Mark Del Franco: Skin Deep

“Everybody down!” she shouted.

The team didn’t hesitate. In unison, they stopped, ducked, and crouched to either side. A bolt of yellow lightning scorched the air above them. Laura gauged the trajectory, threw out her hand, and released her essence reserve in a wide flare. She smiled as, up ahead, a male voice gave a short scream. Someone on the team tossed a smoke grenade forward.

Human essence surrounded her. Except for the team, she didn’t recognize any of it, which meant they were targets. She clicked on the microphone on her radio headset. “We’ve got three on the left, two straight ahead, all human. I’m getting metal essence warping on the left. We’ve got guns, people.”

Foyle and Sanchez shifted positions as gunfire burst from the left. Concerned, urgent chatter crackled on Laura’s headset as other units reacted, followed by Foyle’s calm assurances that they were fine.

She felt the other brownie receding into the building. With little mental effort, she pulled a small node of essence into her head and imprinted her thoughts on it. The fey called the process “sending” because they used it to project mental messages and images to others. Laura liked using them because they were faster, and sometimes she didn’t have the few moments to dial a phone number or click on a radio. She threw the sending to Foyle’s mind. The first brownie is down. The second is running to the rear. Second unit back there can’t handle it. I need to go in.

Foyle’s voice came over her headset. “Sanchez with Crawford. Gianni and Sinclair, cover fire on my lead.”

Straight ahead, Laura sent to Sanchez. She stepped around Sinclair to move in close with Sanchez. Foyle and the others opened fire as she and Sanchez charged past the open doorway. Stray reaction fire responded.

“What’ve we got?” Sanchez radioed.

Two at two o’clock. I’ll smoke them. Keep going straight. She pulled a canister from her vest and tossed it as two humans appeared in a doorway on the right. They stumbled back as acidic haze erupted around them. Sanchez released a burst of suppression fire, and they rushed past. A bend in the hallway blocked their line of sight. Sanchez laid more fire into the opposite wall and rolled across the floor. He signaled all clear, and Laura came in behind him.

An explosion rumbled farther up the hall. The reverberation made her stumble into Sanchez as the lights went out. Sanchez cursed under his breath as radio chatter filled their ears. “The drug lab is down there. Sounds like we lost it,” he said.

The infrared in her goggles snapped on. A wave of nausea rolled through her as the night vision conflicted with her essence vision. She turned off the infrared.

“Which way?” asked Sanchez.

Ahead and left. The brownie’s around the next corner, let me… Hold on. They froze in place, hugging the wall. Laura blocked out the noise of shouts and gunfire and concentrated on the body signature. The brownie essence wavered in her senses. One moment it felt like a brownie should feel, the next it intensified. She pushed at her essence-sensing ability to sharpen its acuity. The brownie felt normal again. Brownies liked to work with wards-stones the fey used to accompany spells. The brownie ahead of them must have some kind of ward on him, an amplifier perhaps, to boost his firepower.

We’re good. Lay down cover, then drop. I’ll hit the target. You secure, she sent to Sanchez.

“Got it,” he said.

They reached a doorway at the turn. Sanchez went in low, firing, and dropped to the floor. Laura followed him and released a burst of essence into the room. The small, dark shape of the brownie wheeled away from her with surprising speed.

Dammit. I missed him, Sanchez. Be careful.

They huddled behind an overturned desk. The walls between several rooms had been torn open to make one large space. The odd sight of workstations of machinery cluttered the area-it seemed to be some type of abandoned illegal sweatshop. The metal warped Laura’s essence perception, the only ability it tended to affect since it was her weakest. A strong brownie signature at the far end of the room read as living essence. That was all she cared about. Behind her, she sensed more body signatures building up in the hallway, unknown humans, not SWAT personnel. She kept them at the edge of her awareness, but focused on the brownie.

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.