by Voss Foster
Once Casey finished checking out Lenva, Swift came into the room and we all got debriefed. Long story short, Lenva was a hag.
"You're serious?" I glanced between her and Casey—he was quarter hag—and shook my head. "No offense, but you're not exactly what comes to mind when I think of a hag."
"Neither am I, I assume." Casey winked and his mouth quirked into a half-smile. He still looked tired, though. "I checked her out myself." He sighed and shook his head. "The strange thing is…she appears to be a little over five-hundred years old. And even if hags did live that long, they don't come out the other end looking quite so…pretty." He laid a hand on Lenva's shoulder. "No offense sweetie. But you know as well as I do, age hits hags hard."
She nodded mirthlessly. "It isn't safe for me to be here. I am over five-hundred, though I couldn't tell you how old exactly. Time doesn't mean much where I was." Her blue eyes went from crystal pale to storm dark, and the barest burn of ozone touched my nose. Then she closed her eyes and breathed a few times and all went back to normal. "I won't always be able to call everything back under control that well, and I don't want to hurt anyone. The best way—"
"No." I jumped in before she could say it again. "OPA protocol doesn't involve murdering protective charges, even when they ask nicely." I glanced to Swift and he didn't seem to have anything to say to the contrary. "We're looking into things."
Gutt cleared his throat. "If you could tell us how your power manifests, we may be able to better keep you safe."
Lenva didn't immediately respond. Her eyes were still dark, though, and when she did finally speak, her voice shook, quiet. "It's best I'm disposed of. Eventually, the spells of any binding would fail. Now faster than ever before."
"Because you're a hag." Swift nodded matter-of-factly and took a step forward. "I have a call into the Kingdoms's ambassador. She'll be our next best step once she gets here."
"She's here, she's here." Another figure walked through the door into Casey's medical office. She was about as tall as Gutt, olive skin, drooping jowls, and yellow-hued eyes. No tusks and her ears were pointed, tight against the sides of her head. Not a troll, then. It struck me that I should probably know at least some cursory information about the Kingdoms's ambassador. I'd never had to deal with her directly before, outside of a couple emails to a generic, government-issue address. I was going to put my money on ogre for now. Ogres tended to have skin that aligned closer to realistically possible human skin, albeit much rougher and thicker than a human's.
"Ambassador Cyrex." Swift nodded and extended his hand to her. "I was just wondering what was keeping you. Thought I might have to send some agents your way, too."
"No, no." She shook his hand roughly. Her voice was hoarse and tight, and her words shot out at a surprisingly rapid rate. "I was attempting to contact someone in the Kingdoms, but I couldn't seem to get any messages through. So I'll talk with them once I've checked out the situation here." Her gaze slid right over me and landed on Gutt. "N'Gutta! It's been some time, though I wish our reunion was under some slightly better conditions than this."
"Well, last time we were together, it was to discuss criminal extradition to the Kingdoms, so that wasn't necessarily a pleasant experience either." He sighed, then turned to me. 'This is Agent Dashiel Rourke, my partner."
"Partnered with a human." She held out her hand to me, and I finally noticed her long, curved talons. Definitely an ogre. "How do you keep on with N'Gutta? He's quite skilled and…well, I don't mean to imply that you're not skilled, but he does have magic at his disposal."
"True, but he's not the one who killed Jörmungandr."
Her eyes widened and sparkled a little. "That human. Forgive me for questioning you, then. Though I have myself convinced you must have a little preet blood in your veins."
"If I do, it's not letting me throw fireballs, so I may as well not." Not the most diplomatic ambassador the world had ever seen, apparently. If I had to guess, she wasn't thrilled at being annexed to the Mundane for this job.
Cyrex slid her gaze over to Casey and Lenva. Then her gaze landed squarely on Lenva. "You must be our refugee."
Lenva didn't respond at all, so Casey stepped up. "She's a hag, roughly five hundred years old. And she's already confirmed that she's a Class-A."
Cyrex nodded, never once taking her eyes off Lenva. "And there have already been three people after her?"
