by Voss Foster
"Broff's dead?" I knew it was stupid as soon as I said it.
So did Kimmy. "Unless you want to hire a fucking necromancer, yeah. Broff's dead."
I scrubbed a hand down my face. "What the hell is going on here?" Murder was a new level, and a beheading? A whole new league of fucked up.
"It gets worse." Swift dug out his own phone and flicked across the screen, then passed it over to King. "There was a scorch mark in his chest. Blackened all the way through. This was burned into his sternum, and thankfully the autopsy tech didn't know what to make of it."
I couldn't see it, but King's face blanched and her jaw tightened. "Well shit. You think it's real?'
"Have to operate like it is unless we learn otherwise."
"They've never been interested in the Mundane before."
"There were never a billion preets living in the Mundane before."
I hated it when they got like this. "The hell are we going on about here?"
King glanced to Swift and, only once he nodded, handed me the phone. A clean, stainless steel surface, and a two-inch wide bone set in the middle. A black circle sat about a third of the way down from the top of the trollish sternum, and in the center of the ring, seven angled lines stretched upward from the bottom. Like fingers bent at the knuckle.
I had an idea. Of course I did. I wasn’t a complete fucking idiot. But I also wasn't about to run my mouth about it. No need to plant bad notions. Better to get them handed to you, just in case you were wrong. "What are we looking at?"
Swift and King didn't say anything for a long time. Too long, apparently, because Kimmy broke the silence. "That's the insignia of the fucking Seven-Fingered Hand."
Chapter Twelve
That was absolutely not what I wanted to hear. It's what I'd been thinking, but it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted to have confirmed. "They're dead and gone."
"And trolls were myths, but I've got one playing babysitter downstairs as we speak." Swift took the other empty chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "We can't discount anything right now."
"But if they're back…did they set Lenva free?"
"Can't speculate on that right now. We'll get word to the Kingdoms, if they'll pick up, we'll tell Ambassador Cyrex, if I can get her to pick up, and we'll try to protect Ixel so we don't lose our best source to…whoever the hell this really is." He pressed a fist against his chest. "Lord, I haven't had a case give me heartburn in years."
"So I guess the giant death snake wasn't enough to upset your strong, manly digestive system?" King shut down her computer and cracked her neck side-to-side. "I think we should maybe let this information slip to our potential informant while we're at it. Might melt her icy little heart."
Swift nodded and rose, and he seemed a lot more like himself, heartburn or not. There was a reason King had been the first department head, back when the OPA started up. She managed to get Swift back on track in a few seconds, which I knew I damn sure wouldn't have been able to pull off.
And she was right about Ixel, too. We had a new card in play now with…with Broff's death. Not with the Hand. We had no reason to believe the Hand was actually back.
My eyes flicked to Swift's phone, still on the desk. Maybe we had a little reason to think the Hand was actually back. The biggest terrorist organization in the history of the Kingdoms. Who just so happened to be involved in trying to release Class-As and other imprisoned preets. Which was exactly the situation we found ourselves in.
A little reason, but not one I wanted to spend a lot of time thinking about. Let it simmer in the back of my mind and move forward on the info we knew was solid.
King nodded at the room. "I'll go handle Ixel. Dash, you need to get yourself a nap. You look like shit."
"Well I feel like shit, so at least my insides match my outside. But I already caught some extra sleep."
"Then you need to learn how to sleep better." King had barely cracked the door when I smelled ozone. Strong and burning. It used to be that scent just told me Gutt was probably close by, at least when we were in the office. Not this time. Now my spine stiffened and I drew my Glock. Swift and King didn't draw, but their hands definitely shifted positions. I wasn't the only one who felt more comfortable strapped up right now.
I scanned the room behind us and, in the corner on the other side of King's desk, there was a shimmer. Why the hell would remote transport make ozone? It was small, common magic.
