Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  There had been a time when the jela pads were standard. Once he’d been able to prepare his food with just a simple thought that activated the thought-sense trigger in the food prep area of his parents’ home. It seemed like a different life.

  Perhaps it had been. More than twenty years had passed since his father died. He’d just been a kid. And that was when the world seemed to come crashing down around him.

  For so long, Astrin and his small defense force had kept many of the demons at bay, away from the small valley in the Roinan Mountains. For a long while, they’d been beneath the notice of the larger demon packs. Astrin and a small army of vigilant, dedicated soldiers had kept the smaller ones back. Sirvani had focused on larger cities and not the small rebel bands that hid in the mountains. Months at a time would go by with not even a single sighting of the enemy.

  Astrin’s death seemed like it had been the beginning of the end.

  More than twenty years later, Kalen still tried to defend the land his father had protected for so long. They held on to their lands, but everywhere were the signs of devastation. The once lush valleys of the Roinan mountain range had been slowly turned into wastelands—either arid stretches of land where nothing would ever grow, or smoldering, stinking marshes where even the very air tasted foul.

  Kalen just didn’t know how much longer they could keep pulling off miracles. So many other places had fallen. There were rumors that some countries no longer had any humans living free. Many eastern countries were believed to be completely overrun by demons. Even the fall of the Jivan Gate was little consolation—those lands were already lost.

  The lands to the far north were believed to be the only true sanctuary, as many of the demons couldn’t tolerate the extreme cold of the polar regions. But the cold was so harsh, many of the mortals in Ishtan couldn’t live there either. Damned pity, too, because there were no known gates in the far north.

  The Union of Aishen might well be the last nation in his world to fall . . . but if something didn’t change, they would fall.

  They killed the intruders, the raiding parties of Sirvani, the occasional Warlord and the demon races that poured out of Anqar, but Anqar’s numbers were so vast.

  Men taken as slaves worked until they collapsed and then they were killed. Women were used as breeding machines, kidnapped from their homes in the dead of night, dragged across the Veil, where the Warlords raped them until they conceived and then repeated the process over and over until the woman’s body gave out.

  Humans were being pushed to extinction, and their world would soon be nothing more than a memory.

  “No,” he murmured to himself. He shook his head. They would not even be a memory—in time, there would be not one soul left that remembered Ishtan or the resistance.

  Turning his head, he stared at Lee as she slept. She looked innocent, almost frail in her sleep, and he tried to reconcile the woman he saw before him with the woman he had fought beside for so long. She was just a woman—mortal, like him. She ate, she drank, she slept—she hurt. Mortal. More than that, she was a mortal who didn’t even understand the power inside her veins. She didn’t know who she was or what she could do.

  How was it that she could be so very important to this war? Kalen did not know the answer, but it didn’t matter, not to him. She wasn’t just important. Lee was vital. If they stood any chance at all, it would be because of her.

  Lee woke with a groan. Even that small sound set her head to screaming, and she clamped her lips closed as she felt another moan rising in her throat. Her entire body was abuzz with pain—too much sensation for her to even locate the source of it.

  She almost felt hungover, but Lee couldn’t remember drinking. She didn’t care for liquor much—hated the loss of control that came with tying one on. As a headache pounded inside her skull, she thought back to the past night.

  For once, there was something more than a surreal blur of thoughts. She actually remembered much of what had happened. And talk about bizarre.

  “Oh, man, what a weird dream,” she muttered. Her belly pitched and she swallowed down the bile burning up her throat. She wasn’t going to throw up.

  Her hands brushed the surface of the mattress, the slick, soft material, and her eyes flew open. Everything spun in dizzying circles, but none of the circles dancing before her eyes were familiar. Slowly, the tan circles slowed and coalesced into one solid form. Wood. A wooden ceiling. Exposed beams, lanterns swinging from those beams by long chains.

  Where in the hell was she? Lee tried to remember something before the dream, but none of it made sense. Nothing seemed clear.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t in her bed and she wasn’t in her own room. That was clear. She also felt worse than usual. Since she usually woke up feeling like she’d been through a battle, that was a bad sign. Her belly pitched and rolled as she slowly flexed her body. The bed under her felt unbelievably good, molding to her form and cradling every last inch of her. If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t know where in the hell she was, she might have been tempted to just keep lying there.

  She did a quick check on her body, rolling each foot at the ankle, tensing the muscles in her thighs, closing her hands into fists. All sorts of various aches but nothing that really hurt—well, her foot hurt a little, but nothing to account for this pain. Finally, all the aches and pains stopped humming and she could locate the source of the pain.

  Son of a bitch! It coalesced behind her eyes, exploding into a mind-searing burst that probably singed her eyeballs. “Oh, hell,” she mumbled. Lee carefully lifted a hand and covered her eyes. Her throat was scratchy. She felt like she hadn’t had anything to drink in months. Her belly was an aching, empty knot, but even though hunger screamed through her, the thought of eating anything was enough to have her gagging.

  With the pain in her head, puking would not be a good idea. Not at all. She heard a sighing sound. Logically, she realized it wasn’t that loud. It was the same kind of noise somebody made when they were sleeping—just a heavy little sigh. But it echoed in her ears like a tortured scream. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but even the thought of touching her head was enough to have her shuddering in pain.

