Skin Deep (3 page)

Get behind me and watch the door.
Sanchez didn’t question her, but let her—unarmed from the human perspective—take the point. She guessed he was used to working with fey folk, probably partnered with the team’s regular druid, who was out on sick leave.

She drew essence into her hands, a charge large enough to knock the brownie unconscious. Taking a deep breath, she sprang up and fired, running the length of the room. The brownie appeared for a brief moment—almost as tall as she, medium brown skin, and rust-colored hair. His plain face twisted in annoyance as he raised his own hands and returned fire. Laura dodged it and caught him with a shot full in the chest. He fell behind a stack of packing crates.

Laura skidded to a stop. The brownie essence wavered and faded away, replaced by another species signature. Glamoured. He wasn’t a brownie. She was chasing an Inverni fairy glamoured to appear as a brownie. He had been playing the same game she was—hiding his true nature behind an illusion, and a dangerous illusion at that. Janice Crawford, with her supposedly limited abilities, could handle a brownie. An Inverni fairy, though, was at least as powerful as Laura Blackstone’s full abilities.

Trouble,
she sent to Sanchez.

Gunfire erupted behind her.

“Here, too. Stay down,” Sanchez radioed.

Laura sensed fear in the outer hall. Fear enhanced essence signatures, especially faint human ones, and helped her pick things up beyond her normal sensing range.
You’ve got three targets, Sanchez. The first is five feet to the left of the door, two more six feet behind him.

“Got it.” She liked his detached reaction, especially since, from the sound of things, the mission was spiraling out of control. She was hearing too much gunfire. These people were prepared, better prepared than the intel had indicated to say nothing of the unexpected challenge of an Inverni fairy. Behind her, Sanchez fired. By the screams in the hall, she judged it a good hit.

The Inverni wasn’t moving. Laura imagined that he was doing the same thing she was—assessing the next move, trying to gauge the power of the opponent. Invernis were among the most powerful of the fairy clans. They had strong resilience against essence-fire, which made them challenging enough to face without the other huge advantage they had maneuvering against a druid: Invernis could fly.

She decided surprise and aggression were her best options. Because of their power, Invernis tended not to expect frontal assaults. She hardened her body shield and ran toward him. As she reached the crates, he rose with a fiercely determined face.

Laura ducked as he gestured, pale blue essence crackling from his fingers. The machinery nearby warped the strike, sending it off target. Laura reached out with her own ability and reflected the bolt back at him. It splintered in two, one branch arcing back to the crates, the other hitting the workstation next to Laura. The Inverni ducked. Laura’s right side burned incandescent white as her body shield absorbed the backlash. She released her shield to deflect the overflow into the floor. In that moment of exposure, a stray essence-spark grazed her shoulder. Essence coursed through her, like an electrical shock of hot pain. Her essence-sensing ability flickered and vanished.

Dammit. I’m head-blind, Sanchez.

“Tie that up back there. I’ve got four more on me.” Sanchez’s voice sounded tight in her earpiece. More gunfire exploded and another flash-bang went off.

Laura shook her head, but the head-blindness stayed with her. Something wasn’t right. No one protected a drug lab this much. She hardened her body shield again and drew essence into her hands. She was strong enough to take down the Inverni but needed to be closer.

Aiming, she fired and charged forward. The crates burst, debris flying in all directions. The Inverni scrambled away and launched into the air as he returned fire, his blade-like wings ablaze with indigo light. Laura made a running slide under a nearby table as bolts of essence shot down.

She imprinted as many details as possible to her memory as the Inverni rose toward the ceiling. Short brownish hair, elongated body, sharp features. By the way he was dressed—an oddly tailored suit and a satchel strapped across his chest—he didn’t look like he had been expecting a fight.

Short bursts of essence pinned her under the table. The Inverni fired at the ceiling with his other hand. Rolling from side to side, Laura followed his line of fire. He was targeting a soot-dark skylight to blow open an escape route. Between firing at her and the skylight and the satchel restricting his wings, he missed both targets. Laura paused, timed her move to his shots, and rolled onto her back.