A slender leg appeared from the shimmer, barefoot and clad in red-rose patterned yoga pants. Broad hips. A flowy blouse. Olive skin and a sharp, defined nose. Arms full of papers. Yellow eyes.
And snakes for hair. I didn't miss that part, either. We had a gorgon in our midst. Finally.
"Vellius." I slipped my gun away. "What took so long?"
"Everything's a mess. Absolutely everything. I was just now able to get myself out of the office. I haven't even made it home." She dropped her jumble of papers on King's desk, then flopped herself down into the office chair. "You have another Class-A loose in the Mundane? Don't you people have more countries? Why is it always here?"
I shrugged. "Just lucky."
She shook her head and the corona of banded serpents hissed and quivered. "I'd get your luck adjusted. I know a researcher working on that if you're open for a trial."
"I'm going to pass on that for now."
Swift cleared his throat. "I'm actually glad you're here now. We have a…development." He grabbed his phone from the desk and turned the screen back on, then passed it over to Vellius. "Does that look familiar?"
It took a few moments, but her eyes widened and her snakes began snapping and twisting around each other. She smoothed them down with her hands, but it didn't seem to be doing much to chill them out. "What am I looking at? A joke?"
"Three preets were after our Class-A guest. One of them she killed in self-defense. One of them is here for questioning. This was the third one."
"You know what this symbol is, don't you?"
Unfortunately, all four of us nodded.
Vellius groaned. "What have you gotten yourselves into here? I'm beginning to think the Mundane isn't destined to exist at all. Between the Hand, Jörmungandr, and now a whole new Class-A."
"Can you tell us anything about our new guest?" asked Swift. "Lenva of Droshheim?"
Her snakes shifted and hissed a moment at the sound of the name. Vellius, however, shook her head. "Even my mind, impressive as it may be, can't hold every piece of information about our containment."
A momentary flash of the eyes passed from King to Swift to Kimmy to me, then back to King again. Not a one of use bought that, and apparently Vellius would make a great opponent around the poker table, because those fucking snakes were shit at bluffing.
Swift sighed and closed the door, locking us all in together. Though if she didn't want to talk, I didn't know exactly what any of us were going to do to get a Class-B gorgon to cooperate with us. But I would back Swift on whatever this was. "If there's info, we need it."
Vellius looked around at all of us, then tossed her hands up above her head, filling the room with golden light It filtered from the ceiling down, dripping like icing along the side of some weird inverted cake. Once it touched down on the floor, her shoulders slumped. "The fact is, I don't know."
King snorted. "Then why did you put up the silencing shell around my office?"
"Because I don't know." She massaged the bridge of her nose and glared at us as though she was cursed by our inferior intellects. But it passed, and she went back to looking just generally low and defeated. "The records on Lenva of Droshheim are all but empty. I was able to gather basically nothing beyond what I'd already been told about by you all. A hag, sealed away five-hundred-twenty-seven years ago. I don't know if this is something done because of political machinations, to hide something secret, or if this is from outside influence. So I'd rather not discuss anything without proper protection."
"No records?" Kimmy raised one eyebrow. "Any way for
you to tell what happened or try to recover them if I got you in through my back door?"
"You have a back door into the Class-A containment records?"
"Yes."
"From the Mundane?"
"No, from a fucking tree in the middle of Um-Shevat. Of course from the Mundane."
I couldn't say I'd spent a ton of time with Vellius, but even telling her that Jörmungandr was being unsealed into the Mundane hadn't struck her speechless. However, she stared for a solid ten seconds at Kimmy before she apparently got her tongue to function again. "You shouldn't have that."
"You shouldn't be so fucking hard to get hold of and maybe I wouldn't have had to." Kimmy crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't try to chastise me."
