by Voss Foster
Not the sallow, half-dead skin of a sorcerer. No scales or fur or tattoos that I could see. A full head of black hair, tied back in dreadlocks, and skin the color of pine wood. But it wasn't woodgrain. His skin almost looked like wax. Perfectly smooth, with the light shining just a bit as his face moved.
I leveled my Glock center mass, hoping he wouldn't call my bluff. I wasn't going to take that shot with the kid writhing and moving, unaware of me. I was a damn good shot, no question, but it was even too dicey for me. "Don't go anywhere, buddy. Just stay right where you are, ride this out, then you're going to come with me."
I guess my talking tipped the poor kid off. His eyes opened just a crack, and he looked at me. "Please help. Please." His voice was all but inaudible, and the vines continued to grow.
It was a fucking split second. One tiny glimpse to this poor suffering kid, and then the waxy skinned figure was gone. I didn't even see the shimmer of remote transport. Just gone in an instant. Probably the same as what happened to Karak.
"Shit, shit." I could berate myself later properly. A little cussing was all I could allow right now. I couldn't do anything to save this kid, but I could be next to him. I could try to comfort him. I stepped inside the circle of safety and put my hands on his shoulders. "What can I do? Who did this?"
"I was…it was dark." He quivered under my grip. "And it was loud. Then bright. It hurts."
I forced everything back down into my stomach. He didn't need to be vomited on to top off this experience. "Can someone help you? I'm a human. What do you need?"
"He needs an elemental." Swift marched through the back door, struggling to keep himself upright as the vines crept and shipped out. Behind him tottered an absolutely ancient gray elemental. "I found a midwife. Move aside so she can do her work."
A midwife. She could seal him. She could help him. I let her through and she immediately went to work, even as the kid asked more and more garbled, ragged questions, and more vines crowded the house, busting out glass and breaking through drywall.
"Go search the house." The old woman hissed through gritted teeth. "Yeshin is dead, but his husband may still be alive somewhere in here."
Another survivor. Something I could try to do. It was better than standing there useless. The vines weren't any more active than they had been when I made my way inside. Either the worst of it was over, or we were in the eye of the storm, though I guess a lot of that depended on the ministrations of his elderly savior.
Swift and I headed back out of the circle and down the short hallway, muscling open doors where we had to. At the very least, there had to be a body, right? Unless I was about to have a preet drive up and see what had become of their trailer. And their husband.
The very last door at the end wasn't blocked off with vines or anything. It was just locked. And luckily made of cheap seventies materials. Swift and I rammed our shoulders into it a few times, slamming through the cheap wood and, sure enough, there was an elf. Not too old, though who the hell knew how to tell with elves for sure, and cowering in the corner.
He looked at me and didn't say anything, just ran over. I nodded and turned around. "We're getting you out. This is getting handled, okay? I'm from the FBI. Office of Preternatural Affairs."
"Yeshin. Where's Yeshin?"
Dead on the living room floor. "Out of danger first, questions second." Maybe I'd come up with some sort of answer that wasn't completely devastating or insensitive to him losing his husband. We passed the old woman, still working some sort of bright glowing magic on the elemental boy. The vines weren't writhing the same way, and the poor kid wasn't all screwed up in pain like he had been when I walked in.
I ushered the other guy out the back door, got him into the crowd that had formed around the trailer, then headed back inside. "Any luck?"
"He's…stable-ish." Still, she worked her hands over him all the same. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, but no other sign of tire or exhaustion. "I can't promise he won't die."
I nodded, deciding to ignore that last bit. "Any idea who he is?"
She shook her head. "There are no plant elementals in the area that I know of." Finally, she lowered her hands to her side. The boy still shook, but he opened his eyes and, after a few seconds of blurry unfocus, he blinked and fixed his gaze on the old woman. "You saved me. You…thank you."
She nodded. "Come on. Let's get you out of here."
