Elemental Disturbance

by Voss Foster

  Which was a hell of a lot of names, unfortunately. They kept their prison dimensions big and full, so the breakout was…devastating. More to us than to the Kingdoms. They knew how to handle this kind of crime. Humans spent the first month in disbelief that magic actually fucking existed, in spite of the evidence provided by trolls and elves running wild through the streets of…everywhere.

  "Using elemental children like this is considered a war crime in the Hidden Kingdoms." King shook her head, finally setting down the now bone-dry coffee cup. "Narrowing down by that won't get us much of anywhere. The people who were doing that are locked up in the highest security prisons in the Kingdoms."

  "And I already checked." Kimmy tapped a few keys and sifted through the list. Sifted everything right out of it, actually. That screen went blank. "No one currently on the list was involved with those crimes. Not even as an accessory."

  I forced the gears of my brain to clank forward. There was definitely something there, with all this information gathered. I mean, come on, there was so much here. There had to be just one thing. Just had to Michelangelo the fuck out of this thing. Chip away everything that was bullshit and find the true seed of terror and awfulness in the middle.

  "I assume this isn't going to do much, but we can cut out anyone who has no proclivity for magic."

  "Right. Criminals from the Kingdoms who can't do magic."

  "It's a start."

  She tapped, then turned to roll her eyes specifically at me. I was so lucky. "That cut out twenty names. Do you have more brilliance to throw out there?"

  "I have so much brilliance you couldn't handle it." It would have been nice if some of that showed up, though. "Show me anything common among the cases we've got so far. Besides the age of the elementals."

  She pulled that up on one of the previously blank screens, right next to the map. "It's a mostly even split. Two more boys than girls. No preference for the type of elemental. Most of them are clustered no more than two or three disappearances in one area."

  "Which means they're smart, and they're probably moving on from Burlington before very much longer." Unless they already had. "All three of the young deaths died inside their home cities. What about the two outlying deaths? The older teenagers."

  "The first one was never identified. The second…his family lived ten minutes away from the beach where they found his body in New Jersey. Where the fuck is this going, Wonderhunk?"

  For the most part, it was going toward buying me time. It was all information, and I could feel something slipping free, a little movement. I just needed to figure out exactly what it was. And hopefully they'd stick with me long enough to find whatever that something was. "Run…run a separate search through cases. Medical records." Yeah. Yeah, that one held promise. "Any elemental minors who were brought in for magic overload, or just with bad fatigue like we saw with this last fire elemental."

  Kimmy snorted. "Ever?"

  "Anything that lines up with the kidnappings, plus a week back before the first recorded one." We knew there were mostly kidnappings and some deaths attached to this. We knew that one elemental hadn’t died at all. And we knew that nothing else had only happened one time so far.

  She input the parameters, and then she stopped when results started popping up. It wasn't a ton—maybe a little over a dozen at first glance—but it was certainly not insignificant. "They're making fucking mistakes, and they have been all along."

  I nodded, pretending I knew something would come of this rather than just hoping. "Until we can rule all of these out, we have to consider each of these to be the same as the others."

  "Dash." King rose from her seat and moved closer to the screen, leaning in and squinting. "Look at the ages on these kids. The ones who were hospitalized."

  I did. Unlike the deaths, these were a tight, solid cluster. Fifteen. Fifteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. "They're all older teenagers."

  King nodded. "The age where they could start to have most of their magic under control."

  I didn't like what she was saying. I didn't like that my brain put it together. I really didn't like that Kimmy was stunned into pale-faced silence. And I liked the fact I had to say it out loud least of all. Considering that my stomach was really attached to the idea of jumping out of my mouth, that didn't seem like the best idea.

  But it had to get out there. "The older ones aren't what they want. If they're too old, they try to kill them or incapacitate them. They're…only keeping the young kids."

  King nodded. :"That's what it looks like. All the teenagers get spent instead of taken."

  Spent made it a little easier to look at, at least for a moment. Easier than calling it attempted murder. Easier than thinking they were simply thrown away. Their energy was just all spent up because they had the audacity to be teenagers.

  Maybe it wasn't that much better.

  I pushed through. Talking, trying to solve a problem, that was better than steeping in the horror. "Okay…so the question is, why? Why aren't they as careful with the older kids, and why did Niila get killed a week later in the same town they grabbed her?"

  "Niila I don't know." King lowered herself back into her seat with a groan and grabbed for the thoroughly emptied coffee cup. It was halfway to her lips before she, I guess, realized there was no coffee left in it and she tossed it into the trash. "But there's only one good reason to forego the teenagers for the young children: they're more destructive when their magic gets let loose. Less control, less training, and more life energy to expend when they finally blow." She shook her head. "If they're only looking for the young ones, then they're either looking for a big unfettered source of power, or they want to weaponize those kids. And my money would be on the latter, given how those few have been…used so far."

  They'd set off several of these kids so far. All but Selal killed multiple people. Plus property damage. Except I couldn't see destroying a few houses being a goal for whoever these people were. You didn't need a nuke to take out a couple houses.

