The Agency

Archangel, part 9/?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:31:31 GMT

Yes, two parts in one day! How about that?

---

Sara scrolled down through the list that Google had obligingly coughed up for her. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “If we’re spelling it right, it’s Sanskrit for ‘black eyed.’ But that doesn’t help much, does it?”

Rowan leaned back in his chair. “Try searching for the name with ‘Seraph’ or ‘angels.’”

Sara did, but shook her head. “Nothing new, sorry. Asitanayana is just a phrase, not even a mythological figure. There’s no link between it and anything angelic--it’s kind of unlikely anyway to find angels and India in the same sentence. Whoever your mother was talking about we’re not going to find it on the Internet. We’ll have to try the Agency archives.”

“I have a better idea,” Rowan said, trying to keep his tone casual. “Tonight is the Full Moon; it would be an ideal time for divination.”

Sara blinked in surprise. “Really? I didn’t know Elves did that sort of thing.”

“Not often. For most of our history we’ve been content to let the future unfold as it will, though we’ve had our share of seers. But there are rituals for it, mostly scrying. Some of it’s old and creepy like that spell you all used to find me through Jason, but what I have in mind should be pretty straightforward.”

She shrugged and said, “Sure, why not? Do you want to do it here, or out in the labyrinth where there’s a built-in Circle?”

“Outside, I think,” he replied. “You know how I am about doing magic indoors.”

“Yeah, you’re a snob,” Sara said with a grin. She looked over at the clock. “It’s probably late enough that there’s nobody out there. Let me put shoes on. Do you need anything for the ritual?”

“Candles to mark the Circle’s boundary,” Rowan said. “Matches. Frankincense if you have it--I’d like to make the space as safe as possible.” He patted the pocket of his jeans. “I have everything else right here.”

*****

“So, are you and Jason still giving each other the bitchy treatment?” Sara asked, shouldering her Totebag of Shadows and falling into step with him as they took the hall toward the elevators.

Rowan shrugged. He didn’t really want to think about that right now. The tension in their apartment had been palpable the last two days, and Jason had been working overtime to give them both room to cool down. The one time Rowan had brought up the Well water, Jason had nearly bitten his head off.

“He’s being completely unreasonable,” Rowan said. “What does he want me to do, live the rest of my life only half knowing what I’m capable of? What happens when the Sibyl comes after you and the baby again, or him, or Lex? If I’m the only one who can stop her, he doesn’t have the right to stop me.”

“He’s just worried,” Sara reasoned. “I admit I am too. It was kind of a dumbass move for you to go off like that without telling anyone. Not that I begrudge you the answers you need,” she added quickly, seeing him start to bristle. “I just think you need to be careful. If what you saw in the Well last time was real, you’ve got a lot of scary power waiting to come out of you, and if you’re not ready...things could get bad.”

Rowan watched the floor as he walked. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“I believe you, sweetie, but what if Weaver-ing out drives you crazy like the Sibyl?”

“I don’t think it will,” he said. “It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? She went insane because she was alone for so long and saw too much of the future.”

“I guess I’m just afraid of you changing,” Sara told him. “I know Jason is too. If you went through with it and became the Weaver, for good, you might not be you anymore. I don’t think either of us could take losing you, Rowan.”

Rowan stopped and hugged her tight. “You won’t, Sara. I won’t let that happen. No matter what, I won’t let go of who I am right now. I don’t want to lose that either. Not again.”

She kissed his ear. “We’ve all changed a lot since we met. Just think--in another nine months you’ll be someone’s dad again.”

He smiled and started walking again. “Have you given any further thought to what you’ll do after the birth?”

“I think about it all the time,” she admitted, “but I haven’t gotten any closer to a decision. I think the smart thing, and probably the best for the tramera, is to foster her out to Clan Willow. She can be raised among people who will understand her potential, and she’ll be safer out there. And I can go back to being an active Agent, and we can all visit whenever we want. But...”

Rowan knew exactly what she was feeling; he shared those feelings, and the conflict. “But you’re not sure you can give her up.”

She opened the door out into the courtyard, but he took it from her and held it so she could go out first. “I might be a great Mom,” she mused. “But unless I went to live with the Clan too, I don’t think my life is baby compatible. And I have to think about what’s best for her, not me.”

“You still have plenty of time to decide,” he reassured her, leading her toward the Blessing Tree, around the back where he’d done the Gate spell. He didn’t want anyone to see this either. “We can start looking for suitable homes for her in a few months. I’m sure Elora would be thrilled to have a foster sister.”

Sara grinned. “I have no doubt.”

Rowan directed her to set the bag down, and they worked together in silence for a minute setting up the Circle; Sara placed the candles at the four cardinal points of the compass, and Rowan lit a charcoal disk to burn the incense on in the pottery dish she had brought. Once the smoke was rising cheerfully into the night, Rowan said, “All right...I’d like it if you did the casting since I’ll have to devote my energy to the divination.”

Sara nodded and took the censer from him. “Make it extra crispy, right?”

“Right. I don’t foresee any problems but you know how it goes--you open yourself up to the universe and the universe gets creative.”

Rowan took position in the center of the Circle while Sara began her work; she normally used more tools for something like this, but it wasn’t strictly necessary. The Witch made the tools, not the other way around. He had seen her do this before, and was as always impressed by her skill. In a matter of minutes he could sense a shimmering boundary forming around them, drawn like a curtain between the area where they stood and the rest of the base.

Finally, she set the censer down in the Eastern “end” of the Circle, and bowed to him. He smiled and bowed back.

“You’re on,” she said, standing out of the way. “How does it work?”

He took the flask from his pocket. “Just stay back,” he advised. “I’m not 100% sure what will happen.”

“Wait...you’ve done this before, right?”

“No.”

Her face became worried. “Then is it really a good idea? And what’s in there, anyway, some kind of potion?”

“Just water,” he replied. “Don’t worry, Sara. Everything will be fine.”

“I don’t know--“

He smiled. “Don’t be afraid, anama.”

Before she could say anything else, he uncapped the flask, lifted it, and drank.

*****

“What the hell has been taking so long?”

“I know, I know, you wanted results ASAP,” Frog said without breaking stride, grabbing a clipboard from one of the worktables as he and Jason passed through the outermost lab. “But the ecto-chrom tech has a two-day backlog right now and we’re totally swamped thanks to that shipment of hexed heroin from Akron and the tests we’re still running on those Seraph knives. Plus we’ve got a new trainee in the sample prep area, and well, basically the entire department is a Mongolian clusterfuck. Sorry, Agent.”

Jason had never been terribly fond of R&D; it was too brightly lit for his comfort, and it smelled weird, too many chemicals and mystical substances competing for his senses. The scientists tended to be socially awkward and always scampered out of his way, which was satisfying until they started dropping things. Once a new analyst had actually caught his instrument on fire because he was staring at Jason instead of monitoring the temperature readout. Jason was far more comfortable with other Agents and people who weren’t scared of guns or fangs.

He had to admit Frog had come a long way since taking over R&D, though. His management skills surprised everyone but Ness, who had been confident in his appointment from the beginning. She was a good judge of people’s potential for growth and achievement. Jason was a good judge of people’s potential for breaking the law or tasting like dinner.

“I did manage to put the water you brought me on the instrument last night, though,” Frog continued, leading Jason briskly into a smaller room where a large square machine took up most of the floorspace. It hummed quietly to itself; in the corner a lab-coated tech was bent over a computer reviewing the data on something or another. She didn’t even look up when they came in.

“Amy, where’s the report on that water sample for Agent Adams?” Frog asked.

She gestured vaguely to the right without turning her head. “Just finished the QC on it. It passes.”

“Good.” Frog snatched a paper-clipped sheaf from the desk and brought it to Jason. “Okay, so, do you want to read this and figure it out, or do you want the short-short version?”

“Short-short. You can cut the full report onto my server later.”

“No problem. Well. We ran all the tests SA-5 requested, and several others just to rule out anything else that might be in the water--curses, poisons, heavy metals, wards, glamours, et cetera. Basicallly? There’s nothing in it.”

Jason frowned. “So it’s just regular old enchanted Elf water?”

Frog shook his head, tapping a graph on the front page of the report. “No, it’s not enchanted anything. It’s just water. There’s no energy in it at all--it’s totally potable.”

“But it was sparkling,” Jason insisted. “There had to be something going on with it.”

“Must have been a trick of the light, then, or carbon dioxide that leached out later. I promise you, SA-7, it’s just water. In fact the sodium and calcium profiles match plain old tap water from any Austin building.”

Jason felt a stone fall into the pit of his stomach. “Including this one?”

“Yeah, actually. We serve filtered in the cafeteria but the individual apartment taps are City water.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jason breathed. “I have to go.”

He nearly sprinted from the lab, with Frog’s “You’re welcome!” ringing after him.

*****

“Rowan? Rowan!”

Sara held onto the Circle as hard as she could, fighting with all her strength to keep the boundary from tumbling as the onslaught of energy battered at her from the center.

She could feel it rising, and rising, swirling like smoke from the ground, starting at Rowan’s feet as he stood with the flask still in his hand, now empty, eyes shut as if seized by sudden pain. She wanted to go to him and make sure he was all right, but she couldn’t move--between one instant and the next the power became blinding, and she could barely see anything, just the afterimage of the Elf in the center of the Circle, and the silver-white flame that consumed him.

Sara felt the ground under her knees, but she held on. Energy ran through her in waves, and it hurt, so far beyond description that all she could do was scream.

From a thousand miles away she heard shouting, but whoever it was, there was nothing they could do--if she dropped the Circle now, Rowan could be killed. Whatever was happening to him had to finish on its own. She could feel it tearing him apart from the inside out, and he, too, screamed, but not in a way anyone would hear; his agony resonated between the worlds, a mourning cry that rent the fabric of time itself.

Another wave of power struck her, and she nearly lost her grip, but she seized the fraying edges of the Circle and held them fast. She bent around her belly and pulled all the energy of her personal shields inward to wrap around the baby.

To her amazement, she could almost feel the tramera inside her observing what was happening with fascination, not fear. The sense she got was of a small child watching fireworks and clapping at every flower of light.

Sara heard a voice--Jason’s, trying to get Rowan’s attention, or hers. “Stay back!” she cried. “Stay out!”

Just when she was sure she was going to collapse, that she couldn’t bear another hit, something changed.

She looked up in time to see the supernova of power around Rowan sucked back into his body...and then it exploded.

Energy rocked through the courtyard like a thunderclap. The Circle shattered into dust around her, but she knew she no longer had to hold it. There was no need.

The blast was such a pure white, with a silvery violet undertone, that it was like looking into the birth of the universe, like heaven staring back at her with a single unblinking eye. She stared, and felt it--perfect knowledge, and perfect love--drawing her back to her feet, lifting the terror from her body and leaving peace in its wake.

The night trembled into silence, and darkness, the light fading, fading, Sara’s vision swimming from the brightness.

She saw the flash of moonlight on the silver flask that lay discarded on the ground, and noticed that the candles had all been blown out.

Then she saw the ground. The grass in the Circle had been scorched--a perfect round scar in the Earth remained, black and smoking even beneath her feet.

Sara reached down with shaking hands and patted herself, and her belly, to confirm she was still alive and unhurt, but there wasn’t a mark on her or a single singed hair.

In the center of the Circle, Rowan lay unconscious on his back, arms outstretched.

Sara stumbled toward him though her legs were uncooperative, and fell to her knees at his side, shaking his shoulders hard. “Rowan!” Her voice was hoarse from screaming, but she called him.

It was then that she realized something about him was different--his hair, minutes ago the mixed browns and greens of a Texas summer, was bleached stark white.

A thunder of footsteps approached, but she ignored them, still trying to wake him. Just as the cacophony of voices reached the Circle, she saw his eyes flutter and open partway...and they were pale, glowing silver, with a violet undertone.

Someone dropped down next to her and took her shoulders. “Sara! Are you all right? What happened here?”

Sara recognized Dr. Nava vaguely; her mind was still running in drunken circles. She shook her head; she had no idea how to answer the doctor’s questions.

“Bring that stretcher for Sara!” Nava barked to the team of medics and Agents that had swarmed the scene. Instantly there were hands on her body, easing her back onto the stretcher, gently pressing her down where they could examine her quickly before moving her.

She paid them no mind. Her eyes were full of Rowan.

He blinked, frowned, and didn’t speak or make any motion that he understood when the others tried to communicate with him.

Sara heard commotion--more commotion--and Jason fought his way to the center, his face ghostly white with fear. He knelt at Rowan’s side and took his hands, trying as Sara had done to rouse the Elf, while the medics buzzed around like bees, taking Rowan’s vitals and placing an oxygen mask over his face. His heartbeat was apparently erratic, his breathing shallow, blood pressure through the roof.

“God damn it, Rowan, you stay with me,” Jason commanded with the slightest tremor in his voice. “I want time to yell at you later for being such a stupid bastard.”

Finally, Rowan blinked, and his eyes momentarily cleared; he squeezed Jason’s hand in reply, and smiled slightly. At the same time the heart monitor’s outraged beeping settled into a regular rhythm, and Rowan took a deep breath, silencing one of the other alarms.

Satisfied that he wasn’t about to crash, Nava ordered a second stretcher brought so both Witch and Elf could be transported down to the infirmary.

Sara closed her eyes at the lurch of the stretcher being lifted, and that was the last thing she knew that night.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

Archangel, part 8/?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:51:14 GMT

Yes, it's been forever, and no, I have no idea when part 9 will be out, but I'm feeling a bit more inspired toward this story lately so it's possible you'll see another part in a few days. Enjoy. :)

The match hissed to light, sending a golden glow over the darkened ground and the fingers that held the matchbook.

Rowan knelt on the earth beneath the Blessing Tree where, earlier that evening, he had set up a fire in a vessel he’d borrowed from the kitchen. He let the match fall into the wood he’d gathered and gently encouraged the flames with a touch of energy so that they flared up quickly. He didn’t want to be gone too long, or Jason would ask questions, and if he knew what Rowan was up to he would definitely not be happy.

Sighing, Rowan took the stone from around his neck. He didn’t need light to see the carvings on it--he had the incantation memorized, and kept his voice down as he recited it the proscribed seven times.

He supposed he was a strange sight, out here in the courtyard of a government building, an eternal creature in blue jeans chanting over a magic fire built in a cast-iron wok, but weird times called for weird measures.

Finally, he lowered the stone into the flames, and waited.

Just as before, there was a rush of power, and the fire blew itself out.

Rowan held his hand over the ashes to make sure they were cool before picking the stone out of the vessel, but he needn’t have worried. The flat surface and its ridged carvings were barely warmer than his body temperature. He draped the cord back around his neck and rose, casting a hunted glance around the courtyard; he’d chosen a spot behind the Tree where he was fairly certain nobody would see, but still, there were always people awake in the Agency and someone might walk by upstairs.

He covered the wok with a cloth so it would blend into the Tree’s shadow. The cook had said he could keep it--she had suspected that he wanted it for something besides stir fry, and most of the time when the Agents requisitioned something it wasn’t exactly fit for use afterward. It was possible Rowan would need it again later.

Taking another deep breath, he left the labyrinth and returned to the base, and to bed.

Surprisingly, when he came in, Jason was there, curled up dozing on the couch, shirtless with damp hair from a shower. He looked tired…but Rowan reflected that he looked tired a lot these days, ever since the Dreaming Gate. It was almost as if dying, even for a moment, had aged the vampire. It wouldn’t have surprised Rowan to see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

Rowan sank onto the couch beside him, suddenly near despair. So much had happened to them both. Were they doomed never to have peace beyond a moment here and there? Was this the best they could hope for, even after everything Rowan had endured, and everything Jason had helped him endure?

One blue eye flicked open. “There you are.”

Rowan mustered a weak smile. “Here I am.”

Jason, still half asleep, moved closer, pulling the Elf to him like a teddy bear and snuggling into his neck with a sigh. “Waited up for you.”

“I’m here now...let’s go to sleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yawning--rather adorably, Rowan thought--Jason rose from the couch and took him by the hand, leading him to the bedroom. Rowan stripped off his jeans and climbed into bed beside the vampire, who was already half asleep again but who moved closer to the Elf, holding him tightly as he settled back into slumber.

Rowan sighed, feeling happier than he had in days, despite what he knew was going to happen as soon as he fell asleep. He buried his face in Jason’s hair, taking as much comfort as he could from the scent and warmth he loved so well.

He didn’t realize he was asleep until he jolted “awake” at the foot of a tree.

Rowan blinked in the light that wasn’t real light, morning in the Dreamtime. The air was cool and smelled of Autumn leaves; the grass beneath him was just starting to warm from the early sun. Rowan was almost reluctant to stand--in some ways this place was so peaceful, even after what had happened last time he’d stood in this clearing.

He left the relative safety of the tree’s spreading branches and crossed the open expanse to the ominous shadow of the Rune Tree. The stone felt hot against his chest. Taking a deep breath, he lifted it and started to fit the key into its place in the bark.

“Don’t!”

Rowan gasped and spun around at the loud whisper from nearby, wishing he’d thought to wear a knife to sleep--stupid move, after last time, to come unarmed--expecting to see a band of murderous Seraph waiting for him.

The figure lurking among the trees was solitary, slender, and familiar. She beckoned to him. “Over here,” she said in Elvish. “We cannot be seen.”

Rowan approached her cautiously, but kept several feet of distance. “Forgive me if I’m not happy to see you, Mother.”

She moved enough out of the shadows that he could see her, and he held back a gasp--the elegant, regal creature he knew had changed since their last meeting. She was almost haggard, her hair hanging limp and unbraided, dark smudges beneath her eyes.

Worst of all, she was weeping.

“I am sorry,” she said, and he realized why she was whispering: her voice was hoarse and scratchy, as if she had been screaming for hours. “I am so sorry. I had no choice, my son, I had no choice.”

He tried to remain unmoved. This could all be a trick. She was the Sibyl’s servant, and had been so for many years, certainly long enough for her loyalties to have been warped by the Jenai’s hateful madness. But Rowan’s heart ached to see her that way, true or not…she was still his mother.

“How long have you been working against us?” Rowan asked.

Neneva sagged back against the trunk of an oak. “Long enough. She has the power of foresight, but not the strength for such sorcery. She uses me.” She held up her arm, baring it to him, and he saw long red gashes that had barely healed running up almost to her elbow.

Rowan felt sick at the sight. “She’s been working blood magic. My god.”

“I spoke to the sorcerer in your city and told him how to conjure the Seraph. He believed I was an angel. I told the coven where to find Sara.” Neneva buried her face in her hands, nearly sobbing. “She forced me to--you have no idea what she is capable of. For so long I believed her cause was just. After everything the humans did to us, I wanted to see them die.”

“Even the human who will bear your granddaughter?” Rowan asked coldly.

“That was when I began to understand that the Sibyl is no loving god, no leader. She is a killer and a madwoman and she must be stopped.”

“Then stop her,” Rowan replied. “Kill her.”

She shook her head as if the thought had occurred to her many, many times. “She is too powerful for that. Normal means will not work. It must be done both with violence and with magic, and for that...there are few powerful enough.”

He caught her meaning easily. “So I have to do it.”

She gave him a weary smile. “Not as you are, child. Right now she could destroy you with hardly a second thought, if she so chose. You are still denying your true power, and as long as you do, you are vulnerable and so are your loved ones.”

“Right now I don’t give a damn about her war. I only care about keeping Sara and the child safe--and Jason, and the others.”

“Then you care about her war,” Neneva replied, “for if you do not stop her, your daughter and the Witch will be its next casualties. The Sibyl will not see a Jenai born to a human. She would be too happy to see the Agency burn--but she doesn’t know where it is. It is so well shielded that even her Sight cannot find it. Thus she sent the Witch to kill Sara and the Singer, and tried to learn the Agency’s location from the young psychic Joshua. Neither he nor his bodyguard told her Seraph what it wanted to know.”

“What about Lex?” Rowan asked. “Did you summon him too?”

Neneva shook her head, swallowing hard. “No...but I know who did.”

“Who?”

Nearby something rustled in the bushes, and Neneva turned ghostly white and looked around, hunted. Rowan swept out with his senses but found nothing amiss. “I cannot linger,” she said. “I have been gone too long already.”

“Tell me who summoned Lex, Mother.”

Neneva looked like she was about to start weeping again, this time out of terror, but she said, “She is called Asitanayana. That is all I can tell you. I must go.”

Neneva turned away and started to bolt back into the forest, but Rowan caught her arm. “Wait--Mother--come with me. Come stay with me at the base. We can keep you safe from her and she won’t be able to use you anymore.”

She smiled again, this time sorrowfully. “I cannot leave here,” she said. “This place is not on the plane of physical reality. You have a body you can return to. I do not. I surrendered it to become the Sibyl’s handmaiden.”

“You’re trapped here...forever?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “But you must not worry about me now. You have your own choice to make, and you must make it soon, before she strikes again. This much you and the Seraph have in common: you both deny your true selves, and in doing so condemn those you love to death.”

“What would you have me do?”

“You drank of the Sibyl’s Well once, to remember. You must do it again in order to remember the rest.”

Rowan crossed his arms and glared at her. “You want me to sneak back in there under her nose and steal water?”

Neneva gave him a look he remembered well from his youth, when he would occasionally remind her that she had not birthed a perfect genius; it was what he called her “Suffer the Fools” look. “Do you think me completely stupid?” she asked, and reached into her robe, producing a clear glass flask that looked like an elongated teardrop. Within it, crystalline water swirled with a faint light. “Take this and drink it by the full Moon, and you will learn what you must.”

Rowan took the flask, holding it up to the sunlight where the soft luminescence of the water flickered like a thousand fireflies. “How do I know that the Sibyl didn’t give this to you to trick me?” he asked.

But when he looked down again, she was gone.

*****

This time, it was much easier--Rowan closed his eyes and willed himself back into his body, and just like that, he woke.

Unfortunately he woke to find Jason sitting up in bed, staring at him with obvious anger on his face.

Rowan groaned at the sudden darkness. “What?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what.

“You tell me,” Jason snapped. “I woke up and found an empty body beside me--you were barely breathing. I was about to call for Nava when I saw that goddamned rock around your neck--it was glowing. I put two and two together and got an Elf I plan to throttle here in a minute.”

“I had to go,” Rowan tried to explain, sitting up himself. “I needed answers. What else was I going to do? Text her?”

“How could you go back to that place after what happened last time? You could have been killed! The Sibyl could have captured you. You could have at least taken me with you--“

“Are you serious?” Rowan asked. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Ever. It was perfectly safe. All I did was go to the clearing, talk to my mother, and come back.”

“That’s all you did? Then what the fuck is that?”

Rowan looked down where Jason was pointing and drew a shocked breath.

The flask of water lay next to him in the bed; it had been in his hand until he woke. He picked it up, and the firefly lights appeared again, even brighter in the darkened room.

“Give it to me,” Jason demanded.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Rowan replied tartly. “You’ll go flush it down the toilet. This may be the only way I can find out what’s really going on.”

“Or it might be full of hydrochloric acid.”

The Elf sighed. He knew a losing argument when he heard one. “All right. I’ll let Frog test it--he can run it through the standard battery of poison analysis and through the ecto-chromatograph for magical toxins. Will that make you happy?”

Jason was not mollified, but he narrowed his eyes and paused before asking, “What is it?”

“It’s water from the Sibyl’s Well. I drank it once before, and learned about my past life as the Weaver. Neneva said that if I drink it again I’ll know what comes next.”

“Well, you should definitely trust her,” Jason muttered. “It’s not like she’s tried to kill anyone you care about lately.”

“She had no choice, Jason. The Sibyl is forcing her to work magic on her behalf. You should see her...she looks...awful. Like something is draining the life out of her one drop at a time. I don’t know how much longer she’ll last at this rate. The only way to free her, and to make sure nothing like what almost happened to Sara happens again, is to kill the Sibyl.”

Jason just looked at him. “Kill her.”

“Yes.”

“Kill a demigod.”

“Yes.”

“How, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Rowan replied, holding up the flask, “but it’s in here.”

*****

The next evening, as they were getting dressed--Jason to go on duty, Rowan to basically do nothing yet again--Jason held out his hand. “Flask.”

“I can take it to Frog,” Rowan said, starting to lose his patience. “Don’t you trust me?”

Jason gave a tired sigh. “To run this kind of test we have to officially register this thing as evidence, remember? There has to be paperwork signed off on by the Agent in charge. You’re suspended--technically you shouldn’t go anywhere near R&D even for a casual visit. We can go over there together and you can talk to Frog about it, but this has to be my case. Otherwise Frog could get in trouble for misappropriation of funds and equipment--“

“Fine, fine,” Rowan interrupted. “Here. Just take the damn thing and go. I’m meeting Sara for dinner and then she can walk me over to the lab. Just tell Frog to run the full GC/MS list and an EC-49 scan. It’ll take hours anyway, there’s no sense in standing around waiting.”

Jason was still angry at him for going to the Gate by himself, and angry that he had any intention of drinking the Well water, tests or no tests; he barely spoke to Rowan until he left, pausing long enough to bestow a quick kiss on Rowan’s forehead and say, tersely, “Don’t get into any more trouble while I’m at work, all right?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be sitting around barefoot like a good little housewife.” Rowan flopped down on the couch and watched Jason gather up his badge and wallet, holding the flask in his other hand as if afraid it might explode. “Have fun being useful to the world.”

Jason shot him a look of profound aggravation. “Don’t kill people, and you won’t get suspended.”

Rowan glared at him. “Don’t be a dick, and you might get laid again someday.”

The vampire threw up a hand, exasperated, and left, all but slamming the door behind him.

Rowan waited until he felt Jason’s presence fade, signaling that he had left the Agents’ apartment hallway and was headed for R&D, before getting up off the couch and heading to the kitchen.

He opened the fridge, also reaching into his jacket pocket and removing the silver whiskey flask that he’d taken from under the bar while Jason was in the shower. Rowan unscrewed the cap and looked in; the water inside the flask sparkled and danced. He replaced the cap and stowed the bottle in the back of the crisper drawer behind a quart of strawberries.

He glanced up at the calendar hanging over the computer desk. Two days till the Full Moon.

Sighing, he straightened out his clothes, and left the apartment to find Sara for dinner.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

Archangel, part 7/?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:08:07 GMT

Yes, I'm back. This time with a title.

Sara wasn't at all happy to be summoned from a sound sleep to an interrogation, but she hauled herself out of bed without complaining, swapping her penguin pajamas for a uniform.

She paused to examine her reflection. It wouldn't be long before her standard issue black cargos and t-shirts failed to circumnavigate the globe of her midsection. She was having trouble with the idea that she still had at least nine months of this, the last few of which the tramera would be almost full size and just...hanging out in her uterus, getting smarter. How was her body supposed to carry all of that for that long? How in hell did Elven women do it?

The truth was they didn't, at least not very often. The birth rate among Rowan's people was astonishingly low. But almost every tramera that survived the first six months made it all the way, unless something happened to the mother. Most infant mortality happened before that.

Surely if a willowy woman with no hips to speak of could manage it, Sara could.

She sighed, pulling her hair back as she left the apartment. At least thinking about carrying a baby for a year was less terrifying than the prospect of giving birth to a three-month-old.

Beck was standing outside the door of the interrogation suite, and her young face was stony.

"This had better be good," Sara told her. "I was in the middle of a dream about Clive Owen. There were peaches."

The vampire shrugged, still expressionless, and though Sara didn't know her as well as she knew her twin, it was pretty obvious that something had her worried.

"Why'd they call me and not Carson?" Sara asked. "He's way better at lie detecting than I am."

Beck shrugged again and opened the door for her. "Carson's working a case in Galveston. Beecher is out on patrol. Perez still isn't cleared for duty after that whole thing with the Corellian Flux Star. Rowan's suspended. You're all we've got."

Sara took a page from Beck's book--she rolled her eyes and said, "Awesome."

She was familiar with both the location and the procedure; the interrogation suite was made up of two adjoining rooms connected by a door and a window. The window was a two-way mirror. There was a bank of recording equipment and computers in the first room, and in the second, only a bare metal table and chairs, although just now the window was dark so she couldn't see who was beyond. Normally, the psychic Agent wired into the system, monitored the suspect's energy output, and offered feedback to the Agent in charge. It was a telepathic enterprise, which was why Sara wasn't usually the first one called. Her primary gift involved touch, not speech.

Her area of expertise was crime scenes, which meant she'd seen a lot of grisly things in her career with the SA, but also meant she rarely dealt with suspects directly. She'd done perhaps four interrogations total, and had never felt entirely comfortable with them. She saw the aftermath of evil, and it gave her a certain intellectual distance from the perpetrator. Interrogations put her up close and personal...even behind inch-thick bulletproof glass.

The door behind her opened, and Jason joined her. He, too, was attempting to cover something unpleasant with a blank expression. She wondered if he'd learned it from Beck, or she'd learned it from him.

He sized her up and said, "Nice shoes."

Sara looked down and saw with dismay that she'd forgotten to put her boots on. She was in fact still wearing her slippers--giant monster feet that had, at one time, roared when she walked. No wonder she'd been able to get dressed so quickly. Bending around her stomach to put on her boots was becoming an issue.

"So write me up," she replied. "Pertinents, please."

Jason stood beside her in front of the dark window. "At 22:34 tonight Shadow Agent 28 was killed in the line of duty."

Her heart sank. "Shit."

"He was serving as a bodyguard for Joshua Cohen. Cohen was also killed. Video surveillance indicated the killer was a Seraph, who used one of the sorcerer's knives stolen from R&D. Lex is the only Seraph known to the Agency, period, and has been on base recently. Eyes logged that he was in his apartment at the time of the murders--at least, he didn't leave by any means they saw. But to eliminate him as a suspect we need a formal psychic interrogation."

All she could think to say was, "Shit."

Jason gestured for her to sit down at the monitors and put on the headset, which was basically an Ear that could only tap into the suite. She got settled, kicking her monster feet off under the counter, then nodded to Jason, who informed Sage that they were ready to connect.

Sara felt the familiar lurch of her mind being joined into the network, but instead of Sean, she was hooked directly to Jason. [Testing.]

[Acknowledged,] he replied.

She hit the switch to begin recording. [Shadow Agent 9, Larson, Sara. Authorization 48994-1, coding on for standard interrogation protocol 1.]

[Shadow Agent 7, Adams, Jason. Authorization 47075-9, coding on as arresting officer in case number 86633C, standard interrogation protocol 1.]

Sage said, [Coding accepted, SA-9 and SA-7. Eyes and Ears recording. You may proceed.]

Jason turned a dimmer knob beside the interior door, and the room beyond the window became visible. Sara's stomach tied itself in a knot when she saw the Seraph sitting in one of the metal chairs, straddling it backwards, his chin resting wearily on the back while his wings spread out on the floor around him.

He'd never been her favorite person, but she had to appreciate in that moment how uncomfortable he must be in the base. None of the furniture was designed for him, and while most of the other nonhuman inhabitants could at least move around freely, he was awkward underground, belonging in the air high above Austin. Even Rowan, with his strange coloring and pointed ears, had an easier time blending in among mortals; the only other person Sara could think of who'd been that obviously a freak was Dru, who had been gone for months.

Not to mention, Sara had tried very hard not to think about Lex's mission or where he had come from, but he probably had to think about it all the time. What was it like, not knowing? When all the other Seraph so far had been summoned for destruction, he must feel terribly alone.

Whatever he was, he was no murderer. Sara knew that as surely as she knew the difference between homicide and suicide at a crime scene. There was really no need to ask questions, but they had hoops to jump through, and the same laws had to apply to everyone.

Jason left her in the recording room and walked into the bare chamber where Lex waited. Even after more than two years Sara still had to admire how easily Jason wore his authority. He was every inch the Federal Agent even in the face of his own lover. That was why Ness permitted him to do this sort of thing; he was one of the few Agents able to maintain objectivity...at least until the cameras were off.

Jason pulled back the chair opposite the Seraph, reaching into his coat to pull out a black case file. He sat down and folded his hands on the table.

"State your name for the record," Jason said.

The Seraph took a deep breath, staring at the file folder. "Lex."

"Your full name, please."

Lex closed his eyes. "Alexander Noel Jordan."

"Where were you tonight at 10:34 p.m.?"

"I was in my aerie, asleep."

"Could you please recount for me your activities between the hours of 8pm and 2am?"

Lex sighed and recited everything he'd done that night, punctuated with occasional questions from Jason when something needed clarification. Meanwhile Sara double-checked her grounding, then shifted into her psychic sight, allowing her senses to evaluate the Seraph's energy. To her, auras showed up as something between color and temperature. Jason's was a familiar silvery sort of blue, with an undertone that gave it a very similar feeling to Rowan's. Since they'd been together their energies had blended more and more.

Lex surprised her. His aura was almost blinding, a luminescent white with an almost violet cast, so bright it caused a stab of pain between her eyes. To normal human eyes he barely registered, but the minute she looked at him as something more, it was perfectly clear he was about as far from mortal as butterflies were from ants.

Sara said into the microphone, "Psychic verification of alibi. Subject is telling the truth as far as he knows it regarding his whereabouts during the murders."

[This is pointless, Jason,] Sara told the Agent. [You know as well as I do he didn't do it. There's nothing for me to tell you.]

He didn't reply, but asked Lex, "Were you aware of the existence of other Seraph in Austin?"

Lex said, "As far as I knew there was only one, the one that tried to kill me. There were the Seraph in the Dreamtime, but they all died as well during the fight."

"Did you take one of the sorcerer's knives from our Research and Development department?"

"No."

Again, the truth; Sara was fairly sure Lex didn't even know where R&D was located.

"Describe how Seraph are created."

Lex looked pained, but knew there was no way around it; he had to answer whatever Jason asked, and Jason had to ask. "We are summoned. Supposedly by God, but apparently humans can do it too. We...take over a human host body."

"What happens to the human inside the host?"

"I can't speak for the others. As far as I can tell, from observing them, the human is gone, dead. The Seraph is basically a soldier with no free will. I don't know why I'm different, but I don't have the memories or the personality of a Seraph--I'm still me, mostly. I wish I knew why."

"Do you know who summoned you?"

"No."

Sara frowned. As Lex said the word, something flickered in his aura--for a split second, it seemed to darken.

[Stay on that,] she said to Jason. [There's something weird happening.]

Finally, the vampire spoke to her. [Weird how?]

[I don't know--follow that line of questioning.]

"Do you know who summoned the others?"

Lex nodded. "The sorcerer, Pierrault."

"But you don't believe he summoned you."

"I don't know."

He flickered again. [Holy shit...he's lying, Jason.]

Jason's brow furrowed slightly, but it was the only outward sign he'd heard her. "You're saying you have no idea where you came from?"

"I told you, I don't!" Lex insisted, voice rising just a hair.

Sara swept the Seraph quickly. Emotionally, he was still showing honesty, but there was something underneath it that negated that emotion. [He does know. But he doesn't know he knows. It's got to be a repressed memory of some kind.]

Jason, ever the professional, changed directions. "Why are Seraph summoned?"

"To protect someone. Each of us is called to guard a soul with our lives." Lex was still agitated, but he spoke calmly enough. "I don't know how it works when a human conjures one of us to kill. At least two of the sorcerer's Seraph had a human--that girl who thought she was Kali, and the one who appeared to Joshua Cohen."

"Who are you here to protect?"

"The Singer...one of the newborn Jenai. Rowan and Sara's daughter."

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Lex returned his chin to the back of the chair, looking thoroughly exhausted. “I can feel it. I knew the moment I woke up with wings. Then when I met Sara, I could feel the Singer's presence even though she's, what, the size of a golf ball?"

[Now what?] Jason asked.

Sara studied Lex for a moment, completely at a loss. They weren't going to get anything out of Lex this way--on the surface, at least, he was innocent, and if he had repressed memories uncovering them would take a far more delicate touch than could be trusted to Jason. The Agency had people who understood the mind far better than a gun-toting immortal. If nothing else, magic might be involved, and she knew magic made Jason nervous.

[Let him go,] Sara suggested. [We need to take this up with Ness and possibly Frog to figure out the next step.]

She watched Jason conclude the interrogation with a few follow-up questions, but Lex's aura didn't flare again; now it showed as simple weariness along with sorrow. He blamed himself, in some twisted way, for Joshua's death--as if he could have known another Seraph would come along, or could have stopped the murder when he had no fighting skills and as far as she could tell not much in the way of psychic talent either. He was feeling pretty useless these days.

Sara didn't want to agree with him, but she couldn't help but wonder just what kind of guardian angel Lex was supposed to be for the tramera; she could be in mortal danger again at any time, and what exactly was he going to do about it, mope around and play the violin? When it came down to it, Jason would have been a better Seraph, even with his surly temper and twitchy atheism.

Sighing, Sara went through the shutdown process with the recording equipment as Jason saw Lex to the door where another SA was waiting to lead the Seraph out of the base. A moment later, Jason gathered up his file, clicked off the lights in the interrogation room, and joined her, looking as frustrated as she felt.

"You think he knows something," the vampire said, crossing his arms and watching her, eyes narrowed, while she logged out.

"He does. Or, part of him does. Maybe it's not Lex that knows it."

"Meaning?"

"Well, he said that Seraph are mostly soldiers. That their human personalities vanish when they're called. Maybe because of how he changed, the Seraph part of him and the Lex part of him are just sort of coexisting in there."

"Did you sense a second personality?"

"No." Sara followed him out into the hall and away from the room; thankfully he let her set the pace, as his gait resembled that of an Arabian stallion and hers was more like a duck these days. "I'm just brainstorming. We need to get him into an altered state, a trance or hypnosis, and have someone try to bring up the information without screwing him up. Whatever's in there...I have a hunch it's not good, or at least, more 'seventh level of Hell' than 'choirs of Heaven.'"

Jason shook his head. "I was afraid you'd say something like that."

"The dire prediction?"

"No...the annoying Biblical metaphors."

She rolled her eyes and poked him in the arm. "Sweetheart, I hate to tell you this, but it's going to get worse. We've got angels, Archangels, and magnificent destinies already. We're going to be up to our ass chakras in holy hoo-ha by the end of the week at this rate."

He left her at the elevator to return to her bed, and she could hear him muttering something about 'holy hoo-ha' along with a string of decidedly unholy curses all the way down the hall.

*****

Beck let herself into the aerie, tossing her bag and coat on her chair. "Baby, you home?"