"I don't care if you're looking at our records. We're having issues with our communication security. No idea where it came from, how long these problems have been brewing inside the various enchantments. We didn't have any reason to consider a link into a Mundane computer system." She shook her head again. "I'm impressed you did it without anyone noticing, but I don't think I'll be able to get anything from your end that I couldn't get from the directory." She jumped to her feet. "However, I do need to check on that connection you have, to make sure it's not compromised."
"If you break it down, those snakes are disconnecting from your scalp." Kimmy glared at her a moment, then reached for the door. I hadn't really noticed the security barrier Vellius had raised, not after the casting had settled. But with the door open, it was pretty obvious we were wrapped in a brilliant gold film. The entirety of the offices outside of the room had that warmth that normally only came from sunset and a west-facing window.
At least until Vellius slapped her hand through the air. The barrier shattered, leaving us back in the really Mundane office setting I'd come to…not know and love, but at least know.
I blew out a long breath once she'd gone. "Vellius is shaken up."
"I noticed that." Swift scrubbed his face. "I'm going back down with Gutt. Dash, King, head back in for some more conversation with Ixel. If this is the Hand, I don't want her alone for one more God damn second."
Fuck. Shit. "Casey's in there with her right now."
It was all I needed to say. King was off and I stayed straight on her heels. Luckily it wasn't far to the interrogation rooms. We got there in time to see Casey draining out a cup of water and going in for a refill. He turned and…we must have looked pretty fucking intense, because he stopped and took a step back. "What's going on here?"
King scanned him head to foot, then carried on into the room. "Fill him in. I want a moment alone with her."
Fine by me. She was better at intimidation than I was. I gave Casey the briefest rundown I could, hoping brevity would make it sound better. It didn't. If anything, condensing our new Hell down into a few concise phrases made it that much worse.
Broff's dead, Lenva has no records, and maybe the Seven-Fingered Hand is back.
Casey shook his head. "Jesus."
"Yeah, that's about how everyone else feels." I glanced into the room. King was bellowing, and Ixel looked as icy calm as ever. "No word from him yet, but don't be shocked if Swift sends you express to Nevada to check out the sternum."
He nodded. "I'll go see what's happening. He's down with Lenva, right?"
I nodded. "Check on her and Gutt, too." Gutt had been working as long and as hard—or harder—than I had been, and Lenva… Well, the possible return of the Hand made her whole situation ten times as complicated. Especially after seeing what she'd done to Vois. If the Hand was really attempting a resurgence, how were they going to feel about a Class-A who wanted to be locked up? I couldn't fucking say. But it was clear she didn't take kindly to being threatened. And that manifested in total annihilation.
Casey walked off and I entered the interrogation room to a full-on shout from King. "…you want to see the pictures?"
"Sure. It'll be nice to say goodbye to Broff."
King was eventually going to fizzle out or actually lose her temper. At the moment it was all performance. So I stepped in. "Listen, Ixel. We don't want you dying, and that's exactly how this might end up if you don't take this seriously." I sat down opposite her. "What do you want with Lenva?"
"I told you: business."
"Well, you sure do business with some shitty people." King slipped her phone across the table, and I had no doubt what was on there. "That's your troll buddy."
As Ixel looked down at the phone, her eyes widened, and the room chilled a few degrees before returning to normal. What little color had livened her pale face faded out entirely, and her voice quivered softly past her lips. "Wh-what is this?" More than anything else, that had broken her. "What sick bastards did this to him?"
King reached out and flicked her finger across the screen, changing the image. "What sick bastards use this symbol?"
Ixel shook her head. "That's ancient history."
"Yet here it is, clear as day, carved into his fucking breastbone."
Ixel stared a few seconds longer, then squeezed her eyes shut. "Who did this?"
"You tell us." King pulled her phone back, then finally sat. "You're the one who knows who hired you, not us. Broff's dead and the Seven-Fingered Hand's seal is carved into his skeleton. A Class-A has been freed, and you're apparently supposed to bring her somewhere. So you want to be a little more cooperative now, or are we still playing the wall of silence game?"