  Weaponized kids. It was maybe morally better than child soldiers. Maybe. These kids weren't living with constant psychological trauma from the things they were being made to do.

  It was kind of like saying melanoma was better than pancreatic cancer. The best option was to not get either, and the best thing for these kids was to stay well and clear of any war, violence, or other fighting. Whether they were pulling the trigger or they were the god damn gun, it was a debate of inches.

  I pulled my head back into the game. That little revelation forced upon me just meant it was even more important that we actually stopped this before it went much further. We needed to get those kids back and do it fast.

  "How many of the hospitalized victims are still alive and up and moving? I want to talk to them."

  More clicking away at her keyboard, then the screen flashed into a much shorter list. "There are two. One in Maryland and one in New York."

  "And all the others are still incapacitated."

  She nodded, and for once there was no acid or snark. "Most of them are comatose. A few are responsive, but they're not open to public. You could probably get in with your ID and sufficient application of your teeth to the right dumb blonde."

  A little snark, then. "Well it works on Casey, right? Get me the list of the ones who are responsive, too." Maybe they'd seen something, heard something, even smelled something that could clue us in on…anything. "I'm calling Swift now, getting approval to head out."

  "I'll come with." King rolled her shoulders back. "I need to get out of this office, and I'm not doing any damn good sitting here. Kimmy can handle all this herself just as well without me hanging over her shoulder."

  "Better without you hanging over my shoulder, frankly." Kimmy handed me a printout, because apparently we didn't have email anymore, then shooed me off. "If I find something, I have your phone number."

  I nodded to her, then looked to King. "Are we ready?"

  "As long as Swift approves.
I'll get coffee."

  She didn't need more caffeine, but I didn't need her getting growly with me, so I let her march off to the coffee pot while I dialed up the big bad department head to tell him exactly how much worse this shit had apparently just gotten. Fun call. Yay for being me.

  The first four doctors weren't charmed at all by my smile and wouldn't let me or King get in to see the patients who were just starting to recover. The fifth one who was a maybe…she was back on life support. I called Casey to see whether he could send anyone over, or recommend a local alchemist or healer who could handle the situation. He agreed to make some calls to try and get some help in there. Considering this happened on OPA watch, it was the least we could do.

  That meant we were onto the ghomebound victims. King and I stepped from the most recent portal into Brunswick, Maryland. "You can close it now, Zar." And I hung up my phone.

  King had the list, was checking it against the houses we'd appeared next to. "It should be a bit down this way."

  "At least we won't have to deal with doctors worried about patient care."

  "Just parents who don't want their children traumatized. Much better."

  "I'm clinging to straws the way you're clinging to caffeine dependence. Let me have it."

  King shrugged. "Fair enough."

  The house was just past the corner, a little beige affair, two stories with bright flower boxes. The mild east coast summer was still holding strong, so flowers could still bloom.

  We walked onto the covered porch. King rapped on the door and, after a few seconds, a wizened, pale-skinned woman stepped out onto the porch. She looked…also beige? That was the closest I could come up with. She didn't quite match her house, but it was close. I had to guess she was in her seventies to look at her, hair wispy and ivory, just slightly paler than her skin. She cut a very stark silhouette, slightly unnerving. Even her eyes were a pale sandy color, just barely off white. "You don't look like missionaries. Can I help you?"

  I showed her my FBI ID. "I'm Agent Dashiel Rourke, this is Agent Abigail King. Office of Preternatural Affairs. We were hoping we could talk to Tenak."

  "About the attack."

  Well, she knew it was an attack, which meant he probably knew it was an attack. And this was new enough info that the media hadn't descended quite yet. So maybe, if I let myself get my hopes up, we could get something good about this case.

  Well, not good. Something helpful, though.

  King stepped in while I was busy in my own brain. "If it's all right. We won't take long, but he could have some valuable information for us."

  "I'm just glad someone is taking him seriously." She stepped aside and motioned us in. "The police told my grandson he was probably high on drugs. Wouldn't listen to a word he said once they made that decision about him."

  I pulled out my notepad early this time. "Grandson?"

  "Yes, my grandson." She led us tottering through the house. It was a frilly affair, lots of doilies and lots and lots of flowers. It wasn't listed what sort of elementals they were, but maybe plant? "His parents are still in the Kingdoms. They work under the Queen of Al-Sekar."

  There was that place again. The same one that tossed out Karak's family after his mother died. The kingdom Chetra came from. Worth looking into…for a seven-foot troll with magic and history in the Kingdoms, not some slightly smarter than average human FBI agent.

  King stopped dead in the hallway and waited for the old woman to turn around before speaking. "I'm going to be blunt and just ask: are you ice elementals? Fire?"

  The old woman smiled. "Dust." In demonstration, she waved a hand through the air and, lo and behold, a cloud of dust rushed to her from across the house. "Particulate matter would be a more appropriate description, but dust is the parlance."

  King nodded. "I'm hoping that wasn't too offensive, but thank you."

  "Offensive? Certainly not. Even in the Kingdoms, we get the question a lot. Dust is not obvious, and not common." She sighed, a hoarse, slightly wooden sound. "Tenak's bedroom is just this way. I'll get some water? Tea? Coffee?"

