“At least?” Lee asked warily. She wanted to look at him and try to decipher the meaning of those words, but that would involve pulling away from his hands. Those heavenly, wonderfully strong hands—no way in hell was she pulling away. At least not willingly.
When he didn’t answer, she just shut her eyes. “What have I gotten myself into?”
Kalen didn’t answer her. He did that a lot, and even though it irritated her, on some level she was relieved. He didn’t try to offer false comfort or promises. Things were bad around here. When things were bad, people tended to say all sorts of meaningless things, just to make a person feel better. But Lee wasn’t much into falsehoods, even those that were well meant.
He slid his hands down her shoulders, massaging her upper arms, then back up. One hand cupped over the back of her neck, lingering there for a minute. Then he stepped away. Lee shivered a little at the loss of his warmth, and then she focused on the mostly full cup she still held in one hand. It wasn’t quite like coffee—sweeter, darker—but it had the same kick that espresso would have. She licked her lips and looked up to see him watching her.
For just the briefest second, there was a look in his eyes. A hungry, greedy look that made her heart skip a beat, a look that turned her muscles into putty. Then it was gone.
Good thing, too, because if he looked at her like that for too long, Lee wasn’t sure what she’d do. And she had enough problems right now, thank you very much. She sure as hell didn’t need to get tied into emotional knots over the dark angel with the silver eyes.
“Do you see?”
Lee just sat, staring into nothingness. See what? The only thing she could see were the trees in front of her, most of them stunted and dead. She could feel the warning of a vicious headache brewing at her right temple, but she hoped if she ignored it long enough, it would go away.
She couldn’t deal with the headache right now.
Not the headache and this.
“This” being her again.
How much longer were they going to stick her with this crazy old woman? Eira Cantrell was crazy. There was no other way to put it. For three hours, she had sat on a damn tree stump and listened to the woman’s raspy, almost hypnotic voice.
Look . . . it’s there . . . . you have seen it before.
Look at what? That was all Lee wanted to know. If the old crone would tell her what Lee was supposed to see, then Lee could look for it.
The Veil . . . look for the Veil.
The Veil. Great. And exactly what was the Veil . . . ?
Lee couldn’t focus. She wanted to focus on her irritationwith Eira, but she couldn’t. She tried to focus on the trees and couldn’t. She searched for whatever it was she was supposed to see, but the more Eira spoke, the harder it was to focus on anything, and the longer she sat there . . .
Her eyes grew heavy.
She felt like she was falling asleep. But she wasn’t. When her eyes closed once more, she didn’t see the darkness of sleep but something shimmery, silvery gray—almost the same shade of silvery gray as Kalen’s eyes.
“There . . . you see now . . .” Eira’s voice sounded different now. Felt different. Like it was echoing on the inside of Lee’s skull, coming from within instead of without.
Lee opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t. She tried to move and couldn’t. She felt frozen, like she was weighted down by something she couldn’t see. What is that? she wanted to know, but she couldn’t seem to form the words to ask.
“The Veil. You’re looking at the Veil,” Eira said. “The barrier between the worlds. It separates our world from the one you grew up in, and it separates us from the dark realm of Anqar.”
Anqar—
The shimmery gray faded, stretched out, until she could see beyond it. It was like looking at something through a transparent piece of gray silk. A desert formed. Hot, arid and dry—she could feel the heat of the air on her face, feel the scorching winds blowing through her hair. She heard voices. She felt chaos. She sensed despair, anger, greed and arrogance.
Each emotion seemed distinct. If she could hold on to this vision long enough, Lee thought maybe, just maybe, she could trace them back to their owners. She wanted to follow the despair. It made her heart hurt. She wanted to help.
But the avarice and greed were stronger. They intruded on her thoughts, demanding her attention. She found herself staring at something alien. Something foreign. Oddly beautiful, terrifying and deadly—a face, but not the face of a human. Too long and thin, stretched out, with dark, hollow pits for eyes, and skin that glowed a burnished orange. Deep inside, she sensed a strange melody, high-pitched, rhythmic and so full of evil, it made her shudder. Her voice shook a little as she said, “There’s something here. It’s waiting for us.”
