Elemental Disturbance

Home > Fantasy > Elemental Disturbance > Page 23
Elemental Disturbance Page 23

by Voss Foster


  Swift nodded curtly. "Well, we got them out of there, at least. Hopefully when this pops its head back up, we'll be able to get a little more concrete evidence and catch the fuckers." His voice didn't take an edge, stayed cool and aloof, like this was all fact. Everything on the same level. The sky is blue, tequila makes you naked, and we were hardly done pursuing these sons of bitches.

  "My money is still on Anisar of Tarwald." Gutt shook his head. "Something about him sets off all my instincts."

  "We've got an eye on him, and on all the other potential suspects. If something's going on with any one of them, we'll see it." Swift sighed and leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk. "If that's everything?"

  Gutt and I both nodded.

  "Dash, while you were out, an intrepid and resourceful journalist actually managed to get a message to me for you." He grabbed a sticky note from his desk and handed it over. "I figured I should reward them for actually making it that far."

  "Are you going soft, Swift? What happened to no media ever? That was the first rule you ever gave me." Our job with the OPA wasn't just to handle magical crimes. Not in Swift's opinion, anyway. For him, part of our job was easing tensions between the preet and Mundane communities. Media coverage had a bad habit of showing how scary and dangerous magic could be as opposed to any of the good it created. He didn't think that was helpful, and I tended to agree.

  "It's nothing compromising. And you've been here almost a year. I might be able to trust your judgment on what to say." He winked. "Now that the Kingdoms and the shapeshifters have reached a tentative agreement, they were looking for an opinion piece from someone who was there. No chance of leaking compromising information that isn't already public, so have at it."

  I crumpled up the note and tossed it into the basket behind me. "Hard pass, but thanks."

  Swift chuckled again. "Well, go on then. File your reports, all of that. Day's almost over with."

  Nodding, Gutt and I both walked out of the office and headed for our desks. Gutt barely fit in his cubicle with such a bulky frame. I sat down myself and pulled up the empty report template on the computer. Then I immediately ignored it. A year. Close to a year I'd been here, anyway. I'd managed to make a little bit of a mark on my workspace. No family pictures, just in case someone with less than honorable intentions made it in and decided my mom or my brother would make easy targets. A massive electric blue scale sat inside of a black frame on one wall. My one and only trophy from any of my work here. A scale from Jörmungandr, the giant world-ending serpent that started me on this whole trajectory with the OPA. I also had a mouse I'd bought myself—more ergonomic—and several books. Not as many as Gutt or Bancroft had around them at any time, but a few core books on preets, the Hidden Kingdoms, and a few informational texts about the biggest anti-preet hate groups.

  Did it do my heart good to stare at the stupid crucifix logo of the Fundamentalist Humanitarian Church? Hell no, but it did damn well make sure I kept them in mind and could read about them at a moment's notice if it looked like they were involved. I longed for the day they were involved in something and we could actually get something on them. Violent, hateful racists masquerading as Christians.

  Sure, this space could have belonged to any OPA agent…but it didn't. This was mine. And if you got me drunk enough, I'd maybe even admit this felt more like the right career path than counterterrorism had.

  Maybe.

  The end of the day came slow and uneventful, which was completely fine by me. About an hour after we'd gotten back, Casey came up and gave us all the rundown, which basically amounted to "all the gnomes are going to be okay and a couple of them want to talk about what they saw." It was a hell of a lot better than it could have been—it wasn't uncommon at all for victims, especially preet victims, to clam up rather than spill anything to the OPA—and it was also going to have to wait until tomorrow.

  Gutt groaned as he rose from his chair. "The winter is not kind to my body."

  "This job isn't kind to your body. Or mine. Or anyone else's." I rubbed the back of my neck to try and work out the crick I'd been dealing with since I woke up. Hooray for aging. "Grab a heating pad and you'll be fine."

  Gutt gestured slowly from his chest down. "Do you really think one heating pad is going to do anything?"

  "Well then, get six. Also, isn't Droshheim basically all ice, all the time?"

  "Not all the time. We do have a warm season." He sighed. "Besides, I'm fairly certain Wisconsin winter runs about fifty degrees colder than Droshheim."

  I chuckled. "It was a little nippy, I'll give you that."

  I walked toward the doors, ready to carry on this conversation. Gutt wasn't following. I turned around to make some smart remark, right up until I saw the set of his jaw and the flash of exposed tusks. His eyes were stony hard and his spine straight as a railroad spike.

  I walked back over. "What's going on?" I glanced around, expecting to see something and really hoping I didn't. And I did get my wish. I didn't see anything.

  But I smelled ozone. Heavy, thick ozone that only seemed to be getting stronger. It wasn't a smell I was supremely familiar with, but working OPA had made it a little more recognizable.

  Ozone was the smell of particularly powerful magic.

  As if in confirmation, Gutt's knees buckled and he only just caught himself on the edge of his desk. I rushed over and helped him into his chair, and all the while the sharp, antiseptic stink of ozone grew steadily stronger, burning my nose.

