Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  The Jorniak demon that had attacked her was dead. Dust in the wind. Not that Kalen had anything to do with it. Lee had taken damn good care of it herself. She was good at that. Always had been. Scowling, he wondered if maybe she was a little too good at it. Good at taking care of herself, good at rationalizing away problems, good at everything.

  Clenching his jaw, he turned away from the Veil and prepared himself to face the coming day without her. It was a frightening thought. But it always had been. One never knew what the day might bring. Not in this world.

  There had been another demon attack, this time high up in the mountains, striking the small settlement of families living there. They had refused to come down into the valley. Too close to the Roinan Gate. It was as if they thought a few miles would protect them. They had been wrong, terribly wrong, and Kalen had to live with the guilt of not trying harder.

  Raviners had killed the few men and taken their time with the women and children. It brought back memories too ugly for him to dwell on, staring at their remains. He couldn’t even take a little bit of comfort in knowing that his men had slaughtered the Raviners. If he had taken them down himself, filling their bodies with the dangerous power of the pulsar he carried at his hip, it wouldn’t have been any comfort.

  They were losing a little more ground every day. The demons were breeding in his world now, and they didn’t have to wait for the Roinan Gate to open for more of their numbers. There had been a time when finding a clutch of demons was a rare occurrence and they were killed quickly, if not always easily.

  They might have a ghost of a chance if they could shut down the fucking gate. Though the demons were breeding in Kalen’s world, they didn’t breed easily. Kalen’s people could hunt them down and kill them, but every time it seemed the resistance had gotten the advantage, the earth would rumble, signaling another influx of monsters as the gate was forced open.

  It was an ugly, thankless job he was doing and one that often seemed pointless. No matter how many demons they killed, more sprung up to replace the dead. No matter how many lives they saved, they’d turn around and find more slaughtered. For every female they managed to save from the raiders, three more were taken.

  It was to the point that the men now outnumbered the women four to one. Girl children were taken into the east, away from the gate, but Kalen heard rumors that girls were being kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder. As young as three or four—whoever the winner was, he’d care for the child and then take her to his bed as soon as she was old enough. Some didn’t even wait beyond the girl’s first menstrual period.

  This damn war was turning his people into savages, and Kalen was losing hope. It hadn’t been so hard at first—he’d been young and idealistic, convinced that with the loyal, devoted people that formed the resistance, they could face whatever hell Anqar threw at them. Convinced that Lelia would soon join them—truly join them. But instead, he was leading the resistance alone as he had for the past fifteen years.

  Facing another day without her—and until she was ready to accept reality, not her idea of what reality was, it wasn’t hard to imagine that each new day could be his last.

  Lee stared with focused intent as she wielded the stylus, watching as the image took on life and color. It was a man. His features were familiar to her but that was no surprise. She’d drawn his face easily a hundred times. But he hadn’t ever seemed this clear to her. This vivid.

  A strong jaw, quicksilver eyes that could glint hot with fury one second and then be as cold as death the next. His long hair blew in the wind, tangling over wide shoulders as he stared out over a land that looked barren and desolate. There was something starkly beautiful about it, though. As if once it had been so lovely, it could bring a tear to the eye. Now it looked like some kind of hell.

  He was crouched on a jagged outcropping, wearing a coat that billowed around a lithe, powerful body, tensed and ready . . . She added more color to his hair, a silvery sheen to the dense black. Then she added more definition to the muscles that rippled along his forearms under the rolled-up cuffs of his coat.

  Lee worked in a daze. Once she finished with the man, she added to the background, working with the sky, the clouds, drawing in just the barest outline of creatures so monstrous they would have given her nightmares if she was prone to them. In her mind, they already had names. Jorniak demons. Raviners. Sirvani.

  Battles raged in her mind as she worked. Hissing calls, furious shouts, the sounds of metal clashing, the hum of a laser weapon slicing through flesh. She could almost smell the scent of burnt flesh.