"Yes," said Swift. "A troll, an elf, and an ice elemental, all seemingly prepared for a fight. We believe they exploited a brief interruption in our security systems to get through." An interruption caused by Lenva. "We were hoping you'd have the best recourse for the situation."
"Well I have nothing, but I'm certain once I get through to the Kingdoms, they'll be able to handle things themselves. If remote communication doesn't work, I'll go in person." She sighed and, finally, turned her attention back to Swift. "Until then, she'll need to be kept safe. Do you have any rooms on the premises that can't be transported in and out of?"
"I can set one up. It won't be perfect, but it should be enough." Gutt drew his shoulders up high. "I do have to ask, Ambassador…is it entirely safe to keep her…anywhere?"
Cyrex looked her up and down, but with a slightly blank expression tinged behind her eyes. It was a look I knew plenty well: an official trying not to let on that they were out of their depth. No idea why. Not like anyone here would expect her to know anything about this random Class-A, but she was still putting on the show. "She seems to be largely in control of her own power, doesn't she?"
I tended to agree, and I was also of the opinion we shouldn't be having that conversation in front of the suicidal hag. No need to make her feel worse about her situation. But I was, again, low man on the totem pole. Especially when it came to this level of shit.
Gutt nodded. "Remarkably so, I would say." Still, a slight tension resided in his jaw, tightening and clipping his voice. I could tell he was still worried about keeping a Class-A running loose.
"It would only be for a short time, N'Gutta," said Cyrex. "Just until we can make enough headway to figure out this situation. But until then, we need a way to keep anyone else from getting to her. So that she's safe."
Okay, Cyrex may have been casually anti-human, but she was okay when it came to Lenva. In my book, anyway. So I stepped in. "We can keep her safe, Ambassador."
"Well I imagine you can. You killed Jörmungandr." She chuckled lightly. "I'm not sure much is beyond your capacity."
"Set up the enchantments, Gutt. In one of the cells." Swift nodded. "Is there anything else we can do, Ambassador?"
"Try to stay safe and keep everyone else safe?" She shrugged slightly. "Agent Swift, you've been head of this department longer than I've held this ambassadorship. I daresay you've got a better handle on these types of situations than I do. All I'm expected to do is keep the Kingdoms and the Mundane from going into all out war, occasionally sign some paperwork, and try not to go absolutely mad living in this forsaken place. No offense intended." She rolled her neck side-to-side before continuing. "Well, I'm going to try a few more times to go through official channels, then I'll have to make a personal appearance in Nedelwald. Given the circumstances, I'm fairly certain they wouldn't have much to say about the breach of protocol. But it's a hell of a time for communications to shut down."
With that lingering line and a shimmer in the air, she was gone. Gutt stepped out the door, presumably to set up the cell with whatever enchantments it was going to need. That just left me, Swift, Casey, and a still sullen Lenva.
Casey sighed. "Well, does anyone need a shot of adrenaline? I could authorize it, since it seems like we might be in for a long night."
His joke fell into flat silence. Things weren't good, and they didn't seem to be in any position to get any better. I didn't know what was going on in Swift's head, but my thoughts sure weren't in a terribly happy place. Our job was to babysit Lenva until the Kingdoms decided what to do with her, and I damn sure knew what the Kingdoms pre
ferred to do with Class-A preets: lock 'em up or shoot 'em down. Cyrex may have had a modicum of compassion, but she was still leaving it to the Kingdoms, in the end. Everyone was.
I knew, intellectually, my position didn't make any sense. I got that Class-As could be dangerous in the extreme. I really, really got that. We'd lost dozens of lives to one within a week of me joining up with the OPA. I knew that the Kingdoms would have weighed the dangers of having them loose far more thoroughly than I was currently. I understood that I'd had passing interaction with Lenva and she wouldn't talk about the nature of her power. I even knew that, as a hag, her power only grew with age. Every passing second, she was getting stronger and more dangerous…and that was on top of five centuries of growth already. Most hags capped out at a little over a hundred years old. A hundred twenty was considerably aged, and hags of that age were almost always considered Class-B preets by default.
