Chapter Four: Gibbs and the Gello
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Cases are infinitely worse when they involve children. This one looks to be one of the worst.
It begins like this:
"Gibbs!" Jenny's voice is high and worried as she takes the stairs at an obscene pace.
"Director?" Gibbs questions, looking up and frowning at the look on her face. "Problem?" Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ziva's typing slow as she indirectly listens to their conversation.
Jenny stops in front of his desk, and he can see from her expression what she's going to say before she says it. "It's Navy now," she says, eyes dark with anger and worry. "We've got a six year old therian just called us, says his father and his father's friend, along with his two children, were just kidnapped from a fairground. He managed to slip away and is there alone now."
"He's six and managed to escape from professional kidnappers?" DiNozzo asks, none of them even pretending not to be listening anymore as they reach for their gear. "Smart kid."
Gibbs skim-reads the report, eyeing the location and the transcript of the child, Zach's, panicked phone call. It's not good. "He'll be a dead kid if we don't hurry, DiNozzo. Move, now."
Speed is integral.
Jenny watches them as they leave the bullpen, and Gibbs knows if he looks back to meet her gaze, he'll see uneasiness in her eyes. Whatever this is, these missing cases, it's getting way too close for comfort.
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Zach Tanner is quiet, scared, and alone. All he has left in the world is his father, and there are no leads to finding him. The man has vanished off the face of the earth, taking with him the only other three people in the world who care about the youngest Tanner. Gibbs can't help but ache when he looks at him, the sight of the huddled ball of fur that was the dog-form Zach in the security booth something that will haunt him for weeks to come. It takes the combined efforts of Abby and Ducky to get him to shift back into human form and start answering questions.
They receive the call three hours after picking up the frightened child.
"They've found a body," DiNozzo says, putting the phone into the cradle and meeting Gibbs' gaze with a furrowed brow. "Five miles from the fairground, it's in pretty bad shape."
"They got an identification?" Gibbs asks, only half wanting an answer.
DiNozzo shakes his head, and they gear up with heavy hearts, none of them expecting easy answers.
Easy is not what they find.
McGee turns green when he sees the remains. DiNozzo is impassive. Gibbs clenches his teeth, stomach twisting, making sure to show no outward sign of his dismay. Ziva doesn't react, just narrows her eyes and paces around the body, examining it carefully. He wonders what that says about her.
"It's not Tanner," McGee says, glancing at the mangled face and looking away quickly. "Tanner was taller. It's the other dad."
"Tanner is taller," Gibbs corrects him. "He's not dead yet." The yet hangs in the air like a mist, clouding their moods oppressively. Silently, DiNozzo begins to take photos. Ziva offers to help, receiving a brusque brush-off in return. Tension ripples through Gibbs' team, amplified by the gruesomeness of the crime-scene. "David, check the surrounding area. See if you can pick up any scents on who dropped him here." He waits until she's gone before pacing up behind DiNozzo and letting his feet fall heavily as a warning.
"Something on your mind, Boss? I mean, aside from these sick bastards."
"Accepting Ziva doesn't mean letting go of Kate," Gibbs says. A blank mask falls over DiNozzo's face at the mention of their fallen friend. "I need a team, DiNozzo, not three people working separately."
"Understood, Boss." DiNozzo's voice is clipped, but there's acceptance in his expression. Gibbs nods and leaves to skirt the roadways. If they're going to solve this and bring the kids home, bring Zach's dad home, they need to work together.
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Ziva is terrible with women, worse with men, and all around terrible at taking witness statements. Yet, somehow, it comes as no surprise to Gibbs that she's actually pretty good with kids. "Do you remember anything about what happened at the park?" she asks Zach, leaning forward to get a look at the paper he's miserably running a pencil over.
Zach answers in short sentences, his expression glum. Hitting the end of his patience with the endless questioning. "There were two men there. Dad was talking to them. He gave us the sign to run. I don't know what happened next." The pencil he's pushing against the paper leaves a long, dark mark as he bites at his lip. "Alec and Noel were behind me, and then they weren't."
Ziva's eyes flicker up to meet Gibbs' gaze. "You have a signal to run? Your father taught you one?"
The boy looks confused. "Yeah, of course. In case the Gello comes. Don't you?"
"Gello?" McGee asks from behind Gibbs. "What's that?"
"Therian nursery rhyme," Tony answers. "You must be gay, or the Gello will take you away."
"Her trap will catch foot or paw, unless you follow elder law," Gibbs adds, seeing Tony's eyebrows lift, despite the fact that he shouldn't be surprised. It's a shapeshifter rhyme, with variants among Garou and therians, but of course he knows it. Kelly had been terrified of the 'Gello', Shannon banning any mention of it from their house.
"Didn't know you were into make believe, Gibbs."
Gibbs snorts. "Yeah, well, bit different when they stop being pretend."
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"What have we got, Duck?"
Ducky straightens from where he's hunched over the corpse of civilian Jerry Hicks, the commander's friend and Zach's godfather. His gaze, when it meets Gibbs', is as troubled as Gibbs has ever seen it, and his bells are muted. "A problem, Jethro. A terrible problem indeed. Our friend here died in agony."
"He was mauled." Gibbs knows what it looks like when something is pulled down by a pack of animals. He's lived it, more than once. But no wolf pack has ever torn something down with this much savagery, at least not one that Gibbs had ever run with.