  That sound, though, meant she wasn’t alone. Not alone meant that maybe there was somebody who could do something about this pain in her head. And an explanation wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

  Slowly, she turned her head. A shock of recognition jolted through her when she saw the hard, chiseled lines of the man whose face had haunted her subconscious and appeared in so much of her work.

  Did going insane hurt? Because that was the best explanation she could come up with. She was seeing a guy that only existed in her work and in her dreams. If insanity hurt, that could certainly explain the pain in her head.

  Everything about him was exactly as he appeared when she reproduced that hawklike visage on her work pad. The arched, sweeping brows, the black silk of the hair that framed his face, the hard sensual lips, relaxed ever so slightly in sleep. Even the small scar that bisected his chin.

  Her eyes moved back to his mouth, and she briefly wondered what he tasted like. And then memories from yesterday slammed into her. The voices in her head. The mirror. The field, so empty and desolate, and him. The feel of his hair in her hands, on her body, the hard, unyielding press of his mouth against hers, and his taste.

  Like a digital image, it was crystal clear in her mind, every last memory. Insanity wouldn’t be this vivid, would it . . . she wondered.

  The thick black fan of his lashes lifted. Even before she found herself staring into the molten silver, she knew his eyes would be that color. “This is really happening,” she said, keeping her voice level, trying very hard not to sound like she had the screaming meemies.

  Which of course, she did, but she refused to let anybody else know that. Nobody else needed to know that she couldn’t make up her mind between screaming or breaking out into nervous laughter. Although the cr
eatures she had seen yesterday didn’t exactly inspire laughter. The screams, definitely. Laughter, not in this lifetime.

  Both laughter and screaming would only make her head worse—and if it got much worse, Lee suspected her head would split in two.

  “Aye,” he replied, his voice just as level and so soft it only hurt her ears a little. “It is really happening. How does your head feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  He sat up, tossing his hair out of his face and propping his elbow on his knee, resting his chin in the cradle of his palm as he studied her. “You could have hurt yourself,” he finally said.

  Touching her fingers to her temple, she muttered, “I think I did.”

  He laughed. He reached out and stroked a finger down her temple. “That is just a headache. A bad one, I imagine, but it is a headache. I’ve seen people send themselves into comas because they pushed themselves too far with their magick.”

  The noise that left her was little more than a squeak. Clearing her throat, she said, “Muh-magick?”

  Kalen made a tiny noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “Well, it was not puffy white clouds drifting from your hands yesterday. Yes, pet. Magick.”

  Lee shook her head. “Magick isn’t real.” She licked her lips as she said it, and wondered why those words felt so . . . wrong.

  “I think you know it is.”

  Thinking made the pain in her head worse, she decided as she squinted at him. “You are confusing the hell out of me.”

  He leaned forward and she found her eyes lingering on the bulge of muscle in his arm. Another memory surfaced. His hands on her body. His mouth on hers. She had kissed him, had wrapped herself around his body like she wanted to crawl inside him. And he’d kissed her back with the same hunger. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she dragged her eyes away from his muscles, forcing herself to focus on his eyes. But the dancing light there had her groaning. He knew, exactly, what thoughts were running through her mind.

  Gingerly, she rolled onto her belly and buried her head in her arms. Even that was enough to make that bright, throbbing pain double in intensity. She moaned her way through it and as the wave of pain peaked and then ebbed away, she muttered, “Why is this happening to me?”

  His fingers, long and warm, came up to stroke down her neck, before he settled into a soothing massage. She could have whimpered as he worked the tense muscles until they felt about as loose as putty. “I have no answer to that. At least, none that I could explain. But you belong here. How you managed to get from our world to the one you call home and then back—I have no explanation.” A long moment of silence passed and he sighed. “But you have a great deal of power within you. The creatures from Anqar are attracted to power. Without strong protectors, a great many children with gifts like yours die before they even reach puberty. Die or are taken. So however you ended up in that world, it was a blessing.”

  “What is Anqar?” she asked. But before he could answer, a flash of pain exploded behind her eyes and she had to stifle her whimper in the odd-feeling mattress beneath her. “Damn it, my head . . .”

  “Roll over,” he ordered gently.

  She resisted, and his hands came up and carefully, but forcefully, turned her onto her back. “This will help.” His voice sounded odd, tinny, as though he was speaking to her through a tunnel, as he touched his fingers to the middle of her brow. Almost instantly, cool, sweet relief started to ease the pain inside her head. After a few minutes passed and the pain had all but abated, Lee chanced opening one eye and looking up at him.

  “Are you magick?” Touching her fingers to her brow, she felt something small and smooth against her skin, something disc-shaped. And to her touch, it felt cool.

  “It’s medicine,” Kalen responded with a faint grin. “No magick needed. I should have not even waited until you woke. There is some tea you need to drink. It will settle the nausea in your belly, and help your strength to return faster.”

  She closed her eyes, sighing blissfully, and murmured, “If it works as well as this, give me a gallon of it.”

