Mark Del Franco - Face Off

For my mom, who will always be there

Thanks to Anne Sowards, my editor, for her much-appreciated patience and support, and to Sara and Bob Schwager, copy editors extraordinaire, who always make me look good. I would also like to thank John Liguori, Paul Carroll, and An-drew Schieffelin, who patiently listen to my rants and still return my calls knowing one’s coming. And special thanks to Jack, who gave me the time and space to write.

THE DESOLATE ROADstretched off into the darkness like a black scar through the woods. In the predawn light, the trees leaned forward, their leaves dull gray, void of true color, their trunks shadows among shadows. Laura Blackstone shifted in her car seat, the engine a soft rumble behind the classical music whispering from the speakers. Watching the road, she sipped her coffee. Other cars sat hidden among the trees, a bit of chrome here and there gleaming beneath the waning moon, the glow of cell phones dancing like orange fireflies as others waited with her.

To outward appearances, Laura was calm and relaxed. She had spent years learning to control her emotions and reactions. Herself. Learned not to show fear or anger or stress. Those emotions all happened inside now.

Of course, to outward appearances, she didn’t look like Laura Blackstone at all. People who knew Laura Blackstone knew the woman who worked as the public-relations director at the Fey Guild. They saw a fit woman, her face of an indeterminate young age, who spent her time spinning the fey agenda for the media. They saw a druid, one of the fey who had the ability to manipulate essence. She didn’t look different from humans. She fit in.

Trying to convince humans that the power of the fey was simply an expression of who and what they were and not dangerous was important to her. It wasn’t magic, what she did. It was inherent in the nature of the fey, an expression of someone who came from Faerie. Some fey had better skill in manipulating essence than others. Some had none at all. Essence could be dangerous. So could a knife or a gun. Or a fist. Having the potential to use essence as a weapon didn’t mean every fey would use it that way. They didn’t wake up in the morning and decide they were going to hurt someone. Some did. Laura wasn’t naïve. Some humans made the conscious choice to cause pain, too. But to Laura, singling out the fey as the sole source of danger and worry in the world was wrong.

Which brought her to the dark car on a dark road, masked to look like someone else. Glamours were one of her skills, and she made them better than anyone else. With the right manipulation of essence, she could alter her appearance. The transformation was complete in every sense—visual, auditory, and tactile.

If a colleague from the Guild walked up to her and asked for directions, he would have no clue that the thin, dark-haired woman in the car was the blond public-relations director he worked with. If she were to introduce herself, the soft Irish lilt in her voice would sound nothing like Laura’s strictly American speech pattern. Her clear blue eyes would stare at him with no indication they were truly green. The mask was complete. He would believe she was someone named Mariel Tate.

That was what attracted the notice of the International Global Security Agency. InterSec first tapped Laura as a policy advisor. By treaty, it worked with governments around the globe as a police force for the fey that extended beyond the borders of nations. When the agency realized she had skills beyond the diplomatic, it recruited her for the special-operations division. Laura Blackstone disappeared from their roster, and Mariel Tate was born.

Five miles out, Sinclair sent.

The phrase reverberated in her mind. The fey called it a sending, the wrapping of thoughts in a tangle of essence to send messages to each other’s minds. Sinclair was descended from a jotunn, a fire giant of the Teutonic fey, but he was more human than not. He didn’t have the abilities of someone who was fully fey, but he could do sendings. They were difficult for him, which was why he sounded so rough in her mind, and he used them only sparingly.

Laura had met Sinclair on her last major mission. Through a series of mistakes and compromises, he ended up working for InterSec on a probationary basis for reasons that gave her a keen sense of responsibility. He was where he was because of her. She wanted him to succeed. It didn’t escape her that her worry about him was more than professional concern, but she wasn’t going to dwell on that in the middle of a job.

A political organization called the Legacy Foundation was showing signs of going radical. Sinclair had inserted himself into the lower rungs of the power structure, where people were more likely to trust a newcomer. After a few weeks, the decision had paid off with information that Legacy was moving a shipment of weapons into D.C. InterSec had decided to intercept the delivery and, with luck, solidify Sinclair’s undercover status.

Laura had been waiting hours for Sinclair’s signal. She made her own sendings to give the others notice that it was showtime.

Against the pale ash sky, arc lights blazed to life. The metallic blue strobe of police lights flashed from the tops of three cars parked along the breakdown lane. People exited their cars, men and women in law-enforcement uniforms. They moved cones into the road, then lit flares to reveal a large traffic sign propped up against sawhorses. In a matter of moments, a drunk-driver checkpoint was in place in the middle of the Virginia back road.

Laura drank the remains of her cold coffee and dropped the empty cup on the floor as she left the car. She moved into the trees across from the checkpoint, sensing other InterSec agents taking their posts nearby. Even in the dark, their body signatures—their personal essences—whirled with color in Laura’s sensing ability. Druids were adept at sensing body signatures, but the same quirk of fate that gave Laura the ability to create flawless glamours seemed to have limited her ability to sense essence unless she was close to it. Farther along the road, she knew Danann fairies hid in the trees although she couldn’t see them. One by one, they exchanged sendings confirming they were in position.

Two miles, Sinclair sent.

An engine made a hollow sound in the far distance. Where the road met the horizon, a dim glow grew until it resolved into headlights.

Got you. Good luck, Laura sent.

The engine throttled louder as a panel truck approached. One of the uniformed officers strolled into the road and waved a flashlight with an orange cone attached to the end. As the truck neared, it slowed and pulled into the breakdown lane. A white man, rough-skinned and dark-haired, leaned out the driver’s side window as another officer approached. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

The officer flashed his flashlight in the driver’s eyes. “This is a DWI checkpoint. Have you been drinking this evening, sir?”

“No,” he said.

The officer swept his beam along the side of the truck as two more officers took up position several feet to the rear of the vehicle. “Where are you going this morning, sir?”

“Arlington,” the driver replied.

The officer pointed the flashlight inside the cab, illuminating a rider in the passenger seat. “Can I see your license, registration, and insurance please?”

The driver’s head moved out of sight as he leaned toward the glove compartment. The officer took the moment to make eye contact with his backup. The driver handed out folded papers. The officer stepped back. “I’ll be back in a moment, sir.”