She tried to lead him away, but he stayed put, shaking his head. "My legs…I don't think I can really…walk." His cheeks turned a dark bluish-green. I guess that was a blush.
I stepped up to him. "You up to me carrying you?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "Thank you."
I got my arms positioned, one behind his knees, one at his neck, and…well, it wasn't nearly as easy as picking up somebody who was already down, but I got him into a solid cradle. He was so god damn light. So frail. How could someone do something like this to a kid? It was really driven home as I had to carry him down the stairs.
As soon as they saw me, the crowd rushed in around me and the kid. We were all able to get him steady, and they kept him stable while someone ran to get a chair. I turned to Swift and he jerked his head over his shoulder. We met over there with Gutt, who was shoving his phone back in his pocket. "I've called Casey."
"Good." Swift stood with his hands in his pockets. "What are we looking at, Dash? You were the only one who really got in there."
"We're looking at…I don't even know. Gutt, Bancroft, and I are looking at a long time trying to figure out what that thing was, though."
"What thing?"
Oh. They hadn't seen it. "There was someone with him. Big, yellow. I looked at the kid for half a second and they got away. I let them get away." Damn it. I shouldn't have.
"It's better than any of us did. You were worried about the kid." Swift nodded. "Don't beat yourself up over that. I'm sure between the three of you, we can get a lead."
I nodded, still not quite sure I'd made the right choice. "Where'd you find the elemental woman?"
"I grabbed the first elemental who showed up in the crowd and got lucky."
That hung in the air until Casey stepped out of the portal. He was looking fresh and rested, in spite of the furrowed worry on his brow. "What's the damage?"
"Elemental kid. He just needs a once-over." Swift jabbed his thumb back toward the crowd. "For now, we need to know if he's stable enough to have a talk."
Casey nodded and slipped away.
Gutt sighed. "He's clearly another teenager. Twelve at the youngest."
"Yeah, I know. Why are they targeting so many here, now?"
"Not the foggiest." Gutt shook his head, then turned to Swift. "Since we seem to just be waiting… Al-Sekar is hiding something. I don't know what, but they're afraid to come clean. They know more than they're letting on."
I breathed out a sigh of relief. I wasn't just paranoid or pissed off. If Gutt was seeing the same thing, then we had reason to believe it was true. "Is Kimmy already running a search through Sekari records?"
Swift nodded. "She has been since before you two left, but she ran into a SNAFU. Slowed her down. Something about the cheap-ass FBI not paying for processors that could handle more than a fucking…something. But that was the gist of it."
"Well this is all one hell of a shitstorm." I thought that summed it up nice and poetically.
Swift shrugged. "Could have been a much worse shitstorm. We got to the kid in time." He turned as Casey led the boy back over to us. "Is he good?"
"Weak, tired, dehydrated, but he looks healthier than anyone else who's come in from this. No major bruising. Also alive and fully responsive, which is always a plus." Casey stabilized the kid as he swayed. "I want to get him back to DC, probably hospitalize him overnight just to make sure there's nothing seriously wrong with him. But as long as he's up for questioning, he's medically fine for it."
"Thank you." The kid's voice quivered out. "All of you."
Casey smiled bright a
t him. "It's kind of our job." He pulled his arm back and the kid stood all on his own. "What's your name, hon?"
"Lorath…" He looked at his feet before continuing. "Prince of Tarwald."
Fuck. We had royal blood, and I'd officially had enough royals for the day. Royals who's kid had been nearly killed…fuck.
"No shit." Swift nodded. "Sounds like you've got quite a story to tell, your highness."
"Please, just Lorath." He didn't look up as he spoke, only holding eye contact with the beetle crawling across his shoe. "How long was I gone?"
"We're going to find out." I nodded to him and smiled. "You did a good job holding yourself together. Probably saved you and that other guy in the trailer."
His face blanched to mint green. "I killed someone, didn't I?"
