by Voss Foster
Until Lenva keeled over on her front, face first into a pool of orc blood.
I tapped my mic. "Swift, we need Casey. Lenva's down." Then I turned my head to look at Vellius. "I need down there."
"I'm not a healer, but you aren't—"
"I didn't stutter." I coughed into my shoulder, my throat still raspy and blazing, and the coughing shook my entire frame. What did that son of a bitch do to me? "Get me down to her."
"Dash, as your senior—"
But Gutt got cut off by a scoff. Ixel reached underneath my armpits and, with only the slightest of oofs, took my weight. She waved her hand through the air. "Come on sugar. I get it."
It was still a weird hobble, but we backed through the remote transport portal, through the myriad colors, and crunched onto the frosted grass. Up close, Lenva looked pale. Sickly for the first time since I'd first seen her down in the basement. Also from this low, the silence wasn't so silent, sounds of struggle, groans of pain, calls for help from those awakening in Ixel's ice.
She led me to Lenva. "You good?"
I nodded. "Thanks."
"I'll go clean up." She flipped her knife and caught it. "I promise I won't kill them. Just neutralize the problem until you can clean it up."
I gripped onto her wrist. "Don't run."
"Me? The innocent little ice elemental?"
"You, the bounty hunter who broke into the FBI." Gutt stepped out of his own portal and sighed. "But we won't charge you with the abduction of a federal agent if you prove useful."
She sighed. "A girl has to try."
I lowered myself down shakily next to Lenva, careful to avoid the blood. I didn't one hundred percent understand how the War Blessing worked and didn't want to unintentionally trigger it to start burning through all of us. But someone had to see if she was still alive. I slipped my fingers beneath her hair and felt around until I found a pulse. But there was a pulse there, however faint and…erratic. An erratic pulse could never be a good thing. "Gutt. She needs to…on her back." I wasn't going to be moving her. The pain was fading from my body, but now I was utterly exhausted. Could barely keep my eyes open. Rolling anyone over, even someone as light as Lenva, wasn't in the cards for me.
Gutt managed to get Lenva on her back. Her chest moved very gently, and she groaned and spit up blue bubbles. But no words, no open eyes. Maybe Ixel was right. Maybe Gelgaath's War Blessing was enough to end this seemingly immortal hag, and we'd let her walk right into her death.
Then I smelled ozone, acrid and antiseptic, and I looked down. Lenva was vibrating, and the air around her body thickened. There was no light or color, but it felt sticky and heavy against my fingers, and it looked like a slow-growing sheath of clear jelly. Now two inches thick all over her, distorting the grass. And my hand.
And frankly, it didn't seem we had much time to get away.
Chapter Twenty-One
I had seconds to do something. Anything. I was closest. I needed to act. Lenva could control this, she just needed to wake up. If the breath and the pulse hadn't been enough clues she was alive, this magic beginning to seep out of her was perfect confirmation.
I didn't waste words, just hauled back and slapped her across the cheek. The magic surrounding her cushioned the blow, but I still felt the give of her skin beneath my palm. What I didn't feel was her jerking back into wakefulness.
"What are you doing?" A familiar, high voice. Casey kneeled down opposite me in the growing magical miasma, setting his kit on the ground next to him. He looked at her, brows furrowed, then looked at me, and the creases in his forehead deepened. "You need to go. You're not looking hot at all."
"Focus on her." I hated the sound of my voice, the burning tightness in my throat. "She's not under control." Just like before, in the cell, I was awash with fear of Lenva. But unlike before, where I was struck by the juxtaposition, the conflicting feelings, all my focus was on giving her back her control. I knew she wouldn't let this happen if she had any choice in the matter at all. "I'll help."
Casey was going to say something, I could see it in the parting of his lips, but then he shook his head and opened up his bag. "This is going to be piecemeal as all hell." Deftly, he filled a syringe with clear fluid, then jabbed it through the fabric of her pants and into the meat of her thigh. "That's enough epinephrine to bring Gutt back to consciousness twice. Hopefully her body doesn't burn it all off." And he was back into his bag.
