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.