No answer, but she hadn't expected one; she could sense he wasn't there, and though she reminded herself he was a big boy and had probably just gone for a flight around the city to steady his nerves, she couldn’t help but worry. The Seraph that killed the Jesus kid would probably be more than happy to do the same to Lex if given the chance. They had no idea who it was or where to find it. The only good thing to come up in the investigation so far was that Lex was no longer even nominally a suspect.

She got herself a beer out of the small fridge and made herself at home, as usual; she had weeks ago filled up the computer with her own music, and brought a spare pair of good speakers to replace the dinky ones he'd had. In minutes she had candles lit and Stella Blue's smooth rich voice was filling the room with heat. Beck had noticed that the musician's most recent album had a sexier, almost happier tone to it--she wondered if Stella had finally gotten laid.

Beck passed by the stand where the Rose waited for her partner, and the vampire's hand slid lightly over the instrument's curves. She wondered if Lex would ever be as firmly bonded to the Rose as Jason was to the Tempest. Touching the old violin she could feel her brother, but this one still had the feel of a bachelorette.

Behind her she heard a thump and the leathery flap of wings, and smiled. Lex's energy, though definitely tired and heavy-hearted, was as warm as always, and the scent of him as he came in the door, still wind blown and wild, went straight between her legs as if she'd stuck her bits in a light socket.

Neither of them spoke. She stood waiting until she felt his arms slowly circle her waist, and leaned her head back on his broad shoulder.

He breathed in her hair, holding onto her tightly. After a moment she turned in the embrace and kissed him.

She didn't give him time to brood, or even think; she all but shoved him backwards, then took firm hold of the back of his neck and steered him toward the nest. It probably would never have occurred to him to resist--few men ever had.

There were a few standard positions they usually operated from that wouldn't cause too much awkward folding and falling-over with Lex's wings. There was one that she'd never quite had the courage to try, but now seemed the time.

She lay her hands on his shoulders, unlacing his tunic and letting it drop to the floor. "Lie down," she commanded gently. "On your back."

His eyes widened, but he obeyed, gingerly lowering himself down onto the nest, wings spread out to either side and hanging over the bed, vulnerable, the position impossible to defend...especially once she had him out of his clothes.

"Trust me," she whispered against the soft fuzzy underside of one wing, loving the way it made him shiver. She peeled off piece after piece of her own attire, until he could do nothing but lie there and stare at the hard-muscled grace of her body, candlelight snaking and shimmering over her ivory skin and making her tattoos seem to dance.

She smiled at the expression on his face and crawled onto the nest, moving slowly and deliberately as she undressed the Seraph. She wished she'd thought of tying him down earlier--she couldn't think of anything handy to use--but this would do, for now. Beck wrapped her bare flesh around his, tattoos snaking against tattoos, and she was only too happy to make sure he was too busy to think about anything but her body...and then, too exhausted to think at all.

Hours later, when he'd finally lost consciousness in a sweaty tangle of limbs and wings, she lay listening to him sleep--he made a noise when asleep that she supposed was the Seraph equivalent of a snore, but sounded more like a large cat purring, and was deeply soothing.

She loved mingling their bodies together, but this was probably her favorite moment, the aftermath, when they were both spent and happy and one by one drifted off into dreams.

What did Seraph dream about?

Beck sighed and nuzzled his throat, content not to care about anything, content just to float in the warm sticky haze of spine-shattering orgasms and the sound of a purring angel at her side.

After a while, to her amusement, he started to murmur in his sleep; she couldn't remember him ever doing that before. Beck ran her hand along his shoulder to remind him she was there, just in case he was having fearful dreams, but he wrested away from her, his voice rising and falling first in nonsensical syllables, then actual words.

She pushed up on her elbow and listened with narrowed eyes. She had no idea what he was saying...but gradually it became clearer and clearer, and it was plain he was speaking a real language, not dream-borne gibberish. Stranger still, the inflection was completely different from his usual speech. Whatever language it was, it had a subtly different cadence, almost like Gaelic, or even Hawaiian...

Beck sat bolt upright and stared at him. He didn't wake, but reached out vaguely with one arm, saying something she almost recognized, as if he were having a conversation with someone she couldn't see. She'd heard it before...where had she heard it before...

She tried to unfocus her mind enough to let the sound reach beyond her intellect, into memory, where music and poetry tended to live. She'd heard dozens of languages in her life, and knew several, but there was only one that sounded like this...only one she'd heard her brother and his mate both speak...one she was absolutely sure Lex did not know.

Elvish.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

Purely out of curiosity...

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:29:06 GMT

View Poll: #1427338

Completed Story Archive Update

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:30:55 GMT

At long last I sat down and converted the files of the five most recent stories into html and uploaded them to the archive. Now you can read them in their entirety without nearly so much clicking, and start back at the beginning of the series if, like me, you've been away from it for so long that you want a refresher course (or just to reread all the sex).

The Fires of Beltaine

Last Dance

Altitude

The Dreaming Gate

Blue

Wow...it's hard to believe I'm on the twenty-second piece of this series. Tell me...what's been your favorite story so far?

Untitled, 6/?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:00:15 GMT

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.

An update that's not an update

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:02:16 GMT

Greetings all,

I'm sorry to have dropped off the face of the Earth this past month--some of you know that I've been writing a novel, and though I finished it on Friday (go me!) I'm kind of burnt out on fiction at the moment. Plus I had kind of forgotten what was happening here at the Agency, so I'm rereading the current story and hope to be back in the saddle in the next few days.

I may do a short bit to get myself back into the universe...maybe even some porn. But I wanted to let all my lovely readers know I haven't abandoned the SA. :)

~DS

Untitled, 5/?

Tue, 19 May 2009 19:32:35 GMT

“All right, get up,” Beck commanded, removing her foot from his neck. “Let’s go again.”

Lex groaned. “You said this was the last time.”

“I lied. Get up.”

He struggled to untwist himself from his wings and get back to his feet, while Beck waited patiently—well, not really. He groped for the knife that had skittered out of his hand, and tried to look somewhat dignified.

“We’re getting nowhere,” he complained. “I can’t do this.”

Beck shook her head. “I won’t deny you suck balls, baby. But surely something will sink in if we keep at it.”

Lex hooked his wings. “It hasn’t so far. Let’s face it. I’m just not built for your kind of fighting. We need a new strategy.”

She bit her lip and crossed her arms, eyes narrowed. “I have no idea how to design a training program for you. I’ve never taught--or fought--anyone with wings before. You’re really kind of awkward on the ground, but I don’t know what to do with you in the air.”

“Now, that’s not true,” he said wryly. “I seem to recall you’ve done a lot of things with me in the air that worked out quite well.”

She snorted. “Great--next time another Seraph attacks you, you can shag him to death.”

He studied the knife in his hand, a plain blade that probably wouldn’t do him much good against his own kind anyway. Neither would firearms, which he flat-out refused to carry. He needed the knife that the assassin Seraph had tried to kill him with, but it was still being analyzed.

Beck glanced at the training room clock and sighed. “Time’s up. I’ve got a case disposition meeting in thirty minutes and I need a shower. I’ll think about this some more--there has to be some useful approach somewhere.”

Handing the knife back to her, he nodded, but without much enthusiasm. Truth be told he wasn’t exactly leaping with excitement about the idea of learning how to kill people, especially his own kind…he understood it was necessary, but he didn’t have to like it.

How, he wondered as he left the training room, did other Seraph do their jobs? The assassin had the knife, but even with a cursed blade it wasn’t very efficient. Their bodies weren’t designed for hand-to-hand combat. They were designed to glide. Did they throw spears from the air? That wasn’t terribly useful either given that they could only fly if they jumped from a high place, not from the ground. They’d be good at soaring around a castle turret in a siege but not much else. It seemed like a flawed design.

That left arcane weaponry, and there again he met a dead end. Aside from his musical talent and a few latent psychic abilities that were starting to become annoying, he didn’t see how he could use magic against attackers. There had to be something they were overlooking.

Was it something that the other Seraph knew instinctively that he didn’t, because he was different? He hoped not.

Lex managed to wedge himself into one of the large shower stalls in the locker room, and rinsed off. Beck hadn’t been too sweaty since the whole hour had consisted of her knocking him over and pinning him down, but he was drenched.

“Useless,” he muttered inbetween dunking his head under the shower spray. He hadn’t been able to prevent the attack on Sara, and whatever Ness had said, making a phone call was hardly heroic. He was obviously not a fighter, although when he’d defended himself against the Seraph both atop the Winchester and at the Rune Tree, he’d held his own by giving into instinct.

Perhaps, again, that was the problem--he couldn’t access those instincts at will. The other Seraph, who were basically mindless soldiers, were nothing but instinct, as they had no personalities or will to get in the way. He was different.

But why?

Why had he been chosen for this if he wasn’t worthy of it? What god or sorcerer or whoever had summoned him into this body had chosen him for such an important task when he lacked the necessary abilities?

Or had his becoming a vampire thrown a wrench in the whole process, and he was supposed to be mindless like the others, but through the reckless intervention of fate, had been turned by Jason instead?

They were deeply uncomfortable thoughts, and Lex’s head hurt with their size. He toweled himself off and retrieved the bag he’d brought with a change of clothes. The SA’s uniforms didn’t really fit him; the pants were okay, but the shirts were a bit of a joke given his torso. At least he could still wear jeans.

He had planned to leave the base and go home, but an idea occurred to him. There was, as far as he knew, only one other person with any sort of experience with a Seraph besides those who had been dreamed to the Rune Tree.

He stepped onto the elevator and got a wide-eyed stare from the woman who rushed in just as the doors were sliding shut. She was wearing a lab coat and glasses and clutching a clipboard to her chest like a shield as she peered at him, and he smiled at her tiredly.

“Hello,” he said, startling her. If she’d heard of him, obviously she hadn’t heard that he could speak English instead of just communicating in grunts and growls.

“Hi,” she replied nervously.

“Ground level?” he asked.

“Um…yeah.”

He pushed the button for the surface-level floor and faced forward, trying not to make the poor girl any more uncomfortable than she already was, but a moment later she asked, hesitantly, almost shocked at her own temerity, “Um…could I…”

He found himself grinning and edged closer to her. “Go ahead.”

She swallowed hard, but reached out her left hand and just barely touched the edge of his wing.

“Wow,” she breathed. “And…you can fly?”

He nodded.

“Wow.”

She watched him in silent awe for the rest of the ride up, and he smiled to himself at the way she tried not to keep looking back at him as they went their separate ways.

Lex knew where he was going--his directional recall was excellent, another change from when he'd been human. Alex had always gotten lost, even the last night he was mortal on his way to the concert that would change his life...he remembered, in fact, that he'd almost given up trying to find the place, but had almost stumbled across the music building at UT, just in time to get the last seat in the back, just in time for Jason to take the stage.

It was another lifetime. He still wasn't sure if he regretted that night or not.

He knocked on the door. "Joshua?"

There was no answer, and repeated knocks did no good. A tendril of worry made its way up through his chest--he hadn't spoken to the boy after their first meeting, and he was fairly sure the Agency would have forgotten about Joshua the way they wanted to forget him. That's how this place was; it tore lives up from the root and then dropped them to wither in the sun.

He was, he supposed, being unfair. There were people here who cared about him and checked up on him, even besides Beck. Ness had been surprisingly solicitous of his welfare. The only person here who seemed to have any disdain for him was Sara, and he understood that even as it frustrated him.

Then of course there was Jason, another cause for frustration. Lex had no idea how to classify their relationship. There were times he craved the vampire's company as a sire and a lover, and times he wanted to slap the hell out of him.

He was starting to think everyone felt that way. Beck certainly did. She adored her twin but he drove her to distraction with amusing frequency.

Lex saw someone moving down the hall and called, "Excuse me."

A uniformed Agent paused and looked back at him. "Can I help you?"

He hadn't dealt with many actual Agents, but they were all cut from the same cloth--on duty they were detached, professional, and dangerous. This one, a young Latina with muscles more impressive than most men, didn't betray her surprise at seeing him, but he knew how she would have reacted without the mask of her job.

"I’m looking for Joshua Cohen," he said. "Is he still staying here?"

The Agent frowned. "As far as I know. He may have gone out, though; the Director decided that he wasn't a threat."

"Of course he's not," Lex replied. "He should be protected--they shouldn't have let him go out alone."

The Agent smiled without any real humor. "We didn't. He's not allowed to leave without a bodyguard. If you like I can check the duty log and see where he went."

Lex tipped his head to one side. "Isn't that against regulations?"

She shrugged and reached up to tap her Ear. He sensed a mental conversation going on--sometimes they spoke out loud, sometimes not. He didn't pretend to understand the system.

"I've got a location," she said after a moment. "Do you have a pen?"

*****

Silence in the conference room. The minutes ticked by.

Jason and Rowan faced each other across the table, both waiting.

Finally Jason asked, “How are you feeling?”

The Elf shook his head indefinitely. “What do you think she'll do?"

"I don't know. Technically she could have your badge."

"She won't do that."

"Probably not. But she can't just sweep it under the rug this time. The girl's death may not have been your fault, but your treatment of her during the interrogation was..."

"Inexcusable. I know." He ran a hand back through his hair. After a moment, he said uncertainly, "I'm afraid that the only way for me to get control of this is to give into it completely. Then who, or what, will I be?"

Before Jason could consider an answer to that—not that he hadn’t been wondering for weeks--the conference room door opened and Ness joined them, taking her usual seat at the table head.

"All right," she said, folding her hands. "After careful consideration of your service record, the current situation, and the incident in question, I've reached a decision. SA-5, you are suspended from duty indefinitely pending a full psychological and psychic review. Clearly you're too emotionally involved in the Blue Moon case--your behavior toward the suspect was in violation of every rule we have regarding interrogation protocol. I'm also concerned about your actions in the infirmary with SA-9; you saved her life, yes, but you displayed power we've never seen before. Until I'm confident that these new abilities of yours aren't dangerous, I won't allow you back into the field, much less within a mile of a witness or suspect. Do you have anything to say?"

"I understand," Rowan said, head bowed. "I'll cooperate fully with the staff in whatever ways you deem necessary."

"Good. SA-7, do you have anything to add?"

Jason gripped the edge of the table and kept his words as professional as possible. "Only that SA-5 has my full confidence."

He felt Rowan's eyes on him, and heard the Elf's gentle voice in his mind: [No, I don't. But I love you for saying so anyway.]

"Duly noted." Ness leveled a look on Jason, who bit his lip, then said to Rowan, "Badge, Ear, and gun, please, Agent."

Rowan stood and complied, sliding them across the table to Jason.

"Dismissed," Ness concluded shortly.

Rowan nodded and left the conference room, taking the left-hand turn, most likely back to their quarters.

"I'm sorry," Ness said once he was gone. "If he'd been anyone else I would have had his memory wiped and thrown him ass-first into the private sector."

"I know. I don't contest your decision, Ness. In fact I feel this is my fault--I should never have let him anywhere near Aradia. It's just...I expected him to act the way he would have before. Like himself. The way he treated her...it wasn't like him. I looked him in the face and didn't recognize him."

“I don’t know what we’re going to do, here, if he can’t get a handle on this. This Agency owes him a lot. After everything that’s happened, I don’t want to lose him.”

Jason didn’t look at her, but he said, “Neither do I.”

*****

St. Brigid's was a relatively new church, built with a combination of old world and modern American architecture. It wasn't as comfortable as the Winchester building with its gargoyles and turrets, but there was still something familiar about it, that faint edge of frankincense and the undeniable touch of...something...in the air.

Lex felt like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime as he walked into the sanctuary, but no one gave him so much as a second look; they were all here for their own reasons that afternoon.

He let his eyes adjust to the dim light, and took a deep breath, watching the light play over the stained glass panels that were set over the altar. He remembered staring at windows like them throughout his childhood, but those had been gruesome depictions of the death of Christ, each drop of blood lovingly set in red glass, a rictus of pain on the Savior's face.

This place was different, and he liked it. The windows showed scenes of Christ's life--letting the little children come unto Him, and feeding the multitudes. The center panel, where the usual crucifix was worked, showed a cross that was bare, a tomb that was empty. Lex smiled.

He lowered his eyes to the pews and saw a familiar dark head in an otherwise empty row.

It was hard to get his wings into the pew, but once he got the turn-and-slide right, he managed it with reasonable agility.

Joshua didn't look at him as he sat down, but the boy crossed himself.

Lex remained silent for a minute, listening to the quiet music: "Amazing Grace." His eyes roamed around the sanctuary, sizing it up automatically for danger, and he caught sight of another uniformed figure in the corner.

"It's an honor to see you again," Joshua said softly.

"You, too." Lex looked at him, seeing how exhausted he was, the shadows under his eyes. "You don't look well."

The boy smiled. "You sound surprised."

"How are you?"

"About as well as I look." Joshua fingered the hymnal in the rack in front of him. "This was always my favorite hymn, you know? I loved how joyful it felt to sing it. I used to love coming to church--a weird thing for a kid, isn't it. Most of the other kids just counted the minutes until benediction. I just wanted...I wanted grace."

"I understand."

"I prayed for years for God to make me His instrument. I wanted to help people--that's why I became a social worker, to try and love people the way Jesus would have. I wanted my life to have meaning and purpose, and I prayed...for years, I prayed, to be touched by God."

Joshua looked around the church as if he didn't recognize it, shook his head. "Now I don't know what I believe. The Seraph that came to me lied to me and said I was the Son of God. An angel tried to kill another angel in my name. And now that angel is dead and there's no one to lead me or protect me. What am I supposed to do now, Lex? Who am I, really?"

Lex sighed, folded his hands, and leaned his forearms on the back of the next pew. "You're Joshua," he answered simply. "Who do you want to be?"

"The Seraph said he was meant to protect me. Now he's dead. Who's trying to kill me, Lex? And why?"

"I think you can figure out the "why' pretty easily yourself. As for the who...we're working on that. There's some evidence there may be a connection between the sorcerer who summoned your Seraph and a group that's been plotting some very nasty things for the human race."

"The Jenai," Joshua affirmed with a nod. "Rowan's people. They want him back, and to do that they'll strike at everyone he loves...especially the baby. They don't want a Jenai born of human blood to pollute their line. But they can't afford to lose Rowan himself--without the Weaver, they'll never have the power to do what they want to do."

"What is it they want to do?" Lex asked.

Joshua leaned his forehead on the pew and closed his eyes. "Destroy humanity, of course," he sighed. "The firstborn Elves, children of the divine, want to cause mass slaughter of the people who mass slaughtered theirs. They see justice. All I see is more death."

"Me, too," Lex said. "I know Rowan feels the same way."

"What he doesn't realize is that now that the word is out about him being Jenai, and the Jenai being real, some Clans will side with him, and other Clans are going to cast their allegiance with the Sibyl. There may be a war before all is said and done--and that's not even half the problem. The rest is you, and the other Seraph. There are more and more rising. Why? What do they want? Who is calling them?"

Lex considered that. "Logic would suggest that the Seraph are the natural adversary of the Jenai--if the Jenai want the end of humanity, then the Seraph have been called to oppose them."

"Except for one thing," Joshua pointed out. "You were raised to protect the Singer, a Jenai. Does that mean not all of them are bent on destruction? And if so, why doesn't Rowan have one himself? He of all people needs protection in this."

"I don't have any answers...I wish I did."

"There's a lot of that going around," Joshua replied, sounding far older than his years. "Life was so much easier when I was Jesus."

"Are you so sure you aren't?"

"I don't know, Lex. I can feel something huge moving inside me, something that reaches out through me to heal and to see. I have these visions...every night when I try to sleep. The Agency people have taught me how to control it enough that I can come out to church without turning every meeting into a tent revival, but the power's still there. Whatever it is, it's big, and fearsome, even dark...and I'm so afraid."

They were silent for a while before Joshua said, "I wish I could go back. I wish none of this had ever happened."

Lex smiled a little. "Shall I go all Gandalf on you and feed you a line about destiny and doing the most with the time you're given?"

The boy rolled his eyes, but smiled back.

"It's getting late," Lex said. "I should get back to my aerie. Will you be all right?"

A shrug. "I guess. I've got Mulder or Scully or whatever his name is over there to get me back to my cage."

Lex took one of the church bulletins that was stuffed into the back of the pew and wrote his cell number on it, as well as his email address. "If you need me," he said, standing. "I'll see what I can find out snooping around the Agents. If they're not going to help us, we'll just have to figure this out for ourselves."

"Thank you, Lex," Joshua replied.

Lex was about to slide out of the pew, but one of the boy's hands darted out and grabbed his arm. When Lex looked back at him, there was a strange, faraway look on Joshua's young face, one that Lex knew, by instinct, not to ignore.

"She's coming for you," Joshua whispered. "Be ready."

Lex regarded him calmly. "Who is coming for me?"

"You and the Weaver both...you deny your true nature, and in doing so you condemn a thousand souls. Blood calls...blood calls to blood...she is coming for you..."

"Who? Tell me, Joshua. Who am I waiting for?"

Joshua looked up and met his eyes--but it wasn't really Joshua, it was whatever divine presence took hold of him and razed his life to the ground the way AIDS, Jason, and the Seraph had razed Lex's.

The boy spoke a single word, and then blinked. "What's wrong?"

"Um...nothing," Lex told him. "I...I was unsteady on my feet and you reached out to help me."

"Oh. Okay."

As Lex left the church, his heart hammering loudly in his ears, he dug in his pocket for his phone and stopped to lean against the stone wall carved with cherubim and the lives of the Saints.

Two rings, and a click: "Adams."

"Jason," Lex said. "I need your help."

The vampire sounded concerned--Lex never called, and no doubt he sounded as rattled as he felt. "What is it? Where are you? I can be there in--"

"No, no. I just need you to ask Rowan something for me."

Jason waited on the other end of the line, but his confusion was palpable, as was his worry.

"Ask him if he knows the word Astaerath."

Jason repeated the word carefully. Lex heard him muffle the phone and ask the question; hopefully Lex had caught them at home, not in the middle of a meeting or anything work-related.

A moment later Jason came back. "Rowan said it's Old Elvish."

"Does he know what it means?"

"Before the Dreaming Gate he wouldn't have, and it took him a minute to remember, but yeah, he does." Jason sounded edgy, and it didn't take long to understand why. "Astaerath are an elder race, or rather, a subset of an elder race."

"What do you mean, subset?"

"The Astaerath were a kind of Seraph, Lex. The word doesn't have a direct translation, but Rowan knew the gist."

"And? What does it mean?"

The vampire took a deep breath. "Archangel."

Untitled, 4/?

Wed, 13 May 2009 20:10:11 GMT

I still don't know what I'm going to call this one.

I did, however, realize that I've officially been writing the Agency for an entire year. A year! No wonder there's so many stories. *laugh* I need to update the archive of completed stories; I think "The Lost" is the most recent one up there.

Anyway. On with the weirdness.

Someone was singing.

Sara drifted in a dark sea of peace and pharmaceuticals, floating on her back, staring up at an imaginary sky full of stars, bound by the arm of the Milky Way. Water lapped around her and kept her insulated from thought and fear.

For a long time the only sound was of her heartbeat, but gradually she became aware of a second rhythm, much faster and higher-pitched than her own, coming from the epicenter of everywhere and nowhere. The two together brought to mind a drum circle, and she thought of dancing; it had been a long time since she’d danced.

Soft and low, she heard the song begin, and she tried to remember where she’d heard it before. Hadn’t it sounded like it was underwater? Or was she, too, underwater, floating beneath the ocean instead of on top of it?

Giving up on such thoughts, she relaxed again, and let herself drift, the tide carrying her up and down as the strange faraway music carried her.

When she woke she was still drifting, but the dark night and the ocean became brighter and resolved themselves into white walls and fluorescent lights. She blinked, unable to make sense of it.

A face peered into hers: female, lovely, with flame-red curls. “Sara?”

Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, but she asked, “What happened to the music?”

A frown. “Do you know where you are?”

“Not really.” Was that her voice? The words were definitely English, but sounded so funny. Hoarse, jagged at the edges, as if someone had rubbed it with sandpaper.

“You’re in the infirmary. You’ve been here since last night. Do you remember what happened?”

Everything was blurry. The face above her kept changing shape, but she was pretty sure she knew who it was. Name…name, name…Sage! Yes, Sage. "No."

"You were attacked. It was pretty bad. Rowan healed you."

Sara tried to laugh. "I don't feel very healed."

"Are you in pain? I'll get Dr. Nava."

Before she could protest Sage had disappeared, but that was all right; talking was taking a lot of effort. She wasn't in pain--she couldn't feel much of anything--but she had meant what she'd said. She could tell that if she weren't stoned out of her mind she would be hurting and probably fairly miserable.

Dr. Nava's dark head appeared in her line of sight. "Welcome back, Sara. How are you feeling?"

"I don’t know."

Sage said, "She doesn't remember anything."

Nava nodded. "She's still got a lot of drugs in her system."

Something awful occurred to Sara, and she reached down to her stomach, patting with clumsy hands, finding the bulge still there. "Baby?"

"The baby is still here. You went into premature labor, and you almost miscarried, but as far as we can tell everything's where it's supposed to be. I have to be honest with you, though, Sara; we can't be 100% sure that she wasn't affected by this. Her vitals are stable but you could still lose her if we're not very, very careful."

She saw movement in her peripheral vision, and another face joined Sage and the doctor. A hand touched her forehead gently. She smiled.

"How are you, anama?" Rowan asked.

She made a noncommittal noise. "You tell me, you fixed me."

The Elf sighed. "As much as I could. My knowledge of human anatomy is limited."

"You've always been pretty good with mine," Sara murmured.

Rowan chuckled. "That's my girl." He looked over at Nava. “How is she?”

“Dazed from the drugs, but she should be up and around in a day or so. As far as I can tell no damage was sustained to her body. Only time will tell for sure if the baby’s going to suffer for it.”

Rowan lowered his eyes to Sara’s belly, then placed his hand there. Sara felt him concentrating; they had a connection of their own, from so many months of working together and sleeping together, and she could tell when he was moving energy around even without invoking her own gifts.

He ran his power through her lightly. Obligingly, the tramera kicked.

The Elf smiled. “She’s all right. It almost felt like she was waving hello.”

“Hi, Dad,” Sara murmured sleepily, letting her eyes close halfway. “Things are great in here…just chilling out in the pool.”

“Why don’t we let you get some more rest,” Nava said. She reached over and picked something up, then lay it by Sara’s hand. “There’s the call button if you need something.”

Before they could leave, another person appeared, this one dark-haired with insanely blue eyes. “How’s the patient?”

“Aw,” said Sara, noticing that her words were getting more and more slurred, “Did you come down here to see me? I’m touched.”

Jason raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Actually I came to find Rowan. He’s needed. Urgently.”

Rowan frowned. “Why?”

“Another quickie in the broom closet,” replied Sara.

Jason rolled his eyes. “Once. That happened once. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”

He and Rowan popped out of sight, and Sara shrugged inwardly. Quickie, actual business, whatever. She had a nap to take.

*****

When Rowan laid eyes on Aradia through the interrogation room’s glass panel, Jason had to grab his arm to keep him from charging into the room and doing something that, while satisfying, would probably be detrimental to the case.

“Whoa there,” Jason said calmly. “We need her to talk.”

“People talk when they’re in pain,” Rowan snapped, but he yielded to Jason’s cooler head and stood still.

“You’re here to read her, and to back me up. I can’t let you stay if you’re going to threaten her.”

Rowan took a deep breath and tried to ground himself. “You’re right. I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want to link via the Ears, or telepathically?”

Rowan made an impatient noise. “I don’t need an Ear.”

“Okay. Can you tell me anything about her? First impressions?”

Rowan studied the frowsy woman at the table, who was staring around her with terrified eyes, her hands clenched together in front of her. She, like Sara, had been snatched from her home in her pajamas in the middle of the night, but had been allowed to throw a cardigan over her Hello Kitty tank top.

He scanned her and frowned. “She’s about as psychic as a block of wood. I’d put her at a 2, telepathically. She’d be able to do basic ritual magic, but would get unimpressive results without a group to back her up. She’s a good channel, though—someone could work through her easily.”

“Do you sense any kind of outside drain, like a link to the Reaping Sphere?”

“Not immediately. I don’t think she’s good enough to conceal something like that. I’ll know more once you’ve got her talking.”

Rowan watched as Jason entered the interrogation room, his demeanor instantly changing from relaxed to all-business. He had drawn energy tightly around him and flooded it with darkness, something Rowan wasn’t sure he knew he did, sort of like a glamour—but this was no illusion. It was simply a part of Jason he usually downplayed.

When the woman saw him she went deathly pale, her eyes flicking from his face to his gun and back again.

Rowan snapped on the speaker so he could listen, and opened a psychic channel between himself and the vampire.

Jason flashed his badge and introduced himself, whereupon the woman immediately launched into a stammered profession of innocence. She didn’t know why she was here; she hadn’t done anything. It was about as believable as it was articulate.

Rowan crossed his arms, thinking back to when it had been Sara on the other side of the glass, and he had been watching Jason question her. He remembered the feeling, the second he’d seen her, that she was going to become very important to the Agency. He’d also known she was trustworthy. This Aradia person gave him no such feeling. She was out to save her own ass, that was all.

“Do you recognize this?” Jason asked, laying a plastic evidence bag with the cursed bone in between them on the table.

She stared at it, swallowing. “N—no.”

“This,” Jason said, ignoring the tears that were tumbling from her eyes, “is a child’s finger bone. We don’t know who it belonged to or how he died, but we do know that someone stole this bone and put a powerful hex on it. We also know that the coven you’re associated with has participated in the murders of at least two people, and that its leadership made threats against Sara Larson.”

“Sara? What happened to Sara?”

“Look at that symbol and tell me what you think.”

Aradia didn’t touch the bone, but she stared at it, still shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

[She won’t touch it,] Rowan pointed out. [She’s not psychic enough to sense it’s dangerous. She must know what it’s for.]

“Why did you try to kill Sara Larson?”

“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t know anything about it!”

Jason remained completely unreactive to her borderline hysteria, and said, “You know, if you were coerced into acting by Blue Moon, and were willing to testify as such, we could make a deal.”

Rowan opened himself further, scanning her energy, watching it spike in accordance with her emotions. If she was linked to the coven at all there would be a cord between them and her, and if she’d been the agent of the attack there would be some kind of line from her to the bone.

“It wasn’t me,” she insisted. “Anyone could have put that in her drink. What about the guy at the counter who poured it? Are you hauling them out in the middle of the night too?”

Jason smiled. “No need.”

Rowan, too, was smiling, grimly. [It’s starting to show. Keep it up—I’ll have a conclusive link in a moment.]

“Miss Johnson, at no point have I mentioned the bone ending up in Sara’s drink.”

Aradia froze, realizing what she’d given away. “I was guessing,” she said. She saw the look on Jason’s face and actually pushed her chair back to put more space between them. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Rowan’s attention latched onto a single tiny leak in the woman’s aura, and he honed in on it. [Got it. They’re watching her. The attack may not have been her idea but it was her hand that acted.]

Seething hot anger rose up inside Rowan, and he stared daggers into her, while Jason continued his line of questioning this time with the assumption of guilt. Rowan knew she was going to crack, but that they wouldn’t get anything useful out of her—these people had trained her well, and she’d go to the grave before betraying them.

We’ll see about that.

Rowan pulled open the door to the interrogation room, striding in with deadly purpose. Jason looked up at him in surprise.

“What are you—“

Without answering, Rowan reached down and hauled Aradia to her feet. She squeaked and struggled, but his grip was like iron; before she could speak he seized her mind in mental hands as rough as his physical one.

“Tell me,” he hissed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Jason say urgently, “Rowan, let her go.”

Rowan’s head snapped around to the vampire’s, and when Jason saw the look on his face, he withdrew his hand and took a step back.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” Rowan said to the woman.

She was sobbing now. “Please, please—I didn’t want to. They said if I didn’t do it I’d be next. Please.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He heard Jason say into his Ear, “No…stand down. I’ve got it under control.”

Aradia was still crying, incoherent now. “Fine,” Rowan said. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

He tightened his hold around her and pried her mind open, an easy task since there wasn’t much in the way of shields to stop him. He dug through until he could get a clear shot at the link between her and the coven. She tried to fight him off, weakly, and he paralyzed her mind for a moment so she wouldn’t accidentally hurt herself.

The link was cleverly concealed, and thready at best—even a month ago he wouldn’t have been able to follow it. But things were different now.

He dove in after it and traced it northward, toward Dallas. That wasn’t unexpected. What did surprise him was that once it reached DFW, it split. The main branch connected her to the coven, but the coven in turn was connected to…someone else. Someone more powerful than all the Witches put together, something that was pulling their strings.

Someone…

No. It can’t be.

Before he could withdraw, he felt something emerge from the link, a dark and twisted energy blasted toward them. It raced along the link like black lightning, and Rowan had to drop his hold on Aradia to shield himself from the onslaught.

The blast hit him like a train, his mind suddenly full of shadows and fire, and agony squeezed him in its fist. He realized, almost too late, that through him the energy could reach Sara, and Jason, and potentially everyone at the SA, and that its intent was murderous and angry at being discovered.

Rowan threw his power into his shields, slamming them up so hard that the attack struck him and bounced back, reverberating along the link until it returned to its creator.

He heard, or felt, a scream.

Energy sizzled through the room. Aftershock after aftershock hit him, and he grounded them out as best he could, but he could feel the building shaking, hear a cacophony of alarms blaring.

Rowan was shaking hard as he opened his eyes. His body was covered in sweat but he was freezing, and the arms around him weren’t helping.

“Hold still,” Jason said. “Nava’s on her way.”

The vampire’s voice was tight with tension, and Rowan started to reassure him he was fine, but it occurred to him that might not be true. He couldn’t seem to move.

“The girl,” he croaked.

Jason looked over past Rowan’s shoulder, then back down. “Dead.”

“Sara?”

“As far as I know she’s fine. Whatever the hell that was, it was contained to this room and a few tremors. Rowan…”

He knew what Jason was saying even without the words. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Maybe not. But you’d better hope Ness believes you.”

Rushing feet, and Rowan closed his eyes, listening as a med team surged into the small room, crowding it with voices and equipment. He heard them examining Aradia and pronouncing her dead.

“Ness,” Jason said, “I’m prepared to testify—“

“Don’t worry about it yet, SA-7,” Ness cut him off. She sounded angry, though surprisingly, not at either of them. “The Eyes got the whole thing. The second the energy in the room rose they started recording. That’s not to say SA-5 is off the hook. He and I are going to have words as soon as he’s fully conscious.”

Normally Rowan would have been upset at that, but he was too busy not screaming from the headache that was now pounding between his eyes. He whimpered and covered his face with his hands.

Dr. Nava knelt beside them and coaxed Rowan onto his back, saying, “From what you’ve told me, Ness, it’s probably just energy shock—he’s been through this before. Do you know where you are, Rowan?”

Rowan nodded. “Too bright.”

“Keep your eyes shut a minute, then. I just need to get your vitals.”

He obeyed mostly because he didn’t have any other option, and felt Nava poking around for his pulse and holding her stethoscope to his chest. Then she placed a cold metal disc on his arm—the digital scanner—and hooked it up to her computer. A moment later, there was a series of beeps.

“As I thought. He’ll be all right. Good thing he didn’t have any electronic equipment on him, like the inhibitor or an Ear, or it would be fried. SA-7, take him downstairs and put him to bed.”

Rowan listened to the voices and noises all around him, keeping his hands over his eyes as the thunder rolled in his head. He wanted to have some kind of emotional reaction to what had happened, but it was too soon—whether from the pain or the shock, he felt frozen inside. But there was one thing he absolutely had to do.

“Ness,” he said weakly. “I need Ness.”

“Yes, Rowan?” she bent over him, close enough that he could smell her perfume: lilacs. It seemed a little…girly…for her, but that was Ness, a study in contradictions. Just like the rest of them.

“The coven.” He forced the words out past waves of unconsciousness. “They’re working for someone. I followed the connection from the girl to them, and then to their boss. That’s who attacked me. They realized who I was and panicked.”

“We know that,” Ness replied. “It was pretty obvious from the readout on the Eyes.”

“But…when I found them…they knew me. And I knew her.”

“What? Who was it?”

He took a deep breath around a hard knot of what he knew was going to turn into grief. “It was my mother.”

Blue (complete)

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:42:23 GMT

This is a short, sweet little story that popped into my head this week, and I thought I'd take time out from the Great Big Angsty Plot OMG to tell something a little more fun. It takes place somewhere between "More than Kin" and "The Lost."

It all started because her violinist got eaten by a demon.

At the time, of course, she didn't know that. All she knew was that Tony hadn't shown up for rehearsal and nobody could find him.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered. "Roy, did you try his cell?"

"Twice. Man, we're fucked." The bassist wasn't one to mince words. "The one song where we really need that lazy ass happens to be the one everyone wants to hear. We can't just skip it."

Stella's hand around the neck of her guitar was clenched so hard her knuckles were white. Roy was right. "Bleed Without You" had gotten a lot of airplay on local stations the last month, and the last two audiences had known all the lyrics. The song was one of those angst-ridden ballads she'd written after Racquel had dumped her, and it depended heavily on the duet of piano and violin. That's what she got for being ambitious--if she'd stuck with an acoustic line the way it was first written it wouldn't be so pretentious and they wouldn't be so fucked.

Neal Munson, the club manager, was asking Roy if they could find someone else, and Roy was retorting acidly that people who played violin and could learn a song in two hours weren't exactly falling out of the goddamned sky in Austin.

Stella lifted her head. "Hey, Roy...let me make a call."

*****

Jason Adams swept into the club looking a little like a secret agent and a lot like a badass. She'd always admired how he commanded attention--the minute he appeared, everyone in the club stopped what they were doing and stared.

He was wearing black like usual, complete with that long coat that seemed to be part of his uniform. He wore it all year long, and she'd pointed out once that if he was ever sent undercover he might want to try short sleeves in July. At least right now it was February, so it made more sense.

He had something with him that made the knot in her stomach relax a little. A violin case.

That wasn't all he had.

Stella watched his two companions enter the club behind him, and while her mind asked "what the fuck?" her pussy said, "oh, hell yeah!"

The first one was another guy, this one with long hair the slushy grey of the world outside, and eyes that were a slick silver like ice hanging from a road sign. Her brain didn't want to register the fact that he had pointy ears, and that he was as theoretically gorgeous as Jason himself, although his features were just feminine enough to confuse her hormones.