I waited. Swift and King and Rashem all came out, but didn't approach, joining clean-up duty. I was barely able to stay functional, but I wanted to be around in case…I didn't know. In case. So I forced myself through it, even as my muscles turned to jelly under the ministrations of whatever Afexius had done to me. A gentle, muted drip from out of view let me know his severed arm was still hanging there under Gutt's sway.
Lenva stirred, finally, her head lolling to the side. Her eyes opened just briefly enough to catch they were back to their normal blue, then closed as she coughed and spit. First pure blue orc blood, but slowly, violet turning to a deep crimson. But she still wasn't responsive, and the magic around her was continuing to creep farther from her skin.
Casey prodded around her, then shook his head. "I need Bancroft!"
Bancroft?
Within seconds, he tottered over, adjusting his glasses with one finger. "What's the issue?"
"She's coughing up deoxygenated blood. How does the War Blessing actually work?"
"It's twofold. The sacrifice's blood is cursed, then transferred to all parties within a given area." His eyes nervously darted back and forth between Lenva and Casey as he spoke. "The magic that spreads it transmutes the victim's blood into a copy of the sacrifice's, complete with the curse."
"Then death would occur before all the blood is fully transmuted." Casey rummaged through his bag and came back out with a much gnarlier looking vial, the glass darkened. "These are high-strength blood scrubbers." He filled a syringe, then jammed it into the side of her neck and depressed the plunger.
I'd never been in a plane crash, but I imagined it felt not entirely dissimilar as the magic shell burst away from her. I suddenly couldn't draw breath again, and every inch of my body was buffeted by some unseen force. My vision blurred into a mass of gray as soon as the energy made contact with me. This is not the best day.
But almost as soon as it began, it was over. And when the sensations faded and my vision fazed all the way back into color and shape again, my throat didn't ache. My muscles weren't weak. I felt like I'd run two back to back marathons, but I wasn't in real pain like before. I got up on shaky legs, just in time to notice that my bulletproof vest had been shredded. Anywhere there had initially been an added magical symbol was totally blown open. Not just scarred up like the vests sometimes got. Like someone had burned holes straight through, exposing my shirt underneath. The shirt was completely untouched, so nothing had gotten through to me.
Lenva was still on the ground, but the magic was gone. I could see the rise and fall of her chest. But next to her, Casey lay stiff, facedown. My whole body tensed, and I hobbled my ass over. "Casey." No iron filings, but speaking still wasn't comfortable. "Casey!"
I half-kneeled, half-fell next to him and checked for a pulse. It was strong. He was just out of it, now. What the fuck is going on?
"Dash, come on." Swift marched up. "All the preets are out after that. How about you get your skinny white ass away from the center of things until we figure out what's going on." He reached down and led me back to my feet, and that was the first time I actually looked around me. An eerie stillness and quiet, coupled with dozens of preets knocked flat. All the soldiers Afexius had brought with him. Casey. Lenva. Ixel. Gutt. Even Rashem, with all his barriers.
King came through the front door, still carrying her rifle, and Swift led me over to join the group. But as soon as King was in shouting distance of Swift…well, she started shouting. "Anyone care to explain the massacre?" She gestured to her chest, complete with blown-out holes to match mine.
In fact, everyone who'd come with a vest had the holes to match. All the enchantments burned off. And now that I was up close enough, I could see that King's rifle was similarly damaged, the barrel warped and the grip cracked.
Swift turned toward Bancroft, trailing behind us. "What exactly are we looking at?"
Bancroft ran his fingers through his frizzy white hair as he spoke. "Well, I am not exactly an expert. Although I suppose I'm the current best qualified. To the best of my ability to parse, Lenva released a wave of pure, unfettered magic after Casey administered the blood scrubbers to her."
"Which means magical overload?" I asked.
"Possibly, yes. They'll need to be attended to. But it also stripped the magic away from any enchanted objects in the vicinity." He gestured to the holes in my vest. "Which implies quite the overload."
No one wanted to ask the hanging question: would they all be okay? Would Gutt and Casey pull out of this, or was a Class-A magical explosion enough to render them magic-free for life?