  Moments later, though, as he forced the cup back to her lips, she pressed against his wrist and snapped, “That tastes disgusting.” She would have thrown it, except he wouldn’t let her. The taste of it coated her tongue, seemed to cling to her throat. Sewer water would have tasted better. It was bitter, pungent, and there was a faint moldy taste to it, like something in it should have been pitched ages ago. He pushed it toward her again and she turned her head. “Get that crap away from me.”

  Kalen arched a brow and said, “The sooner your energy comes back, the sooner those headaches will stop. That pain patch will not stop them forever.”

  With a curl of her lip, she said, “I’ll just use the patches, thank you.”

  Turning her head away, she started to lie back down, only to have him fist a hand in her hair and yank her head back. She gagged on the tea while he literally poured it down her throat. Choking on the vile stuff, Lee jerked against his hold. When he finally let go, she spat what remained in her mouth out at him, gasping and rubbing at her stinging eyes. “You jackass!” she shouted in between coughing fits.

  “Next time, maybe you’ll drink it on your own,” he responded levelly.

  “Next time, you can kiss my ass,” she wheezed out, snatching the cup of water he held out to her. At least, she hoped it was water. Water or cyanide. Right then, she couldn’t decide which she’d prefer. It was just water, though, cold and oddly sweet. She downed half of it before shoving the cup back at him and flopping down on the bed.

  “I would be rather happy to.” A cold cloth wiped over her face, and her eyes flew open as she batted his hand away.

  “Happy to what?” She rolled onto her belly and buried her face in the mattress. She would have cut her arm off before she admitted that the churning in her belly had eased.

  He slid a hand down her back, and Lee tensed as that hand cupped the curve of her butt. His hair fell down around them when he bent over her, sliding along her bare arms as he murmured, “You suggested that next time I could kiss your ass.” Through her thin pajamas, she could feel the heat and strength of his hand on her there. He squeezed lightly, and she had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from sighing a little. “I would be happy to.”

  He nuzzled her neck, his warm breath drifting over her skin like a caress. An involuntary moan slipped past her lips. She tried to make up for it by tensing her entire body, but she felt limp and loose as putty. Fortunately, she did have a little control over her voice, even if her damn body had developed a mind of its own. “Leave me the hell alone,” she snapped, and she was pretty pleased that she managed to sound more like a shrewish bitch than a sex kitten.

  Kalen laughed and slid his hand back up her body, his fingers trailing along the slope of her hip, the slight indentation of her spine, the curve of her breast. He brushed her hair away from her face and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I will . . . for now.”

  “I think for the next fifty years would be better,” she mumbled. The nausea was completely gone, and the rest of the pain in her head had completely receded. The lack of pain didn’t make her mood improve, though. She could still taste that repulsive tea, and her face was still hot with embarrassment and irritation over the little trick he’d pulled, forcing that crap down her throat. Oddly enough, she would have been a little happier if she was still wracked with pain.

  He cupped his hand over the back of her neck. “Feeling better?”

  Obstinate, she lied. “No. I feel like hell.”

  His finger tapped her nose and he whispered, “You are entirely too stubborn. Get some more sleep.”

  Although she was exhausted, sleep was now the last thing on her mind. She wanted to stay awake, just because he had mentioned it. But only moments after he walked out, her lids started to droop.

  Before she realized it, she was sleeping, a deep, dreamless sleep.

  FOUR

  Kalen barked out a series of
orders to the small unit before him. Two of the members of that unit stood in the front, their eyes full of pride and purpose. The purpose reassured him, but the pride made him worry. They were so damn young— Kalen cut off that train of thought before it could go any further. Young, yes, but he’d been younger than the twins when he first started fighting. And the sad fact was that they were safer in his unit than they would be if he turned them away. They just would have sought out another resistance to join, if they lived through the journey.

  He had heard the soft footsteps behind him, but he didn’t turn in Lee’s direction as he finished reminding the two younger men before him that this wasn’t a game, or a contest about who had the bigger dick.

  “Lives are on the line here. We have to hold that line. No foolishness. No playing around. No antics. Just plant the plasma charges and get back here. It’s Morne’s job to stay there and monitor. Not yours. I don’t want any heroics or stupid acts of so-called bravery. I just want—”

  “The charges planted and our asses back here before nightfall,” Dagon repeated, rolling his grass-green eyes as his brother pretended to at least look somber.

  He didn’t like it, Kalen thought as he studied the brothers. Dais stood at his side in silence and Kalen slanted him a glance. The older man just smiled. They were ready. Or at least as ready as any of them could get.

  It’s not that dangerous a job, he told himself. The biggest danger this time of day was the charges themselves, and the twins were techno-wizards. They could handle a couple of charges. Finally, he blew out a sigh and said, “Go. Get on with it, and be careful.”

  Dais clapped a hand on his shoulder and murmured, “Don’t worry so much, Kalen. They are smart, strong kids. They’ll be back, and soon.” He grabbed a pack from the floor and slung it over his shoulders. “Now I have a watch to finish. Lelia.” He nodded at Lee on his way out the door, but Lee never took her eyes from Kalen.