Behind him came a woman in leather with a wild shag of black hair streaked liberally with blood red, and Stella's nether regions stood up and saluted. The woman's face was familiar, and it took a second to realize she must be the sister Jason had talked about. There was a strong family resemblance, down to the way they walked, but the girl was clearly a lot more interested in the people staring at them. Jason was aware of his affect on people but didn't care; the girl was aware, and loved it.

Jason took the steps up to the stage and smiled at her.

"You're my savior," she said, resisting the urge to hug him. "Thank you times a billion."

"Glad to be of service," he replied. "I'm just thankful you called on my night off." He gestured to his companions, who joined them on the stage. "This is my partner, Rowan, and my sister Beck. This is Stella Blue."

Hands shaken all around. Rowan gave her a particularly warm smile, and yeah, he was definitely hot, for a guy. She wasn't sure what to think of that. She’d been in the vag business as long as she’d known there was such a business, and the only phallic objects that had ever come close to her were made of silicon and usually battery operated.

"It's all right," Jason said. "He does that to people."

"Shit, is that a Gibson?" Beck asked, pointing at her guitar. "It's gorgeous."

"Yeah...you play?"

"Bass. A little piano. I'm not a genius like my brother here, but I get by."

"Stella," Jason said, "What can you tell me about this missing violinist of yours?"

She blinked at the change in subject. "Not a lot. His name's Tony Garcia. We advertised for a violinist in the Chronicle three months ago and he was the best audition. He recorded the part for the song, and we liked him enough to keep him around for gigs."

"Did you know anything about his personal life? Friends, enemies?"

"No. He was private. Really driven, as a musician--he was never satisfied with his playing, always practicing. And he was good. Not star quality, but good. He was probably never going to get out of Austin."

Jason shot Beck a look, and she nodded. "Eyes say the energy spike corresponded to his address. The team didn't find anything in the apartment except the usual leftovers."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Goat?"

"Chicken."

"Amateur."

Stella started to ask what the hell they were talking about, but Jason turned back to her and said, "I'll level with you, Stella. After you called I ran a check on Tony Garcia and sent a couple of Agents over to check on his place."

"You shouldn't have done that," she said. "I didn't want you to misuse government resources or whatever they call it. I don't want any trouble, I just needed a stand-in."

"Well, the thing is...this isn't the first time we've heard the name. Tony's suspected in some fairly shady dealings."

"Like what? Drugs?"

Another look exchanged among the three. "Near as we can tell, Tony Garcia was a mediocre music student until six months ago. We think he was...on something that enhanced his performance. Let's call it a drug. The problem is that the kind of people who deal in this sort of thing tend to be dangerous, and we think he may have...gotten his hands on something he wasn't expecting. You know how drug dealers are; you pay for Ecstasy and you get rat poison."

She knew he was skirting some pretty important facts about the whole thing, but really, if the feds were involved, she wasn't sure she wanted to know the details. "Okay. We can go with that. So you think his dealers are looking for him? Is that why you brought the Next Top Models here?"

Jason grinned. "Something like that. And they're both big fans of yours."

Rowan, who had been looking around the club as if memorizing every inch of the room, shot her a smile and said, "We saw you at the Music Hall last Winter. Plus...well, this may be too much information, but you figured heavily into our first date."

"That's probably the weirdest compliment I've ever gotten. Thanks."

Jason nodded to Rowan. "You, stay backstage away from the crowd. Beck, circulate. Keep an eye on the doors."

"Got it." Beck hopped down off the stage, which probably would have resulted in Stella breaking her ankles if she'd tried it, and went to the bar, where Steve was getting ready for the crowd.

As Beck took a barstool, her coat fell open a few inches, and Stella saw the glint of metal: a gun strapped to her corset.

Good god, that was hot.

Jason saw her staring and said, "Sorry, Stella, but liking cock runs in the family."

Stella smiled ruefully. "Too bad. I'd put that girl on a plate and sop her up with a biscuit."

Jason looked mildly horrified at the mental image, but Rowan laughed. "Wouldn't we all." He turned to take the steps back down to the floor, and Stella noticed he was wearing some sort of gadget on his wrist--there was another one behind his ear.

"He has a hearing problem, you could say," Jason not-quite-explained. "Crowd noise."

The collective weirdness of his people was making him seem even weirder. They'd had conversations and hung out before, but she'd never really paid attention to his body language or the aura around him beyond the fact that people automatically deferred to him like they would to a rock star. Watching him open the violin case and take the instrument out, there was a precise sort of poetry in his movements, and she knew from years of hanging around musicians that the way he held the violin meant he was every bit as good as he'd said he was.

"We don't have much time before the doors open. Are you sure you can handle this?" she asked. "The sheet music's on the stand, but maybe we should go through it a couple of times."

He shrugged. "No need. I listened to the song on the way over."

The knot in her stomach was back. Nobody was that good, were they?

She glanced over at Roy, who mouthed, "We're fucked."

*****

"Baby I bleed
I bleed without you
Kiss me one more time
Then twist the knife
and walk away..."

She had no idea how he did it, but not only had Jason memorized the violin part, he'd fixed it. He joined in just after the first measure, half a verse early, and she cringed behind the piano--until she realized that he'd done something to the melody, looping it around itself and changing the key, simplifying the first section and doing some crazy-ass thing with the chorus that almost had her in tears, not only as the beauty of the music, but at the memories it evoked.

She'd really thought Racquel was the one. They'd known each other since the first gig, and she should have known not to fall for a drummer, but what good did common sense do up against a cherry blossom tattoo, multiple orgasms, and the most amazing chipotle chili on the planet?

"Hold my wrists above my head
Carve your initials in my chest
Me plus you forever
Until the leaves come falling down...
'Cause baby I bleed
I bleed without you..."

She hadn't been able to really get into the song since she'd written it--song was emotion, and this one took her back to a deeply painful time she wanted to forget. But somehow looking at it from this side, it held a certain promise along with the loss, as if metaphorically bleeding to death wasn't the end of everything.

It had been months since she'd been kissed. Months. Musicians were supposed to be knee-deep in groupies, right? Even locally-world-famous tiny dreadlocked dykes with red-beans-and-rice asses.

The silence of all those lonely nights poured out of her into the keys, and she heard the violin lift the melody up along with her voice into the bridge. She realized that Jason wasn't just accompanying her, he was improvising. Son of a bitch.

She darted a look at him and saw he was playing behind her, not directly in the spotlight, and his eyes were closed, his expression rapt and bordering on ecstatic. She felt another pair of eyes and turned her head to see Rowan standing in the wings, his eyes locked on Jason, a soft smile playing on his lips. There was enough love in his silvery eyes to make Stella forget, for a minute, just how shitty love really was.

Somebody's going to get crazy laid when he gets home. Stella sighed inwardly. Must be nice.

She arced the piano line back toward the final chorus, and the weirdest thing happened: it was like she could hear someone talking in her head. She recognized the "voice," but had no idea how he could be doing it.

[What is it you really want, Stella?]

She frowned, trying to concentrate on the music--she'd played this song so many fucking times she barely even had to be awake. What did she want? She wanted someone to come home to, someone to go on the road with. Someone to make it worth the risk of hate crimes in this backwards-ass state. Someone she could take to her Mama and someone who would love her dog. Someone who loved music and progressive politics and could teach her how to cook.

Stella looked back over at Rowan, and she knew, instantly, that was exactly what Jason had. A match. A pointy-eared soul mate with his own life and his own purpose who wanted to walk with him for as long as the path went on.

I want that. Is that asking too much of this tired old world? We get maybe eighty years... at least some of them should be in such good company.

She heard a chuckle. [Very well.]

She'd never be able to explain what happened next, but the closest thing she could come to describing it was to say it was like someone cast a spell. She could feel something change in the music, catching her up in the last few lines, and when she opened her mouth to sing, it moved through her, violin and piano and voice all merging, calling, as if it reverberated off the edges of heaven itself.

The applause was, to say the least, thunderous.

*****

She came off the stage feeling so high that she almost got herself killed.

After "Bleed Without You" Jason disappeared, his part of the show over with, but she barely noticed. She was deeper into the music than she'd ever been, and found herself fiddling around with choruses, adding layers to the music, taking her acoustic solo on the cover of "Bring Me Some Water" to a whole new level that Melissa herself might have envied. She felt like a floodgate had opened.

Roy looked shocked as shit, but she noticed he kept up with her. So did Tammy on bass, and Stu, the guy who'd replaced Racquel on drums. She'd picked him specifically because he was the least like Racquel, and not just because of the penis. He was fat and hairy and had jailhouse tats. He was also a big teddy bear and hell on the drums. Her fit of pique had paid off for the band.

The audience demanded two encores, and she was more than willing to oblige. After that, her voice was hoarse and her fingers were about to bleed, but she didn't care. She bowed, told Austin it was awesome and goodnight, and left the spotlight with her beloved Gibson, her boots thumping hollowly on the wood stairs that led to the backstage area and the rear exit.

Her mind was on fire. She found her bag and groped for the notepad she kept in it, scrawling reminders on the first blank page--snippets of lyrics, a melody.

The noise beyond the door was deafening. Stella wiped sweat from her forehead and tossed the notebook back in her bag, then tucked the Gibson in its case and found the bottle of water she'd left by her stuff before rehearsal.

She was burning up. Suddenly she had to be outside--she didn't care if it was sleeting again like it had been earlier that day. She needed air.

Stella pushed open the heavy metal door and stumbled out into the back alley. She still had her water, and guzzled it inbetween huge gulps of freezing night air. As the weather wizards had predicted, it was wet and slippery outside, and sweat-soaked stage clothes were no match for the rapidly dropping temperatures. Within a minute she was shivering.

What the hell had happened in there? Clarity was starting to reassert itself. What was she thinking, magic and love and all that crap? It was crazy, stupid.

She told herself.

There was a scuffling at the end of the alley, probably a dog. She leaned back on the icy bricks to take another couple of breaths before going back inside. She wanted a drink. A very, very big drink.

A growl.

Just what she needed--someone's stray pit bull.

She looked over, about to yell at it to get gone, and her mouth dropped open.

There was a...thing...at the end of the alley, watching her. She could see it plain as day...because it was glowing.

"Oh, shit. Shit, shit, holy mother of shit." She stared at the thing as it took a step toward her, and a spare corner of her brain wondered if she could get to the door before it got to her, assuming she could make her legs work.

It growled again. It was too big to be a dog, and too long. It was like a hairy lizard, or a giant weiner dog wolf, maybe a big killer ferret? It was black and oily-looking, its eyes a sick sort of yellow, its mouth open to show off curving teeth that were dripping with green saliva.

The hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood up.

"Stella! Get down!"

She obeyed before she could even identify the voice, dropping to her knees with her arms over her head, just in time for the club door to fly open to her right and a figure to fly out of it, black leather and red hair swirling.

Beck lifted her gun and fired, just as something moved at the open end of the alley and more shots exploded from there--then from somewhere overhead.

The thing screamed a piercing, all too human sounding scream, causing her to clamp her hands over her ears. It leaped up into the air and landed writhing, screaming again and again as more bullets struck it.

She saw Jason stride up to the creature, showing absolutely no fear, and stand over it, his eyes shining an icy silver. His expression was cold, alien, almost inhuman. He fixed his gun on the thing's head and fired one more time directly between its eyes.

Green blood oozed out of dozens of holes in its body, and it whimpered and lay still, huge red tongue lolling out. Smoke rose from the bullet wounds and she could hear a faint sizzling sound.

"Beck," Jason said, "call for a retrieval and cleanup unit."

Stella stayed right where she was until she felt a gentle hand on her arm, helping her up.

"Easy there," Rowan told her, steadying her. "It's all right now."

"What the fuck was that thing?" she demanded. "Is it cooking?"

The stench was horrific, like barbecued dog hair and rotten meat, and she felt like she was going to--no, wait--

She pulled her arm back, spun away from Rowan, and vomited into a convenient trash can.

Those same hands came up to her again, this time taking careful hold of her dreads and pulling them back from her face until she was finished. She felt soothing heat wherever he touched her, like an instant massage, and it didn't take long to regain her composure.

"Come on," Rowan said. "Let's get away from all this mess, shall we? Beck and the cleanup crew will take care of it."

She didn't have the slightest idea how to protest, even if she were so inclined. She let him lead her away from the dead dog monster, out of the alley, back into the world that made sense.

*****

"So this is what you do," she said after two cups of coffee doctored with a shot of whatever dark, smooth potable Jason produced from the flask in his coat. "You hunt monsters."

"Not exactly." Jason nodded his thanks as the waitress refilled his cup and Rowan's; the former drank his black, the latter added soy milk. "We're federal agents, like I told you, but our jurisdiction is a little more arcane than the FBI. Your friend Garcia, for instance, got in over his head--he owed money to the people who promised to make him a virtuoso. He couldn't pay, so they sent someone to take it out of his hide. Literally."

"That thing?"

"Three of those things," Rowan clarified. "We got the first one--it was sent to his home, which we'd staked out. The second one found him just as we found the third one. All three are now dead...unfortunately so is Mr. Garcia."

Stella shut her eyes. "Fuck."

"I'm sorry," Rowan told her, squeezing her hand. "We tried."

She didn't know what she was getting upset over--she hadn't known Tony that well--but her eyes were suddenly full of tears. "I wish I could just block out the last few hours. Except the show. That was un-fucking-believable."

"Thank you," Jason said. His eyes were on her coffee cup, and was it her imagination or did he look a little bit guilty? What for? "If you need backup again, just let me know, and if I can get the time off I'll be glad to help you out."

Stella blinked. She was so tired--the café was starting to get a little blurry. She probably shouldn't have made her second coffee quite so Irish.

Jason locked eyes with her. "I'm sorry, Stella. You're a civilian. Rules are rules."

"What..."

She felt herself slumping sideways, and Rowan moved around to her side of the booth to hold her up. She heard him sigh. "The cab's waiting."

The last thing she heard, before she passed out, was Jason saying, "Trust me...pretty soon we'll be able to call it even."

*****

"Damn shame about Tony," Roy said. "I've got feelers out for a new violin, don't worry. Tammy said she knows somebody that might be able to hook us up. How you feeling?"

"Kind of hung over," Stella replied, staring down at the half-legible notes she was translating into actual song lyrics. Whatever she'd been high on, it was good shit--there were bits of at least three songs in her notes, and they all had potential. "Did you hear back from the guy at Slipknot?"

"Yeah--we're booked. I've got two more leads, too--seems like word's gotten around about last night. Munson wants us to come back, too. I'll let you know."

"Okay, see you tonight at rehearsal."

"You got it, Stel."

She hung up and switched the ringer off--she hated talking on her cell in places like the coffee shop, but the place was packed and she hadn't wanted to leave and risk somebody stealing her table.

Jason had let her know before he and his people left that the cops had found Tony dead in his apartment from what looked like an overdose. She had apparently commemorated his passing by getting as fucked up as humanly possible, because she couldn't remember a thing about leaving the club or getting home. Thank god she'd made it back with her guitar; it and her bag were both waiting for her on the coffee table when she stumbled bleary-eyed out of bed Sunday morning.

"I have to ask you something," came a voice.

She looked up into the greenest eyes she'd ever seen.

"Yeah?"

"Is Stella Blue your real name?"

She stammered for a second, then managed, "Yeah, actually it is...Stella Tamira Blue. It was either be a musician or a porn star."

The young woman's laugh rang like wind chimes. A single dark brown curl escaped the bandana she had it confined in. "I don't want to bother you," she said. She had a dimple in her right cheek. "I just saw your show last night and wanted to tell you how incredible it was."

"Thank you." Stella looked around--all the tables were still full. "Do you want to sit down?"

"Um...sure." She sank gracefully into the opposite chair, somehow juggling a messenger bag that appeared laden with books, a huge cup of coffee, and an instrument case without dropping anything. She was taller than Stella--most people were--and curvier, wearing flare-legged jeans and a t-shirt that had a cupcake-and-crossbones design over the bust, and Stella didn't miss the tiny triangular rainbow pin on her bag, or the title of one of the battered books that poked out: Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

Stella's eyes fell on the instrument case.

The woman was carrying a violin.

You have got to be shitting me.

"My name's Angie," she was saying. "I'm a music major at UT."

Stella almost didn't remember to reply. She was too busy staring at Angie's full, lush lower lip.

Before things could get too awkward, though, she got her head out of her ass. "Nice to meet you, Angie."

Angie's proffered hand was soft but strong, and she had a tattoo of an angel playing the violin all down her arm. One wing curved over her collarbone and probably her breast. Her curly hair was at least shoulder length, and she had a heart-shaped face with a pierced eyebrow.

Stella's nethers started turning cartwheels and yelling "Wheeeeee!"

She would never know why, but for some reason she had the sudden thought that next time she saw Jason, she was going to hug him, then wring his neck.

"So tell me, Miss Stella Tamira Blue," Angie was saying, her attention taking complete and utter hold of Stella's, her finger brushing ever so lightly along the inside of Stella's wrist, "I heard a rumor that your song 'Kiss the Moon' is about the first time you slept with a woman."

Stella smiled at her. She couldn't seem to stop smiling. "As a matter of fact, it is."

"What are you working on now?"

"Well...I think it's going to be a song about kissing a total stranger in the middle of a crowded coffee house."

Angie lowered her eyelashes, but she was still smiling. Her warm fingers laced through Stella's. "Good."

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

Untitled, 3/?

Fri, 01 May 2009 18:38:14 GMT

Ahhhh, equal parts angst-ridden drama and cheesy romance.

"Get me 200cc's of 25x Angelica root tincture. Dr. Lyons, start a line of Ritodrine hydrochloride..."

Chaos. Above her, voices and mechanical noises and the squeak of the gurney wheels were an impenetrable din. The lurch of the elevator, the sickening turns around hallway corners, competing smells and sudden bright lights--it was all part of the confusion, all coming to her from miles away, making no sense, everything fading, fading...

It hurts. God, it hurts so bad. Her entire body was on fire, but lightning struck her middle over and over again, the sucker-punch of an angry universe.

They had known it could happen--that it was highly likely. Still, her heart was screaming in denial. No. No. Please, hold on, baby. Don't go. I didn't mean it when I called you a parasite. I'll find somebody who can be a good Mom if I can't. Just please don't go.

Something was clamped around her face, and air pushed into her lungs. She felt a pinprick, then another, then burning, then heat. Lava pumped through her veins.

She remembered years ago, years and years, being a kid, lying on her stomach with her legs kicked up behind her, reading a book. She had always loved her bedroom; it was a sanctuary from a father who drank and a mother who pretended. But sometimes things were good. Sometimes her father would open the bedroom door and not stink of whiskey, and he'd smile at her, his only child, and say, "Lights out, sweetie," and she'd grin back at him, and they'd remember when he used to read to her, and the day she started reading to him instead, and how sometimes they'd gone out for ice cream, or she'd ridden the lawn mower in his lap while he spun the huge roaring machine around the back yard, back before her baby brother died in his crib.

Her father had never beaten her or even raised his voice, much--he just pulled farther and farther away, and her mother's smile grew correspondingly false and bright.

She'd been in high school when the accident happened, but really, she'd lost them a long time before that.

But she remembered her bedroom. The quilt her grandma had sewn to commemorate her birth. She still had it somewhere, in one of her boxes in storage.

Pain. The drugs were fighting, and they were losing. She heard herself scream again, but the sound was muffled by the oxygen mask.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, they'd called it. Was there really any other way to die, but suddenly? Even if it took years it was always sudden to someone.

"Stay with us, Sara."

She'd given Elora a jump rope. Before long every Elfling in the Clan had one. They were making up their own rhymes.

Earth and Air and Fire and Water
Goddess loves me, I'm her daughter.
One from two and two from one,
God loves me 'cause I'm his son.

"Get Frog up here and have him run this thing. Find out what's on it. Run the residue through the Ecto-Chrom and do a scan to see what animal it's from."

"Fetal heart rate is falling. Mother's BP is 90/50 and falling."

"Sara."

A female voice thundered silently through her.

Calling her name.

"Sara."

Something flashed in the darkness--light, silver, almost violet like the afterimage of a lightning strike.

"Hold on, Sara. Hold on to me."

Please help me. Help us.

"Hold on."

The rest of the noise was abruptly cut off. She could still hear the monitors beeping, but it was as if all the people in the room had suddenly jumped back away from her.

This time the voice was male, and one she knew well.

"It's okay, anama. Just breathe."

She felt two hands on her body--one on her head, the other on her belly. She heard him take a deep breath...and felt him let go.

Power washed over her like water, the force of a tsunami contained in the gentleness of a Spring morning's rain. Threads of light wrapped around her, one around her heart, several around her middle, more around the rest of her. They wove into a delicate but steel-strong net that caught and held her before she could fall any farther. She could see it, see the light, see it crisscrossing around her, a gossamer web that held fast.

More energy found the source of the pain. It looked like a black sludge coating her skin. The energy burned it off almost as an afterthought.

Finally, he said, "All right...rest now. Rest."

Lights out, sweetie.

*****

They spoke in hushed voices even though Sara was so far under there was no way they'd wake her.

"It's a human bone," Frog said. His eyes kept darting over to the bed, and Jason could see the fear as well as anger--both emotions they all shared. "From a child. A proximal phalanx. The symbol is a bindrune, several symbols linked together. The bone was anointed with an oil comprised of pennyroyal, tansy, and black cohosh--abortifacients. Whoever did this knew she was pregnant. The overall intent is clear: it's a deathspell."

"For Sara?" Ness asked.

"No, specifically for the fetus. Sara would have been considered collateral damage."

The Director looked like she wanted to punch the wall. "What did we get on this Aradia person?"

Jason shook his head. "The trace is still running. If these people would use their actual names our lives would be much easier."

"I want SA-10 on the scene to do a psychometric scan. Try to track her coming and going from the building."

Jason looked over at Rowan, who had collapsed into a chair beside the bed and was holding Sara's hand, staring sightlessly at the floor. "We're going to get this bitch," Jason said, making the words a vow. "We shouldn't have let up on the Blue Moon case. We won't make that mistake again."

He raised his eyes to where Lex stood out of the way, looking like he felt useless. "How are you holding up?"

Lex was pale, shock-worn and weary. "Not so great."

"Thank God you were there," Ness told the Seraph. "If you hadn't known to call us, there's no way the paramedics would have gotten her to us in time."

A smile flickered at the Seraph's lips, but faded. "I should have done something. I should have been able to stop it from happening."

"None of us are infallible," Ness told him. There was rare warmth in her voice. "Not even angels."

Beck appeared in the infirmary doorway and took in the scene, her mouth fixed in a thin line. "No luck with witnesses. Nobody saw anything until she collapsed. The Witch was long gone by then. I suspect she had a cloaking spell on her."

"Why didn't Sara notice something was wrong with her drink?" Lex asked.

Frog, who was still obviously intimidated by the Seraph, took his glasses off and cleaned them on his lab coat. "The hex was designed not to kick in until it made contact with her body. I think she was probably supposed to swallow it. If she had, it probably would have killed her in minutes."

"There aren't too many hexes that are that effective," Beck pointed out.

"No," Jason replied. "But any will work if it's connected to the Reaping Sphere."

"Fuck. We're going to have to get her a royal taster or something after this."

"Not necessarily." Frog put his glasses back on. "Now that we know a magical attack is likely, I can design an amulet for her to wear that will uncross just about anything. If we have Rowan do the actual spellwork it should be nearly invulnerable."

Dr. Nava checked the various monitors hooked up to Sara, made some notations on her computer, and met Jason's eyes. She still looked concerned, but had relaxed somewhat.

"It was close," she said. "Damn close. As it is I want to keep her for a few days for observation and to make sure she doesn't go into preterm labor again. This whole situation is already dangerous enough."

"Keep me apprised," Ness told the doctor. "SA-7, lead the investigation and let me know the minute you find anything we can act on. As soon as we have a positive ID we'll send a team to bring this Aradia in. And get Rowan to bed. He looks like he's about to pass out."

"I'm not leaving," Rowan said quietly without looking up.

Ness gave Jason a "you deal with this" look and departed. Frog, too, left to get back to the lab.

Beck asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Take Lex down to your quarters for the night. I know it's useless to try and send him home. Make sure he gets some sleep."

She nodded and went over to the Seraph, grabbing his arm. "Come on, angel boy. Time for a nap."

To Jason's surprise, Lex didn't argue.

Jason knelt in front of Rowan and caught his eye. "You need to go to bed."

"I'm not leaving."

The fierceness of Rowan's voice was no surprise, though Jason hadn't expected him to have the energy for it after what he’d just done.

They had run into the infirmary in time to see a swarm of doctors and nurses trying to stabilize Sara and the baby. Jason had watched, helpless, knowing by instinct there was nothing they could do—some dark and powerful magic had worked here, striking like a cobra and sinking its envenomed fangs into Sara. At the very least she would lose the baby. That tiny heartbeat, that tiny song, would cease, if it hadn’t already. Nava was trying to get a pulse.

Then he’d seen Rowan’s eyes change color.

The Elf had stood very still in the doorway, breathing slowly, taking in the scene before them. His eyes seemed to ignite and fill with white fire, and Jason felt the air around him begin to crackle. The hair on Jason’s arms stood up and his stomach felt like he’d been dropped from the top of a building.

Rowan stepped forward, and as one, the medical staff stepped back. Their eyes were all riveted to the Elf as he approached the bed and did…whatever it was he did.

Jason got the sense of something changing, little by little—he didn’t remember what it had felt like when Rowan brought him back, but he knew this time it was slower and harder. Rowan didn’t trust his powers unless he held them in absolute iron control, and he had been trying small things since they’d returned, easy exercises to teach him the exact nature of what he was and what he could do. Healing Jason, he had said, had been pure instinct.

This time it wasn’t. As soon as the monitors’ shrill beeping returned to normal and he knew that Sara and the baby were both safe, Rowan stepped back from the bed and fell into the chair. He hadn’t moved since.

“I think you should come home for a while and rest. If anything happens they’ll call us—and you’ll probably know anyway. She’s not going to wake up until at least dawn.”

Rowan shook his head, but his eyes were glazed with exhaustion and heartache, and when Jason drew him to his feet he didn’t fight. In fact he sagged against Jason’s chest, and the vampire held onto him tightly for a while, feeling him tremble, sensing that he was choking back sobs. Of everyone there, Rowan knew best how close they’d come to losing both Sara and the baby. He’d seen it up close, felt it in his own skin as if he’d been poisoned too.

There was the sound of a throat clearing, and Jason half-turned to see Sage hovering in the threshold. Her pretty young face was lined with worry, and she was holding a paper bag.

"Cookies," she said to his questioning eyebrow. "Fudge crinkles. I made them earlier to bring you guys anyway. What can I say? I'm Southern. We bring food."

She came closer and asked, "Is she going to be okay?"

Jason spoke over Rowan's head, still buried in his shoulder. "We think so. She's stabilized."

"I thought maybe I'd sit with her so you could take him to bed," she told him.

"Thank you, Sage," he replied. "That would be perfect."

She handed him the bag, and he guided Rowan out of the infirmary; the Elf cast a glance at Sage, but seemed mollified that there would be someone there with Sara while he was gone.

They were silent on the walk back to their quarters, and Rowan remained so for a long time after the door was shut behind them. Jason nudged him into the shower and changed into more comfortable clothes while the Elf was washing off, then straightened out the covers of Rowan’s bed and lit a stick of incense to help the Elf ground a little. Then he fetched the Tempest from the living room and laid her on the dresser.

Rowan emerged from the steamy bathroom in his robe, and the look on his face was one Jason had rarely seen before: smoldering anger.

“I’m going to find whoever did this,” Rowan said very quietly, “and I’m going to kill them.”

Jason didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply moved over to his side of the bed and patted the sheets. The Elf took the cue and shed his robe, curling up at Jason’s side beneath the covers, his skin still warm and a little damp from the shower. Jason held onto him and he held onto Jason.

“Would you like me to play for you?”

Rowan sighed, then said, “Please. Just…stay here a little longer.”

“I can do that.”

After a moment Rowan said, “This is how it’s going to be, isn’t it. Between this coven and the Sibyl, Sara and the baby are going to be in danger. And once she’s born they’ll still keep trying.”

Jason nuzzled his ear. “We’ll keep them safe.”

“We haven’t so far.”

“We had no idea anyone would try something like this. We still don’t know how Blue Moon knew Sara was pregnant in the first place. But now that we’re aware of what lengths they’re willing to go to, we can figure out how to stop them. We’ve got the whole Agency’s resources—archives, magicians, scientists, an entire arsenal of protective spells. Not to mention all of us. Those bastards have no idea who they’re dealing with.”

The Elf, warmed and cozy in the well-loved cocoon of strong arms and soft sheets, began to relax a little; Jason took the opportunity to wrap a light layer of energy around him, opening the connection between them a little wider so he could soothe Rowan’s anxiety more directly. Rowan, of course, could tell what he was doing, but had no complaints, and closed his eyes gratefully to let Jason do whatever her wanted.

Such trust. Jason remembered a time when things hade been different. “Do you remember our first date?”

There was a smile in Rowan’s slightly sleepy voice. “Oh, yes...ever since that night Indian food turns me on.”

“And our first kiss?”

Now the smile was visible, though Rowan’s eyes were still closed. “On your couch, during Pentecost.”

“To think that something so beautiful could come out of such an ugly time,” Jason said, lacing his fingers through Rowan’s. “Think of it that way, amori. No matter what happens, no matter what monsters we have to fight, one way or another in ten months you’ll be a father again. That weird looking pink thing from the ultrasound will be a pointy-eared little girl. Just think about what an amazing creature she’s going to be and how it’ll all be worth it in the end.”

Rowan looked at him, still smiling a little. “Since when are you such an optimist?”

Jason kissed him and said, “The idea’s been growing on me. I think it started that night on my couch, when I realized all my hope hadn’t been in vain. I loved you for years and was so afraid you’d never love me back.”

“I always did.”

“Even then…for a long time I was constantly afraid of losing you. You were kidnapped, you died, or didn’t, and then you ran away, and I was so sure you wouldn’t come home…but you did. You always came back to me no matter how insane the circumstances. Suddenly I have faith where I never did before…that things might actually be all right.”

There was wonder in Rowan’s eyes. “I never thought in a million years you’d say something like that.”

“Well, I never thought in a million years I’d be happier with someone than I was with my sire.”

He said it almost offhandedly, but Rowan’s eyes widened and his breath caught, and Jason realized both the implications, and the truth, of the words. He hadn’t really thought about it until now, but though his relationship with Fox had been passionate and almost poetic, Fox had always been the leader, the mentor; with Rowan, he had a partnership of equals that was infinitely more satisfying.

“Like I said before,” he told the Elf, looking in his eyes, “You’ve changed, but so have I. You’re my soul mate, Rowan. I don’t care if you’re an Elf or a god or a three-headed troll. I’m in this for good.”

Rowan’s smile felt just the way the sun had, those few moments Jason had stood in the clearing before the Rune Tree, and it warmed him from skin to soul…

…almost as much as what the Elf did next.

Untitled, 2/?

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:58:41 GMT

Sara had left Dallas two years ago, and had not once looked back; she’d hated everything about the city, especially once people she cared about started dropping dead. Even the prospect of being a total stranger in a strange town with no job prospects and no friends was more appealing, at the time, than living in fear.

Still, the fear had followed her to Austin for a while. She’d spent months jumping at shadows and staying in after dark, terrified that her old coven had followed her. Finally she’d decided that if they were cursing people to death, distance wouldn’t matter. If they wanted her dead, they’d find a way. She might as well get on with her life.

Then one night her front door had splintered open, and she’d met a tall blue-eyed creature with a gun.

She smiled as she climbed clumsily out of the cab in front of Austin Java. Who would have guessed how things would turn out? She’d arrived in the capitol city a refugee scared of her own abilities, and now she was getting paid to use them.

She’d considered, once or twice, what she would say to people from her old life if she ever saw them again. Obviously she couldn’t just tell them “Hi, I’m a government agent working for a top secret branch of the FBI, and I use my awesome psychic powers to talk to buildings. I’ve shot a couple of people. My supervisor is a gay vampire whose husband knocked me up.”

Sara entered the café and again noticed that people gave her a wide berth. Being visibly pregnant was weird, and not just for the obvious reasons; people treated her differently. They were kinder, more considerate. They held doors and smiled at her like she was some kind of saint. She wanted to tell them that it didn’t take any special talent to get pregnant—any backwater Catholic could breed. A broken condom or denial of reproductive biology was nothing to canonize.

Still, she had to admit it was nice. She wasn’t ugly by any stretch, but she’d been chubby and fairly nondescript most of her life, so she tended to go unnoticed in a crowd and have to fight her way toward everything. All she’d needed, it turned out, was an alien parasite.

“I don’t mean that,” she muttered, patting her stomach. Lately she’d taken to talking to the tramera as if it could understand her, narrating what was going on and making commentary about people under her breath. There was another difference: if she’d done that before, people would have thought she was nuts. Apparently you could be nuts and pregnant and that was okay.

Sara bellied up to the bar and ordered a blueberry smoothie, a bagel, and cream cheese. She was eating like a horse since they’d gotten back to Austin. Thank god the morning sickness was gone. Nava had given her a list of foods to avoid, and Sara had emailed it to the Clan to double check if there was anything else Mellis would add. The Healer had been surprised that there was such a list, and since almost everything on it was unknown to the Elven diet anyway, she hadn’t had any further recommendations other than, “You should never eat those things. Ever.”

Sara had laughed at the mental image of Mellis turning green when she read that humans ate raw fish.

She found a table that was close to the front so that Aradia would be able to find her, and settled down with her treats, double checking that her Ear was on and recording. It felt odd to have the thing on without the earpiece, but Sage had assured her that it would work just fine, and that their audio software could filter out the background noise.

“Seriously,” Sage had said. “These things can hear a cockroach cough in San Angelo. Just do me a favor—at some point pretend you’ve got a call and hook up your earpiece so we can snap a picture of her and run it through the database.”

Easy enough.

She checked her watch. She was still half an hour early. She’d done that intentionally so she could set up the scene the way she wanted to, but still, she should have brought a book. She concentrated on smearing cream cheese on her bagel and trying to remember to chew it rather than inhaling the whole thing at once.

A shadow fell across the table, and she tensed and looked up.

Sara groaned. “What are you doing here?”

Clad in a long trench coat that was wildly out of place in the Texas summer heat, Lex looked offended that she’d even asked the question.

“I told you,” she said, “I don’t need you to follow me around. I appreciate that you’re on some kind of holy mission to save my baby and all, but—“

“I didn’t know you were here,” he insisted, tucking his auburn hair behind one slightly pointed ear. Sara had to admit she was jealous of that hair, especially of how quickly it seemed to grow. “I felt called to come down here. I assumed it was because I was craving espresso.” He cast a slightly hunted look around the bustling café, but for a wonder, nobody was paying any attention to him. Sara shrugged inwardly; this was Austin, after all. Pale boys in unseasonable garb could just as easily be geeks or gamers as angels.

“Well, you need to leave,” she told him. “I’m expecting someone—Agency business.”

Lex rolled his eyes at her imperious tone. “Please, don’t let my reason for existing get in the way of your rendezvous. I’ll just get a drink and stay in the corner.”

“Fine. Don’t draw attention to yourself or to me. If I get in trouble I’ve got backup.”

The Seraph looked like he wanted to comment on that, but didn’t; he left without a word, heading over to the counter.

Sara sighed and sipped her smoothie, aggravated. This wasn’t the first time he’d popped up somewhere uninvited to “protect” her, and he’d also been spending more time on base, doing some elementary weapons training with Beck and Jason. She was starting to feel like she had a large, socially awkward shadow. Was he going to keep this up for the next ten months? And then what? She and Rowan had discussed sending the baby to foster in Clan Willow. Did Lex think he was going to follow her there? And what, live in a cave somewhere and drink deer blood?

Whatever. She wasn’t going to make it her problem unless he got in the way. She had enough to deal with without angels on crusades.

She finished the last bite of her bagel just in time to sense a vaguely familiar presence coming in the door.

Sara looked up and forced herself to smile. "Hey there."

Aradia paused just inside the threshold of the café and blinked at her, and it took Sara a moment to remember why she'd be staring. Yes. That again.

Sara patted her belly. "I know," she said. "Take it from me, now that you live in Austin go easy on the breakfast tacos."

The Witch hesitated only a breath longer, then smiled. "It's so good to see you, Sara. You didn't mention you had a bun in the oven."

"I'm still getting used to the idea myself. Please, sit down, unless you want to order something first."

"Yeah, I'll get a coffee and be right back."

While Aradia was waiting at the counter, Sara quickly reached into her pocket for her Earpiece and snapped it on, whispering, "Okay for video linkup."

She felt a slight lurch in the back of her mind, and a second later the word "recording" flashed in front of her eyes. She watched Aradia at the counter, leaning back in her chair to get a good shot of her profile; she might not get another chance for a face-front shot.

She kept recording until the Witch came back to the table, cappuccino in hand; as she sat, looking inquisitive, Sara held up her fake phone and pretended to hit a button, letting the network get a last shot, saying, "Okay, honey, I have to go. See you in a couple of hours."

She pulled off the device behind her ear and smiled, shrugging. "He worries every time I leave the house these days."

"I don't blame him." Aradia settled into her chair, her waist-length red hair swinging behind her. She was an average looking Pagan, about Sara's age if not a little younger, a bottle redhead with a few holes in each ear and a standard-issue pentacle around her neck. She was a round woman, and the peasant blouse and long skirt she was wearing didn't play that fact down. Sara memorized as much as she could: moonstone ring, no visible tattoos, large floppy messenger bag, suede boots.

She also dared a superficial psychic sweep, keeping her distance in case Aradia was stronger than she remembered, but as before, the Witch was no more than average unless she had concrete shields.

"So," Aradia said, stirring sugar into her coffee, "how far along are you?"

Sara was prepared for that question; she'd double checked with Nava about what the normal answer would be. "Four months."

Aradia's eyes darted from Sara's burgeoning belly to her bare ring finger. "And the daddy is..."

"We met at work not long after I moved here. How about you? Anyone special with you here in Austin?"

"No, just me." Did Sara imagine it, or did her eyes flicker? "Needed a fresh start, I guess."

"Things didn't work out with you and Blue Moon?"

Subject broached. Aradia shook her head. "No. I didn't even finish the dedicant class. I got kind of sick of how controlling they were. And the HP...he gave me the creeps."