Swift dug out his phone and tapped a few numbers, then brought it to his ear. "Zhagul. No, it's not nice news. You noticed what happened out in the suburbs? Yeah, we need a clean-up crew, plus any healers and alchemists you can scrounge up. Don't care if they're official as long as they know what they're doing." He scanned his gaze over the lawn. "Worst case, we've got a few dozen cases of severe magical overload, all the preets on my team are down for the moment, a compromised safehouse, a potentially volatile Class-A, and the severed limbs from a member of the Seven-Fingered Hand." He paused a few seconds. "Yeah, I bet it's not how you wanted to spend your day. Me either. See you soon."
It was only minutes before a full complement of agents from the Louisville Field Office descended on our location. Turned out we were in Kentucky the whole time. They'd ported all of us back to their OPA offices, and all the preets had gone in for inspection, leaving us with one gnome alchemist to check us all over. She had to levitate herself around to see what she needed, and her hands were uncomfortably warm whenever she had to touch me, but within thirty minutes, all of us silly humans had been cleared. "You, the tall one. You'll need a full course of restoratives. I'll get the prescription whipped together once we have a minute to breathe."
I nodded, resisting the urge to point out that everyone was the tall one compared to her. "Thanks."
Then she left for the room with all the other healers. It was another hour before Zhagul, the head of the Louisville OPA, stepped out, Vellius, Rashem, and Gutt following behind. She was a sorceress with long white hair she wore in a tight bun, and she cut a surprisingly impressive figure in a navy suit, considering she looked as near death as any other sorcerer. "We've cleared the area. The magical overload is manageable in most cases, though your quarter hag friend in there was touch and go. Full force of a Class-A against fractured blood like that. And now he's insisting on sticking around to help." She sat next to Swift and sighed. "The Class-A herself…is questionable. They're trying everything they can."
I flashed to her in the basement, her pleading eyes, those first words. Kill me. And now, because I wasn't a fast enough shot, because I wasn't quite careful enough, because I hadn't done enough, I may very well have helped fulfill that wish.
Zhagul continued on as though nothing at all had happened. "Rashem, I don't know what around there is yours and what's not, so I left most of that alone. If you want to go—"
"Just have them take it all down. That safehouse is completely compromised. I'll have to move somewhere else. Kentucky's probably off the table in its entirety." He sighed. "Maybe ceramic clowns for the next one."
"As head of the OPA, I'm going to veto clowns." Swift shuddered exaggeratedly. "I may have to stay with you again, and I'm not staying in a house filled with damn clowns."
"I'm with Swift." Zhagul rolled her eyes. "The bunnies were at least cute. How do you feel about an under the sea theme?"
I got up and left. I couldn't sit around and talk about decorating. Lenva was in there fighting for her life because she wanted to save all of us. I didn't give two shits if Rashem used bunnies or clowns or those motherfucking saccharine angel figurines they sold to little old church ladies.
"Dash." Gutt lumbered up behind me and caught me just around the corner. He'd been heavily bandaged and smelled like a mix of vinegar and rose petals.
"I can't take a piss by myself? New protocol?"
"Lenva knew what she was doing."
"Oh did she? Because I don't see her with us." I clenched my jaw tight to keep myself from firing off anything I'd regret at Gutt. I knew he meant well, and I knew it wasn't his fault. Didn't matter. "We were supposed to keep her safe. That was our entire goal from the very beginning."
"And we did everything in our power to do just that. But when a Class-A decides she's going to do something, far be it from any of us to keep her away. She did what she felt was necessary to end Afexius."
"But we didn't even get the bastard. A finger of the Hand, one of the original escapees from the prison break, a royal assassin, and he gets away."
"Well, we do have some of him. We'll be able to make some use of that. Oona and Rothiel are already working on repurposing his remains."
I really didn't want to know. "Look, I just need to take a leak and not talk about redecorating Rashem's house. Give me five."
"I'll give you zero. Sound fair?" King marched up before I could head into the solitude of a toilet stall, holding two cups of FBI issue coffee. She handed one to me and nodded. "You're on the clock, and it's not doing anyone any good for you to be running off like this."
