The Agency

Tada! Woohoo! A new part! How 'bout that?

And it's a bit sexy. Enjoy.



Sara was awake, alert, and bored out of her mind.

She spent two more days in the infirmary in a happy haze of drugs and sleep, sipping broth and sucking on popsicles when instructed to do so. There were only two painkillers that were deemed safe for her, and both made her loopy, so she was glad when Nava discontinued them. By then, she didn't hurt much, though she was stiff and achy from being in bed so long.

The primary sensation she would take away from the experience was that of having to pee. Nava viciously kept pumping her full of IV fluids. It didn't help that the baby had started using her bladder as a trampoline.

Despite the discomfort, she was intensely grateful just to feel the tramera moving. The day after she was cleared to go back to quarters she lay back on the couch with her hands on her stomach just feeling, and silently expressing her thanks to the baby that she'd stuck around.

She felt removed from the rest of the base. She'd had visitors the last day but it seemed everyone was preoccupied, even Rowan, who was...well, grumpy, to say the least. He didn't want to talk, and didn't make much eye contact. When she asked what was going on he shrugged but didn't answer.

Sage helped her back to her apartment and fixed her some soup, but then had to head off for a shift on Jason's Ear. The Witch had left an assortment of baked goods that expressed her care and worry in a way that she herself would never put into words. Sara, stuffing her face with cinnamon rolls, had no complaints.

She was just licking the traces of icing off her fingers when there was a knock, then the beep of the door unlocking.

Rowan gave her a tired but genuine smile. "Hey."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Come to grunt at me some more?"

The Elf made a face of chagrin. "Sorry. As Beck would say, it's been a bitch-kitty of a week."

He sat down next to her on the couch, troubled and weary, and she put her hand on his arm. "What's going on?"

Rowan looked away. "I've been suspended," he said.

"What?" She sat up quickly enough to give herself a head rush and stared at him, aghast.

"Apparently I'm a liability," he said bitterly. "They're doing a psych assessment on me to make sure I'm not crazy on top of everything else."

"Why do they think you're crazy?"

He leaned back, or rather slumped, and shut his eyes, speaking as if he'd already repeated the story a dozen times. "They caught Aradia, and she all but confessed to poisoning you. Blue Moon tried to kill you and the tramera--the baby was their primary intended victim but they wanted you gone too. But it turns out the situation is even more complicated than we thought...the coven was working for my mother."

Sara couldn't quite think of a way to say WHAT??? again without annoying him, so she just gaped.

"I traced the link from the girl to the coven and then to Neneva. She attacked me and in doing so killed Aradia, though it was my meddling in the girl's mind that caused it in the first place. I'm not sure if Mother knew who I was or not--she disconnected from the link before I could learn more. But because of how I treated Aradia, which I'm ashamed of, and because of how I healed you, which I'd do again in a heartbeat, they think I'm dangerous."

He looked at her then, and his expression was so young and lost that her heart broke. "They took my gun," he said.

Without really intending to, Sara snorted.

"Sorry," she said at his wounded look. "You just...that's exactly what Jason would say. How long are you suspended?"

"Indefinitely. With pay--not that the money matters, but at least it means they haven't completely voted me off the island. Ness didn't know what else to do, and I don't blame her."

"Wait," Sara said, puzzled. "I don't get it. The Sibyl wants you to join up with her, right? And she wants the Singer. Your mom works for the Sibyl--why would she try to kill us? And why use Blue Moon?"

"I don't know."

"This whole thing is just too big for my brain," Sara muttered, leaning sideways against Rowan, who buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply. "There's a crazy million-year-old Elf trying to recruit you to destroy the human race. She somehow got a nutbag sorcerer to conjure a bunch of Seraph to try to kill our friends, but one of those Seraph took time out to tell a kid he's Jesus Christ. Meanwhile another Seraph, from god knows where, is supposed to protect our baby. And your mother is sending a black coven after me. Maybe she did it in secret to work against the Sibyl?"

"That doesn't make any sense either," Rowan said ruefully. "Believe me, I thought about it. But she was loyal to the Sibyl when I saw her. And there's no way she'd try to murder her own grandchild."

"Not to mention at least one of the other Seraph--maybe more--went to a human and told her she was Kali. Remember that? What happened to her?"