She fired a lancing blow across the Inverni’s chest. He tumbled backward and hit the wall. Recovering, he rose toward the skylight again. A smile crossed Laura’s face. She wasn’t going to let him get away. She blocked his path with a barrage of essence-bolts. With a frustrated cry, he changed tactics and bore down on her, hands outstretched and glowing.

The pile of crates next to her toppled. She rolled away as they thundered down, trapping her under the remains of the table. She heard glass breaking and shards hit the floor around her.

“Crawford?” Sanchez radioed.

I’m good,
she sent. She lifted her head. Debris caged her in, splintered crates on all sides. Inches away from her face, incongruous, a USB thumb drive lay among chips and scraps of wood. It was cracked and hot when she picked it up, and she slipped it into her vest.

“Your target escaped. I could use you back here,” Sanchez radioed.

Working on it,
she sent. Laura swore under her breath. One part of her assessed the situation while another prepared a tirade for Foyle. Sanchez had been calling for backup since they entered the room, but no one was showing up. It was sloppy. If the damned Inverni hadn’t escaped, she wasn’t sure how long she could have held out against him.

She pushed and pulled at the crates until one that didn’t threaten to collapse the entire pile on her moved. A burst of essence skittered several boxes away. She crawled through the opening.

Her stomach clenched as Sanchez abruptly gasped in her earpiece.
Sanchez?

He didn’t answer. Another flash-bang went off, then a smoke grenade. She exhaled in relief.
Sanchez, what’s your status?

Anxiety welled up as she heard a strangled sound. She crawled among the remains of the crates. Moonlight shone through the shattered skylight and gave the smoke in the room an eerie glow. She tried to open her essence-sensing ability, but her head still buzzed from the Inverni’s hit.

No shooting sounded. Out in the hall, the firefight was dying down. Running in a crouch back to Sanchez, Laura powered essence into her hands. In the haze, she made out his uniformed body hunched behind the desk. Sanchez sat with his head tucked. His gun lay on the ground next to him. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Sanchez?”

He groaned and rolled to face her, his hands clutched at his neck. Laura sucked in a breath as blood seeped between his fingers. She hit her radio comm. “Man down! Man down! Back hall, first door on the left!”

She tried to pry his fingers away. Sanchez shook his head. He opened his mouth, exposing bright white teeth framed with blood. “Stop.”

The rest of his words were lost in a gurgling rasp. “Stop what?” Laura asked.

When he tried to speak, he voiced a nauseating liquid sound instead. Whatever happened to cause the mission to fall apart was beside the point now. She had to focus. Laura pressed her hands firmly against his to help staunch the wound. Closing her eyes, she summoned all the healing knowledge she had. She pushed aside the thought of her low-level medical skills and chanted. Essence flowed out of her, and their clasped hands glowed with its white light, tinged pink from Sanchez’s blood.

He stared at her with intent eyes, willing her to succeed. The blood flow continued. They both applied pressure to the wound while Laura chanted.

Sanchez’s eyelids fluttered, and his head lolled to the side.

“Dammit! I need a medic now!” Laura shouted into her radio.

Sanchez relaxed his grip. “Stop. Try,” he managed to say.

Blood pulsed thick and dark from a deep gash. Laura pressed her hands into the wound. “I won’t stop. Come on, Sanchez, hang on. They’re coming. Hang on.”

He grabbed her left wrist and pulled. Laura struggled against him. “No! Stop it. They’re coming. Just a few more minutes.”

Sanchez brought his other hand up and pulled her left arm away. She grappled with him, but his grip steadily pulled her hand away. He forced her arm back and thrust his hand into hers, scratching at her bloody palm. “Stop,” he said.

Laura stared down at the marks he made. “A? What are trying to say? Aaron?”

Sanchez shook his head, the effort feeble. Not Aaron Foyle. He tried again. This time Laura thought it was a number. “Four?”

He started once more, but his head fell back. His eyes closed, and his arms dropped to his sides. Laura stared in horror as his essence faded. A noise from the doorway caught her attention. Everything slowed down again. The smoke receded from her as if the hallway had inhaled. A hazy silhouette appeared. Laura leaned forward, expecting a medic. The muzzle of a gun flashed. Something hit her head with the hardest punch she had ever felt. Red light filled her vision as she fell backward. Her head slammed against the floor, then everything went dark.

