The Agency, Volume V, page 18
“You think there’s something wrong?”
“I think there are many things wrong,” she replied, returning to her work with an almost musical sigh. “I remain deeply troubled by the circumstances of your vampire’s death. Have the Agents found anything?”
“No. The SA lab is trying to analyze the magical traces they found on the body—there are still some lingering on the ashes—but they aren’t getting anywhere, and that’s saying something for them. Frog’s people are the best. But the magic involved in the Seraph is apparently difficult to read.”
Sita shrugged, then touched the mixture in the mortar and rubbed a little between her fingers. “Just right.” She began scraping it into a jar, and said, “I suppose I could help. I could have a look at the ashes myself and see if I recognize the energy signature left on them.”
Lex shook his head. “You shouldn’t go anywhere near the Agency, Sita. They would lock you up and study you at best. You’d be interrogated and profiled and then they would have their Eyes on you forever. Beck said they don’t even have a file on you right now, and that’s the way it should stay.”
“I am inclined to agree. But we must find whoever did this—anyone working our magic without the knowledge of the Astaerath is dangerous to the entire city. If you could bring me some of the ashes, I might be able to learn something.”
Lex’s heart rebelled at the thought, but he nodded grimly. “I’ll get some. The lab only took a sample from the urn; the rest is in Jason and Rowan’s apartment. I’ll just have to find a way in.”
Sita set aside her work and went over to one of the shelves behind her table where she kept empty jars and decorative bottles; she peered at their contents a moment before selecting a small glass vial shaped like a teardrop. “Put it in this,” she said.
Lex took the vial, considering what R&D must be doing with Jason’s ashes right now—running them through machines, looking at them under a microscope, saturating them with chemicals. What part of his body were they looking at? A hand, a kidney? Did they care? When they were done would they return what was left to the urn, or just throw it away?
“Peace, child,” Sita said, touching his arm. “It was only the vessel for his spirit. Sacred, yes, but now a relic.”
“And what about his spirit?” Lex asked around the constriction in his throat. “Where is that?”
“I don’t know,” Sita answered truthfully. “For all our wisdom, the Astaerath are not omniscient. No one is. Not even the Sibyl can see the fullness of death and rebirth—that is reserved only for those who die. But I am sure that, wherever he is, your night walker is at peace.”
Lex pondered the vial in his hand. “I hope so.”
Part Seventeen
Beyond the screaming, there was rest.
The pain and fear faded, leaving only a soft silence that lathed him like warm water, rocking him, embryonic, in maternal arms he had never known in life. The water lifted him out of the prison of flesh and the illusions of the material world, slowly rising with a tide of serenity and truth.
The sense of relief when the pain finally ceased gave way to quiet. There were no words in this place, no language at all, no shapes to confine. Everything simply drifted, and that was good.
Then something went horribly wrong.
Agony gripped him and tore him sideways and down, like giant claws were shredding him out of the sky. Something dragged him violently from that watery place and over jagged shards of feeling and memory—everything was searingly bright and cold except for the sensation of blood falling hot and thick. He choked on it, struggled desperately against the burning rope that hauled him away, but it was far more powerful, and only laughed at his suffering.
Then…
Rain.
It was always raining here.
Everything was grey and muddy, the rain slowly erasing everything like a chalk drawing and revealing layers of the same dull colors beneath. Sometimes there seemed to be trees, sometimes hills, but it was always raining, always cold and damp and joyless.
In this place, he wandered, for eons or perhaps nanoseconds, with no purpose or direction, simply drifting, as before, but not in peace…in numbness. There was no dark and no light, no pain and no pleasure, just…existing, from one moment to the next stretching out into infinity.
A crunch.
He looked down—and being able to look anywhere was startling in and of itself—to see something that, for a minute, he couldn’t remember the word for, but eventually it came: a leaf.
Another step, another leaf, and soon the path that had not been a path before was strewn with them. Red leaves, brown leaves, gold, all the colors of an Autumn sunset…though he didn’t remember what a sunset really looked like, nor a sunrise, nor high noon. But there were leaves, and then there were trees.
A light wind lifted the branches above him, and that rustling sound was sweeter than any music could have been after so many years…or seconds…of nothingness.
There was something familiar about this forest, and at every clearing he expected to see a giant tree on the far edge, but it went on and on, the ground rising and falling, the trees kept in perpetual Fall. The sky was an indeterminate blue that could have been morning or pre-dusk, but there didn’t seem to be a sun, only a world of splendid color laced with welcoming shadows.
Eons, or perhaps nanoseconds, went by before he saw the wall.
First only one brick lay in the dirt, so old and eroded that it might well have been a natural stone. But nearby there was another, and another, and as they grew more numerous they grew more organized, from a tumble to a regular stack.
