Through the Veil (5 page)

“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?”

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 after 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