Sara smiled. "Was it the hairy back or the weird toenails?"

She laughed, and Sara could tell it was a genuine laugh. "Both. Plus he was so into the Great Rite, you know? He kept bringing it up and giving hints that he wanted to do more than the symbolic version."

"That sounds like WolfStar. It just wasn't the same after Foxglove retired. Did you ever meet her?"

"No, but I heard the legends. She was quite a character."

"You're right about that."

Over the course of an hour Sara told her the story of the first ritual she had ever attended with Lady Foxglove, the first High Priestess of Blue Moon Rising coven; Aradia came back with a hilarious account of the last Blue Moon ritual she'd attended with her class, when one of the inner circle members had accidentally set the sleeve of his robe on fire. Aradia asked a few more questions about Sara's life in Austin, but for the most part they kept the talk light, comparing notes on the G-rated versions of their coven experiences.

Sara, laughing, said, "Hold on a minute--I need some orange juice."

Aradia waved a hand at her. "I'll get it. I need a refill anyway."

While she waited Sara risked a look over at the corner, where she could feel Lex still loitering, reading a book and pointedly not watching her. She rolled her eyes.

So far the only conclusion she could come to was that Aradia was harmless, but before she could say so definitively she wanted to hear back on the results the photos had turned up. The Agency could run Aradia's face through the database and find her legal name, and through that trace her occult activity back to at least age 18. They had files on every serious occult practitioner in the state, and the Blue Moon file was extensive, if not complete. Aradia probably wouldn't have her own file, since she wasn't extraordinarily gifted, but she might be included in the coven's, or with any other group she'd belonged to before that. Usually the records started with college Pagan alliances or Internet chatroom activity--the average Pagan wouldn't be more than a footnote, unless he or she got into trouble that pinged the Eyes or was noticed by law enforcement.

"Here you go," the Witch said, sitting back down. "I can't stay too much longer," she added, holding up the to-go cup she'd had her coffee poured into. "But I thought I'd ask--the class I'm doing is a ten-week series, and I was thinking it would be great to have a seasoned practitioner come in for the last class. It's just going to be a party for the students, maybe some Q&A with longtime Witches. What do you think?"

"That would be cool," Sara replied, fishing in her purse for one of her dummy business cards. "You've got my email, but here's my phone number. And if you want to hang out before that let me know--I can show you around town. I don't know a lot of other Pagans here, but I know the stores and bookshops."

"Thank you so much," Aradia said with a relieved smile. "I have to admit I had an ulterior motive in holding a class--meeting people. I've been to a couple of Meetups too, but haven't really hit it off with anyone. The community here's kind of fractured."

"Yeah. I think that's one of the few disadvantages of a city as funky and liberal as Austin; people don't cling to their fringe groups as hard. There's more diversity."

"It's really a shame. I think Pagans should stick together no matter where we are. You never know when outsiders are going to turn on you, y'know?"

There was the faintest shadow in Aradia's eyes, and Sara wondered what ghost she was thinking of. They all had their ghosts. Maybe she could ask next time. There might have to be margaritas.

They didn't hug, like most Pagans did--it would have been awkward around Sara's stomach, and she wasn't a touchy-feely person anyway--but Aradia's farewell was warm and relaxed, and Sara watched her go, reviewing the meeting in her mind to see if she'd missed any body language or other cues. Agents were trained in that sort of thing, and combined with her psychic abilities Sara had proven an excellent evaluator of suspects and witnesses as well as crime scenes.

There had been a few moments where she was pretty sure Aradia was, if not lying, at least bending the truth, but that wasn't entirely unexpected given the past they had in common. Aradia might be as suspicious of Sara as Sara was of her, given that Sara had been a full-fledged initiate of a coven that cursed people to death. Her nervousness could easily stem from whatever straw had broken the camel's back and driven her away from Blue Moon. Sara had no idea what WolfStar and the others had been telling people about her. Attempts to infiltrate the group had failed--they hadn't taken new students since Sara had left, and that was about the only way to get in on a coven's secrets.

Again, the shadow passed over her table, and she looked up at Lex over the rim of her juice glass.

"Are you all right?"

"Of course I am," she said, trying not to snap at him. "I met a fellow human being and we talked for an hour. Nothing sinister, I assure you. You can go back to your belfry."

Now Lex sighed and dropped into the chair Aradia had vacated. "Sara...do you think I enjoy being a pain in your ass? I don't have a choice in this. Even if I didn't want to protect you, every cell in my body keeps pushing me to. Who or whatever summoned me tied my fate to yours. My entire life was leveled for this. Believe me, I'd rather be free to chart my own course."

Sara was about to reply when she felt something hard in her mouth.

She gagged and spat, and Lex almost leaped out of his chair, but she gestured for him to sit down and set her glass back on the table, putting her hand to her mouth to spit the object into. "For the love of--"

She stared into her palm, her heart thudding in her ears.

"What is it?" Lex asked.

Shaking, she held up her hand so he could see:

A bone.

Bleached white, about half an inch long, it lay wet and glistening, the low light of the café picking out the symbol carved into its side. She didn't recognize it, but she could feel the intent radiating off of it like heat off the asphalt.

"Oh god," she whispered. "Lex--Lex--call--"

She couldn't get the words out before wrenching cramps seized her belly and she screamed.

*****

Jason found Rowan outside near the labyrinth, conversing with one of the Agent trainees; they had three this season, and though only one had any useful metaphysical abilities, all three showed promise. This one, a young man, didn't even seem to be that afraid of Jason, though not from arrogance. That was a good sign.

"SA-7," Rowan said as he approached, "I believe you've met Trainee Sanderson."

Jason gave a measured nod, and the young man looked torn between nodding and saluting. He was an ordinary looking lad, still a bit on the lanky side, tall and black and agile. He also had a genius-level IQ and could move things with his mind.

"We were just concluding the trainee's psy assessment," Rowan went on. "I think you'll be pleased with his performance--you'll have my report by the end of the night."

"Excellent. SA-8 is expecting you in the Armory, Mr. Sanderson."

"Yes, sir."

Once they were alone again Rowan said, "He's good. Level 6 telekinetic and a solid 5 in telepathy."

"Any reservations?"

"He's a bit of a nervous kid. Get him into yoga with Dr. Patel and run the supplemental psychiatric assessment--Form 47, I believe. I'll put my notes on your server."

"Good."

Rowan led him over to the Blessing Tree and leaned back against the bark, saying pensively, "It took about ten seconds. It used to take fifteen minutes and they had to be in the labyrinth itself. All I had to do was look at him."

Jason nodded. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that alarming. "Anything else weird tonight?"

"Not so far. You?"

He shook his head.

"It was kind of nice," Rowan said, "being around someone who doesn’t know me. Everyone here, especially acquaintances, has been treating me like a walking time bomb since...we got back. I can only imagine the stories that are going around."

"Here's a good one for you." Jason leaned beside him, looking out over the labyrinth, remembering months ago when they had stood here with Sara on an Ostara evening and bound their lives together. "I heard that you're a living god who doesn't know how to work his powers yet, and that the rest of your kind are plotting to kill the entire human race."

Rowan shut his eyes, pained. "Don't joke about this, please."

"It wasn't a joke. That's the prevailing rumor right now--it just happens to be true. I don't think they could invent anything more creative."

The Elf's voice was almost a whisper. "What am I going to do, Jason? The Sibyl has the gift of foresight--she can find the others and recruit them to her crusade before we even have a clue where to look. And she has my mother."

"I don't know, love. Maybe there's a way you can communicate. Your mother was sending you dreams, right? You could try the same thing. Surely that's within your reach now."

"I'm not sure. But I can try. I have to."

"Come on. Let's go check in with Frog. He should be done running the diagnostics on your stone by now."

Jason started to take Rowan's hand, but the Elf suddenly froze, his face going white as a ghost. He gasped and groped sideways with one arm, catching Jason's wrist, the other hand digging into the Tree's bark.

Just then an alarm shrieked in Jason's Ear, and a familiar male voice erupted over the network's emergency frequency. [Medical team 4 to the Lamar and 9th Street tunnel entrance immediately. Agent down. I repeat, Agent down. SA-7 and SA-8, report to the infirmary.]

[What's going on?] he demanded.

Sage, cutting off the other Ear's broadcast, said, her mental voice agonized, [It's Sara.]

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

Untitled, 1/?

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:43:26 GMT

Nope, it's not porn, sorry. Though it is a bit touchy-feely.

Jason peered in the viewing window of the research lab, where two techs in lab coats were puttering purposefully around a bank of monitors surrounding a single examination chair.

"What have you learned so far?" he asked quietly.

Dr. Nava tapped the screen of her computer with the stylus, though he suspected she didn't need to see her notes. She'd probably been figuring out what to tell him all afternoon.

"We had to recalibrate the assessment equipment," she began. "Normally we have SA-5 do psychic assessments instead of relying on computers. The computer is more precise, but it can't detect the fine differences in type of gift. For example, when you first joined the SA you were assessed by machine, right?"

"Yes."

"It classified your musical gift as 'other,' because it didn't recognize it. If Rowan had been the one testing you, he probably could have named it even if he'd never seen it before. But in this case, we need precision more than type."

"And?"

"We ran into some trouble. The program goes from 3 to 10, with 12 built in as an absolute theoretical maximum. 10 is the highest level known to exist in a living being, and there are only a hundred or so recorded instances in all of SA history, most among nonhuman races."

"I'm aware."

They watched silently for a moment as one of the techs fiddled with a sensor, and a light blinked, then went green; a needle jumped from left to right and was buried in the red zone, then with a pop, the sensor went dark again.

In the exam chair, wired up to a dozen instruments, Rowan sat calmly with his eyes closed, a half smile on his face. He didn't so much as flicker an eyelash when the sensor blew. The techs' anxiety didn't touch him.

Jason looked down at the ticker tape of the Elf's psychic output. The resting rate was already off the chart. Just sitting there, not doing a thing, Rowan was burning out the machines.

"When we first brought him to the base and had him assessed, he clocked in at a 9 on empathy, 6 on telepathy, and 5 in the 'general' or 'other' category. Going off the statistical averages, combining all his talents, he was an 8 overall."

"And now?"

She stared at her notes, doing math in her head, and bit her lip. "Before the last set of calibrations blew out? 17."

Jason let out a long, slow breath. "17."

"Yes. The problem--well, one problem--is that we've measured his empathy spiking at 12, and telepathy at about 10.5, but the majority of what we're seeing is simply not classifiable. We don't know what to call it, or even what to compare it to."

"Have you asked him?"

"He doesn't know either. Thank god this new talent seems to have come with a new array of shields. I don't want to think what he could do to this place if he lost control."

Jason crossed his arms, staring at his partner through the tempered glass, wondering if Rowan could sense he was there--of course he could.

"You can see why I'm reluctant to let him back out in the field," Nava went on. "Until we know exactly what it is we're dealing with, we can't be sure he's safe around a city full of mortals. If he had absolute confidence that would be one thing, but he's struggling with it too. He says he doesn’t know a tenth of what he can do yet."

He nodded. "I concur, Doctor. I'll sign the form to that effect, as long as you're not recommending anything like the house arrest we had Lex under."

"No, definitely not. But I do have a small monitoring device, built along the same lines as the inhibitor, that I'd like him to wear for at least a week, so we can get better readings. It's not designed to be as precise as these instruments, but more to get a graphic representation of how his power rises and falls throughout the day and night. I'd like your approval, if you don't mind signing here..."

Jason took the pen she held out and scrawled his name on the forms, eyes still on the slender figure in the chair. They had discussed the possibility that Nava would want Rowan confined to the base, or to run round after round of tests; Ness had said that before SA-5 could go back out in public she, the doctor, and Jason all had to sign off on it, and Rowan had accepted that without complaint. He knew very well how scary he was now.

"What about you?" Nava asked a moment later. "How have you been feeling?"

He shrugged.

"Any more chest pain, or sleep disturbances?"

He shook his head, though he was lying. There was nothing she could do; he already had drugs, and he'd been in for tests of his own since that night.

The evidence was clear: he'd had a massive heart attack in his sleep. His heart had stopped beating for several minutes and he'd been clinically dead. Though the stake had pierced his heart in a dream world, it had killed him in the real world, at least for a little while before Rowan revived him. The damage to his heart would have killed a human, magic or no magic; it had taken days to heal, and he'd been on painkillers and drugs to regulate his cardiovascular system for a week. Even Rowan himself had been reluctant to offer his newfound gifts--the heart ran on electricity, and he didn't want to make things worse by zapping it with what Sara called his "godling mojo."

Jason had only been cleared to return to duty himself that past Monday, and so far things had been back to normal...sort of.

As much as he wanted to mourn the "normal" that he'd longed for those weeks Rowan had been away, he knew that things would never be that way again. They might be better, or they might be worse, but never the same.

As if picking up on the thought, which is probably what he did, Rowan's eyes opened, and fixed on Jason's even though he shouldn't have been able to see through the glass. The Elf smiled at him lovingly, and Jason felt a pulse of emotion from the Elf's heart to his, gently reassuring and comforting.

Another sensor blew. The tech cursed loudly.

Rowan smiled and closed his eyes again.

*****

"Shit."

Rowan looked up. "Why did you stop?"

"It broke."

"Do you have another one?"

"Yes...it's in the other room, though. I'll be right back."

"Damn...I was really enjoying that."

Jason sighed and put the violin down. "Me too."

When he returned from his bedroom, Rowan peered at him over the book he was reading. "You've broken quite a few strings lately. Is everything all right?"

The vampire looked thoughtful as he turned the peg to release the A string, and Rowan watched, fascinated, while Jason threaded the new string and tightened it without even looking at his hands. Aside from being dead sexy, that kind of manual dexterity was a mystery to Rowan, who had embarrassed himself during his preliminary typing test years ago and had a tendency to kill off video game characters in spectacular fashion. He could do a lot of things with his hands, but they involved skin and muscle, not buttons and keys.

"Everything's fine, just..." Jason picked up his bow and tested the string, made a face, and adjusted the peg. He could also tune perfectly by ear. "Back when I was first learning to play I broke a lot of strings because the power running through me kept spiking until I could control it. It feels the same now."

Rowan closed the book, considering, and reached over to the coffee table for the glass of iced tea he'd forgotten. "What do you think has changed?"

He smiled. "You."

Rowan frowned into his glass, a discomfort settling in his chest that had become a familiar feeling since he had walked back through the Dreaming Gate to lay his hands on Jason's lifeless body. It was what he sensed when others looked at him, like Nava, her eyes full of faint awe when she scrutinized the endless printouts telling her that yes, it was possible, and yes, it was real.

Jason shrugged, his attention on the Tempest. "When you and I first got together I started teaching myself to work with this talent. I had more energy available through you, and I was able to do more than before. After you came back from Clan Yew, once we'd woken up that weird death connection thing we had, I got even stronger. Now...I'm leveling up again."

"I'm all right with that if you are."

"Definitely."

Rowan watched Jason again, smiling to himself. Some things, while different, were better. He was thankful for that...although there were still nights that Jason woke shaking, reaching for him in the dark. He wasn't used to being in constant pain, and had never been afraid of death before--actually dying, Rowan had heard, had a way of changing that for people, but usually for the better. It was different for the deathless, like them. Mortality was not something they really understood, especially after a few centuries.

Jason felt Rowan's gaze on him and looked up again, and Rowan's breath hitched in his chest at how perfectly blue the vampire's eyes were; tonight they were the grayish dark shade of the chenille blanket Rowan had wrapped around him against the chill. Jason tended to run the AC at a sub-Arctic level; about the only regular argument they had was over control of the thermostat. Shortly before he’d left for Clan Willow Jason had bought him the blanket as a peace offering.

Moments like this--the two of them spending a quiet evening at home, each doing what he liked but doing it together, were Rowan's most treasured memories, then as now. He loved simply having Jason near him, close enough to look up and watch from time to time, or on the couch beside him where he could lay his hand on the vampire's thigh and just enjoy the solid muscle under his palm.

He'd been such an idiot to run away...and he was trying, night by night, to make amends.

"What are you looking at, good sir?" Jason asked politely, a spark in his eyes.

Rowan smiled. "I am looking at the man I hope to bed tonight."

Hands moved up and down strings, checking their tightness, tilting the violin at different angles to sort out some arcane musical geometry Rowan was not an initiate of. Bow slid along string, the way he imagined Jason's hand sliding along his back.

"I see," Jason went on, still holding back a smile. "And what assurance do you have of this man's desire to tumble into your bed?"

Rowan grinned and pushed himself up off the couch, moving slowly around behind where Jason stood before the stand of sheet music where, after years of Beck's prodding and Rowan's gentle suggestion, he had finally started writing some of his compositions down. Rowan circled around behind him and took one of his arms, lifting it as Jason lifted the violin into position, and ran his fingers over the silver at his wrist. "I have this assurance," Rowan said. He then drew his hand down Jason's arm, along his side, over his belly, and down into the waistband of his jeans. "And I have this assurance." He squeezed gently.

Jason's eyes drifted shut under Rowan's ministrations, and he let the Elf stroke and caress him, both below and up along the length of his outstretched arm, poised to lower bow to string. Finally Rowan withdrew both hands and moved them around Jason's waist, leaning forward to rest his head against the vampire's back while Jason resumed his stance and began to play--first a few single notes, checking the tuning; then, satisfied, a slow and romantic song, the sort that would play during the scenes of American romance films where the heroine and hero both stand on their balconies, each dreaming of the other, separated by a New York Borough and whatever third-act complication had arisen to break them apart before the final reunion.

Elf and vampire stood that way for a long time, swaying slightly back and forth while Jason played, Rowan listening both to the music and to the heartbeat beneath his ear that served as a metronome. He felt currents of energy eddying around him, lathing away the accumulated tension of the week.

He was about to move his hands back down and see how long it took to make the vampire lose track of what he was playing, when there was a knock at the door.

"Shit," Jason said. "I’m just not destined to finish this."

"I'll get it." Rowan might have been puzzled--they rarely had visitors--but he could already sense who was outside, and hear a double heartbeat just below the surface of audible sound.

"Why didn't you use your key?" he asked Sara, who stood uncertainly in the hallway wearing what he had to assume were maternity jeans and a t-shirt that was working very hard to cover the waterfront. They'd only been back from Clan Willow for two weeks, and her belly had doubled in size.

"I thought you guys might be naked or something," she said with a shrug. "I didn't want to intrude."

He ushered her into the living room, and she sat on the couch with a grunt. Rowan had seen her a few hours before, at dinner, and she'd mentioned she was going out of her mind with boredom now that Nava had put her foot down and denied Sara active duty. She could still be called up for psychic missions, but no patrols, no action, nothing dangerous or overly stressful. He and Sara both thought Nava was being paranoid--the tramera was fine, they could both feel it--but there was no arguing with the chief medical officer. Sara had moaned in despair that this was going to be the longest year of her life.

Rowan could only hope she was right, and that things wouldn't be interesting enough to make time fly by. Interesting, for them, usually meant "tragic."

Jason had put down the Tempest, and asked, "Drink?"

Sara nodded. "Scotch on the rocks with a twist."

Jason handed her a bottle of juice. Sara rolled her eyes, but took it.

"So, what's going on?" Rowan asked, sitting down on the floor cross-legged in front of her and taking one of her sneakered feet, relieving it of its shoe and rubbing the arch. He was reluctant to use much magic right now, but he'd learned reflexology in his old calling, and his limited experience with pregnant women told him she'd appreciate it.

Some Rethla specialized in pregnancy; his area of expertise had been trauma. The irony had not been lost on him.

"Since I can't do much else I've been getting off the base a lot," Sara began, sighing and leaning back into the couch cushions with a sip of her juice. "It's funny how different this city is during the day, you know? All the normal people come out."

Jason made a faintly disgusted noise from where he was making notes on the piece he'd been working on. "You mean, like, heterosexual SUV drivers with children?"

"Like people who don't sacrifice bunnies or have 'aconite' on their grocery lists. Believe it or not, they do exist. Some of them have tans."

Rowan smiled. "And?"

"Well, I stopped by one of the Pagan supply stores in town. The Silver Cauldron caters mostly to the white-lighter crowd. Wiccans, various flavors of NeoPagan, people who are into gardening and massage therapy rather than conjuring things that eat babies. I hadn't been there in over a year. It's kind of weird, seeing the stuff we see, remembering that there are people who only do positive magic."

"True," Rowan said wryly. "I know last time I was conjuring a Baby Eating Demon, I thought much the same thing."

She looked sheepish. "Okay, present company excepted. But you know what I mean. The quiet, devoted Pagans living good lives aren't the ones we run into. There are Witches here on staff, but I haven't had time to really get to know anyone since I made SA. Sage took over the group here a few months back and she keeps bugging me to come to an Esbat, but you know how Full Moons are for Agents. Anyway, I was looking at the bulletin board for upcoming events, and you'll never guess what I saw."

"The point of this story?" Jason asked hopefully.

Sara flipped him off and said, "A woman who goes by Aradia. Someone I knew from Dallas."

That got the vampire's attention. "As in, your old coven?"

"Exactly. She's starting up a Wicca 101 class here in town."

"Do you think it's a front for Blue Moon?" Jason asked.

"Might be. Or she might be a refugee like me. Aradia and I weren't that close--she was in one of the dedicant classes that started just before I left, so she might not have gotten too far in before she realized they weren't what they seemed. Or she might be here recruiting for them. Either way, I figure she might have information. We haven't exactly made a lot of arrests."

Rowan heard the bitterness in her tone, and he sympathized. She had never been satisfied with the Agency's handling of the Blue Moon case, after the SA had so violently disrupted her life for it, but he'd explained to her that she was the only lead they'd had, and the key players had since gone underground or been model citizens. Without evidence, there was nothing they could do, and Blue Moon was covering its tracks very well, including hiding the Reaping Sphere. "Have you made contact with her?" he asked, switching to her other foot.

"Yup. Email. She seemed happy to hear from me." Sara saw the look on Jason's face and said, "What am I, a rookie? I used a dummy account at the public library and told her I was an admin tech for the Justice Department. I wanted to give her just enough info that if she's working for them she'd be interested, but nothing true. I also forwarded our entire conversation to you about an hour ago. We're meeting for coffee tomorrow evening. Public place, yadda yadda. I thought you might want to wire me or something."

"Damn right I do," the vampire replied. "That's why we have Ears. Take one of the camo receiver covers--the ones you snap on to make it look like a cell phone. Keep the earpiece in your pocket or purse and set the whole thing to Record. All you'll have to do if there's a problem is hit 'talk' on the fake phone and it'll send out a distress call."

"Gotcha." Sara pulled her foot reluctantly out of Rowan's grasp and started to get to her feet. "Anyway, I'm headed to bed, I just wanted to fill you in." She let Rowan replace her shoes, and for once didn't wave away Jason's proffered hand up. "I'll let you guys get back to your adult shenanigans."

Rowan grinned as he showed her to the door. "What makes you think there was anything adult going on?"

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at Jason. "Your husband’s pants."

To Rowan’s vast amusement, Jason self-consciously stepped back behind the music stand until the door was shut and Sara was gone.

“You really need to teach me that thing you do that keeps your parts under control until you want otherwise,” Jason muttered, closing the Tempest in her case.

“Absolutely not,” Rowan replied. “I like watching you squirm.”

“Sadist.”

“Horny teenager.”

“Come here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rowan slid happily into the circle of Jason’s arms, laying his head on his lover’s chest, just listening for a moment. Everything sounded fine. “How are you feeling?”

Jason sighed. “I could use a good day’s rest. I’m feeling a little frayed around the edges.”

“I know.” Rowan took him by the hand and led him toward his bedroom door. “Let’s see if I can do something to help you get to sleep.”

Jason paused and tipped Rowan’s chin up to look him in the eye. “What about you? How are you feeling?”

As Rowan spoke, he moved his hands up between them and slid Jason’s shirt up over his middle. “I hate to even say it out loud for fear of jinxing it, but…I’ve never felt better.”

“Good,” was the reply, a bit muffled as there was a t-shirt being yanked over his head. “You deserve to feel well after all of this. It’s the least these gods of yours could do, if they’re going to turn you into some kind of Mega-Elf.”

“Mmm.” Rowan drew his hands along Jason’s shoulders, down over his arms; he leaned in and flicked his tongue delicately along the outermost line of the vampire’s tattoo, and the dragon shivered under the touch.

Smiling inwardly, Rowan lifted his mouth to Jason’s throat, kissed where he could feel the pulse beneath the skin, and placed a solid bite at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

The effect was as lovely as it was predictable. The Elf found himself turned and shoved back against the wall, and he might have laughed at Jason’s urgency except that there was a tongue in his mouth, nails in his arms, and hips pressed hard into his, and all of Rowan’s faculties were occupied.

As soon as he managed to break free, Rowan dragged Jason to the bed, stripping clothes off as they went, and proceeded to ensure they were both so thoroughly exhausted two hours later that neither so much as twitched until the following sunset, when they both showed up half an hour late for duty, Rowan’s hair still wet from the shower and Jason’s shirt on inside out.

Overall, not a bad end to the week.

Musical Inspiration (not a story, don't get your hopes up just yet)

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:37:46 GMT

For the curious, this was the piece that inspired the last scene of the adult-oriented Watching Him, which is still one of my favorite Agency stories.

In fact, the entirety of The Tempest (another of my favorites; I've always been proud of how that one turned out) was inspired by another work involving Joshua Bell--The Red Violin, a film that is sort of a biography of a musical instrument, tracing its life through the hands that play it.

I mention this because every piece of fiction I've ever written has had music in it somewhere; every story has a soundtrack, even if nobody ever knows it but me. Much of Jason's character arose from the violin CDs I was listening to at the time.

I've been listening to a lot of bluesy, sumptuous female artists lately, like Lizz Wright and Me'shell Ndegeocello. What that means for the next story...well, stick around and find out. >;)

Yes, I'm a dirty tease.

The Dreaming Gate, part 12/12

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:03:40 GMT

Here we go, last part. I don't know for sure when I'll have the next story started (or what it will be about), although I'm thinking I might do something short and fun (and possibly dirty) just to clear the palate before the next Big Serious Installment. Any requests? :D

Thanks for sticking with me on this one. I know it took forever to get going, and hopefully the end hasn't disappointed.

In the next few days I hope to have the last four or five stories up on the archive site, so you can access them all in their entirety.

"Federal Agent! Make your presence known!"

Beck held her gun out in front of her, but even as she finished the sentence she knew there was no one in the house.

The reason for that became apparent as soon as she took a breath.

The Agent behind her made a gagging noise.

"Lower your weapons," she ordered. "SA-17, go outside and get yourself together, then send in the Seraph."

He ducked back out the front door, where the rest of the team, plus Lex and the forensics boys, were waiting for the all-clear to enter.

Beck lowered her own gun but kept it at the ready as she sidestepped her way into the house, crossing through the foyer and into the living room. The smell was coming from deeper in the building, probably a back bedroom--the unmistakable sweet-rancid stench of decomposition. Her senses decrypted the smell as easily as Frog could interpret a chemical formula: the human had been dead for about five days, and with the house closed up and the AC off, decomp had been rapid and nasty. Hopefully Pierrault hadn't had pets.

She followed her nose through the kitchen and down a short hallway. The house was dark and cramped, stacked floor to ceiling with books--alchemy, astrology, ceremonial magick, various forms of occultism. She spotted several black market titles and at least three contraband magical tools.

The back room was locked from the inside, but even a deadbolt was no match for a steel-toed boot if that boot happened to belong to a vampire on a mission.

As soon as the door splintered and flew open, the stench of decay rolled out in a cloud, as did a host of flies, all over the lingering smell of Abramelin oil and frankincense, just in time for Lex to appear behind her. She looked back over her shoulder and saw his face turn green.

"Serves you right for running off to almost get killed without me," she muttered.

In a rather uncharacteristic move he'd learned from her, he shot her the finger.

She leaned over and licked him soundly on the mouth.

He tried to grab her hips, but she wiggled out of his grasp, taking a second to drag her fingers across his wing and make him shudder and pull his coat more tightly around in front. Beck grinned, trying not to look too goofy in the act lest one of the other Agents see her acting like a horny teenager, and turned back to the scene and back to business.

The sorcerer, Pierrault, lay in a bloated heap at the base of an enormous altar. The ground was painted with symbols from corner to corner, as were the walls. Beck recognized many of them: symbols meant to imprison, and command, angelic beings.

She gave the body a cursory inspection without touching it, trying to ignore the maggots. There was no visible cause of death, but given the degree of decomp it would really be up to the lab to figure that one out. She didn't see a weapon or an obvious wound. What was left of his expression looked utterly horrified.

Beck stepped over the corpse and went to the altar, Lex in her wake, wrinkling his nose at the body but otherwise composed again. She admired that about him.

"Okay," she said, clicking on the recorder on her Ear. "Adams, Rebecca, Shadow Agent 8, field notes on case 40524A. The scene is a workroom for ritual magick; symbology is consistent with Enochian conjuration ritual. On the altar are six blades in various stages of completion, identical to the one recovered from the last Seraph attack as well as those seen in the accounts of SA-7, SA-5, and SA-9."

She made a circuit around the room, describing her impressions; the forensics team would do a detailed study, but as the lead Agent on the raid her notes were equally important since the evidence had yet to be disturbed.

"Over here," Lex called.

He was standing over a secondary table stacked neatly with handwritten notes and several bound journals, as well as a thick leather-bound volume open to a page of symbols that were annotated in the same precise notation as the journals.

"Look at this," Lex pointed out, indicating a particular passage. "This is the outline of his conjuration--he did it five times and planned eight more, for a total of thirteen. He was creating an army of Seraph to do his bidding."

"But why?" Beck wondered. "Just to kill you and the others? If he needed thirteen for that, he acted a bit rashly the other night."

"No...his plans were bigger than that. Here he says that an archangel of God spoke to him--a female. She commanded him to conjure an army to smite a list of people who stood to bring about the Apocalypse. If this is true, he was as duped as Joshua Cohen was. Just a zealot following orders from on high."

"Where's the list of targets?"

Lex dug around a moment before coming up with another sheet of paper. It held thirteen names, and several had check marks next to them already.

"Lex, the Seraph," Beck read. "Jason Adams. Beck Adams. I don't recognize the rest of these names--we'll have the Eyes check them out and see if they're all human, or all alive."

"Rowan and Sara aren't on here," Lex said. "Neither is Joshua Cohen. So the Seraph weren't meant to kill them."

"There's no mention of Joshua anywhere in these notes," Beck replied. "What do we make of that?"

Lex crossed his arms, looking both deeply concerned and thoughtful. "Pierrault conjured the Seraph to kill me, and you, and your brother, and we're all protecting or involved with Rowan or Sara. Joshua has no connection to any of us. I don’t see the pattern."

"Shit," Beck said, staring down at the papers. "I think I do."

She paged through the journal on the bottom of the stack until she came up with what she was looking for, and held it out to Lex. "Recognize this?"

Lex's eyebrows shot up into his hair. "That's written in Elvish."

"No, it's not," Beck said, feeling a little sick at heart as the truth came home to roost. "It's Jenai. The archangel that set Pierrault after us wasn't an angel, it was a Jenai."

"The Sibyl," Lex concluded, shaking his head. "God. She wanted to separate Rowan from the rest of us so she could get him through the Dreaming Gate and convince him to take up his old powers again for her cause. She couldn't hurt Sara because Sara's carrying the Singer, but I'd bet the minute she gives birth her name would be on this list too. And any of these other people could be connected to other unawakened Jenai. We have to find them and warn them. The Sibyl could be working through anyone with the ability to conjure Seraph."

"You know what's weird," Beck said, leading him out of the house and back into the night, "is that Pierrault summoned the Seraph that went to Joshua Cohen, but it was summoned to kill you, not spark off Cohen's psychic gifts. Where did the Seraph get the idea to go to Cohen at all?"

"The Sibyl might not be the only player here," Lex murmured, watching the forensics and crime scene teams sweep into the building with their equipment. Moments later they saw flashes in the windows as photographers began their rounds. "That would explain something else as well."

"What's that?"

"Me." Lex sighed. "I wasn't summoned by Pierrault, and I don't have the urge to kill anyone in the name of the Jenai. I only want to protect the baby Singer, and as soon as I heard what happened with Rowan and the Sibyl, I knew I was never letting the baby get anywhere near that Gate. That doesn't sound like something the Sibyl would do, which raises the question...who did? Who called me forth, knowing that I would be different from the others and not an unquestioning soldier? Who has the power to do that?"

"Probably whoever got the stone to that mute priestess in Clan Willow," Beck added, complicating things further. "Nobody can get her to say where it came from, just that she found it during her travels and was told to save it for the Weaver. But did the Sibyl arrange for her to have it? Did Rowan's mom? We still don’t know whose side she's really on."

"I just hope that Rowan can keep the Jenai from banding together with the Sibyl," Lex said, his eyes on the house and on the medical examiner techs wheeling out the corpse of a man who had already been caught in the Sibyl's net. "If Rowan is anything to go by, the Jenai are capable of some very, very scary things."

"Yeah," Beck agreed, surreptitiously taking his hand and squeezing it behind her coat. "I just hope that Rowan stays on our side."

*****

In the candlelit darkness of Rowan's bedroom, they lay entwined in each other, and Jason slowly and carefully affirmed, inch by inch, that the Elf in his arms was in fact still Rowan.

His skin was still as silken and smooth, and there was still a ticklish spot inside his left elbow. He still moaned softly when Jason's tongue flicked against the back of his earlobe. His nails still tore tiny holes in the sheets as they moved together in a slow, sweat-slickened undulation. He still cried out in Elvish when he came.

Jason lay his cheek on Rowan's chest, his fingers curling over the surface of the stone the Elf wore around his neck. For the better part of an hour, the only sounds had been gasping and moaning, punctuated with curse words and deity names in equal measure, but finally Jason broke the silence to ask, quietly, "Are you sure you want to keep that?"

Rowan lay his hand over Jason's. Every time Rowan touched him, it was electric, then euphoric. "I have to," he replied. "It's the only key in existence. I have to keep it safe so that the Sibyl can't drag any of the others into her plans."

"Couldn't they just make another key?"

"No. Making things out of nothing is harder than it sounds. And making something to copy what's been made by another's hand is nearly impossible, magically speaking."

"So who made it?"

"The same hand that raised and carved the Rune Tree and build the Dreaming Gate. My hand."

"You made this?"

"Yes, long ago. And there may come a time when we need to get back through the Gate. So I'll guard it, and hopefully one day if there's wisdom to be had, I can lead my daughter there safely."

"Do you think that Beck and Lex are right--that the Sibyl put a hit out on us? And that there's another significant figure in all of this who brought Lex and Joshua into the mix for his or her own reasons?"

"I'm afraid so."

Jason closed his eyes, fighting back the gut feeling of fear that squeezed him every time he remembered the stake biting into his chest, and the pain engulfing him along with the knowledge that he was dying, alone, and worse yet failing to protect Rowan from whatever monsters might have him beyond the Gate. He remembered what Joshua had said: that he was Rowan's guardian angel as much as Lex was the Singer's. So far he'd done a bang-up job.

"Don’t," Rowan whispered, kissing him softly. "There will come a time when my life will depend on you again."

"What do you mean, again?"

Rowan chuckled warmly and ran his hand down over Jason's torso, whisking over sensitive spots and lingering in others. "What do you think kept me alive all that time I was so broken and desperate? Sara was my healer, but it was you I was healing for."

"So...this month, while you were away, did you...have time to do the thinking you needed?"

The Elf sighed. "I'm so sorry I put you through all of this, amori. I was afraid of losing my freedom, my autonomy--when if I'd thought about it for even a second, instead of simply reacting emotionally, I would have seen that you never demanded I sacrifice either of those things, or anything else. All you asked for was my love, and the commitment of my heart. I ran for the hills like a frat boy after a blind date. It was unfair, and I'm sorry."

Jason held his eyes, and said, "I forgive you. Can you forgive me for bringing Lex into our lives when you and I had barely had time to solidify our own relationship?"

"Already done, my love. I'm thankful for him now, most definitely. He has a part to play in our future together. He may very well save my daughter's life, or even Sara's."

"Not to mention he's making Beck almost unbearably happy," Jason added.

Rowan's eyes widened. "He's what?"

"I didn't tell you, did I? I guess there hasn't been time. Well, settle in, you're in for quite a story."

Rowan burrowed under the covers beside him, arms encircling his middle, head on Jason's arm, with the candles burning low and the night waning beyond the walls, though the world and all its cares could have fallen away, for inside the cozy subterranean bedroom, for now and perhaps for always, all was well.

*****

"Okay," Dr. Nava said. "This is going to feel cold--"

Sara yelped. "No shit!"

"Language, Agent 9," Jason said mildly from where he stood just behind Rowan, his arms around the Elf's waist. Rowan was staring anxiously at the screen.

On the opposite side of the bed were Lex, Beck, and Ardeth, along with Ness. Everyone's eyes were glued to the blue image slowly taking shape as Nava passed the cold, lubed-up wand over Sara's exposed midsection.

"Hang on," Nava said, "I think I can get this clearer...one second..." she adjusted a couple of dials on the machine, and the picture on the screen grew less fuzzy. Then, she turned up a knob, and the room was suddenly filled with a wet, echoing fwub-wub-wub sound keeping a rapid time.

"That's the heartbeat," Nava told them. Several wide-eyed looks were exchanged. "Hold on..."

Sara, too, stared at the screen, heart in her throat, Rowan's hand clasping hers while Nava rooted around for a good image. The SA had state of the art 3-D sonogram equipment, but first the traditional imagery had to be used to locate the tramera, and that involved several uncomfortable minutes of push-pulling Sara's midsection to arrange her burgeoning belly for more convenient display.

"Aha!" Nava said triumphantly. "Right...there."

Silence fell, and there were only the sounds of people breathing and the tramera's heartbeat whoosh-whoosh-wub-ing over the speakers.

"Okay," Nava announced, "I'm switching to the higher resolution with 3-D. This might be a bit of a shock."

She sent several commands into the computer, and the screen blanked out; Nava gestured at the second monitor to the right, where pixels were coming together, row by row, like a photo mosaic.

Sara stared, unable to exhale, watching in speechless awe. Rowan squeezed her hand even tighter as the image grew clearer and clearer...

...and there she was.

The monitor showed them all a peek inside Sara's body, deep within the watery safety of her uterus, where a creature the size of a grapefruit was floating in warm darkness, her long legs curled up, her thumb in her mouth.

Her eyes were closed, but long silvery lashes fell against her pale cheek. Her tiny hand already had fingernails, as did her equally tiny toes. A dusting of dark hair crowned her oversized-looking head, and her ears, about the size of Sara's pinky nail, were pointed. She was pink and fuzzy and clearly unfinished, yet eerily beautiful.

No one could speak. Hands slipped into hands, arms around shoulders, and they all stood watching the little miracle, their magic fish, swim in her dream of peace.

Behind her, Sara heard Lex draw a shaky breath, and he whispered, "Do you hear that?"

They all concentrated, frowning to catch what he was talking about, and Sara heard it next, and felt tears spill down over her cheeks. Rowan drew up a chair next to her and hugged her tightly, one of his hands still gripping Jason's, and soon even Jason's eyes were wet.

In among the whooshing of the tramera's heartbeat, there was another sound, so faint it could easily have been imagined, except that they had all imagined it together. It was a soft, sweet humming, subtly different from the noise of the machines, in that it had a melody, a slow rise and fall of tone and pitch, nothing organized like a written piece of music, more like the call of an underwater mammal.

The baby was singing.

Rowan kissed Sara on the forehead, then the lips. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

Sara took a deep breath, wiping her eyes, and beamed at him. "I think our little girl is going to change the world."

He smiled back. "And so are we, dear one. So are we."

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 11/12

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:48:15 GMT

The second Sara's feet carried her beyond the edge of the clearing, she felt her body--her real one, the one back in Clan Willow--moving, trying to wake up around her. The dream world fluxed and flickered, and she had to fight with all her will to stay asleep; she couldn't wake up, she couldn't leave, until she knew the others were all right and Rowan had come back. She had to know.

She stopped short and clung to a tree, breathing hard until things made sense again. Colors spun around her and the forest morphed into the bedroom, then back, and back again, and back, until she forced herself to ground and center in the reality--if it was reality at all--that she wanted to stay in.

Distantly she heard shouts and the sounds of fighting. She had to hold onto the tree to keep from running back toward the clearing. There had to be something she could do--she wasn't some useless barefoot pregnant woman! She wasn't going to stand by and let people she cared about die.

Sara left the tree and headed back, angry at herself for even letting the others convince her to run in the first place, but before she made it ten steps, something large and heavy blundered into her, knocking her back and onto the ground.

She struck out, thinking one of the Seraph had found her, and in a way she was right--in a split second she realized it was Lex.

"Get off!" she grunted. "Damn it, get--"

Then she saw the blood, and the tattered ruins of his left wing. She gasped and slid out from under him, helping him turn onto his back. He groaned.

"I'm all right," he panted, which was absolutely not true. "Jason is in trouble--he sent me to find you while he kept them busy."

"We have to go back!" she said. "Come on!"

"I'm not going to let you get hurt," Lex insisted.

"What exactly are you going to do to stop me? Goddamn it, I'm not just some breeding mare, I'm a fucking Shadow Agent! Now, you can come with me and help me save him, or you can lay there in the dirt."

She started running, and a minute later heard him behind her; she knew he was in bad shape but there was no time to take stock of his injuries until she found Jason and got those things away from him. She didn't really have a plan, but there had to be something, anything--

Sara exploded out onto the sunny grass, and instantly the stench of blood overwhelmed her, sending her puking into the nearest tree trunk. Waves of nausea battered her from all sides and she doubled over.

She heard Lex arrive, and heard him gasp. "Jason!"

She forced herself back up, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and shoved herself away from the tree, following the Seraph's voice past the bodies of the four creatures that had come to kill them.

Near the Rune Tree, still bathed in warm sunlight, lay Shadow Agent 7. He was dead.

"Oh, god, no..." Sara went to her knees beside him, with Lex on the other side, the Seraph gently removing a long pale shaft of wood from the vampire's chest. No blood followed the stake's withdrawal....there was no blood pumping. His heart had stopped beating before they even reached the clearing.

Sara wept, touching Jason's face, trembling fingers closing his lifeless blue eyes. Lex was crying too, silently.

Oh, god, this can't be happening...Rowan...what's Rowan going to do? What are we going to do? He died here all alone, he should have been with Rowan. They should have been together. What are we going to do?

"I'm so sorry," Lex whispered. "Twice now you've saved me, and I can never repay you."

"We're going to have to tell Beck," Sara sobbed, and the answering look on Lex's face was so full of grief that she couldn't say anything else.

Behind her, Sara heard something.

She turned around, terrified suddenly that there were more Seraph, her mind cataloging where she'd seen the discarded weapons--but there was no need.

As it had done before, the Rune Tree's bark was fading, turning to mist; the image of the carved bark seemed to twist in on itself, and went dark.

Sara and Lex stared, openmouthed, at the figure that emerged.

It was Rowan...and yet it wasn't. He looked the same, and was wearing the same black pants and t-shirt he'd been wearing when he'd gone to bed earlier that night. He was still barefoot and still wore the stone around his neck. But though his hair was still its summer shades of brown, green, and grey, and his eyes were still green, something in them had changed irrevocably.

They were luminescent, filled with fire, and with a quality Sara could only describe as life--not the life of a single individual, but all life, waxing and waning and spinning round and round again, from birth to death and on to rebirth.

He stepped forward, and the dream world seemed to bend around him, changing as he moved.

He looked around the clearing, his expression perfectly calm, detached.

He lifted a hand.

Sara felt something in her stomach lurch, and when the feeling stopped, and she followed Lex's gaze, she gasped.

The four dead Seraph had disappeared. The blood had evaporated.

Rowan came to them, and knelt beside Sara, who almost passed out under the onslaught of his aura even as she remembered this very feeling from the night of Beltaine, the night the Singer had been conceived.

Understanding dawned at last.

The Weaver leaned over Jason's body, smiling softly. The look on his face was one hundred percent Rowan, full of love and regret. "Sorry I'm late, culisen," he said, laying his hands tenderly on Jason's ravaged chest.

Again, the lurch in her stomach, and before she could even let out her breath, Jason gasped hard, his body spasming into the ground, eyes flying open as he coughed and drew a hungry, ragged breath. The blood all over his chest was gone, as was the wound left by the stake. His death had been erased...no...rewoven.

"Now," Rowan said, still serene, with a gently ironic touch to his voice, "I think it's time we all woke up."

Sara blinked.

Then she sat bolt upright in bed.

*****

Jason woke shaking, his entire body in agony that centered in his chest--he thrashed in the covers for a moment, confused and scared witless, until he realized he was home in bed, not bleeding out on the forest floor.

He was drenched in sweat and could barely hear anything over the sound of his heart trying to shatter his ribcage from the inside. He curled up in a fetal position, trying to breathe, trying to make sense of anything he'd seen or felt.

I died. I felt it. But then...what happened? I saw Rowan. He was all right. But...

His cell phone on the bedside table rang, the sound oddly shrill in the near-silent room and loud enough to startle him out of his panic. He rolled over, groping for it, and mashed the keypad with numb fingers until he hit the "talk" button and got it to his ear.

"Jason?"

The warm, familiar voice flooded him with relief, banishing the pain and fear.

"Baby, are you there? Talk to me."

"Rowan..."

"Yes, it's me. Just breathe...are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Jason sat up, pulling his knees up to his chin and holding the phone like a lifeline. "I'm okay. Are you?"

"I'm fine. A little...freaked. Well, extremely freaked. But I'm okay."

"Sara?"

"She's here, she's fine too. We both woke up at the same time."

Jason's free hand went to his chest, feeling for the hole that should be there but wasn't. "What happened to me?"

"It's...it's complicated, amori. Just try to relax, and try to rest. Everything's okay now."

He shut his eyes tightly. "Come home."

He could hear Rowan smiling. "I am, my love. Tomorrow. I'll be home to you by sunset. For now, just rest. Call Lex to make sure he's all right, and then rest, and I'll see you soon. I promise."

*****

As Rowan hung up the phone and lay it down, Sara was still weeping into his shoulder. He put his arms around her and held her close, murmuring to her in Elvish, letting her touch and squeeze him wherever she needed to to affirm he was alive, and they were safe in the real world where they belonged.

Gradually she calmed, and before long had fallen asleep again, this time peacefully.

He made sure of that.

After a while, when he was certain she wouldn't wake, he eased out from her embrace and left the bedroom, making his silent way out onto the guest house's porch.

The world was all ashimmer to his eyes. He could see glimpses of past, present, and future, and how the slightest touch could alter worlds. He could feel the potential of everything around him, flowing through his veins, singing from end to end of his being. To work with that magic, he had to enter a deeper state than he had ever been trained for, but still, in time he knew it would be effortless.

He was still Rowan. He chose to be. But as Clan Yew had once filled his head with false memories, now there were entire lifetimes dancing before his eyes--he remembered a thousand years ago, and a thousand before that. He remembered the first breath he had ever drawn, when the world was still so young and humans so innocent. Some things were clear, and some still shrouded in the elusive gossamer of time. The past and the future had always been the Sibyl's province. The present, and transforming it, was his.

It wasn't omnipotence, but it was damn close.

Once, they had all worked together. His sister had been able to see all the consequences of every action--perhaps that was what had driven her mad, spending millennia alone with nothing but the entire world’s karma to keep her company. He remembered when she had been young and full of hope, like the Maiden, the daughter of endless possibility with her blossoms and baby animals. The Sibyl had been the oldest of their triumvirate.

Rowan stood out in the fresh Summer night, letting the crossthreads of the universe shift and split around him, watching it, drawing strength from the endless dance. The urge to lay his hands upon the tapestry of life and change its weave was hard to resist, but he would simply have to learn; he had no right to remake the world on a whim, and the concomitant responsibility was even greater than the power. He knew it was going to be hard, nearly impossible, to use that power without letting himself be used.

Once, his people had faded from the Earth. They had been too powerful, too lonely. Their gifts had been disseminated among their children and children's children, the magical genetic birthright of the Elves. Some of that magic had passed on to humans as well, back when they could interbreed, and now it was all but gone.

But something had brought them back. Something, or Someone, had decided it was time.

Rowan knew in his heart that it had not been the Sibyl's doing. She was an instrument, like they all were; their power came from the Divine, and only the Divine could reawaken it.

One way or another he would find out. One way or another, he would find the others, and he would stop them from turning on the human race.

He'd start with the Singer.

But first...first, he would go home, back to his lover. It was almost funny now, thinking of his fear and doubt. Of all the future possibilities he should worry about, love was not one of them.

Rowan smiled into the dark, one hand touching the silver band around the opposite wrist. Home, and Jason. Passionate lovemaking followed by pizza and sleep. Real life, beautiful life, his life.

Saving the world could wait. He was going home.

*****

SA-7 waited alongside Dr. Nava and Ness while the van pulled up to the ramp inside the Agency's underground parking garage. Outwardly he was all business, but on the inside his heart was turning somersaults and cartwheels in amongst the butterflies--no, bats--in his stomach.

He had no idea what to expect. He'd only spoken to Rowan for a moment the night before, and then briefly to Sara later, who had said that Rowan had changed, but was still himself, and that he shouldn't worry. For some reason that made him worry even more.

It didn't matter. Rowan was home. He could have grown scales and sprouted a second head, and everything would be okay as long as he was home.

The look on Nava's face when Sara climbed awkwardly out of the van was absolutely priceless. The doctor's mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide with shock until she looked like a cartoon of herself.

Sara, visibly and obviously pregnant, had to move more slowly than before, but still looked quite comfortable in her own skin. Her face was a little fuller, but she didn't look tired and sick anymore, and had put on weight besides the belly itself. Still, judging by Nava's expression, their ideas of how quickly she'd progress had been a little conservative. Jason didn't know all that much about pregnancy but he guessed she looked about four months along...at less than two months from conception. In another month she'd be as big as a house, at this rate.

A moment later, Rowan got out, and the van pulled away from the curb.

Jason tried not to stare, but it was difficult. He hadn't seen his partner in a month, unless you counted the night before, and now...it was hard to pinpoint the change, but anyone who had ever known the Elf would know immediately that he was different.

Rowan looked at each of them in turn, evaluating, as if he was reminding himself who they were and what their roles were. When his eyes lit on Jason, the vampire felt the warm kiss of energy run through him, just as it always had.

He finally felt like he could breathe again.

He figured there would be the usual noises made by Ness about debriefing and returning to duty, but before the Director could open her mouth, Rowan said quietly but firmly, "Just as a reminder, Ness, I'm still technically on vacation until Monday. We can debrief then."

For a wonder, Ness didn't protest at all. "Of course, SA-5. I only wanted to welcome you both back and say that you've definitely been missed around here." She turned to Jason and said, "SA-7, I'll need to see you in the conference room as soon as the team returns from the raid on the sorcerer's home. In the meantime I would like you to send me your preliminary report on the necromancy case. I believe you mentioned your notes were on the computer in your quarters?"

"Yes ma'am," he replied with a grin.

"See that you go there immediately, then, and get that put together for me. I'll see you in a few hours."

With that, Ness turned and left, her heels clicking crisply on the concrete.

Nava was already peppering Sara with questions, and Sara sighed and said, "Okay, okay. Let's just go on up to the infirmary and get the poking and prodding over with." She cocked her head toward Jason and added, "Speaking of poking and prodding, aren't you supposed to be headed back to quarters?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "Have fun with your paper gown and speculum, Agent 9."

Sara stuck her tongue out at him and followed Dr. Nava through the sliding doors into the base.

Finally, Jason turned to Rowan.

They stood for a long moment staring into each other's eyes.

"Am I allowed to hug a Jenai?" Jason asked, his voice hushed with emotion despite the weak attempt at humor.

Rowan's only answer was to cross the space between them and fling himself into Jason's arms.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 10/12

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:08:16 GMT

Two parts left after this one. Yay! Part 11 will come tomorrow, or perhaps later tonight.

"Rowan! Rowan, god damn it, come back!" Jason's fists struck the bark of the Rune Tree until they bled, but it was no use; the portal that had opened in front of the Elf had closed behind him in seconds, and now it was just a tree again. Even the stone was gone. There was no way to follow.

Jason rapped his head against the tree and rested, panting, his forehead bitten by the bark.

Rowan was in there. Rowan had gone on alone--that couldn't be right. Why else were they all here, unless it was to go with him through the Gate? How were they going to get him back?

And how were they going to get home?

Sara and Lex had to practically pry him off the tree, but he assented to their wishes readily enough. He had to think. There must be something they were missing, some way they could reopen the Gate and get Rowan back.

"What do we do?" Sara asked, on the verge of panic herself. "He's gone, Jason, he's gone, what do we do?"

Jason pushed away from the Tree and forced his brain to climb back on the tracks of logic. "We wait," he said. "We make ourselves comfortable and we wait. He went in there to learn something, and we have to assume that when he's done he'll come back out, or bring us in. Whatever brought us here couldn't have intended to leave us all to rot."

"I still don't get why we're all here at all," Sara said. "Rowan read the incantation. I was just sitting nearby holding a flashlight. You two weren't even in the same county. We didn't even all know each other."

"Still," Lex said, "it does make a certain sense, depending on who brought us here. I am meant to be guardian of the Singer. You are carrying the Singer in your womb, Sara. I'm as certain of that as I ever have been of anything. It's my job to keep your baby--and by extension you, of course--safe, so if you were to come here, I was too."

"But why me? Because I helped with the spell?"

The Seraph looked helplessly confused. "I don't know. I just know that where you go, I go."

Sara plopped down in the grass with a tired grunt and rubbed her temples. "Great, because that's not going to get annoying."

Just then, the wind kicked up again, and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, as if a helicopter was landing in the clearing--all three stepped back closer to the Tree, Lex hooking his wings to keep them from being thrown about in the gale, and Jason shifted position so he was in front of Sara.

A shadow fell across the grass...then another...and another...and another.

There was a great rushing sound, as of...wings...

Oh, fuck. Jason knew that sound.

When at last the wind died down, the three of them stood staring, and Jason could hear Sara's heartbeat thundering in her chest.

"I don't suppose either of you have weapons," Jason said calmly.

Lex shook his head grimly and Sara said, "I was in bed. Do you sleep with a gun in your pajamas?"

Jason snorted quietly. "You're lucky I have clothes on."

“Maybe they’re just here for a friendly chat,” Sara mused.

As one, the four Seraph facing them all drew long, curved knives like the one the Agency had recovered from Joshua’s angel.

“Doesn’t look that way.” Jason cast a glance around the clearing for anything that might work as a weapon, but the only potentially deadly things were tree branches, and only to him.

That was when he noticed that one of the Seraph had a spear gun loaded with a wooden projectile, and a quiver full of the same hanging from his belt.

They all looked exactly alike down to the nondescript dark grey clothes they wore--just like soldiers, dispatched as a unit on a mission, and by the looks of it, sent by the same sorcerer who had sent the Seraph after Lex days ago. They carried the same kind of knives...and weapons designed to kill vampires. They had known exactly who they would find here.

That didn’t bode well.

Not at all.

“If they’re like you, they can’t take off from the ground, right?” Jason asked.

“No. Only from height.”

“So if we can lose them in the woods they’ll have to follow us on foot. All right. I’m going to keep them occupied, and you get Sara as far away from here as possible.”

“No way,” Sara said quickly. “We’re not leaving you behind to fight them all. If you want me to run I’ll run, but Lex can stay here and help you. Besides, those wings of his will only slow us down.”

Lex looked torn, but said, “She has a point. I can be of more use here.”

“Fine. Sara, as soon as you get an opening you make for the trees.”

“But how will I find you again?”

“I’ll find you by scent. Don’t worry. Just lay low and wait for me.”

“But--“

“That’s an order, SA-9.”

Before she had a chance to retort, the Seraph took a step toward them, raising their weapons with the robotic grace of synchronized swimmers.

Sara moved backwards, edging toward the Tree, while Jason and Lex moved forward.

“What’s the plan?” Lex asked quietly. Jason was surprised, but pleased, that he was obviously not afraid.

“Don’t die,” Jason replied.

The first stake whistled past his left ear, and after that, there was no more time to talk.

*****

The fabric of the dream fluttered like a curtain, and when it stilled, Rowan was no longer in a clearing, or even within view of the Tree itself.

He stood, instead, in a painfully familiar place, one that had not existed for years: the center of the labyrinth outside the Clan Oak Temple.

This time it was night, clear and cool, the sky above flecked with stars that he could see moving in a slow, stately waltz around an axis point that was, it seemed, directly over his head. The sounds he would have expected in this place--wind, birds, the distant songs of Elves and laughter of children--were gone, but the peace he remembered remained.

He still held the stone in his hand, and absently looped it back around his neck as he took in the view he had never expected to see again.

It was definitely the labyrinth he had grown up walking, but beyond it, all around the Temple, the trees were blurry, drifting in and out of solidity the way the trees of the clearing had at first. The Temple itself looked the same as it always had when bathed in starlight. Was the rest of the village out there, too? Did it still exist in dreamtime, or had his mind simply conjured this place up?

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and whirled around.

She smiled.

Rowan fell back a step, hand going to his mouth, the other reaching out expecting his fingers to go through her the way they should a ghost.

"Mother?"

Neneva's smile widened, and she half-bowed. "Son."

He resisted the urge to throw his arms around her; they had never been physically affectionate. Rethla rarely were outside their work, as their touch tended to affect people very strongly even when they weren't actively using their skills. Neneva had always understood that, and besides, there was something in the dignity of her office that kept a distance between her and everyone else, even him, even when he was a child.

"Are you..."

"Am I a figment of your imagination? Are you dreaming me? No, and yes."

She looked exactly as he remembered her, although more like his dreams than in actual memory; here, as then, she had her Winter coloring, her hair white and shining, her eyes pale silver. The land around them was not in that season--was this place, then, frozen in time?

"How can you be real? You died decades ago."

"No, I did not. Come with me, child--there is little time." She started walking out of the labyrinth, and he only hesitated a breath before following her toward the Temple itself.

"I was found in the forest," she went on once he caught up. "Rescued, alone of all the Clan, from our dark and bloody fates. For a long time I thought you were dead, as well--I had heard that the slavers took you, and I prayed that you would die rather than face such an existence."

"I prayed for the same thing."

"But this grace was given to me; I survived, and found a new home, here."

"Here in a dream?"

She paused. "This is not a dream, my son. The Gate is a dream, and the Tree is a dream, but this place is very real. The Jenai created it beyond the mists of sleep so that no mortal could ever cross its borders. This place, and this place alone, is protected, forever, from destruction. They can reach the Tree, but cannot pass through the Gate to our realm. No one can hurt us here."

"How do I get back?" he asked.

She frowned. "For that you must ask the Sibyl."

"Is that where you're taking me now?"

"Yes."

He walked beside her around the Temple, and up the steps to its grand double doors, but try though he might to see what lay past the building, there was only shadow, color and darkness blending into one another and bending around itself every time he looked. It hurt his eyes, and eventually he gave up.

"What do you do here?" he asked Neneva. "Are you Jenai?"

She laughed. "Of course not. I serve them, as will all who survive the genocide of our people. They will save us and the chosen few will come here to act as their acolytes. Your acolytes," she amended, with emphasis.

Now it was his turn to frown. "I don't want servants. Least of all you."

"That is not for me to say," she told him. "Now, through here...you will know her when you see her. She is expecting you."

She pushed him gently through the doorway, and disappeared before he could say any of the thousand things he wished he could have. At the very least, he wished he had hugged her, custom be damned.

Still...she lived. Whatever she was doing here, she was alive. He couldn't help but find comfort in that.

Rowan entered the Temple, his mind full of memories of what it had looked like in his youth. What he found was a bit different.

Rather than the main sanctuary full of light and color, he stood in a stone room, windowless, lit only by the candles that were massed around something at the far end that looked like a wishing well without a roof. The room was stark, without rugs on the floor or stained glass, without any sort of life.

As he approached the well, he tried to focus his gaze on the walls, and for a second here and there he thought he saw carvings like those on the Tree. They, like everything else, drifted out of focus the longer he stared, and his eyes began to water with the effort.

Beyond the well, something moved in the darkness.

Rowan stopped a few feet from the well and waited.

"Weaver," came a soft, almost ghostlike feminine voice, full of wind and shadow.

He didn't speak, but gave a slight nod.

She separated herself from the edges of the dream and came forward, her shape shifting as the trees had, until she became a tall, almost wraithlike figure, draped in layers of shimmering cloth that looked like a moth's delicate wings. A veil covered her face, but he could see her hair, pale and feathery as it fell all around her, reaching the floor. A faint silvery sound like bells or water moved as she moved over the stones. She seemed to float, slither, and undulate all at once, dancing like a column of incense smoke climbing the sky toward heaven.

She, too, wore a stone around her neck, hers hanging from a thin silver chain. She reached up with one hand, its fingers long and spidery, and lifted the veil from her face.

"I know you," he said.

"You do." It was a confirmation, not a question. "Many a long and weary turning have I waited for you to return, my brother."

"Are you the Sibyl?" he asked, even though he already knew she was.

"I am. Of the seven of us who were Firstborn, who looked into the face of the One and One who fashioned us with Their own hands, only I have passed in this same body since that day."

"So there were seven Jenai originally. How many are there now?"

"At this moment? One."

He started to question her, but she waved her hand, and drifted closer to the well. Her eyes were blue, a dark and forbidding color like the water before her, and he found he didn't like looking into them--recognizing her made his body tense and his mind feel something he couldn't name but didn't like. It wasn't fear, or revulsion, but it certainly wasn't love.

"Look into the well, my brother."

Rowan hesitated, and she gestured to him. When the sleeve of her diaphanous robe fell back a little he saw that there were lines running along her forearm that looked like cracks, and indeed, she seemed brittle with age. How long exactly had she been alive? If she was telling the truth, and she had really been created as one of the first Elves, it could have been thousands of years--or millions, depending on which myths one had read.

He hadn't come all this way for nothing, though. He stepped up beside the well and looked in.

She held her hand over the water, and its murky blue depths cleared. "In the first days, we were seven," she said. "Our children became the Secondborn, the Elves."

He watched. The water shaped itself into the bodies of seven creatures, Elf-like in appearance but godlike in power, able to bend and twist reality at will, to read the future and the past like a child's Rune book, to heal and to create as easily as destroy.

The Sibyl appeared, young and sylph-like, with laughing eyes and radiant skin.

"We were the manifestation of Deity upon the Earth," she said. "I was the eyes of the Goddess...the Singer was Her voice. The Weaver was Her hands."

The water changed again, and Rowan stared at himself...only not. He knew his own face, and there was something in the Weaver's eyes that he knew as his own, but the form he saw in the well was regal, with the bearing of a king, or a god. Where his hands touched, reality was transformed, in accordance with his will. Day became night. The dead drew breath. The warp and weft of the universe were held in balance.

He saw others: the Warrior, with her sword of truth; the Maiden, a child who made things grow; the Teacher, who imparted the wisdom of the Elves to humankind and to their own children; and the Shadow, rarely ever seen, but feared by all who didn't understand him.

The Sibyl spoke again, and he listened with half his attention, watching the scenes play out before him to her narration: "The Shadow was the Weaver's opposite, death to his life. He was also the Weaver's beloved. Of all of us, the Shadow faded first, and then the Maiden. One by one we were killed, or vanished. Only I remained, here, alone, for centuries, as I watched the Clans massacred. I chose a few to attend me over the years--those who were strongest, whose faith was greatest, whom I could trust.

"And now the end times have come, and we must awaken again. Long have I seen the signs, long have I waited to call my siblings and friends forth from the blood of the new world, seven of us to return, to remake what we once made."

"How will we do that?" he asked.

"When the last Clan falls, when war tears Mortalkind asunder, it will be time. We will reclaim the Earth as our own, and help the God and Goddess to scour it clean of the creatures that have nearly destroyed it."

Rowan blinked and looked up at the Sibyl sharply. "Wait...what?"

"So it was written, so it was ordained. The future of our people has been carved into these very walls. Read it if you will."

"Carved--by you?"

"There has been no one else. I have been alone."

Rowan shook his head and stepped back from the well. "You're insane," he said. "You're mad if you think I'm going to help you kill off humankind--and worse, just sit by and wait until the rest of the Clans are slaughtered so we can start fresh. That's not why we were created. That's not what Elves do. We're healers, not murderers."

The Sibyl might have laughed; it was impossible to tell. "Speaks one who has killed many, and will kill many more in the future. Speaks one who has killed his own daughter."

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret that," he said. "But I don't regret defending myself or helping to liberate Clan Yew. I've taken life, yes, but I've given it too."

"And you have a daughter now," the Sibyl replied. "A daughter who will one day become the Singer, and who you will bring here to reclaim her birthright, and join in our sacred purpose."

"No."

The Sibyl actually had the good grace to look surprised.

"I'm not bringing my daughter anywhere near this place if that's what you want from her. She'll be raised to love all people regardless of blood. If that means she never becomes a true Jenai, so much the better--and neither will I."

Anger choked him, and he looked around the room for a way out. "Send me back. We're done."

The Sibyl's face did not change, and she didn't reply. Instead, she waved her hand over the water's surface again. "Perhaps before you make a choice you will regret, you should see what is at stake."

Against his better judgment, he did as she said.

He saw the Earth burning; he saw the slavers attacking what few Clans remained and murdering, raping, and maiming the rest of Elvenkind. He saw humanity fall into chaos and the sky ripped apart by nuclear war. He saw the forests turn to ash, the soil turn barren as it was systematically raped of its nutrients, the oceans and rivers filled with the dung of factory farmed animals and the corpses of his people. Famine spread over the planet, and everyone he had ever known, or ever would know, died in pain, while he endured, immortal in a world without any hope, powerless to stop the inevitable.

The water changed again.

Now he saw the clearing beyond the Dreaming Gate. Four Seraph, armed and brainwashed into bloodlust, attacked Lex and Jason, who had sent Sara to safety in the trees. The two were strong, and Jason was a skilled warrior, but they were outnumbered, unarmed, and cornered.

Rowan watched, frozen, as Lex went down first, bleeding but still alive, his arm hanging useless and one wing shredded limply by his side. He clawed his way out from under the two Seraph who slashed at him with their knives, but both blades struck home and he bled, and bled, pinned back against a tree.

Jason was faster than any one Seraph could hope to be. He kicked one in the head, spun around, and threw himself back into a second's chest, seizing the knife and whipping the Seraph around into the first one. They came at him again, and he slit one's throat and dodged the other's knife in time to drop to the ground and plunge his stolen blade into its gut. The knives were enchanted somehow, or poisoned--both Seraph fell screaming to the ground, foul black smoke rising from their wounds, blood bubbling dark green and slimy into the sunlit grass.

The vampire tackled one of the two remaining Seraph, distracting the fourth from Lex.

"Go!" he yelled. "Find Sara and get out of here! I'll hold them off!"

Lex was too badly injured to argue--he knew he couldn't fight any more, but he could make sure Sara was safe. He pulled what remained of his wings tight around him and ran into the woods, disappearing into the blurry background in seconds.

Jason snapped the third Seraph's neck with a sickening crunch that echoed through the well, but he wasn't fast enough to stop the fourth, who leapt sideways, retrieving a spear gun that one of his comrades had dropped, and firing a wooden shaft.

The stake thudded dully into Jason's chest.

Rowan heard himself crying out, but there was nothing he could do.

With the last of his strength, Jason lifted his knife and threw it, a perfect shot--it buried itself to the hilt in the last Seraph's eye, and with a shriek of pain, the creature tumbled dead to the ground.

Jason toppled forward into the bloody grass, his hands too weak and unresponsive to pull the stake from his sternum. He lay on the ground halfway on his side, his breath shallow and wet, blood trickling from his mouth. A violent shudder ran through him...and he was still.

Rowan screamed into the vision, and felt his knees colliding with the stone floor, his hands gripping the edge of the well. "No! No!"

The Sibyl watched him in silence, her seamed face showing not a trace of pity. When he finally raised his eyes to hers, he knew his were burning with rage, and hers were placid.

"The Weaver had the power of life and death," she said. "If you take up your true identity once more, you can bring him back."

Rowan bowed his head until his face touched the cold stone. "And I'll be a part of your holy crusade."

She seemed almost reluctant to say so, but finally, "You alone can choose what to do with your power. If you and I must be enemies, my brother, then that is what we must be. I admit I have not foreseen what will become of us should you take the road of evil."

"Evil is a relative term," he said, his voice flat even though his insides were shaking. "What will happen to me?"

"You will remember. And you will become. This life you have now will cease to be. There will be pain, and sorrow, and one day you will die--in pain, in darkness. The rest is yet unwritten."

"Tell me what I have to do."

She didn't. She merely pointed.

He looked up at her one last time. "Hope, for your own sake, that you and I never meet again, sister."

Then, he bent his head and drank from the well.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 9/?

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:03:41 GMT

This part is really, really long, because I couldn't figure out where to cut it, so forgive me my excesses. It's also the last part until at least Sunday, as I'll be out of town for Easter weekend, but I've got part 10 started already and it will probably be done before Monday's out.

This particular installment of the series is almost over, just so you know, but it's definitely not the end.

"But where did she get it?"

Rowan was sitting on the back porch of the guest house, cross-legged in a cushy chair, examining the stone in the bright sunlight of afternoon. Sara, curled up in the other chair, was itching to get a closer look at it herself, but the Elf hadn't put it down in the hour since he had returned from the forest.

"I don't know," Rowan said. "She wasn't exactly forthcoming with the details. But I asked both Mellis and Deisa and neither remember her having it when she arrived here. Clan Yew certainly wouldn't have let her keep it, if they'd seen it. Everything a refugee came with was stripped away when the Council altered their memories."

"Who was speaking through her? A deity? A spirit?"

Again, Rowan said he didn't know. "The voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it."

Sara leaned back to give her burgeoning belly more room; it was still a minor bump, but already it was uncomfortable to bend or twist too much. Just since yesterday it had grown, and her impulse was to rest her hands on it.

She also hadn't been nearly as nauseated in the last couple of days as before, but that was probably thanks to the mojo honey and an herbal tea that Aven had brought her that morning. Tea and honey both tasted similar, and combining the two was very soothing both to her jangled nerves and her addled body.

How long would it be before she started waddling? Dr. Nava was going to have kittens when she saw her...in five days.

"What does it say?" she asked to ward off the nervous breakdown she was starting to feel was inevitable. "Do we need a graveyard at midnight, or what?"

"No...it's actually very simple, just a few lines in Elvish said before a fire. Then you toss the stone in, and the Gate opens."

"Opens where?"

"Wherever you are, I think. If I'm reading this right, and I know I am, the Gate isn't a physical location, it's a magical phenomenon, like opening up a wormhole in space. I'm not sure how the Rune Tree fits in--it's not mentioned on here."

"Okay...so, are there instructions for how to close it once it's open?"

"It closes behind you. The stone is a key--you have to use it every time you want to open the Gate."

"That's a lot of information for a little rock."

Rowan held the stone up and flipped it over. "That's only one side. The other side...well, I can't read it. I think it's in Jenai."

"Let me see," Sara said, holding out her hand. Rowan was clearly reluctant, but he did as she asked.

The stone was warm in her palm, and perfectly smooth even though it didn't look polished, eroded by many hands on its surface. She could almost hear the hundreds of voices that had spoken the incantation over thousands of years.

Her grasp of written Elvish was a bit iffy, but she translated what she could of the front side, which was easier than she expected since it was all written as a command and therefore didn't use the tricky tenses and convoluted metaphors that spoken Elvish did. She could feel a faint hum coming from the stone, and was tempted to open herself to it and read it the way she would a building or crime scene.

"Don’t," Rowan said. "It could be dangerous for you."

"I know...I won't. But it's...even without looking deeply, I can feel...it's so old, Rowan. It's older than anything I've ever touched before--much older than you. And it's...whoever created it was so powerful. Like a god."

He nodded, a touch of awe in his eyes. "I felt it too. And I feel as if, if I were to meet its creator, I would know her. Like we were friends once, maybe in a past life."

"So you're going to do it?"

"Yes. Tonight. We can't afford to wait."

As he spoke, she turned the stone over to get a look at the back, running her fingers over the ancient symbols. Jenai...the language of the lost gods.

Suddenly, she felt something weird in her stomach--a fluttering, faint. She sucked in a breath and held still, and after a minute it came again.

"Oh my god..."

Rowan saw her face and asked, fearfully, "What? Are you all right? Sara?"

She clutched the stone until her hand hurt, her other hand flying to her middle. She met his eyes.

"It moved," she whispered. "I looked at the back of the stone, and...the baby moved."

The tears that had come to her when she first saw the bump returned, and she didn't fight them. She heard Rowan's chair creak, and he came to her, kneeling at her side and gently prying the stone from her hands so he could hold them.

"She's alive," she said, barely able to speak. "She's alive."

Reverently, Rowan lay his palm against her belly, and there was a third flutter, almost like a tiny wave hello. Rowan's eyes went wide.

They stayed that way for a long time, feeling and listening, the stone forgotten--and when a fourth little movement came, more of a jerk than a flutter but still soft and tentative, they stared at each other, then smiled.

*****

The Moon had risen high and full when she and Rowan went into the woods behind the house, the Elf carrying firewood, Sara carrying a flashlight. They'd explored the area before sunset and found a small clearing that would work well--not knowing what the effects of the spell would be, they'd agreed it was better not to do it in the house.

Ardeth had wanted to come, as had Aven, but Rowan had wanted to do it alone, and it took Sara turning a particularly stern look on him to change his mind. He'd seen that look a number of times since she'd joined the Agency, and any time she used it, he lost an argument.

"All right," he'd surrendered, "But you stay out of the way, and let me do the actual work. If something goes wrong you go for help--don't try to deal with it yourself."

She had promised to be careful, noticing that since that moment on the porch he'd been even more solicitous of her welfare than before.

She didn't really blame him. She was starting to feel that way herself.

She walked with one hand on her stomach, waiting--hoping?--to feel the tramera move again, but it was still, as if it too understood the gravity of what they were doing. There was no way to know what would happen when the Gate was opened. They might not even come back.

Was the knowledge they could gain worth it? She had to believe it was.

"Here," Rowan said. He steered her over to a large chunk of exposed stone and sat her down on it. "Stay put while I get the fire started."

She was too nervous, now that they'd arrived, to disagree. She gripped the flashlight tightly and kept the beam on Rowan as he deposited the wood in the circle of stones and sand they'd made that afternoon. There was no wind, but they'd built the fire circle carefully, pulling up the grass. The last thing they needed was to set fire to the forest.

They'd gotten the wood from the rack next to the guest house, so it was dry and well-seasoned; Elves in general didn't like to cut living trees, so they gathered deadfall all year round and stored it carefully. In the summer most of what was used went into the bakers' ovens and community cookfires.

She wouldn't have figured Rowan for an expert campfire builder, but within minutes the wood was crackling merrily, casting its dancing light all around the clearing.

He stood in front of the ring for a minute, pondering the stone in his hand, before coming over to where she sat and kissing her on the forehead, then on the lips.

"Just in case..." he began.

"None of that," she interrupted. "Everything's going to be fine. We'll be back in our beds asleep in no time, safe and sound."

He smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

Rowan returned to the fire, and memory intruded: she thought back to the first time she'd seen him work, back when she was a new recruit and still had only rudimentary control over her powers. She had been awed by his precision, as well as his grace. He could ground in five seconds flat under heavy gunfire, and project across miles. She knew she had only seen a tenth of what he was capable of...still, after knowing him for nearly two years. Watching him prepare himself for the spell left her speechless...and horny, actually, since it was working with his psychic abilities that had brought them together in the first place.

There would, she hoped, be time for that later.

His energy shifted, rooting itself in the earth, drawing strength from the embrace of the soil and the trees; he was completely calm, centered, and ready as he lifted the stone to where the firelight could illuminate it, and began to read.

His voice rang off the night, strong and sure, the cadence of Elvish adding depth and nuance to the words themselves. A single word in their language could mean a dozen things depending on inflection, gender, and other factors; she had no idea how she could have learned it at all without him implanting the entire thing in her head.

The incantation was four lines long, and she grew more and more tense with each line, her heart nearly stopping as the end of the fourth echoed out around them. Breathing hard, she locked her eyes on Rowan, and waited, heart in her throat as he tossed the stone into the fire pit.

And waited.

Five minutes, ten...fifteen...silence. The birds and crickets went right on about their business as if nothing had happened. The fire crackled. The wind picked up just a bit overhead. Clouds drifted like veils over the face of the Moon.

Nothing happened.

At first Rowan's attention was locked on the fire, but as the minutes ticked by, he started to look a little confused, then concerned. Finally, after twenty minutes, he looked over at Sara, who shrugged.

"Did you feel anything?" she asked.

He made an indefinite gesture. "I think so. I felt something move through me, almost like it was looking me over...but then it was gone. Did we do something wrong?"

"Look at the stone," she said. "Is it intact?"

Rowan leaned over the fire pit--just in time for the fire to sputter and go out, all at once.

He jumped back. "Whoa!"

Sara stood up and came to his side. "It went out, just like that?"

Sure enough, the fire was dead, a pile of black and grey, with one thing gleaming pale amid the ash: the stone, pristine, not even dirty. Rowan leaned over to touch it, and she almost warned him not to, but when his fingers struck the surface, it was cool. He picked it up and hung it back around his neck.

"What did we do wrong?" Sara asked.

Rowan was completely baffled. "Nothing," he insisted. "I did exactly what the inscription said to do. The Gate should be here, right in front of us."

Sara cast about with her senses, but no matter how she approached it, there was nothing amiss in the forest. It might have been any other calm, peaceful night in Clan Willow. "There's nothing here, honey," she said. "I would know if it had changed."

"Something started to happen. Why did it stop? Was it...was it me?"

"Maybe it was me," Sara mused, retrieving the flashlight and kicking dirt into the fire pit to smother the last few embers that hadn't gone out yet. "Maybe you really do have to be alone when you do it."

"She said I wouldn't," Rowan muttered. "She said I wouldn't come alone."

"Well, then we need to take this thing to Deisa tomorrow and see what she knows about it, and talk to some of the other sorcerers in the Clan, the ones that work more in theoretical magic than in craft. They can at least tell us if we're headed in the right direction."

Rowan was agitated, but he nodded. "You're right. We probably should have talked to the others before we even tried it on our own. We could have gotten hurt, or unleashed...anything. We'll get our bearings tomorrow and try again."

"Good." She took his arm. "Let's go back and get some sleep."

"Yes...all right."

He was obviously distracted on the walk back, and also while she puttered around the kitchen fixing them a hasty dinner before bed. The Bakers had brought them bread, and some of the huge kettle of stew that they kept going almost all year, adding different vegetables as the season's harvest dictated. The last few days it had been full of fresh green herbs, compliments of Aven's work at the house, early summer squash and eggplant, and heaps of green beans. Tonight's had several new potatoes chunked into it, and for afterward, there was the much-promised blackberry pie.

"We're well cared for here," Sara observed, dishing them up each a bowl of fragrant stew and a slice of bread.

Rowan seemed a little dazed by their failure, and for a while he said nothing, just picked at his food the way he always did when thinking about something unpleasant. She left him alone, letting him brood, and concentrated on filling her tummy with the wonderful food, in large amounts, now that eating was no longer a signal to her digestive tract to throw the engines in reverse.

"I think you should stay here," Rowan said after a while. "I think you and the tramera need to be here where it's safe."

She looked at him over her stew bowl. "And you?"

"I need to go through the Gate. After that, if...if I come back...we'll see."

“Of course you’ll come back,” she said, panicked at the very thought that he might not. “What good would it do for you to just disappear? Aren’t you supposed to help save the Elves from extinction or something?”

“That’s the myth. What’s the truth? I’m afraid to find out...but I have to.”

She managed to cajole him into eating most of his dinner, then they worked together to clean up, Sara moving a bit slowly--she was as exhausted as she would have been after a full day of training with Carlos back at the base. Apparently it took a lot of energy for a fetus to wiggle its foot.

Rowan took her hand. “Would you mind company tonight?” he asked.

Sara smiled. “Absolutely not.”

They hadn’t slept together much in the weeks they’d been with the Clan, and anything else was even rarer, but bedding down together was as comfortable and warm as always. She had forgotten how good it felt to lie with the Elf, safe in his arms; her relationship with Ardeth was lovely, and extremely satisfying sexually, but there was something about Rowan that was inherently healing, and always had been. They spooned up together amid the cozy blankets of her bed, and she fell asleep to his heartbeat against her back, his arm around her waist, and his fingers laced through hers, thinking that whatever happened, she hoped that this, at least, would not change.

*****

When Rowan opened his eyes, for a moment he could make no sense of what he was looking at. Bright sunlight struck his face and nearly blinded him; he rolled onto his back, groaning, and put his hands over his eyes sleepily.

There was something hard under his back. A rock?

A rock?

He opened his eyes again and found himself staring up at leaves.

“What the...”

Rowan turned over onto his side again, and drew an astonished breath.

Sara was gone. The guest house was gone. He was outside.

It was morning, but there was no birdsong, only the sound of wind rustling through the branches above him. He lay beneath a broad oak, one of many that surrounded the clearing.

Clearing. What?

He got to his feet slowly and looked around, senses on high alert. To all outward appearances it was simply a clearing in the woods, much like the one where he and Sara had lit their fire the night before, though larger.

Something, however, was very, very different about this place.

He turned in a circle, and reality shifted around him belatedly, stopping around him when he grew still and going blurry when he moved. One minute things were crystal clear, the next they were in watercolor; the trees, too, kept changing, some of them oak and then elm, cedar and then cypress. Disoriented, he rubbed his eyes like a child woken from a nap, and tried again, taking a deep breath to center himself.

That was better. The scene settled into a single reality, with trees like the ones he was used to around Clan Willow.

At the far end of the clearing, there was a single enormous oak, standing dark and somewhat ominous as sovereign of the realm. It reminded him strongly of the Blessing Trees, though looking at it made him feel a little uneasy instead of tranquil. There was something odd about the bark, he realized, taking a few steps toward it, out into the sunlight.

He approached the tree carefully. Around him, the wind stilled, waiting.

Rowan stared at it, realizing that what he was seeing wasn’t the nearly black pattern of a live oak’s bark--the pattern was too regular, and smoother.

It was carved. The entire trunk was carved with Elvish Runes like the ones on the back of the stone he wore around his neck...except for a single small circle right in front of him, at about eye level...exactly the size of the stone itself.

“The Rune Tree,” he whispered, one hand seeking the stone.

He looked back at the clearing, trying to get his bearings. Where was he? How had he not known this place was near the Clan?

Or was it?

There was movement on the edge, back where he’d come from, and the shadow beneath the oak where he’d woken seemed to blur again. He watched, heart pounding, as it solidified into the shape of a person.

A groan, a yawn, and a gasp.

Sara struggled to her feet, looking around, her face pale with shock. When she saw him, she sagged back, relieved. “Thank god,” she said. Her voice was almost lost in the silence.

He crossed the clearing to her, and they hugged. The solidity of her body helped him clamp down on the fear that was crawling up his spine.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked.

“I have no idea.”

“I remember falling asleep, that’s all. I woke up here.”

“Me too. The spell must have done this--wherever we are, we must have gone through the Gate.”

“What do we do now?”

Before he could answer, there was another flurry of movement, and the shadow once again gave birth to form. This time, the person that emerged didn’t wake up gradually--he rolled out from the tree, thrashing, and was on his feet in seconds.

He ended up out in the sunlight, and made a terrified noise and jumped back beneath the tree, panting.

“Jason?” Sara asked. “What are you doing here?"

The vampire pressed himself back into the tree as hard as he could, nails clawing backward into the bark, panic written all over his face.

Rowan went to him, pulling him around to the side of the tree, farther from the sunlight. “Breathe, love. Just breathe. You’re okay.”

He’d never seen Jason so afraid of anything, and it was equally frightening to watch, but Jason clenched his arms and did as he said, calming himself by inches. A few feet away, Rowan heard another roll, another thump, and he guessed that meant they had a fourth member in their party.

“Holy shit!” he heard Sara exclaim. “Who the fuck are you?”

Rowan poked his head around the tree and saw a familiar face. “Lex?”

The Seraph wasn’t trying to hide from the sun--Rowan remembered vaguely that it didn’t burn him the way it did normal vampires--but he was clearly thunderstruck, his wings unhooked and unfurled, fists clenched and ready for a fight. It was no wonder Sara looked like she was about to make a run for it.

Lex looked at him. “Rowan? Where are we?”

Sara, who had shrunk back into another tree, stared at him hard. “You’re Lex?”

The Seraph turned to her. “Yes...who are you?”

“I’m Sara.” She smiled weakly. “You’re even hotter than they said you were.”

The Seraph, despite the situation, gave her an equally wobbly grin. “Likewise.”

It wasn’t until she came out into the light again that the Seraph’s eyes went wide as dinner plates, and he put a hand to his mouth, stepping back.

“What?” she asked.

Lex gestured helplessly at her but couldn’t speak.

Rowan brought his attention back to Jason. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

Still breathing hard, the vampire shook his head. “No. It’s...it’s fine.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked around at the woods. “It’s fine. But it shouldn’t be.”

“I thought you had to be in direct sunlight to catch fire,” Sara said.

“I do. But this much light should be giving me the mother of all migraines.”

Still frowning, Jason moved out from behind the tree, out of Rowan’s grasp; the Elf tried to yank him back, but he waved him away and slowly, carefully, stuck a hand out from the shadow into the sunlight.

Nothing.

Emboldened, he stepped forward again, and again, until the sun fell across his face.

Rowan started to yell at him to get back, but there was no need. The sun wasn’t burning him.

Jason held out his arms, staring at his skin, at the midmorning light falling on him that turned his immortal pallor golden. His mouth worked in silence for a full minute, and his voice was small and tremulous as he said, “It’s so warm.”

Meanwhile, Lex was still gaping at Sara, who was gaping at Jason, who looked like he was about to faint.

Clearly someone had to take charge of the situation.

“All right,” Rowan said. “Is everyone okay? Lex, what’s wrong?”

The Seraph motioned toward Sara again, and said, “It’s her.”

“What is?” Sara demanded. “Who am I?”

A slow shake of the auburn head. “Not you,” he clarified, pointing with an unsteady hand at her middle. “Her.”

Sara’s hands went protectively to her belly. “You mean the baby?”

Lex nodded.

“What about her?”

He approached Sara, and knelt in front of her, one long-fingered hand coming to rest over hers. Sara cried out, but not in pain--in recognition, the way she had when the baby had kicked.

Sara swayed backwards, and Lex took her hands, holding her up with a firm but gentle grip. “It’s all right,” he said to her.

Rowan went to them and drew Sara away from him, putting himself between her and the Seraph. “Like hell it is. What’s going on?”

Sara’s voice was hushed. “They recognized each other. The baby knows him. I could feel it.”

Lex’s face bore an expression Rowan couldn’t interpret, a cross between terror and joy. He remained on his knees, looking up at Sara as if she were a queen, or a goddess. “At last,” he said. “At last I know.”

“Rowan,” Jason said from the clearing, “What is this place? What have you done?”

Rowan crossed back to his side, out in the sunlight, where it seemed he was rooted to the spot, staring up at the sky--the first blue sky he’d seen in over a century. The Elf watched him for a minute, a smile spreading over his face--he’d never seen Jason look so young, or so vulnerable. The vampire was gazing up at the sun and drinking in its heat, and though his mind was trying to remain on task, Rowan knew the enormity of it was too overwhelming for reason.

Rowan’s heart ached until it felt like his chest might explode. He swallowed back tears and put his arms around his lover, burying his face in Jason’s neck. Jason returned the embrace, and they held each other tightly for a while before Rowan whispered, “I love you.”

Jason leaned back from him and kissed him. In that moment, Rowan realized--really, truly understood--what a fool he'd been for even considering letting him go.

Behind them, Sara cleared her throat.

Rowan broke the kiss and sighed. “I don’t know where we are,” he told them all. “Last night Sara and I did a ritual to open the Dreaming Gate, using this.” He held up the stone where Lex and Jason could see it. “We didn’t think it worked, but it must have, because we went to sleep and here we are.”

“Were you asleep?” Jason asked Lex, who nodded. “I was, too.”

“Dreaming Gate,” Sara pointed out. “It must only work while you’re asleep.”

Jason cast another glance up at the sun, then tore his eyes back down to the earth. “We’re still asleep, and dreaming now,” he mused. “How else could this be possible?”

“How could we all be having the same dream?” Lex asked.

Rowan pointed at the oak on the far end. “I think that’s the Rune Tree my mother spoke of. It’s carved with old Elvish, and it looks like this stone will fit into it perfectly.”

“Which does what?”

Rowan shook his head at Lex. “I have no idea. But we’re about to find out.”

Sara reached for his hand. “I don’t know about this.”

“Too late for doubt,” he replied. “I don’t think we can get home by going backwards.”

"All right," Jason said, coming back to himself and their current predicament. "We stick together. Lex, you're in charge of Sara."

Sara snorted. "I can take care of myself, thanks. You taught me, remember?"

He gave her a Look. "Don't forget, Agent, you're kicking ass for two now. Don't put yourself at risk if you don't have to."

"She won't," Lex said, and Rowan was surprised at his vehemence.

Sara rolled her eyes and told the Seraph, "Fine, have my back, but don't get in my way."

Lex's face was both impressed and irritated, but he said nothing, merely nodded. Rowan agreed--now wasn't the time to argue.

The Elf took the stone from his neck and walked up to the Tree, wondering if he should be excited, scared to death, or both; he wasn't really sure how he felt, except that he wished fervently that they'd waited to do the incantation until they'd found out more about where this was going to lead.

But, as he'd said, there was only one way forward.

He turned the stone so that the Jenai script was facing out, and pressed it into the hole in the Tree's bark.

He half expected to have to wait again, but almost immediately he felt something change; the carvings in front of him started to move. Each line of text slid to the left or right, as if some unseen eyes were reading it. At the edge of his consciousness, Rowan could hear the faintest whispers...dozens of voices, each repeating the same words in the ancient tongue, words that he couldn't understand...

...and then, out of nowhere, he could.

Language flowed into his mind, the same way he had transferred Elvish into Sara's and Jason's. He heard himself speaking, the words making no sense at first, then rearranging themselves in his head:

"...by the farthest star and the deepest sea, the glowing ember, the flame of eternity...part the mists between the worlds..."

He lost his awareness of everyone else, of the clearing; all he could hear were the voices, voices he recognized from far away and long ago, before loss, before death, before time itself...

Someone was speaking to him, calling him back, but he walked forward, unable to answer. It was calling...they were calling...the mists had parted...the Gate was open...

There was no going back.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 8/?

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:15:18 GMT

She had no idea what she was looking at, but Frog was certainly excited about it.

“Okay,” she said in her best kindergarten-teacher voice. “Why don’t you tell me about your picture, Froggy?”

He shot her a look that said “don’t call me Froggy,” but a raised eyebrow from her kept him from actually voicing the thought. “This is the residue we got off the knife.”

“I thought it was blood,” Beck replied, stepping back from the massive microscope while he fished a printout from his desk. “I could smell it.”

“Well, it was blood. But not just blood. The tests came back with both A-negative and O-positive human blood, but also a variety of essential oils--myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, and calamus, in a carrier of olive oil.”

Beck frowned. “An Abramelin formula? Not exactly rare these days, with all the occultists in Austin.”

“No, but it reinforces the idea that our guy is into Enochian ritual, which overlaps a lot with Thelema, where Abramelin is most widely used. But that’s not the point. The oil isn’t the only thing on the knife besides blood.”

She rubbed her forehead tiredly. “Frog, it’s been a long night and I need to report to SA-7 about our progress. Please, put it in Vampire Dummy Talk for me.”

He nodded. “Okay. Here’s the thing. There’s blood, there’s Abramelin oil, and there’s soot. The blood most likely comes from the human host that the Seraph was invoked into, along with a drop or two from the summoner to bind the spell. The oil would have been used to anoint the blade beforehand.”

“And the soot?”

“The soot would have come from an open flame--the blade has to be purified with fire before the ritual. We analyzed the soot. There were over four hundred constituents, which I won’t list--“

“Praise Jesus.”

“--but put all together, we got a profile on the wood’s most likely source. It was mountain cedar, and it came from Southeast Austin. We’ve got it narrowed down to a neighborhood.”

Beck leaned back against one of the work tables, crossing her arms, wishing her headache would go away. She’d be off shift in half an hour, and she’d planned to go check up on Lex, but she was going to need to feed first. “That’s great, but not very helpful,” she pointed out. “He could have gathered the wood and taken it anywhere.”

“True. But it just so happens that the Eyes picked up an energy spike the day before Joshua Cohen first saw his Seraph. Same neighborhood. Coincidence?”

Beck grinned. “That’s more like it. Anything else?”

“The address that lines up with the energy spike is the home of one Samuel Pierrault, a direct descendant of the man who created the Seraph-invocation ritual.”

Beck whooped and punched the air. “Frog, I could stick my tongue down your geeky throat! Let’s have the address and I’ll get a team out there lickety split.”

Frog, who was a bit pink around the ears, had anticipated the request, and handed her a sheet of paper. “Have fun.”

Beck tapped her Ear on the way out of the lab, but Jason had already coded off for the night--he’d said he was going to take Lex to see the Jesus kid, so he was probably already home in bed by now. She could have had him paged overhead, but it would be easier, not to mention less annoying, to just go down to his quarters. That way they could decide who to send, and whether it could wait until nightfall; if it could, then they could go, but if not, they’d have to send an all-human team, and she wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

She was practically bouncing with excitement as she got off the elevator on the lower level. Finally, a break--Lex would be glad, too, to learn more about what was going on. It might even be a good idea for him to come along so he could take a look at Pierrault’s house. There was the possibility that the bastard had conjured more than just a single Seraph to do his dirty work.

Beck ran her badge over the scanner of Jason and Rowan’s door, and opened it.

She froze just inside the threshold.

Her brain seemed to shut down, unwilling or unable to comprehend the sight that awaited her on the couch: her brother, and her lover, asleep in each other’s arms, the Seraph dressed in Jason’s clothes, his own folded over a chair. The air in the apartment reeked of sex, and from where she stood she could see long scratches down Jason’s upper arms, already healing.

The sound of the door opening woke them both, and Jason blinked, yawned, and looked over at her sleepily. He didn’t seem at all upset by either her intrusion or discovery...but then, why would he, if he didn’t know about her and Lex?

Was there a her and Lex? God, had she been fooling herself this whole time? That’s what it looked like--

The Seraph, too, opened his eyes and looked over at her, but where Jason’s reaction was little more than faint chagrin, Lex’s was decidedly more intense. He sat up abruptly, gasping, and pulled away from Jason, who looked confused at his behavior.

Jason looked at Beck’s face, then at Lex’s, and his mouth dropped open in shock.

Beck started to retreat from the room. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’ll come back later...”

“No, Beck, wait,” Lex called, at the same time Jason said, “Oh my God.”

She groped behind her for a wall to sag against, one hand still on the doorknob. “I...”

Jason’s expression would have been priceless in any other circumstances. He looked like he’d just lifted a shirt to find tits on a man. He turned an accusatory glare on the Seraph and demanded, “How long has this been going on?”

“How long do you think?” Lex snapped through his bewilderment.

“You said you were seeing a woman, and you conveniently left out it’s my sister?”

Beck tried to drum up outrage, but her heart was too fixated on the image of Lex’s head in Jason’s lap, and the peaceful smile on his sleeping face. They had looked so right together...and the thought made her want to throw up.

There was an awkward, nightmarishly tense silence, before Beck asked in a low voice, “So, you two are...back together?”

“No,” they both said firmly, but Jason added, “Except...” and Lex said, “But...”

“It’s okay,” she told them, forcing herself to straighten, her whole body shaking from the inside out. “It’s okay, I mean, it’s not like we’re a couple or anything, it was just for fun, right?

“Beck, I--“

“No, really. I’ll just go. I’m glad you worked things out.”

Seraph and vampire exchanged a glance. Jason looked from Lex back over at her, and something in his face changed; the anger bled out of his eyes, and some kind of understanding dawned. Inwardly, she cringed--she knew what he was thinking. Of course she did. Just like he knew why her voice was so unsteady.

“Here,” she said, foisting the sheet of paper Frog had given her off on her brother. “This is the address for our sorcerer. If you want me to be on the team just let me know before tomorrow’s shift. I’ll just go. It’s okay.”

Beck yanked the door open and bolted.

She made for the elevator, cursing herself the whole time, letting her body carry her blindly toward the locker room where she could officially go off shift.

God damn it. God damn him. Why was she acting like this? She felt like a fool, and worse, like a silly little girl with a crush.

But the thought of them together like that, of Lex touching Jason the way he had her...pain stabbed through her gut. She’d never wanted to cry so much in her life.

Stupid, stupid. You knew better than to get involved like this. Since when have you ever gotten this messed up over a man?

Behind her she heard a door open and shut, then footsteps and the swish of something brushing against the wall, like fabric.

A hand closed around her arm and pulled her to a halt.

“Beck, wait,” Lex insisted.

“Let me go!” she cried, pushing him away. “Go back to your boyfriend. I’ll be fine.”

“No,” he said gently, pulling her back, putting his arms around her. “I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out.”

She tried to fight, but couldn’t. She didn’t want to hurt him. Stupid, stupid.

“You don’t owe me anything,” she replied. “We’re just friends.”

She could hear the smile in his voice as his hand curved around her jaw, tipping her chin up so their eyes met. “Are we?” he asked.

“I’m not going to get in the way. I’m not going to be that girl that makes you choose.”

“Beck...I don’t love him. I love you.”

She froze again, staring at him with wide eyes. “Wh...what?”

“I don’t deny I have feelings for him, or that I’m insanely attracted to him. Tonight was one of those things--maybe it was wrong, maybe not, but we both acted on impulse. It may happen again, or may not...but if it’s going to hurt you, I’ll never touch him again. I promise.”

“Wait...go back...did you just...”

Lex slid his hand up into her hair and pulled her lips to his, gently, almost reverently. “Yes, that’s exactly what I said. And it’s all right if you don’t feel the same way. I’m not asking for anything from you. I just want you to know that if you don’t want me to sleep with him again, I won’t, and if you really, honestly want to walk away...well, I’ll hate it, and I’ll fight like hell to convince you otherwise, but it’s your choice.”

It was really a good thing he was holding her up.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said hoarsely, staring at his neck, his shoulder, anything but his face.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just take some time to think about what you want, and let me know what you decide. I'll give you whatever I can, whatever you need."

He smiled, releasing her, and concluded, "Don't be afraid."

She was still standing there, staring, long after he left.

*****

"Well?"

Lex closed the door and turned to face his sire, who was still sitting on the couch. "I'm not sure."

Jason had all but shoved him out the door as soon as Beck ran off, saying, "For fuck's sake, you idiot, go after her," and Lex hadn't really thought much beyond doing as he was told. Now, though, he wondered if he'd done the right thing. Beck had looked so upset.

"Are you angry?" Lex asked.

The vampire sat back, folding his arms. "A little. You do realize I would never have laid a hand on you tonight if I'd known."

"I know."

"That was a dirty trick."

"It wasn't meant to be a trick." Lex sat back down on the couch with a sigh. "It wasn't until I saw her face just now that I realized..."

Now it was Jason's turn to say, "I know." He grew pensive, and after a minute stood and went over to a cabinet, producing a bottle of whiskey--the same kind Beck favored, Lex noticed. "I don't think I've ever seen that look on her face before, but I knew what I was seeing. On both of you."

Lex shook his head at the offer of a glass, and Jason rejoined him on the couch with one of his own, sipping it thoughtfully. Lex finally took a moment to look around--so this was where he and Rowan lived together. There was definitely a presence here, something non-vampiric, something verdant and much, much older than Jason.

Lex breathed in the scent that wasn't exactly a scent, and detected something deeply familiar about it that he couldn't name. He'd met Rowan once, of course, but those days and that bed seemed a thousand years ago. He'd been human then, or at least not a Seraph, and he'd been jealous of what he had seen between the Elf and the vampire. It had never occurred to him, then, that the Elf might be jealous of him as well. Lex wanted to see Rowan again, to apologize to him--he knew it wasn't his fault that things had gone this way, but still, he knew his appearance in Jason's life had caused a lot of pain.

"We should get some rest," Jason said, breaking through Lex's thoughts. "Do you want to sleep in a bed, or would you be more comfortable out here? We can pile blankets on the floor."

"That would be best," Lex replied.

Given what had happened they probably should have slept separately, but Lex sensed that Jason needed the contact of arms around him--and so did Lex. They built a sort of proto-nest in the middle of the living room and snuggled into it and into each other, neither making a move toward sex, but lying as close together as they could, taking solace.

Still, it was a long time before either of them slept.

*****

Aven wasn't upset when Rowan informed him that he'd been out to spy on the Apiary. He merely nodded and said, "I figured as much."

Rowan sat across the table from the Gardener, with Sara and Ardeth taking up the other two chairs. "So once you were healed enough to start looking for your relatives, you figured out that Talia was your mother."

"No," Aven said. "She came to me. She heard Deisa talking to Mellis about me, and sought me out. I was...surprised. I thought her long dead."

"Does she speak to you?" Sara wanted to know.

Aven shook his head. "We communicate. But she vowed silence after the fall of Clan Yew, and the Goddess kept her voice. I see her once or twice a week. Grief and loss have left her...strange. She prefers to be alone with her bees, and I respect that, but we are both comforted by each other's presence."

"What do you mean, strange?" Rowan asked. "It's a little unusual for an Elf to be so solitary, but understandable given what she's been through. You're not much of a social butterfly either, after all."

A sigh. "That isn't what I mean. I remember her as vivacious, always laughing, devoted to all the children of the Clan, not just to me. She sang, and told stories as well as any Bard. She might have been one, if she hadn't left her home with the Wanderers."

"We have all been changed by death," Ardeth said. "Many of us have lost the joy we once had."

"I'm aware of that," Aven replied, smiling wryly. "But my mother...there is still joy in her. She is always singing, always talking--but not to me. Even when I'm with her, she seems distracted, as if she is keeping up a constant conversation with someone."

"The bees?" Sara ventured.

"No. I have seen people talk to bees, and to trees, and to animals. I've seen Elves talk to each other telepathically. I know what that feels like. This is different. There's someone in her head, all the time."

Rowan looked at Sara, and he could see what she was thinking: crazy. But before Rowan could say anything to that effect, Aven shook his head again, and said, "She is perfectly sane. Meet her and you'll understand."

"That's exactly what I want," Rowan told him. "I want to speak to her. She knows songs and stories, and the Wanderers kept lore of their own--the Bards here haven't been able to help, but maybe she can."

The Gardener looked doubtful, but said, "I can take you to her. I don't know if she'll respond. I've told her you're here, but she didn't seem to listen."

"It's still worth a try. Can we go now?"

"Yes, if you wish. Today is a good day--yesterday she was harvesting, but today she won't be busy. She pays better attention if she isn't distracted by work."

Aven had come to see them midmorning, almost as if he'd known they were talking about him, and it was still cool outside when he led Rowan out to the path toward the Apiary. The day was cloudy, and foretold rain, but not for a few hours--Rowan's internal barometer had suffered in his years indoors, but living among the Clan for a month had restored it. He wondered if it would be lost again if...when...he returned to Austin.

"You know," Aven said casually as they walked side by side, "if you were to stay here, you could help many of your people. You could lead the Clan if you wanted, or live quietly. Your Sara could stay as well, and bear her child in peace."

"I had thought about that."

"But I wonder," he went on, "if you would really be satisfied with peace."

Rowan raised an eyebrow, puzzled. "Who wouldn't be satisfied with peace?"

Aven shrugged. "Those with a larger purpose, I suppose. Those who believe that their talents are needed beyond these borders. Not to mention..." He glanced over at Rowan's arm, where the silver band caught the dappled morning light. "...those with someone to go home to."

"So you think I should go back."

"I think you should do what your heart tells you is right. And I think that if you can get your head to shut up a minute, your heart will let you know what that is."

They left the main path and entered the forest. "You're a good friend, Aven."

He smiled. "I owe you my very existence, honored Rethla. If I can knock some sense into your fool head, I will consider my debt repaid."

For the life of him Rowan couldn't think of anything to say to that, but fortunately he didn't have to; they had arrived at the clearing, and the buzzing of the bees came belatedly to Rowan's ears. He peered out through the trees, looking toward the little building on the far edge, waiting for Aven to proceed, but the Gardener was waiting himself.

Rowan could sense him reaching out telepathically to seek the Priestess, but he couldn't sense Talia at all until she was only a few feet away, to their right. It was odd, but he could tell the bees somehow kept her shielded like part of the hive.

He tried not to jump when he turned around and saw her.

Up close, she was even more wild-looking, and in seconds Rowan saw what Aven had been talking about. Looking straight at them, her eyes were distant, the faint smile playing about her lips directed inward, not at her visitors. She reminded Rowan of a painting he'd seen once of Hamlet's Ophelia.

Aven smiled at the Priestess, and said quietly, "Good morning, Mother."

She tilted her head to the side and her eyes focused on her son. She returned the smile. Aven took her hand and squeezed it, and spoke to her slowly.

"Do you remember Rowan, Mother? He was the Rethla who healed you when you were carrying me."

Talia didn't look at Rowan and her expression didn't change. He was inclined to agree with Sara's unspoken assessment that the woman was, in fact, mad, despite Aven's assertions to the contrary. There was just something...wrong about her. It felt perfectly natural, but still, wrong.

"He needs to ask you some questions," Aven went on patiently. Rowan wondered how many one-sided conversations the two had had in the last few weeks. "I hope that's all right."

Aven nodded to Rowan.

"Talia? I know you were a Wanderer once, and that you were a bard in your own right. I need to know about the Jenai."

No response. She stared forward, not at her son so much as through him, that same preoccupied smile on her lips. A bee flew over and landed on her neck, another on the crown of her head.

"Please, Talia. Someone told me to look for them, and to find something called a Rune Tree, and a Dreaming Gate. No one has ever heard of either. You're my last hope."

At the word "gate," Talia blinked, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly before returning to their prior glazed state. She had heard him. Had she understood?

Once, Rowan himself had bordered precariously on the edge of madness. He knew how tempting the abyss was for those who had seen what they had, and lived through the kind of hell they had. She had seen her beloved murdered, her people destroyed; for anyone of their race to still hold onto sanity was something of a miracle. He had seen worse. At least Talia could walk and think, knew herself and her son, and could do meaningful work within the newborn Clan. Others had not been so lucky...lucky being, really, a bitterly ironic word for their survival.

"Mother," Aven said, trying to get her attention.

"It's all right," Rowan told him. "I understand. Maybe she'll come around later. I shouldn't have intruded."

He started to turn back to the path.

A soft voice stopped him cold.

"Weaver."

Rowan and Aven both spun back around toward the Priestess.

She was staring at Rowan, her Summer-green eyes sharp and fierce. Her voice was not as scratchy and disused as he would have expected; it was, rather, low and musical, bringing to mind both water and earth.

"Come to us."

Aven swallowed hard. "Mother?"

He started to move toward her, but Rowan threw out a hand to stop him and said, very quietly, "That isn't your mother."

Then he said to the woman, "I want to come to you. I need to know how."

"Come in the darkness. You will not be alone."

"But how? And where?"

She reached up and he saw that there was a cord hanging from her neck, which she removed, holding out the round object that dangled from it. He took it, keeping his eyes on her face.

"Be certain you are ready," she said. "There is no going back."

He nodded. "There never is."

"We will be waiting."

She blinked, and the focus faded from her eyes, just before her knees buckled and she slipped gracefully to the grass at their feet.

Aven darted toward her, kneeling at her side, but Rowan knew she would be fine--whatever presence had possessed her, it was gone. He could feel it.

He looked down at the object in his hand: a flat stone smaller than his palm, carved with Elvish script all over both the front and the back. In places the carving was worn almost away. He would need better light to read parts of it, but even a cursory inspection gave him the gist.

"What is it?" Aven asked.

Rowan took a deep breath and tied the cord around his neck, running his fingers over the inscription. "It's an incantation," he replied. "It will open the Dreaming Gate."

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 7/?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:50:19 GMT

At last! You can put down your pitchforks now. Or maybe not.

Lex followed Jason through the labyrinth of identical halls that made up the hive of the Shadow Agency base. He couldn't fathom how anyone learned to navigate the place, and it was starting to make him feel claustrophobic. He thought back to the days he'd spent here, confined to a single room too small to fully open his wings, and was doubly thankful--and wistful--for his aerie and the freedom of the high air.

"Here," Jason said, pausing outside a door. They'd barely spoken since leaving the conference room, but Lex felt the Agent's eyes on him frequently as they walked, and he wondered what Jason was thinking.

The Agent ran his badge over the door lock, and it beeped, the light turning green. "Remember what Ness said," Jason reminded him. "Keep it simple."

Lex nodded, holding back any sort of acerbic retort, and followed the Agent into the room.

Déjà vu--it could have been the same room where Lex had stayed, adjacent to the infirmary. He knew they were in a different part of the building, but it was identical, down to the desk and chair.

A young man sat on the edge of the bed, reading a Bible, which he looked up from at their entry. He smiled.

"Agent Adams," he said pleasantly. "I must say I'm surprised to..."

The smile faded from his face as he saw who the vampire had brought.

The boy let the Bible slide out of his lap onto the bed, one hand shaking slightly as he closed the book, and he pushed himself off the bed and onto his knees, face white as a ghost.

Jason rolled his eyes, but Lex pushed past him into the room and went to the boy, saying, "No, no...Joshua, please, don't do that."

Joshua looked up, eyes wide and full of tears. In that moment Lex's senses went into overdrive--and so did the boy's, it seemed. The edges of their thoughts touched lightly, seeking reassurance, and finding it. The human knew, now, what he'd seen was real; the Seraph knew that the boy was most definitely not insane. Somehow it was a vast relief to them both, and Lex smiled.

"I am a servant of the Lord," Joshua said, smiling back.

"Yes, but not of me. I'm not God."

"But you are a child of God," Joshua insisted.

Lex shrugged, chuckled. "We all are, aren't we? That makes us all equals. Now, please, get up. I just want to talk."

The boy nodded and stood, looking a lot like he might pass out, so Lex took his arm to steady him and sat him down on the bed. When he pulled back his hand, Joshua stared at it, swallowing.

"You're real," the boy said, staring. "The last time, I was asleep--it was all a vision. I still had my doubts, even with everything that's happened. But seeing you...the Lord sent you to me, I know He did, to dispel my doubts and help strengthen my faith."

"Joshua..." Lex looked around helplessly for somewhere to sit.

Jason, who had shut the door behind them, took the chair from the corner and, with one quick decisive motion, broke the back off. Lex and Joshua both jumped at the sudden crack of the wood.

Wordlessly, Jason slid the chair toward Lex, dropping the back in the corner. Lex caught Joshua's eye and smiled as he sat, carefully, on what remained of the chair.

"My name is Lex," he said.

"You have a name?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

Joshua studied the Seraph, eyes narrowed, then said, "You aren't the same angel that visited me in my dream."

"No, I'm not. In fact...that's part of why I'm here." Lex had no idea how to approach the news; he knew the boy was emotionally invested in the idea of being chosen by God, but how was he going to feel when he found out what Lex had done?

Best, he supposed, to start at the beginning. "I'm what is called a Seraph," he said. "We're a kind of noncorporeal being that takes over a host body in order to exist on this plane. That means that your angel started out as a human being, an ordinary man, just like I did."

At the word "ordinary," Lex heard Jason snort softly. Lex ignored him and went on.

"We think that the Seraph who came to you was summoned here by someone using a very old ritual, one that dates back centuries. This summoner sacrificed a human to give the Seraph a host body. Then he sent the Seraph to you...and then to me."

Joshua was clearly confused, but he didn't ask any of the obvious questions. "Why to you?"

"He was sent to kill me."

The boy's eyes widened again. "But...why, if you are an angel too?"

"I don't know. He said it was the will of God, but if he was summoned by a human, it was a human's will."

"I don't understand. The angel said..."

"He wasn't an angel," Jason said sharply. "He was a mindless soldier obeying the orders of a murderer. Whatever he wanted with you, Joshua, it had nothing to do with saving the world."

Lex glared at Jason. "Agent 7, if you're going to be belligerent with our guest, I'm going to have to insist you wait outside."

Jason blinked, more shocked than Lex had ever seen him, though whether it was at the ice in Lex's tone or the fact that someone was bossing him around, Lex couldn't tell. The vampire fell silent and looked away.

Joshua was shaking his head. "This can't be. If you knew what I felt when he came to me--how could he awaken my healing gifts if he was just someone's hit man? I felt the presence of God. I knew what he was saying to me was true. How..."

Lex lay a hand on his arm. "Joshua, whatever Agent Adams might believe, and whatever the evidence may prove, you've done nothing wrong. And if you've been given the ability to help people, without asking anything for yourself, well, that sounds like grace to me. Wherever it came from, that doesn't invalidate it. You can still help people. Besides, we don't know everything that happened. I know in my heart there's more at work here than the actions of one man. I was hoping you could tell me more about your angel so that we could get to the bottom of this."

There were tears in the boy's eyes, but he nodded, and after a moment with his face in his hands, he said, "Thank you. I...I don't know what to tell you, really. He looked much like you, except with green eyes, and without..."

They stared at each other and Lex could sense he was searching for words. "He was empty," Joshua finally said, very quietly. "I couldn't feel his soul the way I can everyone else's. I thought it was because I wasn't awake yet, but now I wonder if there was anything there at all. You're very different. More alive. You shine, to my eyes, like moonlight. You feel like a night wind high above the city."

"I asked him who he was," Lex told him. "He either didn't remember or couldn't say."

"You met him? Where is he now?"

Lex took a deep breath. "He came to kill me, Joshua. I had to defend myself."

Joshua put his hand over his mouth, murmuring, "Oh, God."

To his credit, the boy didn't break down; he shut his eyes tightly for a moment, and asked, "Who summoned you?"

"What do you mean?"

"If this...Seraph...was summoned by someone, and took over a human body, doesn't that mean you did too?"

Lex sat back. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "As far as I can remember, the Seraph had always been living in this body, just waiting for the right time to emerge. Then I got sick, and was too weak to withstand the transformation."

"Yes," Joshua said, looking at him again, his eyes slightly out of focus. "Agent Adams saved you, and you changed. So if anyone summoned you, it was years and years ago. Why do that if they could just take someone over whenever they wanted?"

"I don't know. To tell you the truth, I'm as lost in all of this as you are. In a way, I'm glad you're here. Every clue I get tells me more about why this happened to me, and what I'm supposed to be doing now. It could have been someone else entirely who summoned me, and not every Seraph was summoned by a human--we don't know where they came from, just that they were guardians of important people."

