by Voss Foster
I let out a breath I'd apparently been holding. "So, did Ambassador Cyrex make any headway with the Kingdoms while I was getting paralyzed and pummeled?"
"Not that I've heard. I've actually got a request in to meet with her, but you know how hard it can be to get in touch with anyone from the embassy." Swift sighed, then stood and patted the cot next to him. "I'm going to let you get some actual rest."
"When was the last time you slept on one of these?"
He smiled. "I'm the department head. So it's been a few years." He rapped on the door frame as he opened it to exit. "Work hard and you can go home and sleep in your own bed sometimes."
"Right." He closed the door and I begrudgingly lowered myself onto the cot. I had doubts that I'd be able to get any sleep on this piece of crap. But as I laid down on the government issue pillow, my eyelids felt a little too heavy. The long night, the fight, and all the magical tinctures running through my bloodstream apparently combined to send Dash to beddy-bye time.
Chapter Eight
"Never pegged you for sleeping in."
I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the bright fluorescents burning down from up above. The voice barely filtered in past the exhaustion and pain swinging through my body. I didn't know how much of that came from the cot and how much of that came from the assault of the asshole troll. But I hurt, and I hurt a lot more than I had when I collapsed into sleep.
After my eyes adjusted and my brain clicked into gear, I recognized the voice. Familiar, slightly high, gentle. I struggled myself up to sitting. Well, as sitting as I was going to get. There stood Casey, wearing his white coat and holding a brown brew in a small crystal bottle. I nodded at him, ignoring the tight throb in my neck. "I'm a lazybones. Always have been."
"Well, I haven't woken up next to you yet, in spite of my best efforts, so how would I know?" Casey stepped in and sat gingerly on the very edge of the cot, down by my feet.
"Does Sentient Resources know about you?"
Casey's brows actually furrowed a bit. "If the flirting makes you uncomfortable, I'm fully capable of controlling myself. I know straight guys can get weird with it."
"Hey, SR's not going to stop me from flirting with my favorite hag." My muscles were stiff, but I reached up and patted him on the cheek. "I'm just metaphorically fucking with you. You should know that by now. Cutie."
Casey smiled at me, then handed over whatever alchemical concoction he'd thrown together. "This'll make comforting me a lot less painful. I checked on you while you were sleeping. The revivifying draft is out of your system now, so you're good to take actual pain killers, now."
I downed the potion happily, and within a minute of taking it, everything loosened up. I still had serious pain where the troll's hands had impacted on my shoulders, and in general, I felt like I had a major hangover, that stiffness and general malaise of "yuck" clinging to me. But it was a massive improvement over where I had been. Still, impressive that Casey's alchemy wasn't enough to shrug this off altogether. That troll and I were going to have words next time he showed his face.
Same with the ice elemental who tried to fucking paralyze me.
"Thanks. I owe you…what is it now, thirty-eight?"
"At least." Casey patted me on the knee. "You've been out almost twelve hours, now, so you should probably get ready to go on shift."
Slowly, I pushed myself to full sitting, then to standing. "Have you considered marketing that green stuff for insomnia? It works like a son of a bitch."
"The potions aren't what knocks you out. And if everyone got tackled by a troll and cursed partway to death, they'd sleep great, too." He rose from the cot as well and moved back toward the door. "I'll leave you be. But Gutt should be in shortly for your shift, so best to get your head in the game."
"My head's always in the game. It's my body that's throwing a fit."
Casey chuckled. "Take care of yourself, because I'm off shift, and I need my beauty sleep." He winked, looking entirely like himself, then walked all the way out, stripping off the white coat as he went.
I stretched side to side in a vain attempt to work out the kinks in my back. I got about half of them to pop and loosen enough that, as far as I could tell, I was walking like a normal human being. My clothes were a mess, and I smelled like death, but it was going to have to do for the time being. Once I was moving and a little more presentable, I scuttled out, then headed for a bathroom. I wet my hands and eased the few unruly hairs back into place. Scrubbed a little dried drool off my face, because that wasn't exactly classy. I stripped off my shirt, too, just so I could splash some hand soap and water under my pits.
