the culture like a sponge. I envied her…but then, I always had.

  I was sitting, staring at the Tempest, afraid to touch her. I had been sitting that way for almost two days since I’d returned from the mountain filthy and exhausted.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to pretend the sensei was wrong. I had been to other teachers, several in the last two years, and had learned all they had to offer in a matter of months, but always came away hungry, never knowing enough. This man had the reputation, and I could see the truth of it in his eyes; I wanted what he knew. So far, he had taught me two things: he was a perceptive old bastard and I was a fool.

  “Becca-chan,” I said tiredly, “I hate this thing.”

  She came over and kissed the top of my head. “No you don’t. You’ve said that a thousand times.”

  “I want to throw it in the fire.”

  “You’ve said that, too, and I still don’t believe you. Maybe you’re not ready to play again, but you’ll never hate it. That would be like hating Fox.”

  “No,” I told her. “The Tempest is a part of me. It would be like hating myself.”

  She smiled. “And you don’t?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She picked up the violin and set it in my lap, then took my hand and placed it on the curved wood. “Then I suggest you find out, before you let that old man’s henchmen beat you up again.”

  She gathered up her armload of garments and left the room, and I was alone with the violin, my hand still exactly where she’d put it. Once, I had never been able to touch the instrument without caressing it, even unconsciously. Now, it felt like my fingers were burning.

  “All right,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I rose, my hands fumbling for their old places. The violin felt like lead in my arms, the bow awkward, as if I’d never played before.

  I stood in position for several long minutes, trying to force my arm to move, groping in my mind for any piece of music, mine or another’s. Nothing came.

  There was nothing there. The well was dry.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Music was emotion, and I had not allowed myself to feel any for a very long time. I was afraid of what would happen if I undammed the river; would a rushing torrent drown me, or would it simply be an empty bed of cracked earth? Once the flood began would it ever stop? Could I survive it?

  And did I want to?

  The present was nothing but the empty riverbed. I turned, reluctantly, to the past.

  Fox, I thought, bringing his image to mind for the first time since he had left me.

  Oh, my love. I constructed the picture carefully, one detail at a time: his laugh, his hands, the scents of immortality and anise. I remembered his arms around me as he stood at my back; we had watched many a moonrise that way, out on the terrace, just the two of us and the starlight and the ephemeral peace of the night.

  I remembered the first moment I knew I loved him, before we had ever touched, when I was only a stable boy caring for his prized beasts. I had been on my way to bed at the end of a long day’s mucking out the stalls, and heard music. I followed the sound, mesmerized, until I reached the garden, and there I saw the lord of the house, in silhouette, playing for the moon. I could still remember the song, and the way he turned toward me at my approach even though I thought I was being too quiet to hear. His eyes had met mine, and I felt something… acknowledgment, recognition, a quickening of my heart no human had ever caused. I backed away slowly, suddenly very afraid, and it was days before he found me in the stables, that flash of connection all we needed to fall upon each other, mouth seeking mouth, his surprise and joy surpassing mine.

  That first song…I remembered it, and it came back to me in full, passing into the strings slowly. Without meaning to I merged with the song of mourning I had played on the hill, and I dragged the music out of me, feeding it to my memories, my whole body shaking with strain and sorrow.

  He was gone. Oh, god, he was gone. My one great love, my teacher and friend, taken from me, and I was alone, and cold, it was so cold. Great cracks split the surface of my heart, and at last the grief slammed into me, the river unleashed.

  My fingers slipped on the strings, and I sank to my knees, clutching the Tempest to my chest as I sobbed.

  *****

  The nightmares overwhelmed me after that. Sometimes I burned, sometimes I watched him burn. Sometimes I killed, but every night I died, over and over again, and woke with smoke in my lungs, coughing, crying, fighting my way out of sleep.

  I kept playing. It seemed now that I couldn’t stop. Some days it was the only thing that enabled me to catch even an hour’s rest. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was working my body beyond even a vampire’s endurance, exhausting myself with all the exercises and routines the other teachers had given me, combining them the way I combined pieces of music, one school of fighting morphing into another until it was all my own.

  My sister didn’t comment on how driven I was, but she looked worried and clucked over how little I fed. To appease her--and because I needed the strength--I hunted more, prowling the village streets for those foolish enough to walk about alone at night, taking what I needed, never too much. Occasionally we hunted together, but it was best to stay as covert as possible in a small town like this one, and often she ventured into the surrounding areas, to farms and other villages, for her prey. She liked to travel. I liked efficiency.

  One morning I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the Tempest resting on my bare stomach, my hand wrapped around the bow. Screaming had awakened me, but f
or once it was not in a dream—our next door neighbor’s wife was in labor. It had begun the night before and there was a flurry of activity going on, midwives and doctors coming and going, young women sent to fetch supplies, the husband pacing in the adjoining room and steeling himself against the heart-wrenching sound of her cries.

  I didn’t blame him. I had killed people, but even in my lust for vengeance I had never been interested in causing suffering. Life was already suffering. There was no reason to create more.

  Finally, I couldn’t bear the noise anymore, and I got up and started to play, something lively to drown out the sounds. The walls of the building were paper-thin, so perhaps the music might lessen some of the tension on the other side; if the woman could take her mind off the pain it might go easier for her. Or perhaps not. I knew next to nothing about childbirth except that it was loud.