Mark Del Franco - Skin Deep

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.”

As she left, the essence field of Cress’s body signature interacted with Terryn’s. He gave no sign of it, but Laura sensed the satisfaction it gave him. Their relationship sustained Cress and kept the predatory aspect of her leanansidhe nature in check. By willingly letting her siphon some of his essence, Terryn helped her rise above what her biology demanded. Laura wasn’t sure what he got out of it.

“Did you have your shield up?” said Terryn.

Laura frowned. “I would be surprised if I didn’t. I remember being head-blind, so the body shield could have been affected, too.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She recounted the raid in a detached, formal manner as she told him the events step-by-step, from the moment she left the van until the moment she looked up from the wounded body of Sanchez. Her memory failed there, a gap she tried not to show frustration over. As a druid, she had a natural talent for memory retention, and years of training had honed it. Druids might not always recall instantly, but they almost never forgot.

Terryn’s eyes narrowed when she told him about the unexpected presence of the Inverni fairy, but he didn’t interrupt. She wondered what he would say or do about it. The Inverni fairies were powerful, and Terryn’s family had ruled over the largest clans for generations. An Inverni involved with a crime like drug dealing-to say nothing of trying to kill a police officer-was not something that would be taken lightly by the clans when they heard about it. Invernis had enough problems with their political image without adding lawbreaking to it.

“You remember nothing after summoning help for Sanchez?” he asked.

Laura pushed herself higher on the bed. “It went bad from the get-go, Terryn. Either the intelligence was wrong or there was a tip-off.”

He pulled the damaged USB drive from the pocket of his tunic and handed it to her. “Does anyone else know about this?”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t think I mentioned it on the comm. I saw it, thought it was odd, and picked it up. It had to have come from the Inverni. I got a good hit on a bag he was carrying. I was alone when I found it, that I’m sure of.”

Terryn nodded. “Okay, write it up, then I’ll decide what to tell upstairs.”

Laura didn’t respond. Working as part of InterSec was an exercise in cooperation and misdirection. She’d lost track of the number of law-enforcement agencies involved, and none trusted any of the others. She was proof of that. She’d gone undercover in most of the agencies at some point.

She threw off the bedsheet and swung her feet around to the floor. “Where’s my gear?”

Terryn arched an eyebrow. “I imagine Cress would know. Where do you think you’re going?”

She held the back of her hospital gown closed more for courtesy than any sense of embarrassment. “I have to go back. There’s something I have to check before it’s too late.”

Terryn crossed his arms. “And if I don’t allow it?”

Laura looked him in the eye. “I’ll tell everyone you touched my ass.”

She couldn’t help the twitch of a smile, and neither could he. He bowed his head. “I’ll tell Cress you have something to do. I want you back here as soon as possible, and if you feel at all ill, I want you to return immediately. That’s an order.”

“Thanks,” she said.

She paced along the bed, her lack of memory gnawing at her. Her entire life was based on remembering-her name, her history, her work. One misstep could not only expose the Guild’s or InterSec’s unauthorized involvement in cases, it could get her killed. She didn’t mind if the Guild or InterSec was embarrassed. Like all institutional organisms, they survived beyond the moment. She wouldn’t.

Cress returned. Not bothering to hide a sour expression, she held Laura’s SWAT-team uniform well away from herself. “I hate the smell of gunshot residue.”

“Me, too,” she said, lying a little. She liked the smell in a way she couldn’t describe. It wasn’t enjoyment, per se, but she did experience an element of pleasure in the thin rime of residue permeating her hair and clothing after a session at the range. It was an emotion that had to do with a sense of accomplishment. Washing it off had its own pleasure, too, like shedding a layer of skin associated with work.

Cress pulled the curtain around the bed as Laura removed her hospital gown. “Can you be less modest?”

Laura chuckled as she wrestled into her underwear and pulled the pants on. As a healer, Cress dealt with naked bodies on a regular basis in the context of her work. But because of the fear they engendered, leanansidhe were vigilant about issues of exposure. I would be, too, Laura thought, if being discovered as a leanansidhe meant being chased by an angry mob. As a druid, Laura spent too much time naked with her colleagues, both male and female, to think much about modesty. Something about baring her skin to the light of the moon, in a forest glade with her fellows, seemed natural and right. She didn’t think about nudity as exposure, but as a means to an end-in so many ways.