"No." I stepped right up to him and laid my hands on his shoulders. It was only a little lie, after all. "Someone did this to you. It wasn't your choice."
I could tell the words didn't pierce through or make a damn bit of a difference to him. And honestly, they never were going to mean anything. I didn't know how aware he was of what happened in the trailer, or how connected an elemental was to what they were summoning, but he had to know the blood was on him. Even though that waxy-skinned son of a bitch was the one behind it. I would have felt the same way.
We had royalty from the Kingdoms, and his magic had been used to murder an elf. Maybe to try and murder a second elf, too. It also meant they were still in Burlington, and for some reason they were getting messy.
If they were making this many mistakes, they were either caught off-guard by us, or they were rushing through the final stretch of whatever their plan was. Neither was a great option for us.
Swift groaned, stretching his back out with a couple loud pops. "I'll call Svenson, so you can probably expect him to call you back right after. We're dealing with royalty, so everyone needs to be on watch." He pulled his phone out and walked away, leaving me with that.
Because, you know, what this case really needed was to be even messier than it was before. Interdimensional political intrigue made everything run so much smoother, so why not include two royal bloodlines?
Chapter Nine
Gutt, Bancroft, and I sat in the hotel room. Swift had been called back to DC to talk in person with Director Svenson, and in an odd turn of luck I wasn't being grilled for the "real" information on what was going down. Or not yet, anyway.
"Royal family of Tarwald." Bancroft's glasses were off and he massaged his temples. "What is a member of the royal family even doing in the Mundane?"
I shrugged. "No idea. Not my main concern right now, either. He's in the hospital, and that can be Swift's thing to deal with." I'd engaged in enough interdimensional diplomacy in this case already. "I want to find out who this suspect is, and I didn't recognize him from any of the preet races I've run across so far."
Bancroft slipped his glasses back on. They didn't make him look less old and tired, that's for sure. "Well, I suppose you have come to the proper people to try and parse this out."
Gutt leaned forward, the bed creaking underneath him. "Precisely what are we looking at with this one?"
I sighed, recalling the brief image that I'd managed to get before the bastard slipped away. "Humanoid, long black dreadlocks tied back. About my height, maybe a little taller. Broad build. Really bright yellow eyes."
Gutt nodded. "Reptilian's a possibility. Did you happen to see scales?"
I shook my head. "His skin was completely smooth, and kind of shiny. He looked like he was made of yellow wax."
"Made of wax?" Bancroft tutted his tongue. "I don't suppose it could have been a particularly high-quality golem?"
"It could have been." Gutt popped his massive knuckles as he spoke, mouth set into a tusk-baring frown. "It seems doubtful. Golems take intense magic to keep up, and they don't tend to disappear. Much more likely for a practitioner to simply break it down into its constituents."
Bancroft nodded like that was just an obvious truth he'd overlooked. "You're certain he disappeared, not dissolved or blew apart?"
"Yeah. That kid, he was upset and in pain. I took my eyes off the guy for less than a second and he was gone."
"Well, remote transport can't go that fast. You would have noticed the movement it took. Even if the portal was opened without notice, they'd need to step through." Gutt sighed. "I have to say that I'm stumped on this one as well, given the information we have. Most constructs wouldn't have the magical fortitude to unseal an elemental, let alone pulling off an escape of that sort."
"Skin made of wax." Bancroft repeated that over and over to himself, apparently no longer participating in our conversation. "Skin made of wax. Skin made of wax." He finally snapped and whipped his head up. "I'm not insane, Gutt."
"Are you positive? You're responding to things I haven't said."
"I'm prefacing this. I'm not insane for what I'm about to suggest. So at least hear this one out." He sighed. "A shapeshifter."
Gutt snorted. "Shapeshifters. Your preface was useless. You're insane, or at the very least sleep-deprived."
"You have no other explanation to go on. I don't. Dash certainly doesn't, no offense intended."