A moment—an eon—later she opened her eyes and heard shouting and confused voices chattering on her earpiece. Three men stood over her.

“Is she dead?” one asked.

Someone knelt. She recognized Sinclair, smelled rich, burnt gunpowder on him. “She’s alive.”

Darkness and silence descended, sounds receding first, then her vision becoming narrower and narrower. Foyle leaned in next to Sinclair. Laura fought against a faint. She dragged her right hand across her body, trailing a clumsy hand along her biceps. Under the sleeve of her uniform, she found the small, flat sending stone embedded under her flesh. She pressed it firmly before blacking out.

The stone pulsed with an emergency sending.

CHAPTER 2

IN HER FIRST
moments of awareness, Laura realized three things in quick succession: she was propped up in a hospital bed, she had no idea where she was, and she had no idea what she looked like. Panicked, she lurched up and slammed her body shield on. The beeping rhythm of a heart monitor increased.

A soft hand touched her arm. “Relax. You’re safe.”

Relieved to hear Cress’s voice, she dropped back against the pillows as she realized she was in the med clinic at the Guildhouse. Safe. Protected by the layers of security of the InterSec unit.

On a green vinyl armchair next to the bed, Cress perched with her usual stiff posture. The thin smile on her face softened her unsettling whiteless eyes. Laura thought most people would not be relieved to know they were being watched over by a
leanansidhe
. The
leanansidhe
survived by absorbing essence, and the greatest and easiest source was people. They had few, if any, moral qualms about draining living beings. Cress, though, had chosen a different path and turned to healing. Whatever anxieties Laura had about
leanansidhe
in general, she had no doubt Cress was one of the best healers she had ever met.

Laura rubbed her face. “How long have I been out?”

Cress checked her watch. “Eight and a half hours.”

“Was I compromised?”

Cress smiled. “No, we responded to your signal in plenty of time. Janice Crawford lives on.”

Laura exhaled to calm herself. The Crawford identity would have required a ton of paperwork to replace. “Did Sanchez make it?”

Cress shook her head. “Dead at the scene.”

Anger burned in her chest. Sanchez’s neck wound had been too severe. She had known that as soon as she saw it. He hadn’t had a chance. She remembered trying to fuse the rip in his skin, but she hadn’t had enough healing skill. She didn’t think anybody would have in that situation. The image of him struggling with her rose in her mind, then vanished, leaving nothing but a vague sense of frustration and fear. Laura looked down at her hand. “Was I holding something when you found me?”

“We found a USB drive in your vest. Terryn has it. How do you feel?”“

Laura regarded her hand a moment longer, then curled the fingers closed. “Slight headache. What happened? The last thing I remember was Sanchez bleeding.”

Cress couldn’t hide a smile. “You were shot in the head.”

“What?” she said.

Cress leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on Laura’s arm. “You’re fine. It was a grazing shot. Your helmet took the brunt of it.”

Laura gingerly touched the left side of her head. “I don’t remember it.”

Cress nodded. “You have a concussion. Some memory loss is typical, but you should regain it quickly.”

As Cress spoke, Laura picked up the strong essence signature of an Inverni fairy approaching the room, which made her realize that she could sense Cress’s body signature as well. She had been head-blind at the apartment-complex raid, that much she remembered. But the episode had been thankfully temporary. Her sensing ability had returned. A moment later, Terryn macCullen entered.

Despite a passive expression, the tall Inverni’s translucent wings undulated in agitation, pinpoints of white and blue flashing in the faint veining. Stray strands of his hair, blacker than night, drifted in the essence flowing off him. His eyes glittered a deep emerald against his unearthly pallor. Cress stretched up and out of the chair with a sensual shiver that drew Terryn’s gaze. Even without an exchange of words, Laura felt the emotional bond between the two.

He scanned Laura’s face but spoke to Cress. “Can she report for duty?”

Cress spoke to Laura instead of Terryn. “You should rest a couple of days, but I don’t think there’s any damage.”

Laura tried to smile. She clenched her hand again, wondering what she was not remembering. “I feel fine.”

Terryn shifted his eyes to Laura. “Excuse us, Cress.”