The wall was about shoulder-height and grown over with dying vines. There were gaps where the stones had fallen in, and dead leaves and forest refuse piled up where the wind had met the wall and dropped its burden. The straggly remains of what looked like a bird’s nest poked out of a crack near the top.
Curious, he followed the wall as it curved away from the deeper forest, toward a clearing where it made a half-circle, then stopped.
The clearing itself appeared to have once contained a building of some kind; it was just big enough for a one-room house like a storybook Witch’s cottage. Instead of the ruins of a fireplace, though, there was a circle of stones in the center of the clearing…a well.
He approached it cautiously, wondering if it was dried out or at least grown over with weeds, but even from several feet away he could see that the water within was clear and bright, sparkling as if with tiny diamonds.
As he leaned over the well, peering in, he gasped and leaped back.
There was someone—
Looking around the clearing, he frowned. No one was there. Who had he seen?
Again, he leaned forward, and again, he jumped.
A reflection. There was a reflection in the water, and no one else was here, so…
Was it him?
He stared hard into the well, trying to make sense of the face that stared back. It wasn’t right, somehow. Even after all these years he remembered it differently.
Wait…
The face in the water was on the other side of the well.
He lifted his eyes.
“Hello,” said a gentle voice.
He jumped back and looked up at the face that had been reflected in the water. The greeting was the first word he had heard in an eternity of wandering, and it was as comforting as it was terrifying…almost as much as its source.
Dark, dark eyes met his, watching him out of an ivory face framed in long, shining black hair that fell down almost to the ground. The face was pale and thin, but beautiful, almost impossibly so, with pointed ears poking out of the hair. Lush lips parted just a little in wry amusement.
“You’re an Elf,” he said, his voice sounding harsh and strange after such a long silence, particularly compared to the stranger’s musical accent.
“No,” came the reply.
“Who are you?”
“I think you know.”
They stared at each other while comprehension slowly sank in. “Are you…Death?”
A chuckle. “You could say that.”
He realized why the voice was so familiar…he’d heard it before. “You’re the Shadow.”
“I am.”
Now, he felt something new: anger. He stepped back from the well, and said accusingly, “You brought me here. You did this.”
The Shadow sighed and looked down into the well. “I did not. I wish I had. Then it would be easy to undo.” He glanced up again. “Do you remember your name?”
He frowned…no, he didn’t. He remembered…what? What…
“Think,” the Shadow commanded. “Concentrate. Tell me your name.”
He shook his head, dizzy. “Why don’t I remember?”
“You don’t remember because you’re dead. Passed on. You have ceased to be. You are not, in fact, pining for the fjords. You have shuffled off the immortal coil. You are an ex-vampire.”
He had a feeling there was a joke there he wasn’t getting. “It hurts…”
The Shadow sighed. “Very well, then. I suppose I am asking too much too soon.” He extended a hand, and…
Instantly Jason felt like he’d been dunked head-on into a bucket of ice water. He sputtered and stumbled backwards, striking out with one arm and meeting only air. “The fuck—“
“Much better.”
Jason stared at the Jenai who sat on the side of the well. He was draped in black robes that seemed spun out of something other than cloth; as he moved, they shifted and changed, and Jason could almost see shapes in them, like clouds roiling past the moon before a storm. It was like…
“Shadows,” was the answer. “I spun it myself. Do you like it?”
Jason put his hands over his face, trying to make sense of everything. “You said I’m dead…but I’m not. I’m here.”
“Only if you consider here to be here, and it isn’t anywhere. It’s just…here.”
He glared at the Shadow. “You know, I’ve been murdered and I’m feeling a little out of sorts. Could you skip the riddles and tell me what the hell is going on?”
Another sigh, and Jason had the distinct feeling he was being tolerated, the way an adult would tolerate a child covered in its own shit.
“Something has gone wrong,” the Shadow told him. “By all logic I should now be occupying your flesh. Obviously I am not.”
“You were going to steal my body? Like a Seraph?”
“Not exactly.” He looked down at the water again, and for a moment was silent, staring into the well with half-closed eyes, attention focused entirely on its depths. Then he shook himself out of it and said, “This is a complicated situation you’ve blundered into, young one. This war has many factions, and they all consider themselves righteous.”
“You’ve just described every war in history.”
“Yes, but not every war has had this kind of power behind it. On the one hand, you have the Sibyl, who wants to recreate the Jenai. On the other hand you have the other six Jenai—one alive but in stasis, one trapped, one in potential, one in hiding, and two not yet found. Some will ally with the Sibyl. Some will ally with the Astaerath. The Astaerath themselves are divided. They all want to protect humankind, but not all want to kill the Jenai. And on another hand you have the Seraph, conjured by all sides to act as soldiers, supposedly robots, but one…at least one of the Astaerath has broken the rules, and I’m willing to bet I know who, which means that on the other hand, we have the Black-Eyed to contend with.”