  There were no battles for him now, though. The battles had already been fought. Now he rested. Now he prepared. Now he waited . . . waited for her.

  I’m getting tired of waiting, Lee . . . We need you . . .

  Then silence fell and she heard him, like he was whispering into her ear, from just over her shoulder. How much longer will you hide from what you are?

  Lee snorted. “Just because I don’t think you are real doesn’t mean I am hiding,” she muttered as she saved the work. Standing up, she wavered a little, her knees weak and shaky, as though she had just run a mile. Or fought a battle. Pressing a hand to her temple, she laughed shakily. “You’re losing your mind, chick.”

  Actually, you’re a little more sane now than usual, Lee. When are you going to stop fighting the truth, pet?

  Lee ran her tongue around the inside of her cheek as she started across her studio. “I’m hearing things,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Man, I need a break. A vacation. Drugs. Something.”

  You need to stop being so blind, Lee.

  “Damn it!” she shouted, spinning around. “Would you shut up?” That voice sounded so real . . . Holy shit.

  It was him. The man from the picture.

  He was standing right there.

  In her studio.

  With hair that flowed to broad, rock-hard shoulders, eyes the color of pewter, and a coat like Jack the Ripper would have worn. It hung down to the floor and had one of those weird little capelet things. Under the coat, he had a leather harness on his chest and she could see easily five different blades. His eyes glinted like silver and his hair was raven-wing black.

  But he was also transparent. Lee pressed one hand to her mouth as black dots started to dance before her eyes. His teeth appeared as he grinned at her, a sensual twist of his lips before he faded away. She managed to whisper, “Oh, hell,” before she hit the ground.

  Long moments later, Lee groaned and forced her lids to lift. There was a throbbing just behind her brow as she sat up. With her hands on the ground, she stiffened her arms and forced her weight up, swearing as the world spun in dizzying circles around her. “Whoa . . . what in the hell . . . ?”

  An image of that man danced before her eyes. “For crying out loud,” she muttered, pressing a hand to her forehead. Damn it. “Working too hard.”

  Yeah. That had to be it. Had to be. She was working too hard, sleeping too little and stressing over it all. That was why he had looked so real to her. There was a life to him that was unlike anything she had ever drawn in her life. Everything, from the texture of his hair, the color of his eyes, to the demons that surrounded him.

  She got to her feet, locking her knees when her legs wobbled underneath her. She needed to go to bed. But the dreams would chase her too vividly there. His image would follow her. Haunting her with that dark, quicksilver gaze and that mocking grin that seemed to taunt her every time she closed her eyes.

  “I’m losing my mind,” she groaned.

  Rubbing her eyes, she shut her computer down and left her studio. “That’s it. I’m done for the day.”

  Kalen watched with a faint smile as she walked away, shaking her head and probing the goose egg that was no doubt forming. She’d seen him. He’d seen the shock in her eyes, felt her gaze connect with his . . . at last. She was already rationalizing it away, but for once, he had managed to breach her conscious mind. He opened his eyes, and the vision
of the Veil faded away, replaced once more by the physical world.

  Not everybody could see the Veil, or see through it. It took years of training to see beyond what the conscious mind allowed. Kalen had been forced to learn to do it as he ascended through the ranks of their ragtag rebellion. Considering the demons they fought, they needed all the advantages they could get. It wasn’t always handy, but the few times he’d looked through the Veil and seen what the Warlords of Anqar had planned for his people, he knew it was worth it. Saving just one life would have been worth it.

  Being able to use it to spy on Lee was just a bonus.

  Maybe tonight they would speak of something more than the battle against Anqar.

  Hours later, Kalen growled to himself, “And perhaps kittens will fly.”

  Lee stood in front of the front line of the temp base set right at the city limits. Angeles lay before them in ruins. Until Kalen had moved his people here, the only living creatures in the ruined city were the few poor souls that had managed to evade both demon and Sirvani.