  "Coffee," said King, before I could stop her.

  "Make it two." So she didn't have to put in a ton of extra work…and so that I could stay awake. I hadn't been on intravenous fucking caffeine like King, and I was beginning to feel the drag. "And we didn't get your name."

  "Dorma."

  "Dorma. Got it." I scratched that onto my notepad as we walked, along with Al-Sekar. This case wasn't exactly orbiting around Al-Sekar, but it was certainly a presence, now. Maybe there was something in the Kingdoms that needed exploring.

  Dorma opened the door at the end of the hallway. "Tenak? Are you up for a couple of visitors?"

  "I'm fine, Grams." A reedy voice, high pitched and with a slight lisp.

  She stepped to the side to let us answer. I guess race, species, upbringing didn't matter. Teenage boys always had terribly messy rooms. Underwear on the floor, a stack of dirty dishes, and paper and other crap that was threatening to take over his floor. I mean, if anything, this one was a little better than mine at that age…just not by much. There were at least a couple of chairs we could pull up next to his bed.

  Dorma sighed. "I'm making coffee if you want some."

  "Thank you."

  She walked off. Tenak laid in his bed, covered up to his neck by a quilt, but with his arms exposed. He had a little darker color to him than his grandmother, making him maybe like a pale sandstone. Or something like that.

  He was also pretty roughed up physically, which hadn't been present on any of the others I'd seen so far. Bruising around the wrists, standing out really solidly against pale skin. A gnarly cut from his right eyebrow back to his ear, complete with stitches. Plus I could see the very edges of some white bandages starting at his clavicle and disappearing under the thick quilt.

  So apparently his wasn't just a "wave of the hand and your magic blocking seals are gone" situation. "We're FBI agents. I'm Dashiel Rourke, this is Abigail King."

  He nodded, eyes going distant, mouth turning down. "You're here to see just how many drugs I was smuggling up my ass to get me so high I thought I was attacked."

  "They didn't treat you like that, did they?" King's voice was oddly soft and gentle. Almost motherly. "The police?"

  "They may as well have."

  "Well, I'll go punch their lights out when we're done here, but that's not why we're here. You said you were attacked. We want to try and find out who did it."

  His gaze sharpened, and he shifted himself a little higher up, revealing more of the bandage wrapping over his chest and shoulders. "You believe me."

  "We don't have a reason not to." I wasn't exactly loving the police in general after that mess with Dennison, so I wasn't ready to blindly trust their assessment of this case right now. "Can you just go through what happened?"

  Tenak nodded slowly. "It was two weeks ago. I got up to get something to drink out of the kitchen, and when I got back in there, there was someone standing in the corner of the room. I almost didn't notice them. Lights were off. But when I shut the door, they moved and I saw them."

  "Can you give us anything about them physically?"

  "Taller than me by probably six inches, really big body. Face, I couldn’t make out."

  "Did they say anything?"

  He shook his head. "There was a lot of grunting while they were trying to grab me." He lifted his right arm and showed off the massive fading bruises around his wrist. "They were strong, I know that. This was just with their hands, pinning me to the wall." He closed his eyes and his breathing shortened. His voice grew slightly ragged as he continued. "Then they did magic, the same way my parents did in the Kingdoms, and the way Grams does. To undo the seals. But they were unlocking too much of it. It was more than I'd had to deal with before. I started to feel weak."

  "They didn't try to take you anywhere?"

  He shook his head, eyes opening. "They disappeared once my magic was unsealed. Or they ran and I missed it
. I don't know. I was preoccupied. I did my best to hold everything back, but I couldn't get out of the room in time to get Grams's attention or try to get her to help or anything." He sighed, still a ragged, rough sound. "All the dust came in under the door, out of the closet, off the windowsill. I could feel it all gathering up around me, but I couldn't control it. It wouldn't stop coming. I slowed it down, but I just couldn't carry on for very long. I started to get dizzy, and then it all pushed out and…that was it. I remember waking up in a hospital bed, and everyone told me I'd been out for three days."

  I jotted down all the information that seemed relevant out of that story. Build of the perp, nature of the attack. It did precisely nothing to clarify anything more than what we already knew.

  "Do you know about anyone who would want to hurt you?" said King. "Anyone who would have done this?"

  He shrugged. "My parents are still in the Kingdoms. Not everyone agrees with the royal family of Al-Sekar." He laughed lightly, nervously. "I've had a long time locked up in this room thinking about every single possibility. Overactive imagination. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone thought my parents had some kind of pull. They've worked for the queen for a long time."

  It wasn't a completely insane theory, I didn't think. "Do your parents have any kind of pull?"

  "They had enough that I was allowed to come here and get out of palace life, live with Grams and try to get something different than what was laid out in front of me."

  King nodded. "And what was it that you had laid out for you?"

  "A lifetime working for the royal family of Al-Sekar without any possibility of moving into a new place or a new position." He rolled his eyes. "Not without murdering the right people at least."

  Wow. That was cold. And worth remembering, just in case. "Sounds like a fun place."