Face Off

CHAPTER 46

FIFTY MILES NORTHWEST of the city, the line of black SUVs drove along the back roads outside Front Royal, Virginia. Laura rode in the passenger seat as Sinclair led the caravan through the gathering dusk. The trip out had taken over an hour, even with using roof lights the first half of the way. Not for the first time did she envy the power of flight. She had four Danann fairies on the tactical team, but they weren’t enough to ferry everyone out to the camp.

“Are you sorry you’re missing the party?” Sinclair asked.

Laura checked the cars following in the passenger-side mirror. “You’re joking, right?”

He draped his hand over the steering wheel. “A little. I’d think with the way you run your life, a party would be a nice change of pace.”

She thought about the reception. The planning. The guest lists. The decorations. The politics. “No, Jono. I don’t miss it. I can’t remember the last party I went to that didn’t have to do with work. They’re always about work, one way or another.”

He pursed his lips and shot her a slow, sly look. “Man, you need fun.”

She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. They were on their way to find a kidnapped friend. “You know, you have an odd sense of timing.”

“I do?”

“Do you think I want to talk about having fun right now?”

“Is there ever a right time?” he asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged, frustration on his face. “We’ve been in this car for an hour. We covered the layout of the compound. We bitched about traffic. We made note of all the pretty scenery. At some point, the conversation isn’t about crap, ya know? At some point, Cuddles, you need to stop thinking every moment of your life about the dire consequences for everyone else and relax.”

She flushed with heat. “Are we having an argument? Because it sounds like you want an argument.”

“No, I don’t. I want to talk about something other than the end of the world,” he said.

“It’s not the end of the world,” she snapped.

He tapped the steering wheel. “Good. We’re getting somewhere.”

She glared at him. As much as she wanted to hit him, she knew he had a point. She never did relax. She did think only about work. Having a personal life had always meant letting down her guard. Enjoying herself, as Sinclair put it, meant interacting with other people. It meant risking exposing herself—or worse, them. It meant, she had to admit, that she feared those risks so much, she had let her life disappear. Made it disappear.

“You hit all my sore spots, you know that?” she said. She said it quietly, with little emotion. A statement of fact.

Sinclair glanced at her without any sign of smugness. He dropped his hand on hers and squeezed it. “I think that’s why you like me.”

She did laugh then. “You know, it would be worth dating you if only to deflate that ego of yours.”

He tilted his head at her with a boyish smile. “That sounds like a lot of dating.”

She shook her head and chuckled. The smile lingered on her face as she stared out her window. Sinclair still held her hand, and she decided she would be damned if she pulled away.

They passed into Front Royal. The town had a quaintness about it that reminded Laura of other times and other places. Antique shops and colonial homes lined the main route. It was a lot like Alexandria must have been before it became the coveted bedroom community it was today.

“We’re a mile away,” he said.

Terryn, can you hear me? We’re almost there, she sent. No reply. She didn’t expect a response. The Guild had Terryn in a holding cell that jammed sendings. She thought it might be worth a try to contact him on the off chance he had been allowed to attend Draigen’s reception.

On the GPS screen map, a large swathe of land appeared as blank green space along the Shenandoah River. “It takes a lot of money to make something disappear off satellite maps,” she said.

“And the contamination is an incentive not to attract attention,” he said.

“Contamination?”

He checked his sidearm. “It’s an old Superfund site. Lots of buried toxins. Probably why they were able to afford so much land this close to the city.”

She hummed in disagreement. “Close? I hate the commute across the river to Alexandria.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone can afford that by double-dipping their paychecks,” he said.

She shoved him playfully. “I work for two different agencies, so it’s not a double-dip.”

He pulled off the two-lane road onto grass overhung by tall trees. “It is if you get paid full for half-time work.”

She zipped up her uniform jacket. “I wish. Try two salaries for three times the hours.”

He grinned as he got out of the car. “And you have, what? Three or four apartments? I feel bad.”

“Jerk,” she muttered as she joined him on the side of the road. Behind them, more black-uniformed InterSec agents waited, a mix of Danann fairies, Teutonic elves, and druids.

Sinclair surveyed the gathering. “You know, you’re looking at these guys’ worst nightmare.”

Laura assessed the tactical team. They were armed, trained, and willing to follow orders. “I think this would be anyone’s worst nightmare.”

“Yeah, but we’re a bunch of fey about to storm a protected human compound. That’s their biggest fear right here,” he said.

