Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  Unless there was some sort of miracle, it would keep happening. “If we only knew what they did in Yorkton,” Kalen muttered as he stared off into the west. The Roinan Gate was quiet tonight. Very few flickers lit the air around it, but he knew that didn’t mean much. There were so many demons from Anqar here now, death would come even if the gate never opened again.

  Dais’s joking use of cordain circled through Kalen’s head and he thought bitterly, Wise one, my ass. What’s the term for useless one?

  “You want to see your home turned into another crater?” Lee asked softly, silently appearing at his side and interrupting him before he could travel too far down the path of self-flagellation.

  Kalen didn’t bat an eyelash. “If it meant shutting down the Roinan Gate permanently? In a heartbeat.”

  He would try to evacuate the area as best as he could, but if the knowledge to destroy the gate ever fell into his hands, Kalen knew he’d sacrifice himself and every soldier in his unit if it meant destroying it. If the Roinan Gate fell, this world might actually have a chance.

  Without that knowledge, Kalen didn’t know what he was going to do, and he didn’t know what to say to his men when they looked to him for answers. The rebellion followed their leaders, Kalen Brenner and Lee, with a blind, fearless devotion that was almost slavish. None of them knew her last name. They didn’t know where she lived. They didn’t know where she came from. Nothing more than her first name and that she fought like a woman possessed and that when she was in the battle, the battle was likely to be won.

  That was all they knew. They spoke her name in hushed tones, even the ones who had fought beside her from the time she was old enough to fight. Yes, that utter devotion was a bit disturbing. Even more so considering that not one of them had ever seen Lee by the light of day.

  Not even Kalen.

  She came and left in the dark of night, lingering only a few hours and then disappearing. Sometimes weeks passed between appearances, and then there would be months when she showed her pretty face on a nightly basis. He had known Lee for more than twenty years. She had appeared out of the darkness when she was hardly more than a pretty, cherubic little thing with big, angelic blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, her curling hair pulled into a ponytail high on her little head as she pushed a meat-filled sandwich into his bony hands, whispering, “You’re making my belly hurt.”

  He’d been so hungry. Starving. Locked in the basement of the house where the demons had set up camp, he had been waiting for death. The Raviners that had captured him weren’t known for quick deaths. They preferred to torture their victims slowly, feeding off their pain and their screams.

  Being caught by a Raviner usually only had one of two outcomes: slow death by torture, or possession. A boy of ten was ripe for them, a good prize—especially one weakened by days of abuse, starvation and fear. They’d killed his mother, right in front of him, and Kalen spent long hours in the dark wishing they’d killed him as well.

  But even as a kid, he’d known the Raviners had more in store for him than just a simple death. Raviners had a unique ability of forcing their evil into the soul of weakened victims, making them into mindless zombies intent on one thing—devastation. But Lee had saved him. She’d fed him that night and the next. The third night, she had appeared next to him holding a small, thin disc—the key to the synergistic bonds that kept him immobile. She freed him and disappeared into the shadows of the basement. When he went to look for her, she was gone. Like she had vanished into thin air. He’d waited until sunrise to escape because Raviners, like most of the hell creatures out of Anqar, were weaker during the day. Come sunrise, he’d slipped out of the house and run for his life, sparing just a few thoughts for the girl who had freed him.

  It wasn’t the last time he would see her, or the last time she would save him. Three years passed, and when he saw her next, he was a courier for a rebel army just outside of Orleans. Even though she had grown up a little, he still recognized her as the child who had freed him from the little hell of his prison outside the fallen city of New Angeles.

  “What’s your name?” she had asked. Perched atop an aboveground crypt, she had sat swinging her feet, that dimpled smile exactly as he remembered it.

  “Kalen Brenner.”

  Her brow puckered. She frowned a little. “You have really long hair for a boy.” She tugged on her short curls and glanced at his hair with a wistful sort of envy. “Your hair is prettier than mine.”

  He hadn’t thought so. Kalen had liked those pale yellow curls. But he didn’t say anything. She had just continued to stare at him for a while, then she giggled. He wanted to ask what she was laughing about, and where she was staying, was she safe . . . but somebody had called him. In the few seconds it took him to look behind him and then look back, she had disappeared.

  Gone from his life for another five years. Kalen went from serving as a courier to fighting in a rebel army to leading one. The next time he saw her was when she went to pull him out of the way when one of his lieutenants would have slashed his throat from behind. Dais had warned him that men weren’t going to like following somebody so young, and the old war dog was right. Lee had saved his life again, and after that, Lee started fighting, not just sliding in and out of his life like a wraith, but fighting. Small things at first. He hadn’t wanted her in danger. She was just a kid—she might have just been three years younger but she hadn’t grown up fighting to stay alive, not like he had. She’d been too soft. Too pretty—and not just because she was a girl. But for all his instincts to protect her, Lee had a knack for finding dangerous situations and defusing them. Or finding innocent families, trapped and helpless—Kalen had long since lost count of how many people she’d been responsible for saving.

  At first, she’d simply appeared and led Kalen and his men, but eventually, she’d started showing up with people in tow. People she’d saved. Now he led yet another band of rebels, but this one was larger, more organized, and they didn’t just fight small skirmishes. They fought on the most dangerous front left in their world, with the gates in both Yorkton and Jivan decimated.

  They fought to keep the demons from spreading past the Roinan Mountains. Lee, always an enigma, came and went like the wind, appearing out of the night like a shadow, full of whispered secrets and magicks that saved countless lives. Most of their witches were useless when it came to fighting near the gates—it was as if something from the gates froze their power. What they could do was divert the energy flow that fed the gates, but it wasn’t easy work and usually required the strength of a good three witches.

  Lee, though, was different. A witch, yes, but the gate’s energy didn’t affect her at all. Even more, she was quick, canny and intuitive. The woman should have been leading this army. If Dais truly wanted to call somebody a leader, then it needed to be Lee. Leader, wise one, corida—for all her young years, the titles suited her. She was a leader and Kalen was simply a soldier. He wanted to be out there fighting, not issuing orders and playing the diplomat with fellow rebel leaders.

  Crouched on the twisted rock outcropping, Kalen watched as she issued orders to the rebel soldiers with ease, the sunny banner of her curls gleaming in the false light as she shook her head in response to a question. Tonight’s agenda was the same as it had been for the past week: recon and salvage.

  This had to stop. There had to be a better way to fight this war than this. Gaining a little ground on one front, only to lose it on another. But Kalen didn’t know what the other options were. One of his best warriors was about as insubstantial as a wraith. Until she opened her eyes . . .

  The screams painted the night like blood. Hot, vivid washes of it. Kalen jerked to his feet and all around him, people stared.

  The screams hadn’t come from here. He’d heard them echo through the Veil—a warning, but he had a feeling it was already too late. As he stood, he grabbed the plasma assault rifle from the ground and slung it over his shoulder. His feet passed silently over the uneven ground as he
moved closer to the source of the turmoil. Too many screams. He ran for the rebuilt solar-powered glider and powered it up with a silent prayer. It came to life with a muted roar and he breathed out in relief.

  “I don’t like this.”

  He shifted his eyes as Lee slid out of the darkness, running along beside him effortlessly. Her hair gleamed like silver in the darkness of the night, her blue eyes colorless. “You heard the screaming.”

  Her lips flattened. “The very dead heard those screams,” she whispered. The glider moved over the ground with blurring speed, and she caught her hair in her fist to keep it from blowing in her eyes.

  Miles passed in silence. As they moved closer, other tran-units joined them. As they slowed to a halt, he heard the soft whimper that rose in her throat before she could stop it.

  Kalen had to bite back his own furious scream of denial.Clenching his jaw, he drew the rifle from over his shoulder and leveled it at the Jorniak demon that was still feasting in the middle of the death and devastation.

  Lee lifted her hand and the pure silver energy that flowed from it was the same as the beam that shot out of the laser pulsing from Kalen’s plasma rifle. Like most men, Kalen couldn’t control the energy of the land, although he could sense it. It never ceased to amaze him how easily Lee could call that energy to her hands. She carried weapons—all his soldiers did—but she rarely needed them. Lee was a weapon.

  The Jorniak demon screamed, the hissing quality of his death scream making their skin crawl, while the stench of his blood made their eyes water. Jorniaks never really stank, unless they bled. Once they bled, the smell of them was enough to make a grown man’s eyes water and his stomach rebel.

  “Did you have to kill him so fast? He could have been useful,” Dais muttered from behind Kalen. From the corner of his eye, Kalen saw his lieutenant crouching over one of the fallen.

  Lee’s bolt had killed him. Kalen’s pulsar blast had gone through one of the thing’s three lungs, enough to hurt him, enough to keep him from running very far. Dais had taught Kalen well and Kalen liked to ask questions.

  But Lee . . . well, her anger sometimes got the better of her. Eh, maybe actually leading the army wasn’t the wisest course of action for her. She acted first, asked questions later. She was a dangerous piece of work, true, but she had little use for talking to the demons.

  Kalen had learned the value of asking questions.

  But he understood why she had destroyed the thing. This small unit had been basically a hospital on wheels. A few soldiers, but most of the dead had been healers, the deirons who used the elusive healing magicks and the medics, untalented but skilled people who relied on science to bring a person back to health. They had been harmless, all of them. Healers had little use for fighting unless they were threatened.

  “He killed them all, Kalen.”

  With harsh, jerking motions, he shoved his plasma rifle into the harness at his back. Fury and grief burned inside him and he wanted to howl out his rage to the night sky. But at the low, rough sound of her voice, he turned to look at her, a fist closing around his heart. There were tears sparkling in her cerulean eyes.

  She blinked them away before they could fall, but still the sight of them was like a punch to his already battered system. Lee never cried. “Damn it, how much longer do we have to keep doing this?” she demanded, her voice shaking and hoarse with barely suppressed emotion.

  Kalen cupped his hand over her neck, drawing her against him, his body jumping to life as her sleek curves came into contact with his tensed muscles. “Until we win, darlin’. Until we win,” he replied. Or until they kill all of us. The words hung between them, unsaid, but understood.

  It made no sense. The brutality of the demon attacks had increased over the past decade with an intensity that sickened and scared all of them. There had been a time when the Anqarians had policed the demons themselves. It had only made sense—they used Ishtan as their breeding ground, so they wouldn’t want it totally decimated.

  But lately, it was as though Anqar didn’t give a bloody damn. Not that Kalen wanted to go back to simply evading slaving expeditions or fighting to free the females before it was too late, but this sudden reversal made little sense.

  “And when will we?” Lee asked. But she didn’t seem to expect an answer, and that was just as well. Kalen had no desire to lie to her simply to comfort her, but from where he stood, their future looked grim.

  A shudder wracked her body and then she sighed. The soft sound was broken in the middle by a weird little hitching hiccup. He gritted his teeth as he felt the soft push of her breasts against his chest, the smooth plane of her belly cuddling up against his cock.

  He could smell her. She smelled so sweet, so warm and alive. The scent of her body took him away from everything—for just the briefest moment, he could imagine himself reaching for Lee, holding her body against his. Feeling the warmth of the sun on his flesh, feeling her silken soft body moving against his own.

  A few seconds of peace—the rebellion faded away. The stink of his decaying, dying world, for a moment, was replaced by the warmth of a woman. Then, it was over. Lee stepped away and seemed totally oblivious to the effect she had on him.

  She turned to face the destruction and death that lay before them. Kalen watched as she shoved a shaking hand through her hair. Lee always hated being stared at. She slid him a nervous look and then jerked her gaze away. He sighed and turned away, forcing himself to walk into the splattered circle of blood.

  Akira was dead. She had been a twenty-one-year-old medic that Kalen had known since she was a kid. A tic throbbed in his jaw as he studied the gore that had been made out of her once pretty face. Her eye was missing, half her cheek, and bone gleamed in the moonlight. Blood shone wetly, her throat a raw, open wound.

  He closed his eyes and rested a hand on the smooth, unmarked skin of her brow. “Blessings on your path, little sister,” he murmured, the traditional farewell to a dead or dying friend coming harshly.

  At least she had died quick. And most likely first.

  Akira had been an anomaly, a true healer also blessed with telekinesis. Psychic skills weren’t common among those who went into the healing arts. The only talent common among them was the ability to heal using magick. All Akira had ever wanted to do was help people, and because of that, she was dead.

  If she hadn’t died fast, and first, she could have called for help. Akira’s ability to heal had been invaluable, her other abilities even more so—with her around, her unit hadn’t needed a designated telepath. The soldiers that moved with the med-unit were some of his best, but none of them had any kind of telekinetic skills. He’d counted on Akira being enough. Now she was dead and he’d have to live with that. With a hand that shook, he reached out and gently closed Akira’s one remaining eye.

  She was already cold. Damn it, she had just been fine . . . a few hours ago.

  Rage boiled inside his heart as he straightened up, turning his head, counting every last body. His voice was a rasping snarl as he demanded, “Are there any survivors?”

  Silence fell as his men fanned out and searched for any sign of life. Kalen knelt in blood, gore and other things that he didn’t want to think about as he checked the still bodies for a pulse, for breathing—any sign that someone had survived. There was nothing. He found himself standing at the edge of the clearing, staring at the unidentifiable remains of the Jorniak demons.

  “Kalen.”

  He lifted his head and stared at Dais. The old man’s lined face was weary and his eyes glittered with rage. “There are none left alive,” Dais said, his voice oddly gentle, as though that made the news any easier to hear. But Kalen already knew. Rage pounded inside him as he slowly turned around and stared at the devastation before him.

  The entire med-unit was gone, along with every patient that had been in the small roaming clinic. He counted twelve patients. One or two of them seemed familiar, but beyond that, he knew none of them. But the med-unit staff, he’
d known all of them. Five friends dead. Blood roared in his ears, while reality seemed to freeze in front of him.

  “Leave,” Kalen whispered.

  “Son?”

  Kalen lifted his head and stared at Dais, his eyes burning. A muscle jerked in his jaw as he repeated it, “Leave. All of you. Take the men back to camp.”

  “But the dead . . .”

  Kalen laughed bitterly. “The dead will still be dead in an hour, Dais. Get the hell out of here. Now.” Kalen didn’t bother to watch them leave; instead he turned his head and stared at Lee. She sat cross-legged by the body of a young child, holding a limp hand between hers. The tears had finallystarted to fall and her shoulders were wracked with the force of her sobs.

  Even in the middle of the massacre, the sound of her grief tore at him like jagged claws. He wanted to go to her. But standing over Akira’s body, he couldn’t. Rage shook him, ate at him, and the longer he stared at Lee, the hotter his rage burned.

  This could all stop.

  Lee could help them stop it.

  It was within her power. Kalen didn’t know how he knew that, but it was true. Magick wasn’t uncommon in his world. More than half of the women who served under him had magickal abilities. Many of the men had psychic skills of some sort. Save for the med-units, easily half of his forces had either magickal or telepathic skills. But none of them had the kind of potential that he sensed within Lee.

  She moved in the shadows of their world, always at night, fighting the demons while the moon rode in the sky and the demons were at their strongest. She fought them and she won. Somehow, she was their chance out of hell. He knew it in his gut. But none of that would do any of them a damn bit of good until she accepted who she was. If Lee would do that, they just might have a chance. He reached out to her and she ignored him every time. She came and did what she had to, and when it was done, she turned her back on them while Kalen’s people continued to die.

  His heart pounded in his throat and the bitter taste of anger lay heavy on his tongue as he stared at her. “How long will you hide, Lee?”