  She stood quiet and intent, focused on something that he couldn’t see or sense, although he wouldn’t have been surprised if she was feigning that concentration just so she wouldn’t have to look at him. From the time she had appeared out of the forest at sunset, Lee had been ignoring him entirely, like that brief, surreal moment earlier in the day hadn’t happened. If Kalen had thought things would be different, he was very much mistaken.

  It was business as usual for the pale, pretty blonde. The past few weeks had gone by with an uneasy quiet. It didn’t bode well for them. Other than the encroaching bands of Raviners and the demon attack in the mountain settlement, there hadn’t been much demonic activity on the radar. Small skirmishes, but very few outright attacks and absolutely no raids for nearly two months. The gate wasn’t completely inactive—weird little flickers that lasted a few heartbeats before it fell silent.

  Their enemies never went this quiet for long. Lee’s presence only added to Kalen’s unease. The woman usually only showed up this regularly when trouble was brewing. She was silent and tense, her body practically vibrating from the nerves inside her as she paced the perimeter of the encampment.

  Kalen didn’t think it was the devastated landscape that held her attention.

  Much of the city had fallen to ruins, but the inhabitants of New Angeles were determined not to lose one more square foot of their land. Anqar had been a blight on Ishtan for centuries untold. Entire families went missing in the dead of night. A horde of demons slipped through a gate and devastated small villages.

  But Ishtan had always battled them back. The small raiding parties that came through were nothing that Ishtan couldn’t handle. But the past two generations had seen drastic changes, and all of it for the worse. Gates were blasted open, unleashing a series of natural disasters that devastated the land. Entire armies replaced the small raiding parties. Demons came through unchecked.

  Ishtan was being overrun. Even though their resistance had battled back the invaders from Anqar, Kalen knew their luck wouldn’t hold forever. When they fell, it was over.

  Not because they were the only hope of an already broken world. Pockets of rebellion were scattered across the globe. But here in New Angeles, at the base of the Roinan mountain range, lay the gateway to and from Anqar. There were other, smaller gates but they were erratic and rarely remained open for longer than a few heartbearts. Many hadn’t been opened for decades and were easier to protect. The Roinan Gate was huge, big enough for entire armies to pass through, and it remained open for hours, sometimes days, at a time.

  There had been two other gates this size once. In Yorkton and in Jivan. A huge earthquake had rocked Jivan, and the shelf of land where that gate had resided crumbled. When the gate flickered next, it had proved devastating to what few people still lived on the big island. As well as to the creatures from Anqar that tried to come through. There was a second earthquake, more powerful than any in recorded history. A huge tsunami had resulted and no one had survived. What remained of the island lay under hundreds of feet of water. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of humans had died, but it had shut down a dangerous gate.

  One hand giveth . . . , Kalen thought bitterly. The earthquake had probably saved most of that continent, at least for the time being.

  What happened in Yorkton, nobody knew. York had been the first to fall to the raiders, and nothing of what once was remained. Huge skyscrapers had been decimated by the endless battles. Ragtag rebellions had formed, just like they did with every other gate. The demons came through, destroying enough of the resistance that they would have less chance of fighting. Then the Sirvani came, capturing whatever women they could. Finally the Warlords.

  Warlords could tap into the energy of the land with an ability much like Lee’s. They fouled it, though. Poisoned it. The land weakened, and eventually the people fought less and less, as though the sickness in the land had spread through them.

  The energy fluctuated each time the gate opened. An odd ripple effect. Power erupted from one gate, traveled through the land, triggered something that made the next nearest gate open. And so on and so on, until within a period of days, a hundred gates were open at any given time. Sensitives could feel it in the air when a gatestorm was approaching. There had been a huge storm brewing, centered around Yorkton. Resistance units throughout the world had mobilized, preparing for the coming onslaught.

