Through the Veil (10 page)

This is sooooo not happening,
she thought helplessly, even as she jerked to the left and flung out her hand again. Again, and again, and each time, more of the Raviners fell.

Kalen broke free of their circle and fought his way to her side as the throng of creatures tried to regroup. But from their earlier number of several dozen, less than ten now stood. Blood roared in her ears. Her heart pounded frantically as fear gnawed a hole in her gut. But the Raviners all fell back, scrambling away from them. They watched Lee and Kalen from the depths of their hoods, hate radiating from them.

Lee’s hand fell to her side as they all rushed to the tear in the earth where they had ripped through only minutes before. As the last one disappeared from sight, her knees buckled and she started to collapse slowly, only to have Kalen’s arm come around her, supporting her weight against his body.

“This isn’t happening,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Not happening.”

Lifting her face, she looked up at him, seeing his lips move but hearing nothing as the roaring in her ears increased and a sudden blinding pain exploded just behind her right temple.

Kalen stood in the back of the small mobile hospital, brooding. Morne Ramire knelt over Lee, his long-fingered hands absorbing the negative energy from her wounded body, one hand on her forehead, the other resting between her breasts. The deiron’s hair fell around his face like a shield, hiding his features from Kalen, and the relaxed posture of his body told Kalen nothing.

Kalen had seen him that calm and serene as he guided a dying child into the arms of the ever after. Lee could be dying, and Kalen would never know just by looking at Morne’s face.

When Morne finally spoke, his deep, soft voice was weary, but Kalen heard a nuance in it that gave his heart hope even before he finished processing what the healer had said.

“She overextended, too hard and too fast. Your lady will wake up with a headache the size of a wyrm hole, but she’ll be fine,” Morne said, rising to his feet with boneless grace, turning to stare at Kalen with probing black eyes. The deiron’s face was as exquisite as if he had been formed by heaven’s own angels, but those eyes had more knowledge than Kalen would hope an angel would ever know. The shock of those black eyes in his pale face, surrounded by hair a soft, silvery blond—Kalen imagined his rather poetic looks had subjected him to endless tormenting as a child, but whether it had bothered Morne much was anybody’s guess.

He was . . . contained. Very, very contained.

He was also the most deadly soldier in their ranks, quite possibly even surpassing the skill of Kalen’s legendary father. Dead many years, Astrin Brenner had fought back the demons in their small haven for decades before he was finally cut down.

That a healer, of all people, was the one rising to meet that legend was unheard of.

Kalen hunkered on the ground by Lee’s head and ran his fingers through her tangled blond hair. He cupped a hand over her neck and contented himself with the slow, steady rise and fall of her breathing. “She scared the hell out of me. I’ve seen witches kill themselves by pushing too hard,” he murmured.

Behind him, Morne chuckled. “That lady would have to come close to leveling our world before she killed herself— you know magick is physically draining to the bearer, but Lee has more control than this.” He frowned and shrugged. “That little bit of magick I sensed earlier shouldn’t have even fazed her. Why did it? Lee’s been throwing blasts around since she was old enough for you to notice she was female.”

Kalen cut Morne a narrow look before looking back at Lee’s still face. “Would you believe she’s never really been here, my friend?”

The laughter that followed Kalen’s slow question wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. Rising, Kalen turned and met Morne’s eyes with a level stare, lifting one brow and waiting.

“The average warrior wouldn’t notice, even your warriors with all their gifts. And that’s most of what we have here. But a good healer knows when he is facing a person’s shade,” Morne responded, shrugging. “Still doesn’t explain why she made an amateur’s mistake and damn near put herself into a coma.” He focused his black eyes on Kalen’s face and simply waited.

“She doesn’t realize what she’s been doing here,” Kalen finally said after a lengthy silence had passed. “She came in her dreams, and when she woke, she forgot them.”

“And you’ve known this for . . . ?”

“Always. Or at least it seems that way.” Kalen closed his eyes, trying to recall a time that stood out when he knew that Lee wasn’t exactly of his world. “I’ve always known there was something odd about her presence here. Time passed—and I just knew.”

A soft sigh left Morne, and Kalen glanced up to see a faint frown on the man’s ageless face. “You’re dealing with a very powerful weapon, and she hasn’t a clue as to how to use a damn thing that is inside of her. This could be interesting.”

At the man’s mild tone, Kalen scowled. “Interesting? Bloody insane, that’s more like it.”

“Well, I’ve been told I am a master of understatement,” Morne said drolly. From the utility belt at his waist, he pulled out a small stack of minuscule circular pain patches and handed them to Kalen. “In case I’m out when she wakes.” He grabbed a pack from the ground and flipped it open, reaching inside and pulling out a sealed pouch of tea bags. “Chances are, she will not like it, but some insian tea will help. Restore her energy and clear up the headache. Let me know if I’m needed.”

Kalen didn’t respond. If something came up when she was waking, and Morne was needed, the deiron would already know. On rare occasions, a witch rising out of a slumber like this had trouble—in the form of seizures, or Raviners lurking nearby as they waited for a chance to possess the weakened body. Either one would release a burst of energy that Morne was unlikely to miss.

Kalen moved one of the small cots over by the sturdier, more comfortable patient bed. The patient beds were thick, cushioned jela pads, but the cots were just tough cloth strung over a metal frame. The jela pads were too few and far between a luxury for anybody other than the very sick, the wounded or the very old to use.

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 creatures she had seen yesterday didn’t exactly inspire laughter. The screams, definitely. Laughter, not in this lifetime.