Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  Kalen stroked a hand up her side and cupped her breast in his hand. With his thumb, he stroked a slow circle around her nipple. Her lashes lifted and she looked up at him. A slow, sexy smile curved her lips and she reached for him. That simple gesture was enough to shatter him. He went into her arms and took her mouth. She brought her legs up, her knees squeezing against his hips as she rocked up against him.

  His patience blew apart—she was silky wet. He could feel it through his pants. With a harsh groan, Kalen lifted up just enough to free himself from the too tight confines of his clothing. He was so hard he hurt with it, his skin stretched so tight over his throbbing length, even the brush of air against his cock was torture.

  He gritted his teeth and pressed against her. She was slick and warm and so sweet—she slid her arms around his neck, pulling him completely against her. Her breasts flattened against his chest. Her hips lifted to meet his and she turned her face toward his so that their mouths met.

  And against his chest, he could feel the rapid, erratic beat of her heart. He dropped his shields and he could sense Lee’s wonder, her staggering pleasure. The same as his own. He groaned against her lips and hooked his arms under hers, holding her so tight. He couldn’t imagine ever letting go of her. Not now.

  Her arms wrapped around his neck and she arched up to meet each thrust. It was sweeter than any dream. “I have dreamed of this,” he whispered against her mouth. “So many times.”

  Lee smiled against his mouth. “Me, too. And there’s no comparison.”

  “None.” He reached down and caught her hands, linking her fingers. “Nothing can compare to heaven.”

  Truer words had never been said, either. She wrapped her thighs around his hips, squeezing tight. Her heels dug into his low back and she arched up, taking him deeper. A smile curled her lips and she watched him. Her sheath flexed around his cock, slow, then she did it again, and again. Kalen groaned. He reared back and slammed into her, shafting her hard and fast.

  Lee’s eyes widened. She whimpered, a hungry, hot little sound, and then she bucked under him. Kalen lowered his head, pressing his mouth to her neck. He raked the skin lightly with his teeth and then bit down where the neck curved into the shoulder. Lee went stiff under him, her sex clenching down around him, squeezing his cock so hard and tight.

  She climaxed around him. The sound of his name on her lips, soft and ragged, as she came was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. He rasped out her name. He kissed her, and as she continued to shudder and quake from her orgasm, Kalen gave in to his. She milked it from him with a series of slow, convulsive little pulses, dragging it out and out, until he didn’t even have the strength to pull back.

  His arms gave way and he collapsed against her, with their hands still entwined.

  SEVEN

  “Two surveillance teams, ten men each.”

  “Just ten?”

  Kalen gave Dais a flat look. “Yes. Ten. As much as I’d like to send a full contingency, we can’t spare that many men. Two teams, ten men each.” Sending more than that was just asking for trouble. Somehow, the Warlords always knew when their defenses were down, and that was when the gates would open.

  Kalen wasn’t risking it. His gut insisted that this uneasy quiet wouldn’t last much longer, and he wasn’t going to send out any more men than absolutely necessary.

  Dais ran a hand over his beard. He looked like he had something else to say, but instead he just nodded. His faded green eyes narrowed as he studied the huge map before them. It had been carved into a table’s surface, and it was highly detailed, down to the rivers, streams, caves and abandoned villages, with the ruins of New Angeles making up most of the western edge. He tapped his index finger to the far northwestern quadrant and said, “We’re running short at this checkpoint, Kalen.”

  Silently, Kalen thought, Isn’t that a startling piece of news? It was always worst in the west. Out loud, he responded, “There is nowhere we aren’t running short, Dais. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “Perhaps we should send word back east. Certainly some of the camps can afford . . .”

  “I’ve already done that,” Kalen reminded him, shaking his head. He frowned a little, studying Dais’s face. “We talked it over with Laisyn and we sent word. At the time, you didn’t seem to think it was necessary.”

  With a weary sigh, Dais nodded. “Yes . . . yes. I’m sorry, Kalen. The past few days have me edgy as hell. Can’t even think straight.”