It was the first time I got to see the bruising, and I stiffened painfully from the shock. My night's sleep had let the marks bloom, deep red and purple. I could see where the troll's fingers had splayed against my body. Not clean, clear marks, but definitely hands that had smashed against my body. I cocked my torso to one side so I could get a glance at my back. Not as extreme, but I'd taken a heavy slam against that wall, and a dark line following my spine.
I quickly scrubbed some soap and water under my arms, rinsed as best I could with damp paper towels, dried them off, then redressed. At the very least, the tiny slice on my chest seemed to have closed up. That was…something. I didn't enjoy looking like I'd gone through a meat grinder. I figured the concoctions Casey had been feeding me would clear the bruising up quickly. He regrew my skin and muscle the first time I met him. But until that kicked in, I was going to be in rough shape.
I arrived back to the cell just as Gutt marched up. He had a suspiciously greasy, white paper bag clutched in one fist, and the smell hit my nose immediately. "Julian's?"
"I thought something with a little more nutritional value than candy bars and potato chips was in order."
"You'll hear no objection from me."
Gutt shook his head, a deep, throaty chuckle passing over his lips. We walked in, and Oona, a pink mohawked elf woman, and Zar, our red demon remote transport specialist, rose, both nodding.
Oona sighed. "Fair warning, Svenson caught wind of the whole 'we're keeping a Class-A hag in our basement' situation. So he's on the warpath, and Swift ran himself ragged all day trying to get in touch with Ambassador Cyrex. No luck on that front."
I nodded. "Anything here?"
"Nope. Heard that you got yourself bruised up earlier."
"You should see the other guy." He was fine, other than a bullet hole in his shoulder that hadn't seemed to faze him at all.
Oona rolled her eyes. "I am off for the night." She turned and nodded curtly toward Lenva. "Evening." Her voice clipped forward, and she retreated rapidly out the door.
I looked to Zar. "Oona's not comfy here?"
"No. Class-A." She flashed a gaze toward Lenva herself. "No offense on my end." She yawned and stroked her hands across her smooth, sweeping horns. "But on top of that, Oona's not comfortable much of anywhere Rothiel's not."
I'd been curious about this one for some time, and this seemed as good a time as any to ask. "Are they a couple or something?"
"Of course." Zar gave me a crinkled up look like I'd asked if the sky was above my head. "They've been together for a long time. It's why they work so well together." Another yawn, showing her gleaming fangs. "To be honest, King was lucky she managed to pull them in. They worked in the Grand Archives of Nedelwald for over a decade before they came here."
Sounded like they'd be fascinating dinner company, but I could tell that whatever weird demonic metabolism she had going on was begging her to go to bed. So I waved her off and lowered myself down into the seat she'd been in.
Gutt sat next to me and opened the white paper bag. He pulled out a thing of skin-on fries and a burger that definitely took two hands to eat. Then another…and then a third, which he carried over to the cell. "It's not high-end cuisine, but something to keep your strength up."
"My strength is as fine as it's ever been." A gentle smile curved up Lenva's lips as she reached through
the bars to grab the nosh from him. She looked a hell of a lot more comfortable than she had the day before, and I had to force back a smile. Maybe it was just her getting used to things, but I liked to think she was maybe finding some reason to want us to, I don't know, not murder her in cold blood. At the very least, it seemed like she was interested in food, even if she didn't need it.
She snatched the bag of fries as well, pulled them through the bars, and levitated them next to her with a twitch of her pinky. "Thank you."
Gutt lowered himself into his seat with a groan. "I would hate for you to see me as a rude host. Your accommodations are already dismal enough without forcing you to watch us fill our gullets while you starve."