“How many hands do you have?” Jason asked.
The Shadow tilted his head to one side. “More than Vishnu on speed, young one. But the point is, in all of this, the gods themselves remain silent. Perhaps they do not even exist anymore. Who knows? How is one to choose a side, and how can any triumph over the others?”
“Where do you come in?”
The Shadow looked up at the sky. “Beats the hell out of me.”
“Great,” Jason muttered. “Aren’t you supposed to be a god?”
“God is a strong word for any of us. The Sibyl thinks of herself as a god, but she’s a raving lunatic. We are more like…prophets, avatars, that sort of thing. The Divine will not speak, will not act; and so we speak and act for Her.”
“So what happened to us? Where are we?”
“I told you. Dead. Or rather, trapped in death. The irony does not escape me.” The Shadow looked back down at him, and Jason had a sense of how powerful he truly was…and, right now, how bound. He was like a dam waiting to be broken, a plague waiting for its first rat. There were dark and terrible things contained in his eyes…and yet…there was something loving, even kind, there as well.
“Not every culture views Death as a spectral skeleton to be feared, Jason. Many thought of me as beautiful.”
Jason stared at him for a long minute before asking, “Where have you been all this time, then?”
“I was lost, for many centuries. The Sibyl cast me down and I was lost until some humans stumbled upon me and took me prisoner. How they managed that, well, your guess is as good as mine. They intended to destroy me, thinking me the devil, or some other superstitious nonsense. But I…” He smiled a bit wickedly. “I have my ways. I…inspired them, you might say, down a different path. Guided them to the right texts, taught them the right skills, to bring me back to the world of form.”
“For which you needed a body,” Jason concluded. “Mine. Why mine?”
“You were a vampire. It was poetic.” The Shadow saw Jason’s expression, rolled his eyes, and clarified, “You were strong enough to contain me. Face it, there aren’t many Elves like Rowan. He was born of the gods, as his daughter shall be. Right now it would be impossible for another Jenai to be born into an Elven body. I had to improvise, and you were the best candidate. I would have had to…alter you, somewhat, but I think you would have been sufficient.”
“What about all that crap you were spouting about creating something new out of us?”
“All true.”
“So you would have just destroyed my personality, taken my body, and then what?”
“I didn’t know what would happen,” the Shadow said, nearly losing his implacable calm. “For all I knew your personality would overwrite mine and only my power and memories would remain. But it was a chance I had to take. I had to get back to the Earth.”
“Why now? What was so urgent?”
Now, he looked away, no longer able to hold Jason’s gaze. “Him,” he said quietly. “The one you call Rowan.”
Jason crossed his arms. “Your lover, you mean. What, you wanted him back?”
“Of course I did. But it isn’t that simple.” The Shadow rose and walked toward Jason, who resisted the urge to step back; he made a slow circle around Jason as he said, “Do you have any idea the kind of power the Jenai had? The Sibyl is trapped in her dream world, but if she were to walk the Earth, she could scramble the threads of time—future would become past, past would become future, and the present would collapse under paradox. I could lay waste to nations with a thought. The Weaver could create mountains out of a handful of dust and then scatter them to the winds of the cosmos as easily as breathing. That kind of power, unchecked, is unnatural, especially the forces of creation and destruction. Without death, life unchecked is cancer. Death unchecked is plague and famine. The Weaver and I were more than lovers—we were each other’s balance.”
The Shadow sounded weary, and Jason could relate. What must it be like to be that old? The years had warped the Sibyl until she was a twisted, evil thing. Even at 150 years, Jason had felt ancient sometimes, way past the age that anything should continue to exist. It had to be so much worse for something that was death, and deathless.
The Jenai paused, facing away from Jason and staring out at the forest. There was longing in his voice as ancient as the universe. “We were each other’s balance,” he repeated. “When the Sibyl struck me down, he turned on her out of grief as much as a desire for justice…and it was suicide, plain and simple. Creation and destruction must always go together. It isn’t a law, or a theory…it simply is.”
“Then how did we get trapped here?” Jason asked, losing the last of his anger. “And what do we do now?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We’re prisoners. The ritual backfired, giving the Sibyl the chance to seize us when neither of us were in your body. Now we’re stuck here.”
“Wait…so where’s my body?”
A shrug. “Wherever bodies go in your world. Buried, burned, whatever. Bodies are easy to come by. Be glad you still have a soul.”
Jason sagged back against the side of the well, reality truly hitting him for the first time. “I’m dead…my body’s gone. I’m dead.” He patted his own arms and chest, trying to comprehend it and failing. “I’m gone. They would have cremated me by now. There’s nothing left but ash. What…what happens now? We stay here forever? I can’t…I can’t…”