  But it didn’t come. Instead there was a power fracture. Almost a hiccup, then an explosion. The resistance there had done something, but what, nobody would ever know. Nothing living survived. Yorkton was little more than a crater in the earth now, a hollowed-out, burned depression that stretched out for miles.

  That had been three years ago and still nothing lived there. While it didn’t exactly turn the tide, it weakened the remaining gates. The Roinan Gate was the only one strong enough now to trigger the others.

  Their intelligence resources in Anqar were limited, but there was a theory that the Warlords somehow forced the flickering in the gates, the surge in power that made a gate open. Once the Warlords had the gate open, Sirvani and demons flooded through while other Sirvani worked with the Warlords to maintain the gate.

  “She’s tense tonight.”

  Kalen glanced over at Dais, his mouth quirking in a smile. The older man’s face was heavily scarred—a long, ugly jagged mark started at his right temple and ended just above his lower jawbone. It was twisted and puckered, and thanks to days without medical treatment, infection had set in and damn near killed him. That had been forty years ago, a few years before Kalen was born, and he’d grown up seeing the old man’s scars. Under the cavinir vest, there were probably twenty other scars. Some older. Some newer. All of them received while fighting the demons back.

  Kalen looked over at Lee and studied her. Yes. She was quiet. Her mind was heavy; he could sense it even if he wasn’t trying to touch her thoughts. Out of respect, he turned his back to her and focused on his weapons lieutenant. “You left your position to discuss her silence?”

  Dais grinned. “No. I left my position to tell you that my men found two younglings out in the woods. Boys, seventeen or eighteen at the most. Looking for you, Cordain.” The older man smirked a little as he used the rare title. Roughly translated, it meant “wise one” or “leader.” It was a term that had once been used for governing males in Ishtan, while corida was the female equivalent. Over the past century, as their world sank further and further into chaos, many of the traditions had fallen to the wayside. Dais’s use of the title now was more humorous than aught else. The man had nearly twice as many years on him as Kalen had, but when the role of leadership had fallen to Kalen over the years, Dais had settled comfortably into his role as Kalen’s lieutenant and only rarely made jabs at Kalen’s fewer years.

  Thinking about the boys, Kalen rolled his eyes. Yeah, he could imagine why a couple of foolish boys were searching for him. Same reason men twice their age searched him o
ut, but at least grown men had a place in Kalen’s army. He didn’t know what to do with the kids. He knew what they would want him to do, but as desperate as he was, Kalen hadn’t taken to putting seventeen-year-olds on the front line.

  He prayed that day didn’t ever come.

  “They have an escort?”

  Dais gave Kalen the same look he’d give a dullard. Chances were Dais’s men had been watching the kids for days. And protecting them. With a smirk, Kalen said, “Fine, fine. Send them on in. Send them to Eira. She’ll know what to do with them.” He waved a hand back toward the main camp. If anybody deserved the respectful title of corida, it was Eira. She’d seemed ancient when Kalen was a boy, but she still continued to train those with talent.

  As Dais headed off, he beckoned to his men hiding in the trees. They separated themselves from the foliage in a fluid, easy motion, invisible even to Kalen’s eyes until they moved.

  No. Kids had no place in his army. Kalen knew that, even as he knew that he probably had kids serving under his command. Kids that looked older than they were, had led lives that aged them far too soon. Kalen had been like that, orphaned and forced to fight to stay alive.

  He’d been twelve when he killed his first demon, was serving as a courier by thirteen and fighting in battle before fifteen. He would have died on his first battlefield if Dais hadn’t found him, lying there with a demon’s poison swimming through his bloodstream. If Kalen had been fighting when he was fifteen, then chances were he had other fifteen-year-olds out on his battlefields and he didn’t even know it.

  It was an unpleasant thought, but there was little he could do about it. He had a war to fight and people to protect and if he started questioning his soldiers about their age and their right to serve on the battlefields, more people would die. So he had to live with the knowledge that he likely had kids serving under him, and it left him sick inside with the image of them out there, fighting and dying.