"Indeed. Look here…" Ducky turns the body, gloved finger pointing to long, jagged tears along the man's back and neck. "He was shifted when he was injured. When he died, he shifted back, tearing all the wounds."
"Like pulling on a wet paper bag," Palmer adds, looking fascinated. "Dreadful."
"Yes Mr. Palmer, dreadful for his family who are still out there in the hands of these monsters, and yet you stand here making crass analogies." Ducky aims a fierce glare at his assistant, who wilts. Gibbs' gut starts churning. Hicks' neck is ringed by neat puncture marks, far too neat for teeth or claw. That's a horribly familiar sight.
"Yes, you recognise it too," Ducky says. "A binding collar was placed on this man, Jethro. Bound in his animal shape."
Damn. That really means only one thing: slavers.
"Lots of money to be made on a therian fighting ring," he says, bile burning the back of his throat as vivid memories of the videos and pictures they've all been shown of the practise rises in his mind.
"Well, that's the odd thing." Ducky lowers the body with a perturbed expression. "There's a lot of money to be made on therians on the black market, alive or dead. Even in the state this poor fellow is in, he's still worth a fortune on the silk road. Why would they leave his body for us to find? They could have been operating for years without us finding solid evidence to link them to the disappearances."
"It's a threat, Duck. A message."
Palmer coughs, eyes widening. "Look what we can do," he murmurs, gaze locked on the body of the man. "Look what we can do, and you can't stop us."
Gibbs glares at him for that last bit. Like hell they can't.
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The air in the attic is stale, filling Gibbs' mouth with dust and his mind with memories. He coughs to clear them both away, avoiding the desire to shake as though to clear debris from his fur. The box he's looking for is right at the back, small and non-descript. When he opens it, his hands hover over the colourful illustrations of the picture books reluctantly. Finally, he shuffles through, looking for one particular book out of the bright jumble. It's down the bottom, one of the first to have been hidden away back when Shannon was still around to disapprove of his choice of reading material to their daughter. Back when Kelly was still around to hear him read the old rhymes.
He reads it and misses them keenly.
You must be good, you must be gay
Lest the Gello come take you away
Her trap will catch you by the paw
Unless you follow elder law
Run away, run away, you'll be caught
you'll be fraught
When the Gello comes,
it's far too late
Your heart will rend and rule with hate
And when you are dead
Your fur now red
We all now dread
Your name
Poor you! Poor you!
Gibbs closes the book and weighs it in his hand, thoughtfully. A myth. Just a myth.
But, when he leaves, he takes it with him.
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Zach is quiet that night, fiddling with the block of sandpaper Gibbs has given him. "At this rate, we'll have her seaworthy in no time," Gibbs teases, seeing the downward curve of the boy's mouth.
He looks up with dull brown eyes, every bit the lost pup he'd been when they picked him up. "My dad would have loved to help with this," he says mournfully, with the eyes of a much older man.
"Maybe he will. We'll find him, Zach."
Before he's finished talking, the kid is already shaking his head. "You don't come back when the Gello gets you. She takes you away and makes you angry, then you die."
"You said it was men who took your dad and friends. It's a fairy-tale, kid. Just something moms made up years and years ago to make their kids behave."
"But it could be real, you don't know." Zach's face is stubborn in his surety.
There's the click of a heel by the door. "You'd do well to believe Agent Gibbs, Zach," says a cheerful voice from the stairway. "He knows all about monsters."
Gibbs straightens. "Jenny. Dinner at the White House?" Her long gown shimmers in the uneven light of his basement, sorely out of place.
"A date, actually. Would you be able to give us a minute, Zach?" Her eyes turn grim, and Gibbs knows what's coming. Zach nods and bolts upstairs to get a soda, skirting carefully around Jenny to avoid getting wood dust on her dress. "We have to face the possibility we're not going to find the commander, Gibbs," Jenny says in a low voice as soon as the door bangs shut behind the kid. "We need to make arrangements for Zach."
"We'll find him." Gibbs is determined they will. What bullshit is it to give up now, when the man is barely even a day gone?
Her mouth twists unhappily. "We haven't found any of them yet. Not one, and there's over two hundred over the country missing in the same circumstances."
Gibbs opens his mouth to reply but a scream from the kitchen cuts him off, right as the walls of the basement explode into flickering webs of light. Snarls and shrieks can be heard, his security spells attempting to defend the home. But, even as they flare, they begin to burn out, their power source being leeched from elsewhere. Gibbs hurtles up the stairs, feet barely touching the wood as he shifts and bursts through the door, roaring. He hears snarls behind him—Jenny following suit in her small, but still vicious, fox form.
Zach scoots towards him, slipping through a pool of spilled soda and shifting into his dog form. Behind him, three men with magic flaring about their hands loom, summoned shadow sprites lunging for the boy's unprotected back. Gibbs leaps over Zach, feeling spells splatter and fizz over his fur as the mages attempted to defend themselves. Their attempts to subdue him are laughable, his werewolf hide resistant to their piss-weak curses. One falls under his jaws, bones splintering as teeth sinks into the soft flesh. He whirls, seeing Jenny snapping at the legs of the wavering forms of the shadow sprites, dancing about to avoid their retaliating attacks.
"There's more coming!" she cries, seconds before a glittering spell net covers her. "Jethro!"
"Dad!" screams Zach, one of the mages grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Mouth held wide, Gibbs rears but, before he can seize the boy back, he's thrown off his paws by an impact of heat and pain to his side that sends him sprawling.
The last thing he remembers is the rending agony of iron on his skin.