With that, I couldn't completely hold back the smile. Gutt wasn't just there to talk the talk about being reasonable and understanding with Lenva. Sure, maybe a serving of fast food was a small, stupid thing to care about, but it was a show of good faith. A showing of who Gutt was, and who I'd maybe forgotten he was.
Once we were settled with food, I turned to Gutt. "I heard about Svenson's freakout."
"It was bound to happen." Gutt sighed and leaned back in his chair. "They were in quite the shouting match, according to King. For someone who likes to be so distant from everyone, she certainly manages to always find herself privy to pertinent gossip."
"That's how she works her magic." King invariably had a contact or a lead in her back pocket when it became important, often finding out about situations at the same time as, or even before, Agent Swift.
"From what little I managed to glean from everyone, there was apparently talk of reaching out to Vellius."
"Really?" I'd suggested it at the start, but it was a hell of sidestep to skip Ambassador Cyrex and get in touch with the Grand Archives on our own.
"Swift was understandably reluctant to reach out, subvert the traditional channels, put the delicate political balance at risk, so I'm not sure when exactly he plans to touch base with her, if at all." Gutt nodded and took a hearty bite of his burger. "I personally think it's high time we speak with Vellius, since Cyrex doesn't appear to be making any headway getting through to the Kingdoms through official channels."
"Who is Vellius?" Lenva's voice floated out from the cell. She held a French fry between her thumb and middle finger, and brought it to her mouth while she waited.
"She's a researcher in Nedelwald." It felt a little awkward, me doing the explaining about the Kingdoms to a hag. "She works in Class-A containment."
Lenva nodded, and no shadow crossed her eyes this time, in spite of the subject matter. "She would be the one to talk to, then."
I still had a hard time reconciling her with the idea of something as dangerous as Jörmungandr. But at this point, I had to wait. Keep her safe from the seemingly very determined bounty hunters who were after her. Or kidnappers. Or murderers. Whatever they actually were, we still didn't know. "Hey, what happened to that knife you got off the elemental? Casey wanted me to warn you about it."
"The paralytic enchantment? It was easy enough to suss out. I left it with Oona and Rothiel, and we can always retrieve it as evidence. But it would be a nice enchantment to be able to replicate. On something preferably less lethal than a dagger, of course."
"They said they got sent to do a job." I popped one crisp fry into my mouth. Damn it did I love Julian's. "Does that knife give us any clue who might be their mysterious benefactor?"
"Not as of yet. That's a job for Kimmy and the R and D gals. All I could tell from my passing examination was that it was nasty. Not a standard paralytic enchantment."
"There's a standard one?"
"There's a standard everything. They can be quite useful in more dire situations where eliminating the target is not required. The standard enchantment presents no real risk of death. This one was considerably more penetrative. Oona and Rothiel have had to take care simply handling it." He nodded like this was perfectly reasonable dinner chat, apparently not as concerned by the effects of it as I was. Of course, he hadn't been the one who started to succumb to it, so maybe I was a bit more sensitive about the whole thing.
We polished off Gutt's food a little faster than I would be comfortable admitting, even given the somewhat harrowing conversation. Even Lenva sucked hers down pretty fast. Now all we had to do was wait around again. Doing anything with a Class-A should have been exciting, stressful, difficult…instead, it felt like any other boring babysitting duty. Hell, maybe even more boring. This time, we were locked up in the same room, just waiting for all the nothing to happen. Plus, with no distraction, my body aches seemed to throb worse and worse as time went on. I knew it wasn't worse than nearly dying to Jörmungandr's poison, but it sure as hell felt like it.
I was just getting ready to take a trip to the bathroom, just to get some bloodflow and address the stiffness in my joints, when Gutt jumped to his feet. Anything that could make seven feet and four-hundred pounds move like that wasn't anything I wanted to deal with, so my hand went straight to the grip of my Glock. "What's going on?'
"I don't know. It doesn't feel like they're back." He scanned his gaze around the room, landing on Lenva at least three times. From everything I could see, it wasn't anything she was doing, unless her dragging her legs up onto the bed and hugging her knees absolutely terrified Gutt.