"None taken." A little taken, but I let it slide because Bancroft was the only one with a theory at the moment. "Why is a shapeshifter crazy?"
"Shapeshifters are…myths. Legends. They don't exist." Gutt actually rolled his damn eyes, which just looked fucking weird and not like him. But I guess it was that patently ridiculous a suggestion. "It would be just as insane as someone claiming the crime must have been committed by a bigfoot."
"Or a troll?" I couldn't help it. "All of you were myths before ten years ago. So maybe there are things that you don't know."
"Santa Claus." Gutt snorted derisively. "Do we think it may have been Santa Claus himself committing this string of child kidnappings? Perhaps that's what he's doing to the naughty children nowadays, using them to blow each other up."
Okay. He had some convictions. And they were also making him act like a stupid jackass. "Listen, do you have a better idea right now?"
"Better than chasing something that doesn't exist?"
"Better than chasing something you don't believe exists. Do I need to refer you back to the whole "trolls and elves" thing?" I shook my head. "If shapeshifters did exist, then how well do you think this would fit?"
Gutt got off the bed, started pacing back and forth across the motel room. "If I entertain this, can we move on?"
"Sure. Just get to the entertaining part."
He sighed, still pacing. "Shapeshifters are…they're malleable, obviously. They could apparently grow taller than the highest treetops and smaller than a thumbnail trimming. Even with the magic at our disposal, what they were supposedly able to do would have been nigh impossible."
"Could they have blended in, though? Been someone these kids would have trusted long enough to grab them?"
"Not according to the legends on record," said Bancroft. "Shape and size could change all it wanted, but they couldn't mimic features without an external spell, just like anyone else."
"They were supposedly formed from the wax drippings that fell from the candles of the gods." Gutt tossed his arms wide. "Which is just as insane as everything else we're talking about."
"There are researchers who specialize in this sort of thing." Bancroft pulled out his phone, typing and swiping away as he continued on his spiel. "Where we have cryptozoology to try and uncover the Jersey devil or the Loch Ness monster, there are scholars from the Kingdoms who want to find the supposedly impossible creatures and races out there in their world. Shapeshifters are of particular interest to a few contacts I have." He pointed very importantly to his phone. "Here. I have a few people I could dig into to try and find out what's going on."
"What's going on is something real, Bancroft." At this point, Gutt just sounded defeated, like he was talking to a particularly exasperating child. "It's not a shapeshifter, and
turning over stones like this isn't going to help any of these kids."
Bancroft shrugged at that. "Gutt, the fact of the matter here is that I am largely useless on this particular case. You have enough elemental contacts to go into the culture and the sealing and unsealing magic. You know far more about the political structures that could be behind this than I do. My time is being spent comforting old friends, and as far as the case is concerned, that's of no importance. So far as I see it, there's no harm in my pursuing this."
Gutt stood, staring for a few seconds, then finally dropped back onto the bed. "Fine. I assume you'll ask Swift before jumping off into the Kingdoms or something ridiculous like that."
"Of course. I still intend to follow protocol." He winked, looking almost youthful and mischievous and…puckish. It wasn't hard to excite Bancroft. Give him a problem to research, something he could sink his teeth into. But his job didn't provide much in the way of opportunity for that. Even as he pretended to be hurt, he couldn't keep the sparkle from his eye. "Honestly Gutt, you think so little of me to suggest I'd go behind Swift's back?"
Gutt closed his eyes, breathing deeply a few times. "I wasn't intending to imply that I didn't trust you, Bancroft. But you have to understand how insane this all sounds."
"I do, but when you reach a dead end, you have to go somewhere you didn't think you could." Bancroft rose and walked over, laid a hand on Gutt's shoulder. "Relax. If this is something worth paying attention to and looking into, then best we find it. After all, this could be someone pretending to be a shapeshifter, and I guarantee these same scholars would be up on anything like that. And if it's nothing, my time is completely expendable at the moment."