  A wry smile appeared on Kalen’s face and he replied, “Understandable. What reinforcements can be spared will be here when they can. Winter is coming as well. Sooner or later refugees in the mountains will come.”

  Dais’s lip curled. “Refugees. And you think they will be much help? They were too cowardly to come to us and ran to hide in the mountains. We do not need refugees who would rather hide than fight. If they come to us because they must do that or freeze, we don’t need them.”

  “That isn’t fair, Dais.” Kalen turned away from the former security officer and moved to the small table that he used for eating. The meal on it had long since gone cold, but he sat down and took a bite anyway. They weren’t running short on food yet, but they couldn’t waste it either. “Not everybody has the experience behind them that you have.” He leveled a steady look at Dais and reminded him, “Not all of us were given the formal training you received.”

  Hell, if it wasn’t for the refugees, his forces would be lesser by a third. At least. Many of them had resisted at first, thinking that the sudden influx of demons and Sirvani was something they could hide from.

  There had been a time when the gates opened only sporadically. Kalen didn’t remember it, but his father had. A century ago, the opening of the gate was rare, happening perhaps once or twice a year. Steadily, it became more and more commonplace, and by the time Kalen was born, Ishtan had become a world where the raids happened on a monthly basis.

  In that other life, decades ago, specialized units were trained to deal with the gates. That was where Dais had been trained. Then the raids increased and the specialists were killed before new ones could be trained. They lost more and more of the people to the war. Eventually governments failed, the advancement of technology stopped and war became their way of life.

  Dais made a disgusted sound. “They run into the mountains and hide, but they still cower in the night and pray for deliverance. They’d be better served to work for that deliverance than to pray for it.”

  “I think we’d all be better served to do both,” Kalen said mildly. “And that’s enough on this subject, Dais. You have teams to prep and I have work of my own.”

  Dais left without a word, and Kalen, appetite gone, stood up and paced away from his desk to stare outside. It was a quiet day, relatively cool and breezy. The breeze had cleared some of the smog, and Kalen could even see the faintest bit of sky far, far off to the east.

  Deliverance. He had always seen himself as something of a cynic, but compared to Dais, he wasn’t. Not at all. He’d spent more than half of his life praying for a way out of this. That hope had dimmed over recent years, only to burn anew when Lee came into his life.

  He had to wonder, though, was it wrong to place such a burden on her shoulders? She was simply human. Just like him. Instead of the more common psy skills, she had true magick, but even true magick wasn’t going to stop the raids from Anqar. Yet he couldn’t shake his gut-deep belief that Lee was the key. Magick aside, there had to be something more to her than what he saw.

  If magick alone could solve their problems, they wouldn’t have any. Eira wasn’t the only witch in Kalen’s world. Her daughters had all inherited her gifts, ranging from weak to extraordinary. There were other witches out in the world. Nearly every resistance unit that fought to keep a gate securehad at least one mid-level witch. And there was nothing the witches could do to the gates themselves. They could disrupt them enough to shut a gate down, but that was only temporary.

  The only way to win would be
to destroy the gate.

  There was a chiming sound behind him, and he glanced toward the old-fashioned clock hanging on his wall. The clock had belonged to his mother. It was old, relying on the simple mechanics of wheels instead of any sort of technology, and made of polished, smooth wood. The soft, soothing chimes at the beginning of each hour produced a sound he could remember hearing for as long as he’d been alive.

  Time to go see Eira. Morne and the medics were keeping her under close watch, and visits were structured and purposefully kept short so the old woman could rest.

  Leaving his half-eaten lunch behind, he headed out the door. Maybe speaking with Eira would help.

  “Look at you, old woman.” Kalen smiled gently as he slipped into the narrow room where Eira rested.

  She tuned her head and looked at Kalen. One side of her face looked like a mask, her eye dropping down, her mouth slack. It almost looked like a wax mask with one side having been exposed to fire just long enough for the melting to start.