After a few more seconds, the air shimmered above the table and light showered down from that glimmer. It slowly coalesced into…Vellius. A tiny Vellius, maybe six inches tall. Her snake hair formed a wild explosion around her head, and she wore a sheer robe that reminded me she was very fit. But the manic expression slashed across her miniature face destroyed any of those thoughts.
"N'Gutta." Her yellow eyes cut across the room until they finally landed on Gutt. "I'm glad I got hold of you. You'll understand."
"Understand what? Is this about the Class-A situation?"
"No. That's…that's something else." She glanced over her shoulder, as though there was someone off…not off-screen, but off hologram? Off enchantment? Someone we couldn't see who might be watching over her. "I don't have much time. Until we’ve fully secured communications again, all missives are being heavily monitored and regulated."
"Secure communications?" Gutt leaned in close to her magical hologram. "What's going on?"
"There's an issue with communications moving between the Mundane and the Hidden Kingdoms. Official channels are still down while we scrub for any surveillance we may have missed. I'm using my own enchantment, just so you know you're not being ignored."
"Of course. Information is everything." Gutt started popping his knuckles. "Someone compromised the communications…that's dangerous. And concerning."
"That's why I was glad I got you. I knew you'd see the severity." She sighed, her snakes whipping faster before settling back into gentle undulations around her head. "Look, I'll get there when I can. For the time being, redouble your security. Anyone with the skill or power to get into official communications like these isn't someone who needs to know about this Class-A. Assuming they don't already."
My spine stiffened. "You think this is connected?"
Her tiny image glanced over to me. "I don't know. Don't take chances. I'll be there—"
She wavered, then shattered apart in a spray of light. The stench of ozone filled the room.
Chapter Nine
Gutt and I both backed straight against the bars of Lenva's cell. I slipped my finger just in front of my trigger guard, but I had no idea where to aim. There was no threat I could see, and it didn't seem like Gutt had any clue what we were waiting for. All any of us knew was the smell of ozone in the air.
I dared one glance back to Lenva. "Just stay calm."
She didn't respond, and I didn't have enough of her face in my periphery to read any sort of emotion from her. All I had were audio cues. Her breathing felt abnormally shallow. Could have been anxiety, could have been her trying to just keep herself under control so she didn't do…whatever got her locked in infinite sol
itary to begin with.
Gutt leaned back against the bars and his breath caught in his throat, shallowing just like Lenva's. Only for a second, but long enough to know something was wrong. "Gutt? You with me?"
"Someone's working on getting through, and I think they've made it pretty deep in." He shook off whatever was happening to him, then planted his feet wide apart like he was prepared to take a blow. Or ten. "Let's see what we can do here." I could tell he was trying to sound playful and nonchalant, but the grit and gruffness to his voice betrayed him. Still, he set to work, his fingers curling in and out of various formations in front of his face.
Lenva apparently had a bead on what he was doing. "I can help." She got off the bed and pushed herself up to the bars. "They're exploiting a weakness in the bonds between your magic reversal sigil and the destructive barrier you put up."
"Yes, I know. It's standard procedure, and that weakness is always present." Gutt had dropped his cordial voice as he continued on. Apparently the strain of this magic was just a little bit too much. "This is very delicate work and I need to concentrate."
Lenva opened her mouth to say something more, but that was right when Gutt went down to one knee. His hands fell to his sides, and his fingertips billowed white smoke. I wasn't an expert in troll anatomy, but I was going to hazard a guess and say that wasn't supposed to happen.
"Get armed, Dash. They're coming through." Gutt swirled his right hand through the air and, slowly, gleaming light gathered around his palm and fingers.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm not going to be able to hold them off." The light sped to him faster and faster, and the smoking flesh sputtered to a stop. It was slightly blackened, but only for a moment before it began to heal back to his normal slate blue. "I'm reabsorbing the magic I put into these barriers. That way I'm not fully useless."