"I don't know anything about that."
"Well what do you know about?" King leaned forward. "The longer you're here answering the questions, the longer we can keep you in here and away from whoever had an ax to grind with Broff. Because they're probably not too thrilled with you, either."
Shit, King was playing that game. All right, then. I nodded and let Ixel sit with that not-very-veiled-at-all threat.
She closed her eyes and just breathed for a few moments. The room was dead silent other than the ticking clock and that inhale-exhale cycle. When Ixel finally did speak again, she sounded entirely different. She sounded…scared. "The Class-A wasn't anything Broff or I wanted. We were supposed to deliver her to Solvar and that was the end of our involvement. Vois got sent along as an extra body to help. And I assume to keep an eye on us. Useless fucking elf."
"You're lying again." King shook her head. "Nobody's delivering anything to Solvar."
"I'm telling you the truth. They wanted her sent to Solvar. I don't know why. Maybe they want her dead instead of imprisoned. Maybe they're fucking insane. But we got offered fifty pounds of gold apiece."
King cocked an eyebrow. "That's what, a million dollars? To tangle with a Class-A?"
"I don't know what it is in your weird Mundane money. But it's enough to disappear into the milieu of Al-Sekar or Droshheim or Tarwald or anywhere else we wanted to for years. Fresh start, nobody on our asses, living a fine life until things calm down." She shrugged. "It was enough for Broff and I take the job, no questions asked."
King nodded and typed a couple things into her phone. I didn't know if she was saving the info, or if she was just sending all of this straight to Swift. Or hell, she could have been pretending just to psych Ixel out a little bit more…somehow. I didn't pretend to understand how King's mind worked. But then she set her phone down and locked eyes with Ixel. "How'd you get her out of Class-A containment?"
"We didn't. Once she was free, we got told to retrieve her out of the Mundane. That's where we got the recursive restraints, too."
"What's where you got them?"
"In a package with her location."
"Which is where?"
"Ashes in my kitchen. Burned up a minute after we read it. Whoever this is, they're not playing games." Her sentence trailed off, and her gaze grew distant. "I never thought Broff would die on a job. We wouldn't have taken it. We thought it was so cut and dry with that recursive restraint." She shook her head. "We got in over our heads this time."
And like that, any pretense she'd been holding onto slipped. N
ot mouthing off. Not some professional criminal. She'd lost a colleague. An old friend. A major aspect of her life. All seemingly because of the one last job they'd decided to take. Vois wasn't a part of their little connection, so his death was apparently easier to shake. But not Broff.
"Are you ready to try and stop this the best you can?" King finally lowered herself into a chair, her voice quieting to its normal gruffness instead of the full anger that had burned around her before. "Don't want this happening to you. Don't want anything to go wrong with Lenva. Don't want whoever the hell this is running around causing problems for anyone else, either. But with the way things played out, you're the only source of information we have."
And to ruin that moment, the door opened. Swift poked his head in. "Dash."
I nodded, got up, and headed out, clicking the door shut behind me. Not often that we left King to do the social, people-interacting part of the job, but she at least seemed a hell of a lot calmer, now. "What's going on?"
"Feel like taking a trip to Nevada?"
"Murder scene?"
He nodded. "You and Gutt. See if there's anything you can notice that the police didn't catch. You can call into the Las Vegas Field Office if it comes to it, but I'd like to keep everything surrounding Lenva and the Hand as hush-hush as we can manage."
I nodded. "When are we heading out?"
"You'll gain three hours going all the way to Nevada. So any time. I already talked to Zar, she's dropping you at a motel that's not too far away. Gutt can get you the rest of the way."
"You think we're going to need to be there a few days?"
Swift shrugged. "I don't know. You might. Better to be set up than not have everything in place. Plus Gutt's not exactly the freshest right now. A little rest and recuperation might be necessary for him to do the job properly." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Dress for the desert. Body was found out in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere."