Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  She lifted her head, and a breeze blew by, blowing long strands of her silken hair across her face, hiding from him everything but those azure eyes. For long moments, she stared at him, unmoving.

  Kalen moved to her, the thick soles of his combat boots thudding dully on the rubble-strewn ground. It was thick with garbage, dirt, tossed medical supplies . . . and things he’d rather not think about, gobbets of nasty wet things he didn’t want to see. By the carcass of the senior medical officer, he paused and knelt. He felt a knot swell in his throat as he stared down into the man’s wizened old face. “God-speed, Jacob,” he whispered. He blew out a tired breath and ran a hand down his face before snagging a blanket from the rubble. Gently, he covered Jacob’s body before rising and meeting Lee’s gaze over the distance that separated them.

  Purpose filled his eyes, his gut, his steps as he moved to her. He curled his hands into loose fists and wondered if he would be able to control his temper this time. Kalen saw the trepidation enter her eyes, watched as her throat moved, the fragile skin shifting, betraying the nerves he suspected she was suddenly feeling.

  He could see the pain in her gaze, but it came nowhere near the pain he felt. Lee barely knew these people. She hadn’t been there when Akira returned from her medical training and forced her way into Kalen’s unit. She hadn’t been there when Akira helped deliver Jacob’s first granddaughter. She hadn’t been there when Akira sat by Jacob’s side as his wife died.

  No, Lee came and went. She never risked herself for anything longer than a few hours a night. A few nights a week. Weeks would go by when she wasn’t seen at all.

  It cost them lives. People depended on her.

  She had proved time and again she would only come when she couldn’t stay away any longer. Her conscious self didn’t even know what was going on. She hid behind the veil of her memory, safe inside her normal world, where demons didn’t exist, where everything was safeness, security and light.

  Here, in this darker reality, where things existed whether she liked it or not, she could join them, save lives . . . but she refused.

  Closing the distance between them, he loomed over her, staring down into a face he knew almost as well as he knew his own. “When are you going to open your eyes, Lee?”

  She blinked. He could seen the tension that suddenly tightened her body, stiffening her shoulders, drawing her back ramrod straight, tiny little lines fanning out from her eyes. Her lashes lowered, the spiky little fans hooding her eyes, shielding her gaze from him as she murmured, “What do you mean, Kalen?”

  “When you are going to come into the open? Join us? We’re dying while we wait for you,” he growled, reaching down and closing firm, unyielding hands around her upper arms as he drew her closer to him.

  “I’ve been helping you for twenty years, since I was a kid, Kalen. What more do you want?” she demanded. “I gave you my childhood.”

  “I want you to join us. Not to just fight when you can’t hide from your dreams anymore. What do you do when you’re not here? Where do you live? What is your home? I don’t even know your full name—do you?” She just stared at him and the irrational anger surged higher in him. “Damn it, what is your name?”

  With every harsh question, he watched her flinch. Even here she couldn’t answer. Even when she was here in her subconscious dreams, she was too afraid. With a rough, disbelieving laugh, he let her go and turned away, reaching up to rub a hand over his stiff neck.

  “You come and go like a shadow in the night, Lee. You’re like flashfire, baby,” he whispered. “Just as reliable. Just as hot. Just as deadly. You can cause a hell of a lot of damage to the Warlords’ armies. You can cut through demons like you’re cutting down grass. But too many of our people want to depend on you to always be there. People have launched entire campaigns, thinking that at the critical minute you will come and pull off a miracle. When they are right, it’s been amazing. But when they are wrong . . . it’s been too devastating for words. I can’t let them depend on you anymore. I can’t depend on you.”

  Turning back to face her, he felt a hollow ache settle in his heart. “You belong in my world. I know this—in my gut. You know it, you always have. Otherwise you wouldn’t keep coming here. You wouldn’t even know we existed.”

  Kalen plunged his hands through his hair, fisting them, resisting the urge to tear out hunks of hair, anything to relieve the building pain and frustration inside him. They needed to end this. They had to find a way to unite and drive back the monsters through the gate separating Kalen’s world from Anqar, a way to stop the Warlords’ ever-increasing raids, and they had to do it soon, or it would be too late.

  A sudden surge of weariness flooded him and he had to fight to stay on his feet. All the fighting, endless, seemingly useless fighting, inches gained only to loose yards on the next front. Staring into the sky, he studied the flickering lights of the auroras. They had once been much brighter, so beautiful it made the soul hurt just to look at them.

  Now he couldn’t even see the stars. The auroras grew fainter with each passing season. The skies were clogged with smoke and fumes. The fire-bearing demons were only partially responsible for that. Encampments relied on fire to keep back many of the demon breeds, so there were always fires burning. Some of the demons breathed out a noxious gas, adding to the already polluted air.

  Time passed and the skies grew more and more hazy, until the sun became little more than an indistinct bright circle behind the smog.

  Kalen couldn’t remember the last time he had seen stars.

  His world was falling apart. His people were being killed to extinction.

  “What are you waiting for, Lee?”

  “Kalen—”

  Cutting his eyes to her, he whispered silkily, “Don’t. Just—don’t, Lee.” Crossing over to her, he cupped her face in his hand, tightening his hold when she tried to jerk her face away. “You aren’t here every day. You haven’t been the one to go into a safe haven and find entire families slaughtered, wiped out, from the elders to the babes. You haven’t had to comfort friends as they had to watch the women they love slowly go insane because they were raped by the Warlords’ men.

  “You live there, in your reflection of this world, safe and secure, blind to what happens here. Except for your dreams, where you can’t block us out. And then, you come and you go—but you come because you can’t resist it anymore. You never come for us, for me.”

  “Damn it, I’ve saved your fine ass a number of times,” she sneered, jabbing him in the chest with a fingernail. It was bright, bold red, the color of junyai rubies, precious gems once found in the mines of Jivan. “Your life. This army. All of you.”

  “Yes. Because something disturbed you in your sleep, while you rest safe and sound in your safe little world. Damn it, I know what’s going on. You know. A part of you has always known,” he whispered passionately. The wind started to kick up and his hair blew around them like a cloak, winding around her slim shoulders as he moved closer, nudging her toes with his.

  “Known what?” she demanded, rising onto her toes so that she was snarling into his face.

  Her mouth was just a breath away from his . . . just one breath . . . Kalen could almost taste her, taste her fury, her fear, the hunger she tried so hard to hide. He laughed softly, releasing her chin to stroke his fingers over her eyes. “Known what you are. You don’t belong in the mundane, powerless realm. You’re magick. You’re power . . . You’re a warrior and you belong here. You see things in your world that other people don’t see, but you block it out. You feel things, hear things, sense things . . . You are like a wraith in that world. A mere shadow of your true self. When are you going to come home? Come to us, fight with us?”

  “I fight with you all the time,” she whispered, her lips trembling, tears welling in her eyes as she stared at him, hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. “You act like I’m in some other world, but I am right here.”

  “You’re still blocking it out. Even a
fter all this time.” Kalen shook his head. “Still. Lee . . . you are here. Part of you. Part of you lingers there. But you’re nothing but a shadow of yourself in either world. You have to open your eyes and start seeing your reality, instead of the one somebody created for you. Otherwise you’ll remain in the shadows.”

  Lee gritted her teeth, a tiny shriek of frustrated anger slipping from behind them as she spun away and punched her fist into the ruined wall of what had once been a mercantilery. “Damn it, what in the hell are you talking about? You always talk in riddles, you overgrown, self-righteous, hypocritical bastard!”

  He said her name softly and waited until she turned around to glare at him before he asked quietly, “Where do you go when you aren’t here? Do you know?”

  A blank look entered her eyes, one he had seen before. Often he tried to probe her mind—sometimes she deflected him, but sometimes, he knew she honestly didn’t know. Her face turned mutinous, a line forming between her eyes, that lush pink mouth puckering into a sullen, sexy little scowl. “What does that have to do with anything?” she demanded. She shoved a hand through her hair, pushing the blond curls out of her eyes.

  With a tired sigh, Kalen rubbed his forehead. “You don’t even know. Damn it, Lee, doesn’t that strike you as pretty fucking weird, that you don’t know where you go in between flitting in and out of my life?” he demanded, flinging a hand in her direction before letting it fall limply to his side as she just stared at him, her lids flickering, her eyes glittering like diamonds in the faint light.

  “What did you do yesterday?” he asked. Damn it, prove me wrong . . . prove me wrong! It would be so much easier if she was just some elusive witch from the mountains. From anywhere—so long as she lived on this world.

  But he already knew the truth.

  When she remained silent, he felt something inside him die. “You can’t,” he answered for her. “Because you don’t remember.”

  Something broke open inside him and he lunged for her, drawing his blade from the sheath at his hip, grabbing her forearm. She shrieked and shoved at him, startled. He could feel the fire of her magick as she pressed her hands against his chest. One hand pressed against the dull sheen on his cavinir jacket that he hadn’t zipped up. But the other landed on his chest, just a little off center.Above his heart. The heat of her power burned into his skin.

  Gripping her left hand, he wrenched her palm away from his chest. He could smell the scorched stink of burned flesh as he pinned her arm down. Stony-eyed, he used the blade to slice a shallow mark into her arm. His heart bled as he heard her soft gasp of pain. “Explain that . . . when you wake in the morning. Explain your bruises away, however you will. But explain a knife cut.”

  Turning from her, he stormed away. He felt a little sick in his gut for what he had done. He closed his eyes and fought the urge to scream and rail at her. It wouldn’t do any good. She hadn’t listened to him in all this time.

  She wouldn’t listen now.

  “Leave, Lee. Leave and don’t come back. We’ll fight this war without you.”

  And if she kept coming back, he would end up doing something that would destroy them both.

  TWO

  Lee woke with tears drying on her face and an ache in her heart.

  She stretched slowly, searching for any new aches and pains. Nothing felt outwardly painful, which was odd, because she felt like she had run the gauntlet. Usually when she woke feeling like this, she had myriad bruises all over her body.

  From her feet up, she stretched, rolling her ankles, tensing then relaxing her calves, her thighs, her buttocks, arching her spine. As she started to stretch her arms over her head, she yelped. A fiery pain exploded in her left forearm.

  Slowly, Lee sat up and cradled her arm close to her chest. She didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t want to see. This pain, whatever it was, felt different. Lee swallowed, the sound of it echoing in her ears. Foreboding filled her, hot and thick, as she slowly lowered her arm and stared at it. Watery sunlight filtered through the curtains, falling on the long, thin slash.

  It was three inches long, the dried blood on it forming a scab. It was hair-thin. It would heal quickly and probably wouldn’t even leave a scar. He hadn’t wanted to scar her. Just scare her, just make some sort of point.

  Terror bubbled inside her mind as she stared at the cut and wondered where that thought had come from.

  Explain that.

  An angry voice flooded her ears, and eyes loomed large in her vision, flooding out everything but their molten silver essence.

  We’ll fight this war without you . . .

  Swallowing, she rubbed her chest. The ache there expanded as his words echoed in her mind over and over. Explain that.

  Explain it—there was no earthly way to explain it. Well, there was one. She was going crazy. She was going crazy—having bizarre, insane dreams—and she had cut herself. But even as she thought that through, she knew it was wrong. This felt like no dream.

  It felt like a memory.

  A man’s face shimmered into her mind’s eye.

  The man from that piece she had been working on the other day.

  Kalen. His name was Kalen. His face had haunted her dreams for so long.

  Kalen, standing over a bloody mess of chaos and destruction, turning to look at her with pain and disappointment in those amazing silver eyes. His hair was a silken black cloak that hung around his shoulders, halfway down his back . . . and he was angry, so angry the air around him all but vibrated with his rage.

  You belong in our world . . .

  She closed her eyes, pressing her hands to her face. Behind her eyelids, she saw a world that was overwhelmed by war, by chaos, pitted, blackened areas that had once been cities, forests stripped of everything green and pure, a world so ugly and torn. Smoke filled the air and fires always burned. It was a terrifying, ugly image, as close to hell on earth as she could imagine. But like an afterim-age . . . another world wavered, just beyond the reach of her sight, something green and lush and rich.

  That was the world as it had once been. Before something, or someone, had torn open a hole that led straight to hell. Now it was a feeding and breeding ground for something evil, something vile.

  Too real . . . too real . . .

  Lee whimpered in her throat, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin there. You’re going out of your mind . . .

  That low, raspy voice, with its odd accent. Like Ireland, but heavier. Almost more ancient sounding. You belong in my world . . . It sounded like music to her ears: Y b’lon in me world. Ye know it . . . ye always have.

  His eyes were pools of molten silver, and just as hot. Damn it, there was no way she could have imagined a creature as fantastical as he was. Or as angry. The rage she sensed inside him was practically tangible. He seemed so real . . . Whimpering, she curled on her side in the bed and whispered, “What’s going on with me?”

  The entire dream, she remembered all of it. She had closed her eyes to go to sleep last night and had a brief moment of nothingness . . . then she had opened her eyes, seeing a murky display of greenish purple lights just beyond the thick cover of clouds. A strange sense of purpose had filled her, and she had moved through the bizarre landscape of empty rubble-strewn streets, shells of buildings, trees that were twisted and stunted. Walking those roads had felt familiar, and she had seen faces that she had known.

  The more she thought about the dream, the more memories she seemed to find, like they had been buried just under the sand and a wind had come, blowing the sand away and exposing the memories. Curling her hands into fists, she clenched her teeth against another onslaught of them. What is going on?

  Lee spent the day wandering the house, thinking she had lost her mind, her hold on reality. If she didn’t settle down and focus, she might just lose her job. She had four pieces due by the end of the week, but damned if she could focus on anything.

  After dropping the drawing board and the stylus for the third time, sh
e gave up on trying to work. Her equipment was too expensive to keep getting abused like that, and it wasn’t like she had accomplished anything today anyway. Not even crap. If she had finished a crappy piece, at least it would have been something she could try to rework tomorrow.

  She felt disconnected from everything around her. Even sitting down and trying to watch reruns of Law & Order was a waste of time. She couldn’t follow the plot to save her life, not today.

  His words kept echoing in her ears—Open your eyes . . .

  Damn it, what in the hell did those dreams mean?

  Why didn’t they feel like dreams? Dreams felt vague, blurry—or more often than not, she didn’t remember them at all. So often she woke up and felt like she had walked through an entire other world, but recalling those dreams was nearly impossible. But this dream? It all felt too real for words.

  She could remember the feel of his hands on her arms, the agony and the self-directed fury she saw in his eyes as he sliced that blade down her arm. Lee remembered the quick flash of pain—it hadn’t hurt, not at first. The pain came a few seconds later, but the pain wasn’t what had her so shaken.

  He’d cut her. He’d deliberately hurt her. For some odd reason, she felt betrayed by that.

  The cut . . . She lifted her forearm, staring at the cut with wide, troubled eyes. Anytime she had ever gotten hurt in life, it had healed with amazing speed. She hadn’t ever taken much notice of it, until another kid from the foster home she’d been living in when she was twelve came home with stitches in her leg from a laceration she’d gotten when she’d been hurt in a bike accident. Lee hadn’t seen stitches before.

  Technically, she’d heard of them. But weren’t they for more serious things? Little cuts like that healed in a couple of days. Well, they always did for her. But Toni had kept those stitches in for more than a week, and the nasty gash on her leg took weeks to heal.

  The cut on Lee’s arm was still raw. Still open. Like it wasn’t healing at all. Lee blew her bangs out of her eyes and dropped her arm, spinning away. “You weren’t in some magickal world last night. Some magicked blade didn’t cut your arm. You are you, nobody else.”