  Neither Eira nor Lee could fill in the details of what exactly happened, so all any of them could do was guess. Eira had guided Lee into a trance, the old woman remembered that much. She’d sensed the approach of the Ikacado and hadn’t been concerned—Eira’s powers were formidable. After checking on Lee, she’d left the clearing to go deal with the Ikacado on her own. Dealing with a couple of firebreathers was nothing she couldn’t handle.

  But then something had happened; her vision had suddenly grayed out and she couldn’t stand. She remembered stumbling, then falling—after that, her memories of that day were nonexistent.

  It was like she’d stroked out with a couple of power-hungry monsters breathing down her neck and the only other person around had been caught in a trance, completely unaware.

  When Lee came out of the trance, she’d known something was wrong, but she hadn’t known what. All she’d been able to tell them was that Eira hadn’t been there and Lee had known something was wrong.

  It was a damn miracle she hadn’t been found by the Ikacado. If they’d come on her while she was in a trance, Lee would have been dead in a heartbeat.

  The other side of Eira’s face was practically normal as she shifted a little to meet Kalen’s gaze as he approached the bed. Her right eye was bright and sharp and she smiled just a little. “Old woman—aye, I truly feel like an old woman today.”

  Her voice was slurred, but at least he could understand her. Kalen had seen his fair share of people who’d received a serious brain injury and for whom even something as simple as talking was outside of their abilities. Being able to speak with her was nothing short of a miracle. Already, she was sitting up in the bed, aided with pillows but still, it was a sign of her strength of will that she was sitting up at all. “You look wonderful, corida.”

  She snorted. “Like bloody hell, that’s what I look like. Don’t be kind, boy. I know better.” Her eyes closed and she sighed. “Your mind is troubled.”

  Kalen smiled reluctantly. “And I thought I was hiding it.”

  Eira laughed. The sound seemed to tangle inside her throat and choke her. He waited until the coughing fit passed, and then he took the water glass from the small chest serving as a table. He held it to her lips and she sipped the thickened water slowly. Some of it dribbled out and he carefully wiped it away. Eira turned her head aside but not before he caught the sadness and shame there.

  “Corida, you call me. Bah. All I am is an old, helpless woman,” she murmured. “We can’t afford to keep somebody at my side night and day.”

  “We can,” Kalen said in a flat voice. “And we will.”

  “I do not wish to argue this with you again,” she said tiredly. She glanced toward the doorway, and Kalen knew she was thinking about the battle-trained medic he’d assigned to watch over her. Thinking about it, and hating it. But surprisingly, she said nothing. He was relieved, because he wouldn’t argue this with her again.

  He wouldn’t leave her unguarded, not again. She saw herself as a weakness, a hindrance. Kalen simply saw her as a friend that he intended to protect.

  She shifted a little and sighed, holding out a hand to him. “What is weighing so heavily on your mind, Kalen? Is it Lelia? Are there problems?”

  He settled beside her and accepted her hand. Watching her, he caught sight of something in Eira’s eyes. A flicker. A smile that was there and then gone. “Lee has always been a problem,” he muttered. Then he shrugged. “All in all, I would say she is doing well. It’s a drastic change she’s had to deal with. It can’t be easy.”

  “She needs some time.”

  Kalen swore under his breath. “That’s the problem, Eira. We don’t have that much time. Something is coming, I can feel it. I don’t know if Lee is going to be ready. She has too much to deal with, and while she’s doing her best to cope, I’m trying to figure out how to buy time and I feel like I’m running out of options. I don’t know which way to go now, how to act—none of it.”

  “You don’t act, Kalen. You react. You wait for the raids, you set traps—very successful ones, but traps nonetheless. Defensive tactics. We need offensive.”

  Kalen felt the dull rush of blood to his cheeks. He fought down the instinct to lash out, because even though it sounded like criticism, he knew it wasn’t. “I can’t think of a way to go on the offensive, Eira. The gates will not yield to us, and the few times we have gotten our hands on a Warlord, he used the gate’s power to kill our men. We can’t keep losing them like that.”

  “I know, Kalen,” she said gently. Then she sighed tiredly and closed her eyes. He thought she’d drifted to sleep and he stood to leave.

  “When will you send Lee to me? I have so much yet to teach her and time is no more my friend than yours.”

  He went stiff. Send Lee to her? Was she trying to hasten her death? She needed rest. Without turning to look at her, he said, “We have discussed this, Eira. Not until you are better.”

  “I’m not going to get much better, lad, and we both know it.”

  He didn’t know that. He wouldn’t believe it. “Wait a little longer, Eira.” She already looked better than she had a week ago. But she wasn’t ready to get back to training Lee.

  “Kalen, you know as well as I that we cannot afford to wait. We cannot. There are things I must tell Lee and I will not risk my time running out.” She fell silent for a moment, studying him with gentle, understanding eyes. “You call me corida and I know you mean it. You’ve always respected and trusted me, even when others thought I was going mad. Trust me now, Kalen. You are our leader here and none will go against you.”

  He shook his head. “You are too weak, Eira.”

  “And I will not get stronger, Kalen. This is a simple truth.” He flinched at her words, and she seemed to understand exactly what was going through his mind. “I am dying, Kalen. Time and rest will not change that. What else have I to do? Lie here and just wait to die?” Eira asked quietly. “I wait already.”

  “You are not dying,” Kalen said softly. Standing up, he shook his head and started to pace the narrow, confined space. “You’re not.”

  But he knew he lied. There was only so much they could do for someone suffering from recurring strokes. Damage done by advancing age was something outside of a healer’s ability. Morne had done what he could, but it had been precious little.

  If she had another stroke, Eira would be gone.

  But Kalen didn’t want to think about that yet. She was a fixture in his life. Save for the war and Lee, she was the one thing that had always been there, and even more rare than that, she was a welcome constant.

  The war had been raging his entire life.

  Lee had been there more than half of his life, but there had been times when her presence was almost too painful, the way she came and went, appearing and then disappearing like smoke.

  But Eira was constant. He could count on her honesty. He could count on her listening when he needed it. Simply put, he could count on her. He always had been able to. He
wasn’t ready to let that change.

  “It has to change, boy.”

  He looked up and flushed as he realized he’d been broadcasting his emotions, his shields dropped so that he was wide open. Eira had picked up every last thought. The stroke hadn’t affected that part of her brain. Slowly, he sat down beside the bed. The medic lingering at Eira’s side left silently. Kalen held out his hand and Eira lifted hers. He closed his fingers around hers and squeezed.

  “It is changing, boy. I’m sorry for it—you need me still. All of you. Lee is not ready. Perhaps if Elina was here, she could take my place and train your warrior woman. But she is not.” Each word was slow, stilted, but her voice was determined. “Send for her. Elina will come. She can train Lee, and together, the two of you can battle back this darkness. Perhaps even defeat it. I only wish I could see it.”

  “You will.” Kalen tightened his hand and made himself smile. But it was a lie, both his words and the smile, because he could all but see the death lurking on her.

  “No.” Her one good eye narrowed, and she gave him a glare he could remember from childhood. The one that meant she wasn’t going to buy any innocent line he might hand her to get out of doing whatever it was he should have been doing. “You were never a liar, Kalen. Do not start now.”

  She tugged her hand from his and pressed the control on the bed railing. The ancient bed rose at the head, degree by degree, and she shifted around. Kalen reached over to help and she stilled. “I may be old and dying, but I am not yet dead. If I need help, I shall ask.”

  Finally, she settled back against the mattress with a weary sigh. She closed her eyes and without looking, she said, “The damage inside my head cannot be undone. Some of the medics are working on an herbal concoction. Could buy a few more weeks. I’ll use those weeks to do what I can with Lee. Fight me on this, Kalen, and I will spend those last weeks making your life hell.” Her lids opened—well, the right one did. The left one did little more than flicker. “My brain still functions, Kalen. I am not dead yet. I am not yet useless. Let me do what I can. I have to do this.”