But she didn't feel dangerous. She wasn't a mountain-sized snake spewing poison gas from its fangs like Jörmungandr, or a giant dragon amplifying all the magic around it out of control, or some Cthulhu entity wreaking madness on anyone who tried to behold it. I don't know, maybe I suffered from a severe lack of exposure. Maybe they looked like Lenva way more often than they looked like hulking behemoths. Maybe—actually, scratch that, very possibly—I was just an idiot and letting all my human baggage or whatever color my opinion on this matter. I still couldn’t get past the idea that she didn't deserve to be locked up. Again. Lenva was a victim on the run, and to protect her…we were going to hand her back to the Kingdoms so they could stick her in solitary confinement for another five hundred years.
Alternately, they could decide she was too difficult to keep under lock and key and simply dispatch her the way she wanted.
"Dash." Swift placed a hand on my shoulder, shocking me out of my thoughts and back to the present. His brows knitted slightly, and he had a few more wrinkles than usual, staring at me concernedly. "Come with me. We need to get you briefed on a few things before we start you on guard duty." He glanced over at Casey and Lenva. "Will you two be okay here on your own for a bit?"
Casey nodded. "Don't you worry about anything. She's in good hands." He smiled, not showing a damn sign of anything negative or untoward…other than his hands stuffed deep into his jeans pockets, clenching and unclenching beneath the denim. If even Casey was that nervous, that was yet another sign I wasn't acting reasonably.
I locked eyes with Lenva instead. She stared back, more wide-eyed than normal, but said nothing.
"Dash. Come on." Swift led me by the shoulder, firm but not forceful, but we didn't make it all the way back to his office. Instead, he popped the door open on a storage closet a few yards down the hallway. This one was filled with industrial sized bottles of ammonia and bleach, plus the odd flask of brightly colored liquid. I guess for cleaning up magical spills and stains and such.
He clicked the door closed and flicked on a light switch, which brought a dim overhead to life. "You clear on this one, Dash? Or is there something I need to know about?"
"I'm clear on all the protocol."
"Then why the hell are you a hundred miles away right now?" His tone stayed completely casual, and he even leaned back against a set of shelves. But the slight frown on his lips betrayed that this was, in fact, serious. In case his need to immediately get the two of us secluded wasn't enough proof of that.
So it seemed best to play stupid instead of going into everything. "Just tired."
"Bullshit, Dash. You think I haven't seen agents do this kind of dance before? You think I haven't done it once or twice?" He shook his head. "How about you try again?"
So lying hadn't been the best course of action. Fine. "Are you completely okay with what's going on here, Swift? We're just waiting around to hand her back to the Kingdoms, and we don't even know why she got locked up to begin with."
"Exactly. We don't know why she got locked up, but they do." Swift closed his eyes, and for a long while, that closet was silent as sin. When he did speak up again, his words came out softer. His shoulders even slackened a touch. "Doesn't help that she looks human, does it?"
I'd certainly noticed her appearance, but that meant…nothing. At least nothing I'd picked up on in myself. "The first thing she did was ask us to kill her. I'm not down for ignoring that kind of cry for help. And you know damn well, if we hand her over to Nedelwald, ignore it is exactly what they're going to do."
Swift's eyes sparkled, the corners crinkling, but then he was all business again. "You saw what she did to Gutt, and I can guarantee you, if she's a Class-A? That's just a fraction of what she has at her fingertips. Suicidal or not." He sighed heavily, tightly. "Right now, our job is to keep anyone from getting to her and hurting her. Can you manage that, or do I need to call King in and let you get home?"
A mixture of hot shame and icy anger crept from my belly out to the very tips of my fingers and toes. I didn't appreciate being manipulated, but I also wasn't about to stand down and sit around in my stupid apartment. "I'll keep her safe, but that might mean keeping her safe from the Hidden Kingdoms if I think they're making the wrong choice."