Laura started walking toward the camp. “You’re wrong. If anything has happened to Cress, I’m going to be their biggest fear.”

She sent the Dananns ahead for surveillance. They swept in a low formation over the road, their wings a dim glow in the night sky. The rest of the team fell in behind. They jogged up the road until a tall chain-link fence appeared. Laura started to receive sendings from the Dananns as soon as she sighted the guardhouse next to the driveway.

“We’ve got one guy in the gate,” she said.

Sinclair moved in front of her. “I’ll take him.”

She grabbed his arm. “Let one of the Dananns do it. It’ll be quicker.”

“And raise an alarm,” he said over his shoulder. “This place is warded with essence detectors. They zap him, we lose the element of surprise across a quarter-mile run up to the bunkers.”

Laura considered his proposal. “Make it quick.”

He stood. “Make sure your buddies remember I’m on their side.”

She smiled up at him. “It’s okay. I told them not to shoot the tall guy unless I asked them to.”

He grinned as he strolled away, staying in the open, his assault rifle slung casually over his shoulder. In the lit gatehouse, the guard’s head lifted as Sinclair approached. He came to the door, hand resting on his holstered pistol. Sinclair leaned against the gatehouse door, talking and gesturing up the road. Laura ducked deeper into the weeds as the guard looked in her direction. In a blur, Sinclair spun his rifle off his shoulder and landed the butt in the guard’s face. The man fell to the ground.

As Laura ran up, Sinclair was disarming him. “Nice.”

She held out her hand to cast a binding spell, but Sinclair grabbed it. “I told you. Essence alarms.”

She coiled her fingers closed. “Oh, sure, they don’t like the fey, but they have no problem using fey tools.”

Sinclair peered into the compound. “We take a straight shot up the driveway, then to the left.”

Laura signaled the team behind her, and they quick-stepped across the pavement as she opened the gate. She trailed behind Sinclair. “One guard at the gatehouse concerns me.”

“Yeah. There are usually two,” he said.

“Great. Now I’m worried.”

As the afternoon light faded, white cinder-block buildings loomed in the shadows of tall, mature trees. “I’ve never seen the place so dark and quiet,” Sinclair said.

A lone figure appeared from the back side of the nearest building. He stopped short when he saw Sinclair and Laura, then raised his gun. A burst of green essence sliced through the night air as someone behind them fired elf-shot. Sirens began to wail.

Laura swore as she ran for the nearest building and crouched against it. Rifle in position, Sinclair backpedaled to watch their flank. The essence burst had been elf-shot. She searched among the running team until she spotted the likely perpetrator who had fired without her say-so. He was not going to like his debriefing at the mission review.

“That would be the essence alarm, I take it?” she asked.

“The very one,” he said.

She peered around the corner. Someone with an automatic weapon scuttled across the access road. “The med bunker is up and to the left, right?”

“Yeah, but let’s go left, then up. Less light,” he said.

“Okay, you lead,” she said.

“You just want to look at my butt.”

“It’s a very nice butt,” she said. Two could play his game.

She broadcast a sending to the tactical team, directing them up and to the right to draw away as many Legacy guards as possible. Sinclair slipped in front of her and watched the open driveway as she ran for the building across the way.

They hustled down a paved walkway at the rear of a line of buildings. Legacy guards cut across the path ahead, moving to the northeast of the compound. Sinclair paused at the next corner, spying around the building. “Something’s not right. This isn’t a tenth of the guys that should be here.”

“Let’s hope they’re not staying put at the bunker,” Laura said.

Gunfire erupted in the distance to their right, followed by the unmistakable crackle of essence-fire. Sinclair dodged left around a utility shed. He gestured with his rifle across the grassy front of a low building. A door stood open, unguarded, spilling light into the night. “That’s the med bunker. We go straight in, stairwell halfway down on the right to the lower level. Doors all the way.”

“Take the point,” Laura said.

“Sure,” Sinclair muttered. “Good enough to take the first hit, but not for health benefits.”

“You’re wearing their uniform. It’s an advantage,” Laura said as she chased him across the grass.

Sinclair hit the wall beside the door. He ducked his head out and back. “Clear.”

He quick-stepped in, rifle low and pointed at the first door. It remained closed, and they passed it. Step by step, they crept down the empty hallway. No one challenged them. Sinclair peered into the stairwell. “Clear.”

With muted steps, they descended. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Why did they abandon their posts?” Sinclair asked.

“You said they look understaffed. Maybe the rest of the tac team is near a more high-profile target,” Laura said.

They reached the lower level. “Yeah, that’s not helping. It looks like the lab’s the next door.”

They moved along the corridor, the silence an uncomfortable weight bearing down on them. Sinclair reached for the door handle. He glanced to check Laura’s position, then ducked as he pushed the door open. No sound came from within.

“I’m not sensing anyone. In fact, I’m not sensing anything at all down here,” Laura said in a whisper.

In a crouch, Sinclair entered. Laura counted off the seconds until he called out, “Clear.”

Inside, as the blueprints indicated, the fifteen-foot granite crèche stretched down the center of the room. At regular intervals, shallow bowl-like niches made a double ring around the circumference. Bands of quartz connected the niches with the deep bed of the crèche.

Laura didn’t sense Cress, or anything else for that matter. As she approached the crèche, the air deadened, void of a trace of essence. “Cress was here. The room feels scrubbed, like there’s no essence at all.”

Beside her, Sinclair touched the edge of the crèche and swayed on his feet as his essence dimmed. Laura grabbed his arm. “You okay?”

He shook his head rapidly as if clearing it. “It’s some kind of essence sink.”

Laura examined the hollowed interior without touching the crèche. “That’s what the documents described—the crèche channels and amplifies abilities. They tuned the crèche to Cress’s abilities. That’s why it’s trying to absorb our essence. That also means that Cress was in this thing. From the look of it, something rested in here like it was a cradle. She was on or in something.”

“Now what?” Sinclair said.

Laura glanced around the room. “We search the complex. If the crèche is still active, I’m guessing Cress was here recently. She might still be here somewhere.”

She moved around to the other side of the crèche. Glass helmets sat in several of the rounded-out niches. She pulled one out and held it up. Her body essence flowed down her arm toward the helmet. With some effort, she pulled the essence back and raised her body shield.

She examined the helmet again and peered into the niche, finding a matching quartz strip. “The stone tabs on these helmets are tuned to the crèche, Jono. They have the same essence warding on them. Mobile essence-draining units. The glass shunts essence over the head to the stone tab, and the tab must send it somewhere. The crèche acts like a charger for the helmets.”

She replaced the helmet and froze. Two legs stretched out on the floor at the far end of the crèche. “We’ve got a body.”

She hurried the length of the room as Sinclair circled in from the other side. A man lay facedown on the floor. She pulled him over by the arm, and he rolled on his back. “Danu’s blood, this is Ian Whiting.”

“The druid suicide?” Sinclair asked.

She applied her fingers to his carotid artery. “I’d recognize him anywhere. Dammit. No pulse. No living body essence. He’s drained. Dead.”

Sinclair held his hand out. “No, wait. I can see the shape of his essence. It’s faint, but it’s there.”

Laura placed her hand on Whiting’s chest. Without any other essence source in the room, she pushed some of her own into him. His body shuddered as a warm yellow light swirled into him. “I’m seeing a body signature now.”

She jerked her head up at a sudden intake of breath from Sinclair. He was crouched next to her, but his gaze was toward the crèche. At intervals on the underside of the helmet niches were small bricks of C-4 explosive. Lights flashed from timers on several of them.

Sinclair pulled Whiting into a seated position. With no effort, he lifted the man from the floor. Sinclair grabbed Laura’s arm. “We need to get out of here now. Crank your shields all the way up, Cuddles. It might get breezy in here.”

They ran for the door, Laura’s hardened body shield expanding around them. As they made the outside corridor, the room erupted. The door blew off, slamming into the shield. Laura stumbled against Sinclair. They hit the wall and fell. Another explosion went off somewhere above them, and the lights flickered.

“Go! Ghost out of here. I’ll get Whiting out,” Sinclair shouted.

She shoved him forward, almost knocking him to the ground again. “Keep moving. You don’t have a shield.”

Explosions rocked the end of the corridor as they reached the stairs. Laura swayed under the pressure, dizziness threatening to overwhelm her as the force of the concussion destabilized her shield. Sinclair stumbled on a step, and they fell again. With Whiting draped over his shoulder like a rag doll, he wrapped his arm around Laura as she struggled to get her feet under her. Debris rained down, bouncing off her body shield. The strain of covering all three of them without an external essence source drained her. Black and red spots flashed in her vision as she fought to remain conscious.

Sinclair dragged her down the crumbling upper hall. An explosion on the main floor sent them airborne. They burst through the door, arcing into the air. Laura’s shield shredded as she hit the ground.