"Dead," Rowan replied flatly. "Found in her room here at the base, the morning after the Dreaming Gate. As far as they can tell she died when her Seraph died."

"Then why didn't Joshua die when Lex killed his?"

"I have no idea. None of it adds up. Then there's the Astaerath--"

"Come again?"

"Archangel," Rowan clarified. "Joshua said something about one while he was in a trance talking to Lex. And the sorcerer who conjured the Seraph wrote that an Archangel had commanded him to act. Joshua said this Archangel was coming for Lex, and for me. But that's all he said."

Sara rubbed her temples, then ticked one finger at a time as she counted, "Elves. Vampires. Demigods. Christ. Angels. Archangels. Sorcerers. Kali. Witches. How can this get weirder, Rowan?"

"God, don't even say that."

They leaned on each other in silence for a while, and Sara began to notice something a bit surprising--he smelled incredible. That fact in itself wasn't surprising, as he always smelled good, but this time, the scent of his warm skin next to her cheek seemed to seep into her, and once it got in, it made her feel tingly and hot all over. She shifted slightly, heat blossoming between her thighs, the unlooked-for arousal making her a bit dizzy.

Rowan tilted back to look at her. "My goodness," he said, a smile playing at the edges of his lips.

"I guess you can feel that."

He chuckled, his dour mood lifting a little. "Just who do you think you're talking to?"

Sara gasped as the sensations in her body redoubled, and Rowan gave her a speculative look, then leaned into her and flicked his tongue against her ear.

She moaned. "Oh, holy..."

Clearly grateful for the distraction, Rowan nibbled his way down along her jaw, then her neck, one arm slipping around her and pulling her hips forward as he nudged her back into the cushions. His other hand occupied itself beneath her t-shirt, fingertips tracing circles around her nipples, which were hypersensitive, eliciting another moan.

"Wait a second," she breathed. "Is this..."

"Completely safe," he murmured. "Trust me, I'm a professional."

"I'm not supposed to do any strenuous--oh--"

Smiling, he slid back off the couch onto the floor, and hooked his thumbs in the elastic waistband of her shorts, yanking them down over her hips with a mischievous glint in his eyes. She was still able to wear her normal clothes, and as far as she could tell the bump hadn't gotten any bigger since they'd returned to Austin, but it was weird looking down at him as he stripped off her panties, the view eclipsed ever so slightly by the swell of her middle.

Her hormones seemed to be having an effect on him too. He let his eyes drift halfway shut and settled on his knees, parting her legs as he'd done a hundred times, almost looking hypnotized. He kissed slow spirals around her stomach, then around her thighs, biting the skin lightly just as his hand wandered between.

The contact was like being struck by lightning. She arched her back, the pleasure of his nimble fingers too intense to even make a sound, and all but clamped her legs around his head. One finger, then another, slipped inside, and she felt like the Nile, flooding over her banks--the depth of her need was painful, as was the anticipation he let build, striking up an agonizing tempo with one hand, until she was about to scream.

She was begging, she could hear herself, but she didn't care. Nothing mattered in the universe but the succulent burn of his tongue darting against her, following the path of his fingers, then diving in deep enough to tear cries from her throat.

Begging turned to affirmation, then to various names of Divinity, then to little more than vowel sounds. It felt like the entire planet rolled in her skin, thunder and earthquakes and a river bursting through a dam, fire racing over a tortured plain that was then quenched with a season of torrential rain.

Sara was trembling violently as she came down, and realized with about an eighth of her attention that she was now hanging halfway off the couch, her legs wrapped around Rowan's neck, her hands clinging to the cushions.

The Elf, too, was panting, his head resting on her thigh. He was smiling.

"Thank you for that," he sighed contentedly.

She made an incoherent noise back at him somewhere between a growl and a meow.

Rowan laughed quietly and licked his lips, then unwound her legs from his neck and eased her back up onto the couch, pulling her panties back up from where they'd pooled on the floor but leaving her shorts off. He stayed on the ground next to her, leaning against her sweat-dampened forehead, and she could smell herself on his breath, familiar and strangely soothing.

After a moment she asked, "Do Elf babies know what's going on in the womb?"

The Elf replied, "To an extent. Nothing they'll remember once they're born--like human babies, they respond to stimuli and have a certain level of emotion and empathy. Her brain won't be quite developed enough yet to process any real information. At least that's what Mellis said."