"Five fucking minutes is too much to ask for all the sudden? Bathroom break?" That lie wasn't holding, but I'd be damned if I was going to let it go that easily.
"Kid, this is just another case. All things considered, it went well."
I snapped without thinking. "Went well? Show me Lenva. We were protecting her."
"Sometimes things go pear-shaped. You fucking know that. We turned back the Hand and stopped their stupid bullshit for the day."
"And I got Lenva killed"
"She's not dead."
"Not fucking yet, King, but give it a few more minutes." Damn it all to fucking hell. "I had the shot. I fucked up."
"You hit him."
"I grazed him. Then he about killed me and Lenva had to clean up my mess. Now she's paying the price."
I jerked to get past King, finally head to the bathroom, but she hadn't taken the brunt of Afexius's magic. She was fast enough to block me. "So let me make sure I understand. You're going to act like a little bitch and whine and piss and moan every time something like this goes sour, is that it? That's how you think an FBI agent should behave?" She downed her coffee, then handed the empty cup to Gutt and spread her arms wide. "Go ahead. Better take a swing at me. Make it good and hard. I was on this case too. Not to mention all the other shit that's gone tits up on me in the last eleven years working here."
"King—"
"No, let's fucking do this. Go on. Hit me. Punish me, then I'll punish you right back and we can just get ourselves locked into a vicious fucking cycle while the rest of the world goes to hell around us. Doesn't that sound peachy? We'll just be throwing punches at each other when the next Class-A gets out, or the Hand decides that the United States government is worthy of destruction. God knows they'd get plenty of humans on board with that one, right?" She motioned me forward one more time. "Get it on. Let's go."
I wanted to hit her, to hit something, anything, and she was the closest, most willing target. I stepped up to her, fists balled, and I popped her in the shoulder. It was all I could bring to the table. I wasn't about to have a drag out brawl with her. King reached out and grabbed my opposite shoulder, then pulled me in. It didn't change anything. Lenva made the best choice in the circumstances. We could have done things a hundred different ways to get a hundred different outcomes. We could have chopped off one of those seven fucking fingers. This little moment between us? Not helping any of
that.
But for something that wasn't helping, it lasted a long time. When King finally released me, I felt a little less like a slug. I was at least a snail. I had a hard outer shell I could pull over all the other bullshit.
"She's not going to be your last tough case, Dash. And she's not going to be the only one that doesn't go right." King shoved her hands in her pockets. "Hell, you're probably going to have a case go bad one of these days that's a hundred percent your fault. And the morning after, you're going to get your ass into the office and solve the next one."
"Any better advice than that?"
"Well, if you check the bottom drawer of my desk, I can't say you wouldn't find a bottle of rotgut gin. For emergencies." She shrugged. "You level?"
"Nope."
"Can you pretend?"
I looked to her, then to Gutt, and nodded. "Why the hell not?"
She turned and walked back, but Gutt stayed with me. It must have been hard for him taking such tiny steps, but he did it until we rejoined the group. And our group had a new member. Casey. Casey, on his own two feet.
"She's stable. Finally." He brushed his sweat-soaked hair back from his face. "That curse did a real number on her. Plus she needed an infusion of fresh blood on top of all the drugs and brews and spells." He held out his left arm to show off the gauze wrapped around his elbow. "Never had to pop open a vein for a patient before."
Swift raised one eyebrow. "Is quarter hag blood going to do the trick?"
"It kept her going until we could get a match for her in actual hag blood. We had to make sure there wasn't even a trace of orc blood left in her, otherwise the War Blessing would have eventually taken her down." He sighed. "There were some side effects, though. Initial findings suggest that she's…no longer a Class-A."
My whole body went cold. "What do you mean?"
Casey took the nearest seat, and I finally noticed how pale he was looking. I guess he really gave up a lot of blood. "That magic took it out of her. Don't know exactly how. Vellius wants to take some time to study her. But she's not throwing off anywhere near the level of magic she was before the big explosion. If I was going to guess, she's a Class-C, but it's not my expertise."