  "Gutt, are you okay?"

  Slowly, he nodded. "Strong magic. Too strong. Get Swift."

  "Swift's already here." He strode up, calm and put-together, but with a sharp frown set into his face. "I smelled the magic."

  Gutt nodded again, closing his eyes. "I've never felt anything like this. Did you approve anything of this magnitude, Swift?"

  "I didn't approve anything of any magnitude." He glanced to the clock up above his office door. "Casey will be gone by now, but I could call him in."

  "No." Gutt cracked his eyes open and, shaky and uneasy, brought himself back to his feet. "I'll be fine. It just came out of nowhere." He flicked one enormous hand to the side. I saw sparks of golden light, but that was it. They fizzled out, and Gutt's scowl cut deeper. "But whatever this is, I won't be able to magic our way out of it."

  "Well, we'd better hope it's friendly." Swift's voice still remained even and easy, carrying the slightest twang of his New Orleans accent. "Dash, you don’t happen to have cuffs on you, do you?"

  I went to my desk and opened the bottom drawer. I came back out with a set of anti-magical restraints, wood and metal handcuffs scribed with swirling, interlocking symbols and studded with gems and stones in all sorts of different colors. "You really think these are going to work on something so strong it about killed Gutt?"

  "Not for one hot second," said Swift. "Doesn't matter. Better to try and fail than not try and find out it would have saved us a shitpot full of trouble." He turned his attention back to Gutt. "Any chance you can sniff out where this is all coming from?"

  Gutt closed his eyes, and he actually managed to stand up fully straight again. "I think so. It's a strong signature…but it's coming under control again."

  Yeah, or winding back for a big fuck you magic punch. But I kept that particular fear to myself and just followed behind Gutt and Swift.

  Gutt led us at a decent clip, now that he was back up and running. Well, not quite running. No way my stupid human ass kept up with a seven foot troll if he decided to run. But Swift and I were definitely running to keep up with Gutt's jog. We left the main OPA offices and headed down the hall. Gutt stopped at an intersection now and then before apparently making a decision on which way the danger lived.

  I was personally regretting not having a magicked up firearm at my hip when we headed downstairs and hit the distinct smell of ozone once again. It lived somewhere between rainstorm and chlorine, and it sent my hand going straight for the very useless, very non-magical Gl
ock I was allowed to carry. Magic guns did too much damage for everyday use, and certainly too much to be allowed willy-nilly inside FBI headquarters.

  Gutt led us down three flights. We were on the same level now as the parking garage, but I couldn't recall ever having gone down to wherever this was. I couldn't find a sign that told me what we might be walking into, either.

  Gutt slowed at the bottom of the stairs and creaked the door open. "Swift, can you think of anything that would be down here that anybody might want?"

  "Not off the top of my head. As long as I've been here, this has been storage for odds and ends, but nothing magical."

  A storage room that, as far as I knew, nobody ever checked. Or at least no one had checked in my one-year tenure with the OPA. Exactly the kind of place something nasty could have been brewing right under all our damn noses. "What's the plan?" A fresh wave of ozone hit and I stood up a little straighter. We were walking in there one way or another. "We have a plan, right?"

  "Go in and see what the hell we're working with. That's my plan." Swift sighed. "Can you arm yourself at all, Gutt?"

  Once again, he tossed his hand to the side. A glowing golden ring appeared around his wrist. A strong, magical restraint, and one Gutt used often enough I recognized it. I was happy he could make it again, no doubt, but less exciting? When Gutt made those rings, I always smelled ozone. That was the very first time I connected magic with that smell, and the fact that this ambient magic from whatever was in that room could drown it out? Well, big time gulp situation.

  Gutt reached forward and opened the door, and we slowly walked in. About two feet in before we saw something that was definitely not part of OPA storage. At least I hoped not. "Swift, is that the last agent you tried to hire before me?"

  "Last person I added before you was Bancroft. So no."

  Huddled on the floor was a slight figure, wearing a tattered, dirty robe. So dirty I couldn't make out the color. If I were to guess, she was female. Olive skin, short, ragged brown hair cut to just below the bottoms of her ears

  Gutt stepped forward, holding his glowing ring at the ready, and he spoke softly. "Who are you?"

  She whipped her head around, and wide, round eyes darted from Gutt's face to the ring. Then came a new wave of ozone and the golden ring flickered out of existence.

  Gutt stepped back in line with Swift and I and raised his voice. Guess working in the Class-B prisons in the Kingdoms taught him how to stand up to folks who can end you. "You are in the Office of Preternatural Affairs without permission. Who are you, and what business do you have here?"

  She parted dried, cracked lips. If I didn't know better from the sheer power of magic emanating from her body, I'd have said she was just a human, maybe twenty-five years old. But I had to swallow down any sympathy that came from her image, at least until we knew what we were dealing with.

  When she spoke, her voice quivered out past her lips, and she closed her eyes. "Please kill me."

  Want to keep reading? Sign up to be notified when Sovereign Malpractice is available!

 

 

 


‹ Prev