"So we didn't just traumatize her."

He frowned. "With an orgasm? Seriously? Humans are so weird."

"Well, it's not like you were poking her in the head or anything, but..."

Now he laughed again. "Actually...given how my people regard sex, we think of it this way: if the mother's body is relaxed and happy enough to get off, the tramera feels her emotions and is comforted knowing all is right with the world. She wouldn’t understand where it came from, just that her mother was feeling joy."

Sara smiled, letting him tuck a pillow under her head. "I like that," she said with a yawn. "I guess we've got the most comforted unborn baby on Earth, then."

"I hope so," Rowan said. He lay his head against the side of her belly, lightly, one palm beneath her breasts. "With everything that's happening, and everything that might still, the least we can do is keep her happy while she's in there."

As if the tramera had been listening, she chose that moment to press one of her limbs against the wall of Sara's stomach, thereby poking her father in the ear.

He jumped and looked down, making a face. "It isn't polite to eavesdrop," he said.

Sara giggled, a wave of giddiness hitting her, and found she couldn’t stop laughing. Rowan kissed the spot where the baby's hand or foot had prodded him, laughing himself, and returned his head to Sara's stomach.

Sara ran her hand through his hair and smiled at him. He seemed so relieved, the heaviness over his heart lifting enough to let him feel something besides sadness and foreboding, that she didn't have the heart to tell him that she really, really had to pee.


*****


Lex woke with laughter in his ears, no doubt the last remnants of a fading dream, and blinked in the candlelight.

He shifted up onto his elbows, dislodging the book that lay open beside him on the nest. The huge leather tome fell with a clomp onto the floor; it was a history of Enochian ritual magick, and was about as exciting as watching flies fuck. He must have fallen asleep reading it; he remembered the page growing blurry.

There was a noise, and he realized that was what had woken him: a knock.

That almost never happened. Beck didn't knock; she had a key. The only other person who had ever come to visit was Jason.

Sure enough, he reached out with his senses and felt the vampire's presence beyond the door, tense with worry.

Lex got up quickly. He was still dressed, and padded across the aerie barefoot to unlock the interior door and the metal gate that covered it.

He expected Jason to demand what had taken so long, but amazingly, the Agent looked more concerned than impatient. "Can I come in?"

Lex tilted his head to the side. "Of course. What's wrong?"

"There's something..."

He was so agitated that Lex didn't ask any further questions, only stepped back to let him enter. Jason was in full uniform, armed, and wore his "on duty" posture, though it was tempered with the intense discomfort of someone who was about to break very bad news.

Lex felt it before Jason even said anything, and sat down, gesturing for the vampire to do the same.

Jason shook his head. "I have to ask this," he said. "Where were you four hours ago?"

Lex blinked. "What time is it now?"

"Two thirty in the morning."

"I guess I was asleep," Lex answered. "I went out at sunset and came in at nearly ten--surely the cameras and the Eyes registered that?"

Jason nodded. "I believe you. I just had to ask."

"Jason, what's going on?"

Jason crossed his arms. "At about ten thirty tonight one of our Agents was killed," he said. "He was stabbed repeatedly in a church parking lot."

At the word "church," Lex's heart froze in his chest. "Go on."

"A security camera caught the attack. The police forwarded it to us, and..."

"It was a Seraph," Lex concluded.

"We think so. It used one of the sorcerer's blades...and the thing is, one of the knives we confiscated from the sorcerer's house has gone missing. Frog was running tests on them, and when he went to return one to the evidence locker there were only six, not seven."

"And I'm the only Seraph anyone knows of who's been in the base."

"Yes."

"Am I under arrest?"

Jason was paler than usual, and took a deep breath. "Not officially. I've been asked to bring you in for questioning. It won't take long--they'll have one of the psychic Agents test you and they'll know you're telling the truth. But we have to do it. For the record."

Lex nodded and stood. "It's all right, Jason, I understand." He walked over and fetched the shirt he'd had on earlier that night, then his coat. "I have every intention of cooperating."

"Lex...there's more."

He paused, halfway through pulling his coat on, and closed his eyes. "I know."

He barely needed confirmation of the deep, hollow sadness that had already welled up in his chest, and he barely heard Jason speak.

"The Agent was acting as a bodyguard...the Seraph took him out first, then his charge. Joshua Cohen is dead."



© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.