"Good. I'd rather have an agent who actually cares about the people he's protecting instead of a bunch of yes men." Swift popped the door open and stepped out. But he stayed in the doorway, blocking me from leaving. He looked me dead in the eye, and there were flames in the brown irises. "Don't let caring make you do stupid things, and don't lie to me when I ask a direct question again. I don't flap my lips to keep my face toned."
"Are you sure? Because it seems to be working. You're practically irresistible."
He held his stare another few seconds, then chuckled slightly and moved aside. "Black don't crack, Dash."
I slipped out as Swift strode his way back toward the office. My tension wasn't totally gone, probably wouldn't be until we had some answers and a permanent solution. But it had receded enough that I could maybe function like a normal human being. As normal as the sort of person who hung around with trolls and five-hundred year old hags could really be, anyway.
Chapter Four
It was near seven PM before we finally had everything put into place to hopefully keep Lenva safe. And, if things went wrong, Gutt and I safe from her and the bounty hunters who were after her. That seemed especially pertinent because, for the first time since I'd met Gutt almost a year ago, he looked…withered. Almost sick, and not magical overload sickness. Tired, drawn, slightly pale, and as we sat there, his shoulders steadily slumped farther and farther forward.
"That magic really took it out of you, didn't it?"
"Containment and shielding magic…of this magnitude…traditionally a team of specialists would handle it." He was slightly breathless, too, and when he looked at me straight on, his eyes seemed just a bit unfocused. But he offered a weak smile all the same, showing the barest flash of his tusks. "I am but one FBI agent, and no specialist. Mighty as I may be, I found it quite taxing."
"Are you having to still hold it up? Or does it just sort of do its own thing?"
"Oh, no, if I attempted to hold this entirely by my own will, I'd most certainly be in overload by the end of the first hour. A larger initial outlay, but more sustainable."
I looked over the cell, bars glowing with silvery light and arcing brilliant white between them and runes across the floor and ceiling. The walls around us glimmered, slightly iridescent, jagged pieces of shimmery, colored magic that spread out like a shattered window pane a second before clattering to the ground. It was definitely a powerful bunch of enchantments, filling the air with that abrasive cleanliness of ozone.
I looked past the glowing bars, and there sat Lenva. We'd made the cell as comfortable as possible, given the time constraints, and she'd gone in without a fuss, but my stomach still panged. Her eyes focused on nothing, and she clutched her knees up to her chest. It was some semblance of protection, for her and for us. I understood the necessity of the enchantments, knew she was an unkno
wn who needed to be accounted for as much as her pursuers. But I couldn't fully suppress the welling reservations as I looked at her, as I remembered her opening salvo down in the basement. Please kill me.
"Gutt, why don't you catch some sleep?"
"And what if something happens?" He pulled himself up a little straighter and shook his head. "You're no match for a preet, Dash."
"I can think of a few preets who might beg to differ. Or did you forget how I got this job in the first place?"
"Yes, you punched a sorcerer in the face."
"Damn straight."
"You also nearly died in the process, and you won't have the element of surprise in this situation, and you could be going three against one. Possibly more than that if they bring reinforcements."
So he wasn't here to coddle my ego, fine. "All the more reason for you to sleep now while we're pretty sure they're not going to show up. It's too close to when they were here the first time. They won't turn around this fast and head back for us. And if they do, I'm sure your enchantments around this room will buy me enough time to call you out."
Gutt glanced to Lenva, then into the mirror against the far wall. "Are you certain you can handle this on your own?"
"I haven't been certain of anything since I took this job. I'm still not certain that you won't get hungry and eat my arm one day."
He snorted half a laugh. "You would be far too stringy." With a slight groan, he rose to his feet. "Half an hour, an hour at the most. Then I'll be back."
"Good. If they do show up, I don't want my troll partner half-assing his magic."
"You know, humans are capable of learning rudimentary magic. If it's that important to you."
"Yeah, but this human isn't capable of learning how to be a badass magic practitioner before the assholes show back up, so maybe a certain troll I know should skedaddle himself into the oh-so-comfortable FBI issue bed in the other room."
"Are you trying to talk me out of this nap? Do you know what those beds do to a four-hundred pound body? Nothing lovely."