"Like me," Joshua said, a bitter note entering his voice.

"Yes, like you. We're going to take care of you. I promise."

A nod, weary. "You'll try."

"We will. Me, the Agency, SA-7--we're going to keep you safe. And we're going to find the truth."

Joshua almost smiled as he glanced over at Jason. "I think SA-7 would prefer not to be included in that number."

Lex rolled his eyes. "He can get over himself," he said pointedly without looking at the vampire. "Sometimes he isn't all that bright."

Now, the boy did smile. "He's smart enough to love you," he replied. "That gives me hope."

*****

Jason waited until they were safely away from the boy's room, where it was unlikely his psychic talent would overhear, before turning to face Lex and hissing, "Don’t ever do that again."

The Seraph’s eyebrows shot up at the venom in the words. "What?"

"You may be some holy being, or you may just be a flying college kid, but here in this base, I outrank you. You're not an Agent, and you don't have any authority to say what we will and won't do--and you sure as hell aren't going to have my balls in front of some crazy zealot who thinks he's Jesus Christ."

Lex stared at him, the edges of his irises turning silver. "I will do exactly what I feel called to do, Agent Adams. Your authority is damn near meaningless to me." The Seraph crossed his arms. "And also? I've about had it with your atheist bullshit. Believe or don't believe whatever you want to, but stop pissing on everyone else who lives for something besides bullets and blowjobs."

Jason started to retort, but Lex kept talking. "That boy isn't crazy and he isn't a zealot. He's an innocent human who was misled by someone who should be your target, but apparently isn't, because you already have someone to pick on. But you know what? If you're going to screw that boy's life up more than it already is, you're going to have to go through me."

Punctuating the last three words, Lex snapped his wings partway open, filling the space in the corridor and blocking out the fluorescent light.

Jason didn't back down, at least not physically, but mentally he quailed--the fierceness in Lex's face, and the swelling power around him, would have cowed any mortal, and most immortals as well. Jason's heart hammered, and he almost went for his gun before remembering that, for one thing, he wasn't armed, and for another, they were supposed to be on the same side.

They stood glaring into each other's eyes, both breathing hard, anger smoldering between them in the air-conditioned hallway.

Between one breath and the next, Jason crossed the few feet between them, seized the Seraph by the shoulders, and flung him back against the wall, his own body crashing into Lex's as their mouths fixed hard to each other's. Lex groaned into his mouth, and Jason could sense a moment of resistance before the Seraph's hands wrapped around his upper arms, wings enfolding them both.

They tore at each other, nails raking along skin, and suddenly there was nothing in the world Jason wanted more--nothing beyond pale silk and ruby-red blood, right here, and to hell with anyone seeing.

The Seraph pushed him back, and for a second Jason was terrified that he was going to call a halt to it, but Lex, breathless, asked, “How close are we to your room?”

Jason grinned. “Very. The elevator’s around the corner.”

They managed to get to the apartment without making a spectacle of themselves, but in the elevator Jason felt practically dizzy from the heat emanating from the Seraph beside him, and it was all he could do not to hit the stop button. As it was, he fumbled for his badge and nearly dropped it unlocking the door, a sudden loss of grace that wasn’t like him at all.

Lex watched his clumsiness with a wry half-smile. “It has been a while for you, hasn’t it, Agent.”

“Too long,” Jason muttered, all but shoving him into the room and shutting the door firmly behind them.

Neither of them asked the important questions, and neither brought up the objections he should have. Neither voiced any hesitation whatsoever.

“This room is small,” Lex noted. He took hold of Jason’s arms and pulled them back together, the contact drawing a gasp from Jason’s lips. Lex bent his head and kissed the hollow of Jason’s throat, driving most remaining coherent thought a hundred miles away.

“There’s always the cafeteria,” Jason replied.

Lex reached out with one foot and pushed the coffee table out of the way, giving them more space. Mouth sought mouth, and they sank to the floor together, the fever from the hallway returning to claim them both.

They knew each other’s bodies, yes, but it had been long enough, and enough had happened in the interim, that Jason forced himself to slow down a little and reacquaint himself with the lines and curves of the Seraph’s muscles, taking the time to draw his fingertips along one wing, enjoying the shiver and soft moan that arose from the touch.

Lex’s hands moved over him with equal attention, parting him from his clothes with practiced ease. Jason didn’t remember Lex being so sure of himself...but he wasn’t about to complain. He had tried so hard to deny what was between them--he suspected they both had--but whatever emotional distance had grown, the desire, the need, had never faded, only gone into hibernation awaiting the first blush of warmth to emerge...and emerge it did.

Lex had a good point--the living room was way too small for him, and it was difficult to maneuver the Seraph’s wings so that they weren’t in the way or bent painfully. In the end, Jason sculpted the Seraph up onto his knees, hands buried in the couch cushions, and knelt behind him, sliding against each other on a sheen of sweat, the ridges of muscle and skin where wing joined back bruising Jason’s ribs with the force of their bodies colliding. His arms wound around Lex’s chest, hands searching, nails leaving long violently red lines.

Perhaps it was mere minutes, perhaps hours, before they collapsed onto the ground, Jason landing on the Seraph’s back with a grunt while every cell in his body quaked with wave after wave of dark, honey-sweet release. Lex, too, was shaking, as much from the effort of staying upright as from anything, and his fingers clenched the carpet in time to his heartbeat.

Jason ran his own hands along Lex’s damp arms and twined their fingers together. They lay panting while the apartment’s cool air dried their skin and the sounds of groaning and gasping faded into peaceful silence.

Lex turned his head and rested his cheek against the carpet. “That,” he breathed, “was a really bad idea.”

“The most enjoyable things usually are.”

“You’re the one who broke us up...has something changed, or were you just horny?”

Jason nipped the back of his neck, then sucked the sweat from his shoulder, letting his tongue trace the black lines of the tattoo as he’d wanted so desperately to do since first laying eyes on it. “Turn over.”

“Jason...”

Lex looked back at him, or rather up, and they held each other’s gazes for a moment before the Seraph acquiesced, or tried to. “You’re going to have to move first.”

Jason sighed and shifted his hips back, disengaging from Lex’s body, both groaning softly and then, slowly, moving apart. Lex had to push himself back up on all fours to turn around, and Jason helped move his wings without knocking over the lamps.

He stared at the drenched, slightly sticky naked angel on his living room floor, and found himself smiling.

“I forgot how beautiful you are.”

Lex smiled back. “Did you?”

“I forced myself to.”

Jason came back to him, returning to his exploration of the symbols on Lex’s torso, remembering that they were symbols of protection. Yes...protect him. Whatever he’s here for, if there’s anything in this world that’s holy, it’s here.

His lips roved over Lex’s chest, pausing now and then to bite--as he had expected, the Seraph was still hard and wanting, and arched his hips up to meet Jason’s hand, then his mouth, whimpering.

Jason lifted his head and grinned wickedly. “You were saying something about this being a bad idea?”

“Oh, for the love of god, shut up and get back to work--“

He chuckled and obeyed enthusiastically. About five minutes later, he was laughing again, as Lex fell back with a cry, spasms rocking through his body, and cracked his head on the edge of the coffee table.

They both dissolved into laughter, curling up against each other face to face with Lex halfway on his stomach to allow for the wings, one of which he let fall over Jason’s side.

“You okay?” Jason asked quietly, looking in his eyes for signs of a concussion.

“Definitely,” came the slightly slurred reply. “No worse than hitting a headboard.”

They held each other for a while, neither speaking, until finally Lex asked, hesitantly, “So...”

Jason heard the volumes of meaning behind that one word, and answered, “I don’t know.”

“What about Rowan?”

Jason closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Lex’s, trying not to give in to the sorrow that arose at the mention of the Elf’s name. He wished that, for once, he could simply feel some measure of contentment for more than two minutes.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Jason said.

Lex touched his face. “Then you should go get him.”

“Why? I can’t force him to want to live with me.”

“No. But you can make him remember you. You can tell him he’s being an idiot, which he is, if he’s willing to give you up just so he can hide from the world.”

Jason buried his face in Lex’s neck, breathing in the layered scents of immortality, sex, and Austin. “I...”

“I’m not a substitute for your husband, Jason.”

He looked up in alarm. “No, of course not. Did you think--“

The Seraph shook his head. “I don’t know what brought this on, at least not for you. I’ve been thinking all this while that I was over you but apparently parts of me aren’t. I can deal with that. Can you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Everything’s...just wrong. And I wish I could believe that it will work out, but in my experience nothing ever really does. We have each other’s hearts for a while, but something always gets in the way. Other people, death, life. Everything ends, and usually long before you’re ready.”

Lex considered that a moment before he said, “I have to tell you the truth...I care about you, a lot, but I’m not in love with you like I was. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I’m not it.”

Jason nodded. He’d known that. As much as it hurt to hear, he’d known. “That’s all right.”

“And there’s...there’s actually...someone else.”

He hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”

“I’ve been seeing someone. I don’t know where it’s going, if it’s going anywhere. The idea was we were going to be friends with benefits, but I think there’s more than that, and I don’t want to hurt her.”

“Her? You’re with a woman?”

“That’s generally what ‘her’ means.”

Jason took a deep breath. “Do you love her?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you’re saying that this...what happened here tonight won’t happen again.”

The Seraph sighed and sat up, running his hands back through his damp hair. “I don’t know that either. We’re certainly not exclusive, she and I. I just don’t know how she’d react knowing I was here with you right now, or that we were going to do this again.”

Jason followed suit, groping for his clothes but not putting them on yet. “So we won’t.”

Lex reached over and ran his fingers along Jason’s lips. “Are you sure?”

He took Lex’s hand in his and held it, kissing each knuckle lightly. “Are you?”

A smile, touched with regret. “No.”

“Me neither.”

“So...what do we do now?”

Jason pressed the Seraph’s palm against his chest, thinking and trying not to think, wishing and trying not to wish. “Right now, we take a shower, and I find something clean for you to put on. Then we have something to eat, and get some sleep. We’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. For tonight, I think you should stay with me and let the rest of the world take care of itself.”

Getting the Seraph into the shower was another opportunity for laughter, as well as some strategic lathering that turned into something more intimate; by the time they made it to the couch with the last of Jason’s store of blood, they were both exhausted, so much so that Lex didn’t seem to care that he had to fold himself onto a sofa with one wing wrapped around the front of the cushion and the other hanging off onto the floor. It looked hideously uncomfortable, and after a few minutes Lex made an irritated noise and shifted position, trying in vain to set himself right.

“Here,” Jason said, moving back into the corner and beckoning to the Seraph to lay his head in the vampire’s lap. Lex did so, facedown with his head turned sideways as he had on the floor, wings trailing down his back, past his feet. “Better?”

“Mmm.” Lex closed his eyes and smiled at the feeling of Jason’s fingers in his hair, stroking the strands back away from his temple and behind one ear. He could feel Lex drifting off to sleep, and let himself be pulled along as well, the easy rhythm of the Seraph’s breathing lulling him toward peace.

That--the two of them curled up together like longtime lovers, hands curved around thighs and fingers in hair--was how Beck found them an hour later.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

just for fun...

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:21:44 GMT

I happened across a "create your own superhero" generator and just had to make myself a character from the Agency. Thus, I give you, Lex the Seraph, known to the comic book world apparently as the Shredding Bat. *laugh*

Yep, it's cartoony, and the wings are way too small. The only longer hair option looked way too much like a mullet. But you get the gist.

It's really too bad the generator doesn't have more options for body size and type, or I could do a whole line of SA characters with it. :)

Here's a link to the generator so everyone can play:

http://www.cpbintegrated.com/theherofactory/

The Dreaming Gate, part 6/?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:00:18 GMT

I apologize for the interval between parts lately--I admit I'm involved in another writing project that's grabbed my attention, but don't worry, I haven't abandoned the Agency!

There was really no way to make Lex comfortable inside the Agency base, but they did try. A backless stool from one of the R&D labs was brought into the conference room, and the long table was moved back to allow him more space, as if they expected him to knock things over with his wings like a bull in a China shop. Still, he appreciated the effort, and sat at the end of the room waiting for the meeting to begin, pretending not to notice that the other Agents--and the Director herself--were all staring at him.

Not that he could blame them. Vampires looked mostly human; Elves did too, aside from the ears and their coloring. Lex knew that the Agents routinely ran into demons, but that ninety percent of the demon breeds looked more like animals than people. Most of the criminals the SA brought down were human.

He couldn't be boxed into any category. He was human in shape, except for the wings; his skin was almost translucent; he had a vampire's sharp blue eyes, an Elf's pointed ears, the powerful muscles of a werewolf, and dark auburn hair that was growing rapidly down toward his shoulders. He knew what he looked like, and what they were all thinking.

"All right, let's go over what we know," Ness said, calling everyone to attention. "We have in custody one Joshua Cohen, who claims to have been visited by a Seraph. That same Seraph attacked Lex and was killed. The knife the Seraph used in the attack has been confirmed by Frog's people to contain a particularly nasty kind of binding spell. What else can you tell us, Frog?"

The researcher pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. "Er...well, the conjuration symbols can be traced back to the Enochian texts of an eighteenth-century French astrologer named Luc Pierrault, the self-proclaimed Hound of God. According to historical account, Pierrault was convinced that God had abandoned humankind, and that it was up to men like himself to strike down evildoers in God's name. His journals describe his efforts to invoke and control angelic beings that we believe were Seraph. He used ritual knives like the one we found, carved with the same symbols, and dipped in his own blood as well as that of the human host to the Seraph's spirit."

"So this isn't the work of the Almighty," Jason said, sounding gratingly self-satisfied. "Just a lone nutjob with a library card."

"That nutjob is still out there," Ness pointed out. "He or she also used the body of an innocent to invoke his Seraph, commanded him to mislead Joshua Cohen, and then to kill Lex here. SA-8, what are we doing to find him?"

"We're running a trace on the knife," Beck replied. "Assuming he didn't hand forge it, there are only so many dealers who work in the grade of silver Frog found in the blade. I've got calls in to all my sources and I'm waiting for a nibble."

Another woman in a lab coat spoke up. "We're also working to identify the host body, but so far it's proving difficult. The transformation from human to Seraph destroys many of the usual ID markers. Plus we have no way of knowing how long he was a Seraph, so that makes it harder to narrow the search of missing persons--he might not have been gone long enough for family or friends to report it. Right now we've got samples running through the ecto-chromatograph for an energetic fingerprint, and the DNA sequencer is taking apart his genetic code to look for traces of the human."

"What about Joshua Cohen?"

All eyes turned to Lex.

"Has he said anything else? Does he know what happened to his angel?"

Ness frowned. "Not yet. He's still here on base being assessed."

"I'd like to speak to him," Lex said.

The Director looked dubious, but shrugged. "I don't see how it could hurt."

"There’s no point. What do you intend to say?" Jason asked. "Hi, nice to meet you, I slit your angel's throat?"

Lex shot Jason a look that could have cut through diamonds. "I want to know why his angel came to kill me. I'd also like to know if he's all right. We don't know anything about the sort of connection that forms between my kind and theirs. For all we know he may have felt its death, or know something else. Don't dismiss the boy so lightly just because he follows a creed you don't believe in, Jason. Not all believers are delusional."

Jason's eyes narrowed. "This one is."

Everyone else in the room was watching the exchange as if it were the world's most bizarre tennis match; Lex suspected that people didn't regularly contradict SA-7.

"Even so," Lex said, "I want to meet him. He's the closest link I have to my own kind now that I've murdered the other."

"It wasn't murder," Beck interjected. "You acted in self-defense. He fully intended to kill you."

"I know," Lex told her, gentling his tone, "but it still felt like murder to me."

"Good thing you're not a Shadow Agent," Jason muttered.

Lex fixed him with a steady glare. "Yes, I suppose it is."

"All right," Ness broke in. "Everyone, continue with your search. You're all doing excellent work and I want you to keep it up. Lex, SA-7 will escort you to the assessment suites to meet Joshua Cohen, but I want it kept brief, and for you to be careful how much information you divulge to the kid. From what I hear he's very charismatic and invites confidence; he’s also untrained and could probe your mind without meaning to."

"I'll keep that in mind, Director MacMillan," Lex replied. "I'm assuming our visit will be recorded."

"In every way I can think of," Ness said with a smile. "Be careful."

Even after having met the Director only a handful of times in less-than-ideal circumstances, Lex liked her. She was direct, firm, and had no use for pretension or equivocation. Compared to the vampires she was a welcome breath of no-nonsense air.

"Yes ma'am," he said, bowing slightly and returning her smile.

Lex waited until the rest of the crowd had departed and only he, Ness, Jason, and Beck remained before hopping down off the stool. “Shall we?” he asked.

Jason, resigned to the situation, nodded. “This way.”

Before they could leave, however, another SA member--this one in business clothes so probably Admin staff--appeared at the doorway. She did a double-take when she saw Lex, but tore her eyes from him to Ness and said a bit nervously, “Director MacMillan, we just received word from SA-22’s Ear that she’s en route to the base with another human who claims to have been touched by an angel.”

“Another Jesus?” Beck asked, eyebrows shooting up. “God, they’re like rabbits, aren’t they?”

“No, Agent—this one is a young woman who claims to be an incarnation of…” The human checked a notepad in her hand. “Kali.”

“Shit,” Lex said. He’d studied enough mythology to know that they were in trouble. “How was she found?”

“Covered in blood,” came the answer. “The Agent apprehended her just after she decapitated a pimp downtown with--get this--a scimitar.”

“Let me guess,” Lex added tiredly. “She was dancing on his remains.”

At the Admin’s nod, Jason asked, “How did you know that?”

“I paid attention in college,” Lex replied.

“I’ll see your 'shit' and raise you an ‘oh fuck,’” Ness said to Lex before turning back to the Admin. “Thank you, Sharon--let me know immediately which containment cell the woman is brought to. Get her sedated if necessary and have SA-22 get her report to me about the situation ASAP. Also get the Eyes on a search for any other signs of these rogue Seraph and pounce on any, and I do mean any, lead.”

“Yes ma’am.” The Admin bounded away, leaving the four of them staring at each other.

“We have to find the bastard doing this and take him down,” Beck said. “Otherwise it’s going to be Clash of the Titans all over the city. Who knows--they might all be after Lex.”

Jason sized him up, then concluded, “I think it’s time you had a weapon.”

*****

Nenevah of Clan Oak had been a formidable woman: tall for an Elf, with strong shoulders and an imposing presence made all the more impressive by her magical power. She spent most of her time cloistered in the Temple complex which, in Oak, consisted of several buildings connected by breezeways, with courtyards, the labyrinth, and its own garden for Temple herbs. The beehives had been in their own courtyard adjacent to the Apiary Priestess’s room. The Archive, the largest repository of Elven history and lore ever known to the Clans, had its own building. Nenevah had spent a large percentage of her time there, chasing the shadows of the long-dead Jenai.

She had hoped that her son would follow in her footsteps to the Temple, but having a Rethla in the family was no poor substitute, and she’d been immensely proud of him for aspiring to such a high calling even if it wasn’t her own.

All Elves were deeply spiritual, and much of their daily life was devoted to devotion. Even in the refugee Clans the Temple was the first building erected, and the first prayers said were over its cornerstone.

If a hundred years ago anyone had asked Rowan about a crisis--or loss--of faith, he would have been confused by the very idea. How could he lose something that was as natural to him as the rhythms of his own body? The day began with the inhalation of prayer and ended with the exhalation of song. It had been so for all of them since time began.

Now, in the soft light of early dawn, he stood outside the Temple doors, thinking back to when he had stopped breathing.

The night after his Clan had been massacred, when the stench of burning flesh still hung in the air, five men had climbed into the tent where he was caged and gang-raped him for hours, some going so far as to pretend he was a woman. Though that first night of brutality had been merely a taste of what was to come, until then he had no idea such a thing could happen, and that the most sacred part of his life--his reason for existence--could be twisted into such a mockery of anything loving or healing. When they were finished with him they left him naked and bleeding in the truck, and he had curled into a ball and wept, praying with all his heart for deliverance, or death.

There had been no answer. He had called and called to Deity for help, and there was never an answer. After the first year, he finally stopped calling. Either the God and Goddess had abandoned him, or they had never existed in the first place. The latter idea was unthinkable to his people, so he had concluded that for whatever reason, the Hands that had created him had left him to suffer at the hands of cruel humanity and turned Their backs on him.

He hadn’t had to think about it much since then. The day to day hell of survival took all his will, and after that, he lived in the Agency base where, if there was any religion going on, it was behind closed doors. He kept an altar in his bedroom but gave little time to it, and once he and Jason moved in together he’d spent even less time in meditation, just enough to keep a check on his powers and to stay centered.

After 150 years of similar experience--seeing too much evil and never the good to match--Jason had declared that God was a figment of the desperate human imagination. Rowan had never been able to bring himself to agree; the world was still full of spirit, in his experience, but he had come to doubt whether that spirit actually gave a damn about individual lives.

But if all of this was true, it was possible he and Jason both were very, very wrong, and the prospect, which should have been wonderful, scared the hell out of the Elf.

He sighed. He was spending far too much time afraid these days.

As he steeled himself to go into the Temple, one of the heavy oak doors swung open, and the High Priestess, Deisa, walked out to meet him. She wore a light robe and cape against the coolness of the forest morning; she had hair down to her knees, as was the fashion among the priesthood even now, with the sides braided with ribbon and wrapped around her head. A silver chain around her neck held the leaf-shaped insignia of her office, and there were matching leaves hanging from her ears. She was willowy and tall and brought to mind a gazelle or other graceful pale animal.

“Rowan,” she said warmly, her voice deeper than her appearance would suggest. “Are you going to come in, or shall we talk out here?”

He shook his head and approached her, bowing. “I’m sorry, my lady. I was…having a weird moment.”

She smiled. “We all have our weird moments. Please, come in.”

She held out her arm, gesturing for him to pass her into the Temple, and as he did he caught the scent of lavender. Nenevah had favored the same scent, and he was overwhelmed, for a minute, with memory.

Again, Deisa seemed to understand how he was feeling, and waited for him at the entrance, saying quietly, “So much lost, so many gone. Sometimes I wish the Goddess weren’t so mysterious in Her ways, and that I could see, even for a second, the greater design behind all our suffering.”

Rowan looked at her. “What if there isn’t one?”

One thing he had always appreciated about Elven clergy was that questions never threatened them; they were perfectly willing to hold a differing opinion from others, for the most part, though many--his mother included--would argue their points for hours if given the chance. Though dogma did exist, there was no holy book, and no ecclesiastical law. Clan Yew had been the dark exception to the shining soul of Elvenkind.

Deisa considered his question, which was really more of an accusation, then said, “If there isn’t one, then it is up to us to create our own. We were given free will and the power to change things.”

“Aren’t free will and a divine plan inherently contradictory?”

She led him through the Temple vestibule and into the sanctuary itself, a large open room very much like a human church but with a subtle difference in energy and open windows instead of stained glass. Branching off from the main room were a number of smaller niches for personal devotions, each with a cushion and shrine; to the back were doors leading to the Priestesses’ offices and quarters.

Deisa spoke again as she led him toward the back. “I like to think that a person’s highest will, as opposed to a momentary whim, is always in line with the divine plan, and that we have a choice to listen to our highest will or to our whims. The choice to act in accord with the Goddess--with nature--is always ours to make, but turning away from Her will lead us farther from our sanctity and closer to evil. As with everything there are beneficial choices and detrimental ones. But I believe you have come to talk history, not theology, yes?”

They crossed the sanctuary into one of the side rooms that served as her office; it, too, had an abundance of light and air, and the floor had been tiled in a mosaic of spirals and leaves.

Deisa saw him admiring it. “We’ve been slowly but surely embellishing the plain building materials the Agency gave us,” she said, beckoning him to sit across the modest desk from her. “We may never reach the grandeur of the Temple you grew up in, but I think what we lack in opulence we make up for in sincerity.”

“I agree,” he said. “I would feel much more at home here nowadays than I would in the Temple of Oak.”

She offered him tea, and he accepted. “I understand you have a number of questions.”

“Yes. I don’t know how much you’ll be able to help, but I had to start somewhere. The visions I’ve been having instructed me to come to the Temple, and this is the only one I know, so here I am.”

Over the course of two cups of tea and some honeycakes, he told her as much as he could about the dreams, about Beltaine, and about Sara. She was, of course, bound by confidentiality, as were Rethla and Healers, so he knew that neither Deisa nor Mellis would spread the word about what was going on; they had much more subtle methods of finding information than that.

She listened, asking for clarification here and there, and then said, “I wish some of the old Archives had been salvaged. We have so little to go on--for centuries our people treated history as if it were no more than a bedtime story, when we should have been taking its lessons to heart. Your mother was one of the few who refused to forget the majesty and beauty of what had gone before…before the slavers, before we began to fade. I hate to say it but I don’t know of anyone else with her knowledge.”

“Isn’t there anything you can tell me? About this Rune Tree, or Dreaming Gate, or anything?”

"I wish there were, Rowan, but neither name means anything to me."

He didn't hide his disappointment--or was it relief? "Do you have any idea where I should look?"

Her smile was wry and rueful. "Well, I would say you should talk to Talia, but that would be impossible."

"Talia, the other Priestess? Why?"

"Talia is the Apiary Priestess. She is older than you or I, and comes originally from Clan Cypress, like Mellis."

"Cypress is one of the Clans that Nenevah was investigating," Rowan remembered. "Why can't I speak to her?"

"She has taken a vow of silence. She too survived Clan Yew, more or less. She was one of the outcast at the time of the Council's fall. She never reclaimed her voice."

Rowan's heart ached at the thought of the Silent. He remembered few of their faces, except that of Lia, who now led Clan Ash; but they had taken care of him even after he had been the one to arrest and deliver them to the Council for torture. As far as he knew none of the Silent had blamed him, but still, he couldn't imagine what he would say to Talia, or how she would react to meeting him.

"Are she and Mellis friends?" he asked.

"They were acquainted but never close. Talia was a Wanderer for much of her youth, until she and the band she traveled with were attacked by humans. She was the only survivor, but witnessed the murder of her friends as well as her lover. She was brought, I believe, to Clan Oak; perhaps you met. It wasn't more than fifty years ago."

"Wait...has Talia always been her name?"

"No, I don't think so."

Rowan sat back, astounded by the sense of recognition that suddenly hit him. "I remember her. I remember when the Warriors found her barely alive and practically crawling to our territory. She was mostly unhurt, but exhausted and starving, and she barely spoke, until I was asked by the Healers to be her Rethla."

Deisa's mouth dropped open. "My goodness."

He nodded, the memory coming fast. "I worked with her for a couple of weeks before she discovered she was two months pregnant with her lover's child. She nearly lost the baby, but both pulled through. She returned to Cypress and her family shortly thereafter. The last I heard of her she had a son."

Deisa smiled. "I had no idea you were her Rethla. We owe you a great debt, then. Talia spends most of her time with her bees, and she is the reason they give us so much honey."

Rowan smiled now, through the sadness of knowing what Talia had endured, glad that at the very least she had lived, and now had a safe home. She had survived the loss of two Clans, essentially--the Wanderers were the gypsies of the Elven world, and had in fact traveled with the Romany off and on throughout history, tight-knit family groups distrustful of outsiders but fiercely loyal to each other. It was the Wanderers who brought back fantastic tales of the world beyond the forests, tales that the Bards spun into song. Talia would have many, many stories...perhaps even something that would help him.

He had to find her. He wouldn’t press her for information but at the very least he wanted to see her well.

"Thank you, my lady," he said to Deisa, rising. "I'll let you get back to your work now. If you think of anything at all, please let me know."

"I will. Blessings, Rowan."

"And to you."

He left the Temple, stepping out into another beautiful morning where the sun was already warming the air. Strange how the weather here was so mild for Texas, though the Clan wasn't far enough away from Austin to warrant such a climate change. Come to think of it, few Clans ever had to deal with extreme weather, even those who lived in other countries; he had never really considered that the presence of the Elves might have as much an effect on the ecosystem as the ecosystem had on them.

He ran his hand back through his hair at the thought, wondering if more of it was green today, and set off along the path toward the outer edge of the village where he was pretty sure the hives were kept.

He didn't know much about beekeeping, but he knew that a large portion of the task had to do with keeping the bees safe from weather and predators, and making sure there were plenty of flowers for them to pollinate. Too little food meant the bees would migrate to greener pastures. The Apiary Priestess--always a woman, for reasons he wasn't privy to--worked in tandem with the Gardeners. She also kept the hives clean and harvested and purified the honey, rituals that few ever saw.

Rowan heard the hives long before he saw them; large Clans had half a dozen, but he doubted Clan Willow needed more than two. Honey was precious to his people, always taken in small amounts and only by the Priestess. Most of it was saved for the Beltaine season, but the Healers used some as they had for Sara, and the Bakers kept a stock for other holidays and special occasions. When a household was established the members were gifted with a jar, some of which was offered to Deity at the house blessing ritual.

He left the main path, angling toward the left and into the woods, toward the low hum that grew louder with each step. Now and then a bee or two zipped past him like a tiny helicopter. He was thankful Sara wasn't with him; she was terrified of insects.

Rowan stepped off the path and moved behind a large tree as the clearing came into view. He could sense Talia's presence and didn't want to startle her or her charges.

She moved between the two white wood cabinets, wearing only a sleeveless white shift that was barely visible in the cloud of buzzing striped creatures that surrounded her. Her unbound hair was darker than most of the Clan's, though it was still run through with a dozen colors, including a few strands of yellow. She wore no jewelry, no shoes, and she was as tiny as Deisa was tall.

Bees droned all around her, a hundred or more landing on her at a time, the sight leaving Rowan's stomach a little queasy even though he wasn't afraid of bees in theory. Bee stings were very rare in Elves, mostly because of how highly the little creatures were regarded. Killing a bee was as great a taboo as naming an unborn child.

He wasn't sure what the Priestess was doing, but he watched her, hypnotized, as she lifted the cover off one of the hives and dipped her arm down into the teeming mass of insects. When she drew her hand back, one finger was sticky and golden, and she held it up to the light, inspecting the honey with a critical eye. Nodding to herself, she carefully replaced the lid and went on to repeat the procedure with the second hive.

As she was lidding the hive, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. Just then Rowan heard movement coming from another arm of the path that also ended at the clearing, and another Elf emerged from the forest.

Rowan frowned. What...

Talia stepped gracefully away from the hives, and almost in a single movement the bees fell from her body, returning to their homes and leaving her skin bare, if dusted with pollen.

She smiled.

The second Elf came forward and put his arms around her. "Mother," he said, keeping his voice low. "How are you today?"

Talia stood up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. A single bee landed on his ear, and he chuckled, waiting patiently until it flew away to move again. Talia, still smiling, took the Elf's hand and led him away from the hives, toward a small building where she probably processed honey and wax.

Rowan stared after them: Talia, the beekeeper...and her son, Aven.

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 5/?

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:33:19 GMT

Considering there was an armed Seraph standing in front of him whose mission, apparently, was to kill him, Lex felt remarkably calm.

He crossed his arms. "Why, exactly, am I your prey?"

"God spoke to me--"

"Oh, right. God. Okay. The same God I'm supposed to be a messenger of too, right? You're an angel of the Lord, we're the same species, so why would God want you to kill me?"

"It isn't my right to question--"

Lex sighed. He should have felt afraid, or at least nervous. He should have been a tad angry, he supposed, that this creature was stalking him and now wanted to kill him just because a burning bush, or whatever, told him to. Instead, Lex couldn't help but feel something akin to pity.

"Who were you, before?" he asked. "You were human once, right? So was I. Were you a believer? Protestant, Catholic, Muslim? Did you have a family?"

The Seraph looked confused. "That does not matter."

"Of course it does. What was your name? Do you even remember?"

The Seraph held his knife a little higher, shifting his stance. He looked a little concerned that things weren't going according to plan.

"Maybe that's why you're supposed to kill me," Lex mused. "Because I'm different. Maybe the reason there are no records of us is that we cease to exist as people and just become soldiers. We carry out our mission, we die, and that's it. The Seraph takes our bodies, but what happens to our souls? Is the human you once were dead now? In Heaven, maybe? Or is he hanging out trapped in his body somewhere until you die? That's not what happened to me. I'm not like you. Maybe that makes me a threat."

The Seraph looked even more dubious.

"Or maybe," Lex said, "I'm just trying to distract you."

He dropped to the ground and lashed out with one foot, knocking the Seraph off his legs. The Seraph crashed into the ground with a grunt and his knife clattered away, but he was up again in a heartbeat and went for Lex with his claws at the ready.

Lex had no idea how to fight. In fact he had no idea how to do what he had just done. But something--instinct, primal hot and raw--flooded up over him, and he didn't give himself time to think. He gave into it.

His arm flew out and caught the Seraph's wrist, twisting with his entire body until he heard a crack and a cry. Lex unhooked his wings and caught the intruder full on with one, using his upper body strength to fling him into the wall. Another crack.

The Seraph was undaunted, though he bled from his ear and nose and his left arm hung useless at his side. He, too, unfurled his wings, and flung himself at Lex with an animal snarl. Lex hissed, his canines sliding out over his tongue, his vision going scarlet, and he struck like a snake, tearing ragged holes in the Seraph's neck that spewed scalding blood over them both.

The Seraph stumbled back, good hand flying up to his neck. It wasn't a fatal wound, but his eyes were huge and white with shock.

Lex licked his lips, tasting copper and sulfur. "Did I mention I'm also a vampire?"

Injured, bleeding, and weakening, the Seraph dove for him again, and again, but Lex already had the upper hand, and punched him in the stomach once, then spun around and clubbed him with his wings a second time. This time, the intruder hit the wall and didn't get back up.

Lex's entire body was on fire, buzzing with adrenaline, his breath coming hard. He bent and retrieved the Seraph's knife and stood over the fallen one, who even now was trying to claw his way up the wall back to his feet.

"Stop," Lex said softly. "Please."

"No...must..."

Lex looked at the blade--it was marked with symbols that reminded him strongly of the ones he had tattooed on his shoulder. The metal almost seemed to smolder with dark intent. Just touching its hilt, he knew: it was made to draw the blood of his kind.

"I'm sorry," he said.

As the Seraph forced himself up to his knees, hands scrabbling in his own blood, Lex snapped his arm across and slit the Seraph's throat.

The body tumbled forward, its wings falling over it like a shroud.

Silence. Lex knelt beside the Seraph, feeling the strange desire to curl into a ball and weep, as if he could mourn for the one who had come to take his life. In a way, he did.

He lay a hand on the Seraph's shoulder and waited for the Agency to arrive.

*****

Beck was first on the scene, and she resisted the urge to throw her arms around Lex and pat him all over to make sure he was safe. Business first. She hit her Ear and called for backup including a med unit.

"I'm not hurt," Lex insisted. He was still kneeling by the dead creature. When Beck approached, he held up his hand, offering her the knife he held. "Take this. Your people will probably want to look at it."

"You knew I was coming," she said.

His lips quirked in a humorless smile. "Of course. You don't think I know there are cameras out here? I guess they called you since you were on patrol."

"Yeah. I was closest. Are you sure you're all right? You look like shit."

He shrugged. "A few scratches. The desire to vomit. That's all."

Beck yanked a vinyl glove out of her coat and used it to take the knife, sliding the thing into an evidence bag. Lex was right; R&D would be all over the thing. She could feel something squirming all over it, like a hex of some kind.

"These are angelic conjuration symbols," she said. "They're like your tattoo, but with a different intention. This is dark stuff--whoever did this knew what he was doing."

"God did it," Lex said bitterly. "The Angel of the Lord was sent to smite me."

"No." Beck held the bag open and sniffed--there was the Seraph's blood, of course, but underneath that the smell of cedar oil, and beneath that... "There was already blood on this blade, dried, at least 24 hours old."

Lex looked up in surprise. "There was? I didn't see it."

"It was wiped, but there's a trace up along the hilt. It's human blood. The blade was either anointed by the conjurer, or used in a sacrifice. Frog and the boys might be able to tell which."

"So someone else died for this too," Lex said. "That makes me feel so much better."

"Only if it was a sacrifice. Otherwise, this guy was sent after you by a sorcerer, not by God."

Lex went pale. "Humans can summon and control us?"

"I don't know, honey. Let's not jump to any conclusions. Frog will know."

Behind them the elevator door slid open, and Jason and three other Agents, followed by two medics with a stretcher, emerged.

Jason took in the scene and Beck could see clearly he was trying not to freak out. "All right," he said with false calm, "Start at the beginning."

*****

Sara stood in front of the mirror, turning left and right, her hand behind her back pulling her shirt tight across her stomach. Her mouth was dry, her palms clammy, her heart laboring.

She’d gone to bed with a flat belly. Now she had what could only be described as a bump.

Her pants had been tight for the last week, but it was nothing anyone would notice; her face seemed puffy too. But this was the first obvious sign, and the second she saw it she felt like the world had turned inside out yet again.

She pulled her shirt off and looked at her reflection again, hesitantly moving a hand down to her abdomen, where the slightest visible convexity was now pressing out against the waistband of her panties.

That was how Rowan found her a few minutes later. “Sara, breakfast is…”

“Look,” she said softly, indicating the mirror.

He came up behind her and stared, then reached out and covered her hand with his, his other arm sliding around her shoulder.

“It’s real,” she whispered. “There’s really a baby in there.”

“Either that or you need to lay off the honeycakes,” Rowan chuckled in her ear, warm and comforting. She tried to smile back but felt more like crying.

“Sara,” he said, “It’s not too late if you’ve changed your mind…”

She shook her head and blinked back her tears. “No…no, I want to do this. I’m just hormonal—I keep crying at the drop of a hat this week. Yesterday I practically had a nervous breakdown because I spilled juice on my shirt. Mellis says that I’ll probably get this kind of thing worse than usual because my body doesn’t know what to do with all the genetic weirdness going on. And…I mean…my brain is still trying to catch up with reality. I just never thought I’d look at myself in the mirror and see a belly bump.”

“Come eat,” he said, drawing her by the hand away from the mirror. “You’re still not eating enough in the mornings.”

“That’s because vomiting gets kind of old after a while.”

“Which is why we’re keeping it simple today,” he replied, sitting her down at the table. The smell of fresh-baked bread filled her nose, and instead of making her stomach lurch like most food did upon waking, it made her stomach growl with hunger. “The Bakers sent this over--it’s a special recipe they make for pregnant women. They haven’t needed it in so long that nobody could remember how to make it, but one of the Gardeners’ mothers was a Baker, and he inherited her cookbook.”

“What’s special about it?” she asked, her mouth practically watering as he cut her a slice and drizzled it with some kind of dark syrup she didn’t recognize.

“Herbs,” he said. “And this stuff is a particular kind of honey that’s only made by one hive, off in the woods; the apiary Priestess sent it to you. It’s supposed to be insanely healthy. I think they even hit it with some mojo.”

Sara smiled, her eyes burning again—damn it—at the thought of the others conspiring to make her feel better. She took a bite of the bread, and it was luscious, still warm and slightly sweet even without the honey, which was marvelously complex in flavor and richer than maple syrup.

She noticed that she had to back her chair up slightly from the table. “God, this is just going to keep getting weirder and weirder.”

“Wait until it starts kicking,” Rowan told her helpfully.

She decided not to think about that, and concentrated on her bread. One thing at a time; she’d get through this week, and the next, and then they’d be back in Austin…

…Austin, where she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to return.

“I don’t want to go back,” she said quietly, staring at her plate.

Rowan sighed. “I know. To tell you the truth I don’t either.”

“Once I get back to base I’ll be basically on house arrest for months. I might as well just go back to Admin. I don’t know if I can do that again, Rowan. Ness said they’d send me out for psychic specialty missions, but it felt like she was just trying to placate me. And I’ll be poked and prodded every day, and the tramera…they’ll treat it like a medical condition. I just keep thinking she’ll be safer here.”

The words tumbled out before she could stop them, putting voice to how she’d been feeling the entire course of their stay in Clan Willow. She’d kept it to herself for so long it was a relief just to blurt the whole thing out to the one person that might understand how she felt.

Then, what he’d said registered to her, and she asked, “What do you mean, you don’t want to go back? What about Jason?”

He leaned his forehead on his hands. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I know it’s been hard for you to adjust to the whole couples thing, and I know that mess with Lex rattled you pretty hard, but…would you really just give up like that?”

“What do you want from me, Sara?” A spark of anger flared in Rowan’s voice—a rare thing, indeed. "Did you expect a happily ever after here? I'm tired. I'm tired of living in a dirty city, tired of living in a cave, tired of getting paid to shoot people when humans are too stupid to keep their hands off things they don't understand. What's wrong with wanting to be among my own people, somewhere I'm not regarded as a freak?"

"So go off active duty, Rowan. Tell Ness you don't want to go out in the field anymore. It was your idea in the first place. Get your own apartment again if living aboveground is that important to you. But don't throw away what you have--what most people would kill for."

He put his head back in his hands. "You don't understand. You couldn't."

"Right, of course not. I'm just a human, right? Good enough to knock up but not good enough to understand the lofty concerns of the enlightened immortal Elves. Well, for being four hundred years old you're acting like a toddler having a tantrum. I guess the old saying's true--absence makes the heart completely fucking stupid."

She stood up, shoving the chair back under the table. "I am going for a walk now, so I can get some fresh air and not punch you in the head."

Sara started to leave, but dizziness and nausea gripped her once again, and she grabbed the back of the chair to keep from falling over, groaning. She was hungry--god, she was so hungry, and tired, and sick at heart. And she wasn't going to throw up again, damn it. Not again.

Instantly Rowan was at her side, taking her shoulders and gently easing her back, guiding her toward one of the cushy chairs in the living area. "Here," he said, all the anger vanished from his tone. "Just relax...let me get you some water. Or tea? I can put some of the mojo honey in it."

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and waited, eyes shut against tears, listening to the Elf in the kitchen. A moment later he was pressing a cup into her hand. He knelt in front of her with a cool, wet rag and wiped her face as she sipped.

"There," he said, taking on the soothing tone she'd heard him use with traumatized people. "Is that better?"

Her hands were shaking, but she drank, and after a few minutes the feeling started to fade. She opened her eyes again and saw that Rowan's were damp.

"I'm sorry I upset you," he told her. "I guess we should have been talking about this stuff this whole time--both of us. I know you're scared...so am I. Something big is coming, Sara. Something big, and probably bad, and you and I are right in the middle of it. I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm terrified."

"Me too," she whispered. "I want to run away too."

He smiled a little, sadly. "That's exactly what I'm doing, isn't it? You're right...I'm scared of that too. I'm afraid of how he makes me feel. I've never felt like this before--not even close. I used to look at people in relationships like they were Pygmies on National Geographic. Fascinating but ultimately a world apart from mine."

Sara leaned her forehead against his. "I think it's time we both quit trying to hide," she said. "But first I think I need a nap."

"Okay." He helped her up, and she sank back into her bed gratefully, her hands coming to rest on her belly. It was almost reassuring knowing it was still there.

Rowan lay a light blanket over her, then kissed her on the cheek and left her to rest. A moment later she heard a faint beep, then the Elf speaking: "Hi, baby. No...nothing's wrong. I just...wanted to hear your voice."

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 4/?

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:41:05 GMT

The young man smiled. "You have doubts."

Jason smiled back, though not with a lot of humor. "According to our records your name is Joshua Cohen. Second son of Maria and David Cohen, a lawyer and CPA respectively. Maria, a naturalized citizen born in Mexico City; David, born and raised in Houston, Texas. You're a graduate of Rice University, here in Austin as a social worker with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Noble, but not exactly holy."

Joshua's smile broadened. "All things are holy, Agent Adams."

"Which means nothing is," Jason retorted, then looked back down at the file. "Three days ago in a session with a female student named Amy Ackerman, you claim you healed her blindness."

"I did nothing," Joshua said. "God worked through me. I was merely the vessel."

"Whereupon the school decided you were a lunatic. They say your behavior in the last week changed radically leading up to the incident, and that you were delusional, even raving at times. One of the teachers whose brother is a Catholic priest asked you to visit with him, and you scared the bejesus--pardon me, scared the shit--out of some nuns. They called the men in white coats, who took you to Austin State Hospital, and that was when you came to our attention. Does all of this ring true, Mr. Cohen?"

"Yes, I suppose," he replied. "I regret frightening the priest and the sisters."

"How exactly did you frighten them?" Jason asked, though it was typed out neatly on the report.

"I looked at them and I could see into their hearts," he said, growing serious. "The priest...he was abusing one of the nuns, and had done so with others. The vision so consumed me that I couldn't stop myself from blurting the truth out." Joshua looked a little sheepish, and added, "This is all very new to me, Agent."

"All right...why don't you tell me how this started? You haven't always been able to read people and heal blindness."

"No, of course not. I grew up as normal as anyone--" The smile returned. "Well, perhaps not you, Agent Adams. But nothing about my childhood betrayed anything extraordinary, except that I was extremely sensitive, picked on for being a sissy. I didn't live up to the traditional notion of masculinity and so I was a target. I'm sure you can relate."

Jason sat back, frowning. "Are you suggesting something about me, Mr. Cohen?"

A long blink. "No, I'm not. I can see it as plainly as I can see that you're a vampire. It's all right there, in your heart, to be read like a book."

Jason's heart--book or no book--lumbered around in his chest in surprise. He should have been way too well-shielded for the boy to get anything off him, let alone what he was. "I see. And I suppose you're going to threaten me with hellfire now?"

"No Father of mine would cast a soul into the Pit for falling in love."

"Well, then there's always atheism, vampirism, the long list of people I've shot..."

"Judgment isn't my purpose here, Agent," Joshua said. "I'm here to help. As for how it began--a week ago I was visited in a dream by an angel of the Lord. He said I was destined to be a great healer and deliver souls from evil. When I woke, I found I had these abilities."

"Out of nowhere?"

"Yes."

"Tell me more about this angel. What did he look like? Did he have a name?"

"He didn't give me a name...but I remember thinking he was as great and terrible as the Old Testament angels were, but still different. No flaming sword, for example, but he did have wings...without feathers. Great wings that blocked out the sun, smooth like a bat's. His skin was pale grey like stone."

Jason nearly fell out of his chair.

A Seraph.

"Did your angel have blue eyes like mine?" he asked.

Joshua thought about it, then shook his head. "Green. Bright emerald green."

It couldn't be Lex, then. Another Seraph.

And if it really was a Seraph, the boy's story might be true, or at least partly so--the Seraph only appeared to guard those with an important purpose on Earth.

"Have you seen the angel again since then?" he managed.

"No. Only in the dream. But everything he said has proven true."

"All right, then, Mr. Cohen," Jason said, "I'm not going to return you to ASH just yet. I'd like you to speak with someone in the Agency about your abilities. We have tests we perform to gauge their strength and type, and we can help you learn to control them."

Joshua stared at him, finally taken aback by something. "You mean you believe me?"

"I believe you're a very strong psychic whose gifts have been awakened unusually late in life, and I'd like to know what role this angel played in that and if he's taking advantage of you for his own ends. I don't believe you're the Son of God, because I don't believe in God. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're crazy."

"How long will I have to stay?" the boy asked hesitantly. "I have so much work to do..."

"Give me 48 hours to have you tested, and then you can talk to our Psychic Development people about what to do next. I'm afraid I can't let you go wandering around the city without any sort of training or protection; it's dangerous for you and for everyone else. But once we're assured you aren't a threat, you'll be free to go, with the understanding that we'll be watching to make sure you obey the rules."

"I've never been known for obeying rules," Joshua said. "But as long as the angel doesn't protest and I have no signs from God directing me otherwise, I think I'd appreciate your help."

"Good boy. Now, I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of Shadow Agent 14 who will arrange lodging for you while I speak to the Director."

Jason stood, but as he reached for the file on the table, Joshua's hand darted out and seized his wrist. The vampire started to snatch his arm back, but he looked up at the boy's face to deliver a fairly nasty threat, and paused.

"Don't be afraid," Joshua said softly, his voice sounding far away and his eyes unfocused. "He'll come home to you--but you have to save him, Jason. No one else can. You're as much his guardian angel as Lex is hers."

Jason couldn't find words for a minute, but the first thing he could think to say was, "I'm no angel."

An amused sort of half-smile played over Joshua's lips, and he said, "Not yet."

*****

Lex had the feeling he was being watched.

Oh, he knew the Agency kept an eye on him--he could sense it, Eyes and Ears both sweeping through his aerie during the day when he was in bed and sometimes at night when he was reading or playing the Rose. Luckily so far they hadn't recorded him and Beck together, or if they had he'd been too busy to notice.

This was something more than that. He could feel eyes on him, real eyes, inhuman eyes, as he glided over Austin or walked the streets in his coat. They weren't threatening, simply observing, and he made no secret of the fact that they weren't a secret.

Being a strange Seraph-vampire hybrid, or whatever he was, his body bent to some of the vampire's rules and some it didn't. He wasn't as vulnerable to sunlight, and he had better long distance vision; also, sometimes he craved food, and it didn't make him ill the way it would Beck. Specifically, there were nights when he needed bread so badly he could barely think, so he would drop down to a nearby market and buy a fresh loaf with his limited cash and eat the entire thing in one sitting. Usually it was bread, but sometimes he needed peaches, and one night he practically inhaled a disturbingly large hunk of cheddar in the elevator on the way up to the aerie.

Beck had asked the medical staff and gotten a shrug; there was too little known about Lex's kind, and what was known was either fuzzy myth or cold fact discerned from his tests weeks ago. Many things about him baffled the Agency--cheese cravings were the least of their concerns.

That night, he ventured down to the market and came home with a loaf of bread and a tub of chipotle pesto, one of his old favorites as a human, wondering if it would still taste at all appealing or if he'd take a bite and end up tossing it over the side of the building like he had the pineapple.

Again, as he entered the Winchester, he felt someone watching him, and paused long enough to face the direction he felt the gaze coming from and stick his tongue out.

When he got upstairs he shucked his coat, thankful to have the oppressive heat of the garment off. His body temperature was about 100 degrees, and he was never cold. He was thankful for the coat because it hid his wings so he could have his outings (and his bread), but still, it was uncomfortable, as was wearing a shirt, which he also removed.

Doing things with longer, sharper fingernails had taken some getting used to. He kept them filed relatively short but they still grew in points. He gave up trying to undo the twist tie on the bread and just ripped the bag open with an irritated noise.

Who, he wondered again, was spying on him? It wasn't human, but there was something familiar about it. He should have been alarmed that anyone knew of his existence, and probably should have told the SA about it, but he wasn't feeling particularly charitable toward the Agency at the moment so he kept it to himself. He was far too curious about what it wanted to tell Beck, who would hunt it down and kill it.

Thinking of her made him smile. Thinking of her also made his dick hard.

He sighed and dipped a hunk of bread into the pesto. Beck was on patrol tonight, and would be for the rest of the week, so he wouldn't get to see her until Friday. He should also have been alarmed at how disappointed he was.

Damn the Adams twins, anyway. It seemed they existed solely to shoot things and make him sweat.

As if the universe was laughing snidely at him, he heard the elevator doors open, and a footfall he recognized with no little shock outside the door.

Lex set the food aside and stood, hooking his wings and waiting.

"Anyone there?" came an uncertain voice.

Lex took a deep breath. "Come in."

It was, of course, Jason, for the first time since they'd...broken up, if that was the term for it. The vampire looked as beautiful as always in his once and future black, but he didn't seem to be as heavily armed as he had been the last time. He looked tired, and torn between coming into the room and running the other way.

"Well," Lex said. "This is a surprise."

Deep blue eyes moved over him, and Jason was holding his breath, as if he'd forgotten what Lex looked like in a couple of weeks. One of his hands twitched when he saw the tattoo, probably imagining what it would feel like.

"I..."

They stared at each other, but only one was really having trouble speaking. Lex was simply waiting.

It was odd, but in the back of his mind Lex had been wishing for this moment, wishing to see his sire again. Some part of him had hoped beyond hope that Jason would appear and want him back...but as Lex watched him, he realized that whatever Jason might want, Lex didn't. Whether via hard reality or Beck, Lex had gotten over him.

"I wanted to see if you were all right," Jason said, breaking the tense silence. "And to apologize."

"Oh?"

Jason looked around--the furniture had been moved since his last visit, and Lex had made the place much more comfortable both for himself and his one non-winged guest--and ended up taking the chair he'd always sat in before.

Lex couldn't sit in normal chairs. He had stools. He pulled one over and sat.

"I was a complete bastard," Jason went on. "I should never have left you alone so soon, no matter what was going on in my life. I should have taken care of you. I brought you across and that means I was responsible for you, but I pushed you away at the first opportunity. For that I'm sorry."

Lex nodded. "I accept."

Another silence, Seraph and vampire each waiting for the other to speak. Finally Jason said, "Beck said she visits you."

Lex's heart skipped a beat--did he know? She'd said she wasn't going to say anything. If Jason got anywhere near the nest he'd smell her, but the rest of the room should be clear.

"Yes," he replied, swallowing.

Jason gestured at Lex's torso. "That looks like her work."

"It is. They're angelic symbols of protection. I got it a few days ago."

"Speaking of which..." Jason looked relieved to have something else to talk about. "There's something I need to ask you about, for a case I'm working on. Are you aware of any other Seraph here in the city?"

Lex's eyebrows shot up. Subject change, indeed. "No..." Then he thought of his mystery stalker, and added, "but I'm not sure I would recognize one if there were. We're rather good at concealing ourselves, you know. Part of the job. Why do you ask?"

"This human was brought in claiming he'd seen an angel in his dreams, and what he described sounded just like you except it had green eyes. It gave him messages supposedly from God and is somehow linked to his psychic abilities waking up spontaneously. Do you know if you can do that?"

"I have no idea."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Jason sighed. "Let me know if you see any evidence that there's another Seraph lurking around, please. I need to know what it did to this boy--the poor kid thinks he's Jesus Christ."

Lex smiled. "Is he?"

"Of course not. Even if you believe in that kind of crap there aren't any references to the Second Coming being a skinny white social worker from Houston."

"I don't know," Lex said. "I think a social worker is a pretty good candidate. Is he Jewish?"

"Half, on his father's side. Mexican on his mother's. His name's Joshua Cohen--"

"Joshua?" Lex smiled archly. "His father's not a carpenter, is he?"

"No, a CPA."

"I'll refrain from jokes about money-changers in the Temple."

"Thank you. The point is, somehow a Seraph seems to have gotten hold of this boy and is feeding him a line about his destiny. I know you're supposed to be solitary, but it's a little weird to me that we've never heard of a Seraph and suddenly there's two running around. So if you hear or see something, please let me know."

"I will."

"Good." Jason stood. "I should go, then, and leave you to whatever it was you were doing. I just wanted to check on you."

"No," Lex told him, "you wanted information for a case, and perhaps you're feeling a little sentimental because you've been alone for three weeks. Would it have satisfied you more if I were still grieving your loss?"

Jason's mouth worked a second before any words came out. "No. I never wanted to hurt you, Lex. I was a fool.”

“Yes, I suppose you were. But so was I. I expected you to make all of my problems disappear. To save me, to give me purpose. But whatever my purpose here is, I understand now that it has nothing to do with you.”

The words stung, and it occurred to Lex that Jason might still love him, and might miss him above and beyond the absence of his Elf. Lex wanted to feel compassion for him. He wanted to feel something of what he once had—it hadn’t been that long ago, barely a tick of the clock for a vampire.

In the end, he chose to be kind. “I understand Rowan will be home soon,” he said, making his voice more soothing. “I’m sure things will be better for you after that. It must have been hard without him.”

“Yeah.” Jason slumped back into the chair and traced the thread pattern of the arm with his fingernail, then said, almost without meaning to, “Everyone keeps saying it’s all going to work out fine. I wish I could believe that.”

“You don’t? Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just…sometimes I think he’d be happier if he stayed with the Clan, with his own people. He could go back to doing what he used to do, and not have to worry about thorny relationship issues or having to kill people. It was different before he was healed, when he used to be in so much pain—I felt like he needed me.”

Lex folded his hands on his knee and regarded the vampire soberly. “So you think the basis of your relationship is need, and if he doesn’t need you, he won’t want you either?”

Jason frowned. “Stop being so insightful. You remind me of my sister.”

Lex laughed inwardly, but outwardly shrugged and said, “Don’t bring it up if you don’t want my opinion.”

“We barely speak,” Jason said quietly. “I call, and he doesn’t answer. When he does he acts like he’d rather be anywhere else. How should I feel about that?”

“Let’s see…Rowan’s the lone survivor of his Clan, who’s been tortured and enslaved and kidnapped and near death several times, and now he’s found out he knocked up a human woman, and not only that, he might be a demigod. His dead mother is showing up in his dreams and he’s also in the first semi-monogamous relationship of his four hundred year long life. There’s also something in there about the possible end of his entire race. Perhaps—and this is just an idea—just perhaps, his behavior isn’t all about you.”

Jason’s eyebrow lifted. “How did you know about Sara, and about his mother?”

Lex shrugged again. “Beck told me.”

“That’s classified information.”

The Seraph snorted. “Who exactly am I going to tell? Besides, wasn’t it you who said this whole thing was somehow connected to me anyway?”

He looked vaguely guilty. “You’re right again. I should try harder to keep you in the loop on all of this—everything that’s happening now seems interconnected, even this Jesus boy. Yet another way I’ve fucked things up where you’re concerned.”

Lex rolled his eyes and stood. “Please, Jason, enough. Yes, you are a bit of a cock. Yes, you made some mistakes. Who hasn’t? What about my going to bed with a vampire I’d met an hour before? Not exactly Harvard-level brilliance. So if you’d like me to find you a hair shirt, I’ll do my best, but I’d really prefer if we could just try to be friends and you could stop beating yourself up over all of this.”

Finally, Jason smiled. “All right, all right. Don’t get your wings in a twist. I’ll try.” He got back up and straightened his coat, and his mood was much lighter than it had been when he’d arrived. “Shake on it?” He asked, extending a hand.

Lex rolled his eyes, reached out, and pulled the vampire into a hug. “Don’t be a moron,” he said into Jason’s hair. “Now, go save the world like a good boy and keep me posted.”

Jason squeezed him around the middle, hard, then stepped back, still smiling, albeit tiredly. “As you wish.”

Lex saw him to the elevator, and Jason gave him an almost-chaste kiss before he left.

“Men,” Lex muttered, turning back toward the comforting stone and steel of his home.

He froze, eyes narrowing—something wasn’t right.

One of the shadows was deeper than the rest, and the feeling of being watched redoubled, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Come out,” he demanded. “Enough of this.”

The shadow separated from the rest and moved forward. Again, Lex had the feeling of familiarity, and though he should have been afraid of anyone who had managed to sneak up to his home without his or Jason’s noticing, he felt no fear, only irritation.

His visitor stepped out into the light.

Broad leathery wings extended up, peaking in bone hooks. Marble skin gleamed in the night. Brilliant green eyes lit on him with equal recognition, and Seraph faced Seraph.

“You must be the Angel of the Lord,” Lex said. “Do you have a name?”

The Seraph looked puzzled. “No. We do not have names.” His voice—if in fact it was a he, with such androgynous features—was gravely and low. “We are no one.”

“Speak for yourself. My name is Lex. And I’d like to know why you’re following me.”

The Seraph wore no shirt, and his skin was unmarked; the only garment he had on was a pair of slightly tattered black pants. He also carried a long curved knife in a sheath on his belt.

“I was sent on an errand from Almighty God,” the Seraph replied. “I am here to protect as well as to serve.”

“So you’re on the police force, then?”

Another blink—all right, clearly Seraph weren’t the comedians of the occult world. Lex reminded himself that he was different; most Seraph took over their human hosts much younger, and most started out human. If the representative of his species before him was what he could expect from the rest, Lex knew he’d gotten the better deal.

“Are you the one who appeared to Joshua Cohen?” Lex asked.

“I am.”

“And you told him he’s Jesus? Did it occur to you that might be a little much for him to absorb along with all the powers coming out of nowhere?”

“I did as I was told by God. I delivered the message, and now I must protect my charge to the death. I must pave the way for him to ascend to his destiny, and smite all those who oppose him.”

Lex couldn’t help it; he laughed. “You really just said ‘smite,’ didn’t you. That’s fantastic.”

There was, of course, no response. Lex sighed. “So why have you come to me, then? Obviously we don’t work as a team. Did you come here just to say hello?”

“No,” the Seraph said, drawing his knife, the blade flashing wickedly. “I came here to kill you.”

© 2009 by Dianne Sylvan.

The Dreaming Gate, part 3/?

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:57:01 GMT

Ah, at last things start to get interesting.

Rowan's cell phone started to ring before Aven, Ardeth, and Mellis even had him settled in the bed.

Sara stood out of the way feeling useless until she heard the familiar wind-chime-esque sound of the ringtone, then darted into the kitchen and dug for the phone amidst the various techno-toys they'd brought from Austin to send information back to the Agency.

"SA-9 speaking," she said.

"God damn it," Jason's voice crackled through the aether, "If he's in another fucking coma I'm going to fucking kill somebody."

Sara smiled in spite of the situation and ventured back into the bedroom, where Rowan was starting to regain consciousness but looked absolutely hellish despite the pain-blocking energy Mellis had dosed him with. It had been months since he'd had an episode, so long that they'd all stopped stocking morphine in their quarters.

"He's okay," she said to reassure herself as much as the vampire. "I'm not sure what happened--he had some kind of seizure and passed out, but he's all right. No damage, Mellis says. I promise I'll call you when we know more."

"Put him on," Jason demanded.

"But--"

"Just do it."

She sighed. There was no reasoning with Jason when he had the bit between his teeth about something, especially when it came to Rowan. She sat down on the edge of the bed and held the phone up to Rowan's ear.

She could hear Jason speaking, and whatever it was he said, Rowan actually smiled as his eyes started to open, and murmured a little hoarsely, "Promises, promises. No...no, love, I promise, I'm fine. I'm not sure yet. No, I'm not going to get kidnapped. I swear. Now, if you'll excuse me I think the Healer wants to find out what happened."

A moment later there was silence from the phone, which Sara interpreted as Jason hanging up; she took the phone from Rowan and set it on the bedside table. "He sounded pissed," she noted.

Rowan rolled his eyes slightly, but with more affection than she'd seen at the mention of his partner the entire time they'd been there. "Well...Frog's theory was that the psychic link we have would alert either of us if something happened to the other, even if we weren't actively using it. Remind me I owe him a Coke."

Aven had been keeping his peace the whole time, but said worriedly, "Rowan...please let Mellis look you over now."

Mellis clucked her tongue. "I already have," she said. "I read him thoroughly while he was speaking into that device." She gave Aven a motherly look, and Sara remembered that she had been the one treating the Gardener when he was first rescued from the slavers. "As he said, Aven, he's fine. His energy is somewhat depleted from the pain, but by morning he should be right as rain. Now, can you tell me what you saw when this happened?"

Aven took up position opposite Sara, carefully taking one of Rowan's hands. If Aven had been human she would have sworn he was in love with Rowan, but among Elves it was nearly impossible to tell. They wore their emotions completely differently than mortals did. They all seemed to love each other deeply on a level that Sara was pretty sure her own race couldn't possibly understand.

The thought slipped into her mind: would the baby feel that same connection to the Elves? Would it have anything at all in common with her?

Would its hair and eyes change color like its father's, or stay the same season to season like hers? It was odd that a race known for immortality was so changeable. Did the baby...tramera, she reminded herself...have pointed ears already, floating around in her belly? How soon would it know what was happening to it? Was it--

Aven took a deep breath, the sound bringing her back to the present with a shiver. "We were sitting beneath the Tree, talking, about to get up, and his face...went blank. He wasn't in his body anymore. I couldn't say where he went, but...a moment later he fell back, and then the pain seemed to hit."

"Was it only his expression that went blank?"

He frowned. "No. His energy did as well. For a moment, he was simply...elsewhere. And there was...there was something else. Just before he fell he said something I didn't understand."

"Was it in English?" Sara asked. Aven looked dubious, so she repeated the question in English to let him know what it sounded like.

"No. Definitely not. It sounded like Elvish, only..."

In the corner, leaning back against the wall, Ardeth spoke up. "Older?"

Aven, surprised, nodded. "Yes. Older is the word I would choose. How did you know?"

Ardeth looked like he immediately regretted saying anything, and looked helplessly at Rowan, who closed his eyes for a moment. "Aven...I don't want you to worry about me. I'm fine. A little foggy around the brain, and tired, but fine. I promise."

Aven stared at him hard, then gave a slow nod. "I believe you...but I am not leaving you until you explain to me what happened."

Sara held back a smile--the lad was perceptive, and was quite possibly as stubborn as Rowan himself. She'd seen glimpses of it in her few meetings with the Gardener, and she knew that only someone with an inner well of great strength could overcome what he was working to overcome even with a Rethla's help. He was a quiet, serious young Elf, but there was far more to him than there appeared. She liked him.

As if to confirm her thoughts, Rowan started to dissemble, and Aven shook his head, his long hair falling around his shoulders in a cascade of pale greens and lavender. "I know something is going on," Aven insisted. "I want to help."

"I know you do," Rowan told him, smiling a little. "And if I can think of a way, I'll let you. I'm just...I'm not sure how to explain it."

"You might as well try," Mellis informed the Rethla. "As your Healer I have to insist you tell me what happened--whatever you remember. I need to know how your experience compares to Aven's observations."

"Why?" Rowan asked, sounding pained. "Can't you just accept that I wasn't hurt and let it go?"

The Healer crossed her arms, and Sara suspected that Aven wanted to do the same. "You must be joking," she said flatly. "You come here and tell me that you've managed to father a tramera with a human woman on Beltaine--and don't fool yourself into thinking I don't know what that could mean, I am far older than you--and coincidentally you start having blackouts involving strange languages, and I'm supposed to let it go?"

Rowan's smile returned, this time a little more sincere. "You remind me a lot of my mother."

"She's right," said Sara. "I think we've been putting this off long enough. We need answers, and we've barely even started looking. Vacation's over, sweetie."

"I know. I'm just...not entirely sure where to start."

"Then I will," she replied, looking up at Mellis. "Have you ever heard of the Jenai?"

Aven sucked in a breath, and Mellis's eyebrows shot up into her hair. Sara's gaze flicked over to the Gardener, whose expression cycled rapidly from concerned to shocked to appraising.

"Of course," Aven muttered.

Mellis, for her part, looked skeptical. "Yes, I've heard of them. I knew Neneva, after all."

"You did?" Rowan asked, genuinely taken aback. "How is it you and I never met?"

The Healer shrugged fluidly. "I only met her a handful of times, each among my own Clan."

"You come from Cypress, if I am not mistaken," Ardeth noted. "The accent is still fairly clear."

Mellis nodded. "Neneva visited Cypress a number of times over the years, researching the Jenai. It was something of an obsession with her, and we were one of the oldest Clans, so she was looking for evidence. She claimed the Jenai were to return within the next century and save the Elven race from dying. As she was a High Priestess there were few who openly questioned her, although..."

"Everyone thought she was a bit touched," Rowan affirmed. "I loved her dearly, but I felt the same way...until Beltaine."

Sara took the thread of the discussion back before he could come up with an excuse to change the subject. "Neneva believed that Rowan was Jenai."

Mellis blinked, and Sara saw her start to laugh, but she then became thoughtful, frowning. "And do you believe this too, Rowan?"

"I didn't. I don't want to. But she appeared to both me and Sara in our dreams to say so again, and then, weeks ago a creature that had never seen me before and knew nothing about our people said so as well. On Beltaine somehow after millennia of infertility an Elf and a human managed to conceive. Then this evening...as I passed out I heard a voice, a strong one, calling me Jenai, and...Weaver."

"The Clans are dying," Aven said quietly. "If they were to return, now would be the time."

Mellis shook her head. "The Jenai are a myth. The myth is so old it's practically a myth about a myth. It cannot be. There is no real evidence, only coincidence."

"This isn't a coincidence in my uterus," Sara pointed out.

But Aven, too, was shaking his head. "Honored Healer, I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with you."

Mellis was looking at them all as if they'd lost their minds. "Based on what, exactly?"

Aven looked her in the eye. "He healed me. Intimately. Our bodies have been joined together and so have our minds. I have partaken of the services of a Rethla before in my life, and while she was powerful, she was nothing like Rowan. The things he can do...I should have died, Mellis. I should never have come out of myself, much less so far in less than a month. You know it's true. All of you were ready to give up on me, and rightly so. An hour of his touch and I wanted to live. How would you explain that?"

"I won't deny that Rowan is powerful..."

Ardeth spoke up again. "I have been touched by his...er, magic...as well, Mellis. It felt like the entire universe poured through my body."

Sara added, pointing at her stomach, "Oh, and also? Pregnant."

"All right, all right," Mellis all but snapped, her Healer's serenity nearly buckling under their determination. "Let us say for a moment that you're right. What is it that you need, then, Rowan? Clan Willow is entirely made up of refugees--we fled with the clothes on our backs, some of us not even that. We have no archives, no tomes of ancient Elven history. Most of the records were lost with Clan Oak. We are left with only tales and songs."

Rowan, who had been listening to the others with bemused surprise, took a breath. "In my vision my mother said I should seek the Sibyl. She said I must go to the Temple--I'm assuming that means the one here. I also heard something about a Rune Tree and a Dreaming Gate, but I haven't the faintest idea what those are. And we need to ask everyone in the Clan if they know anything, or know anyone living who knows anything, about the Jenai. If...if it's really true, and I am one, there must be more, or more coming. And its' reasonable to assume that if I am, the tramera will be too, or at least half."

"You've been called a Weaver," Sara said. "Which one was that?"

"I don't know. We also need to find all the legends we can about how many there were, what their archetypes were. The Seraph said something about a Singer, and Mother had mentioned that title in her stories. That can't be a coincidence either."

The Healer was again shaking her head, this time in resignation. "Very well. I will help you question the others in the Clan. I will start tomorrow, and you can go speak to Deisa at the Temple. But I expect you to rest tonight."

"Thank you, Mellis," Rowan said, relieved.

She bowed. "I still think you are mad," she said as she departed, "But then, your mother was mad too, and we would have done well to heed her warnings decades ago. Perhaps there is something to this, perhaps not. We will see."

Aven stood, finally releasing Rowan's hand as he did so. "I will ask among the Gardeners. Please let me know if I can do anything else."

"Thank you." Rowan smiled up at him. "Thank you for vouching for me, as well. We may win her over yet."

Aven smiled back. "We may. But regardless I have my own reasons for helping you. Perhaps one day I'll even tell you what they are."

Sara caught Rowan's raised eyebrow as she followed the Gardener out of the bedroom, through the common area of the house, to let him out. He had brought over a wreath of fresh-cut herbs for their kitchen door earlier that day, and she wanted him to see she'd hung it.

She paused in the doorway and asked in a low voice, "Are you falling for him?"

Aven turned to her, and he chuckled; it was the first time she'd ever heard him laugh. "No, my lady," he answered sincerely. "I could, very easily, but I know not to sow the seeds of my heart in overburdened soil."

"So you want to help, why, out of gratitude? I can understand that."

There was something mysterious in his smile that she'd never seen before, and it occurred to her that she knew next to nothing about him, not even his age. "More than that, my lady. Much more than that."

With that, he stepped off the guest house's front porch and disappeared into the calm, clear night.

*****

Regardless of what might be happening miles away in Clan Willow—regardless of the hard stone of dread that had taken up long-term residence in the pit of Jason’s stomach, and the sexual and emotional frustration that seemed to stab a little deeper with every breath—life at the Agency went on as it always had, and the business of occult crime would not be deterred by the angst of one vampire.

He crossed the Floor on the way to the lockers and armory, grateful that his reputation kept anyone from trying to make conversation; the Ears and the Admins watched him pass with varying degrees of awe, fear, and fascination, but with the exception of the Agents themselves and the high ranking management, they knew better than to approach him. He was already in uniform, just unarmed, and the long dark length of his coat swept out behind him as he walked with his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes on the floor.

Halfway to the hall, someone fell into step beside him, and he lifted his eyes to SA-14. “Yes?”

She was fairly new, even newer than Sara, and when their eyes met she turned pink and stammered a second before she could get a sentence out. He waited patiently; he was used to it. She might be attracted to him or she might simply have seen the predator in his eyes—or both.

“Um…I brought you the case file on the subject you’re supposed to interrogate tonight,” she said, handing him a black file folder with the Agency seal embossed on it. “I managed the transfer from ASH yesterday. Sir.”

Jason nodded, opening the folder and scanning the first page with a groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “What was your impression of the subject?”

“Lucid,” she replied. “Respectful, very calm—even peaceful. I wouldn’t classify him as an immediate threat. But if you’ll pardon the language, sir, he’s definitely crazy as a shithouse rat.”

“Thank you, SA-14. Dismissed.”

She didn’t question the order; few people did. He took the folder with him to the armory, where he dropped it on the bench before coding on shift and unlocking his weapons drawer.

For a basic interrogation he didn’t need much, just something to intimidate the subject; his standard-issue 9mm would do, along with the usual hidden knives just in case. He’d had one or two of these sessions go wrong and had to subdue the subject or worse. He clicked his Ear into place and sat down on the bench briefly to look over the file.

The door to the armory swung open, and Beck appeared, looking breathless and disheveled. She started when she saw him. “Oh—shit—hi.”

He took in the unkempt state of her stage clothes, most likely from the previous night, and the way her hair was slightly mashed on one side. “Rough night?”

She shrugged. “You know how it is.”

He smiled. Some things never changed. “Vampire, hot young goth, or fawning Fang Porn admirer?”

“Vampire,” she said right away.

“What happened to your wig?”

Beck put her hands on her head, wincing. “I think I lost it.”

Now he laughed. “Must have been some night.”

“Yeah, it was…I’d better get a shower and suit up, I’m on patrol.”

She vanished, and a moment later he heard the water running in one of the shower stalls. He felt a twinge of envy; at least one of them was getting laid these days.

Again he thought about going to the Winchester…not expecting anything, and not wanting to start anything again, but…he had failed Lex as a sire, failed him as a lover. Perhaps he could try being a friend to the Seraph, helping him through whatever it was he was going through. He had to be lonely up there in that drafty room, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but read and watch the world go by.

Later, he told himself. He’d drop by later just to say hello. For now he had work to do.

Jason pushed himself up off the bench, closing the folder. This was going to be good.

The interrogation rooms were actually on the ground level of the base, though they were windowless and gave the impression of being as sealed as a bank vault. Subjects were usually sedated for the trip and often bagged if they were considered dangerous, so that they couldn’t learn the location of the base or its inner layout on the off chance they won free of custody.

Jason arrived at room 1 to find it guarded by two Agents, including SA-14, who gave him a questioning look after glancing at the file under his arm.

“Shithouse rat,” Jason told her. “Is he awake?”

SA-14 nodded. “Audio, visual, and ecto are monitoring. We’re ready for you.”

“Let’s get this done, then, and get the little whack-a-mole back in his cage.”

He opened the door and stepped inside, and automatically raised his shields as high as they would go—the kid was putting off serious vibes, both projecting and receiving, and had the chaotic careless energy of someone with no training whatsoever. Thankfully the room was walled off in every possible way, so his aura was probably not affecting anyone else on the ground level.

His aura wasn’t evil, certainly, and didn’t give the impression of insanity on the surface; rather, it was curious, even wondering, touching and probing everything around him as if he had been born blind and only today gained sight. Something had woken his gifts, woken them late, and that was dangerous.

Jason plopped the folder down on the table and took up his chair opposite the subject, folding his hands and studying the boy in silence for the better part of a minute.

He was human, at least. He watched Jason without any fear whatsoever, his wide dark eyes gleaming with too much light the same way Rowan’s sometimes did. Most people in this situation sweated and fidgeted, but he simply sat with his hands laced in his lap, waiting, relaxed.

It was damned unsettling.

Jason refused to cede the upper hand, however, and gave the boy a sweeping look from head to foot, taking in as much as he could without compromising his shields. Finally he met the boy’s eyes again, and this time he was ready. The strangeness, and the sense that the boy knew far more than he should about far more than was in the room was not a surprise this time.

He had to be a level 6 at least, probably an empath and telepath in equal measure judging from the way he was feeling at Jason’s shields, testing, tasting, but not trying to force his way in or get any closer than a light, almost childlike touch.

They stared at each other, one stern, one serene, for a long time.

Finally, Jason opened the folder, revealing the data sheet with the boy’s picture. “So,” he said. “I understand you’re Jesus Christ.”