Eira’s voice was soothing, gentle as she murmured, “No. Nothing is here. It’s on the other side of the Veil. We’re safe. Tell me, what do you see?”
“No. No, we’re not. It’s there . . .” The face wavered, the music in her head swelled.
“Describe it for me. Tell me what you see.” Eira’s voice was calm, as though they were discussing the weather.
But Lee couldn’t be calm. The thing that seemed to hover in front of her like a mirage had her petrified. Its mouth opened and a horrifying screech filled the air. Lee flinched and instinctively closed her eyes. When she opened them and tried to see the thing again, it was gone.
The shimmery gray veil remained and she could see the alien landscape, but the creature, whatever it had been, was gone. “It’s gone, Eira.”
“Then tell me what you feel . . .” Something touched Lee’s head and she realized Eira was stroking her hair. Oddly, it comforted Lee. It felt strangely familiar.
In this strange, bizarre place, Lee would gladly accept anything that felt familiar. Sometimes, it felt so natural, and she could almost accept what Kalen told her, that she belonged here. Part of her felt as though she did. The world itself was oddly familiar, kind of like a movie she had seen ages ago but forgotten.
They had guns. But the guns looked more like something out of a sci-fi flick set three hundred years in the future. They had field hospitals like those Lee had seen when she had spent a few months in the Middle East, but the technology used here was so far advanced, it left her mind reeling.
Even more baffling than the technology was the magick. Real magick. The kind that shouldn’t exist but the kind that she apparently could do. And the Veil—staring at it gave Lee all sorts of conflicting urges. She wanted to pull away. She wanted to reach out—it was insubstantial, like fog, and would probably fall apart if she managed to touch it, but she wanted to try.
“Tell me, Lee . . . what do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?”
“Just the Veil, Eira,” she whispered. The silvery shimmer of the Veil thickened, wrapping around her until it was all she could see. When she breathed it, it was like she took some of that barrier inside her, like breathing in smoke.
She felt terror. Not just her own, but like it was coming from others. “I can’t see anything. It’s all gone silver again. But—there’s fear. I feel it.” Her voice started to shake, and it was harder to separate the emotions she felt coming from the outside and what she felt on the inside.
The terror rose inside, choking her. Her vision dwindled down until the pretty shimmer of the Veil was replaced by a pinpoint of darkness. There was a heavy weight sitting on her chest, crushing her, squeezing all of the air out of her lungs, and she couldn’t breathe.
She wanted to curl in on herself and hide, but she was frozen. Trapped and helpless, and when it came for her, she wouldn’t be able to run. Wouldn’t be able to hide. Lee didn’t even know what the “it” was, she just knew it was deadly, knew it killed, and she knew it was ravenous.
A whimper slid free and finally she could move, but small, surprisingly strong hands closed over her arms and wouldn’t let go. They tightened to the point of pain and then Lee realized Eira was there.
> “Pull away from it for now, Lee. Just pull away. The Veil will be there tomorrow. Relax . . . breathe . . .” Eira’s voice grew rhythmic once more, soothing, gentle . . . quieter and quieter. The fear faded away and Lee could finally breathe. “You feel their fear, Lee. You have power inside you that comes from the land, and when the people of the land live in terror, it can reflect back on any soul that has a connection with it. But you can’t let it control you.”
Lee took a deep, shuddering breath. “I couldn’t stop it.”
“Just breathe. You have to breathe through it, breathe past it. You can’t block the fear, but you can keep it from taking control of you.” She rubbed her hand over Lee’s back in a slow, soothing circle. “You need to center yourself. Focus. Breathe . . .”
The remnants of fear slowly faded away and Lee was left with only the sound of her breathing to keep her company and the soft monotone of Eira’s voice. Time stretched out. Lee was caught in that weird place between dreams and waking when everything felt both too real and not real at all. Time moved at a crawl. Darkness gathered around her and still, she drifted. Eira’s voice faded away but Lee never noticed.
There was a weird, muffled sound. Lee came hurtling back into awareness with a jolt and jerked on the stump. It was nearing twilight. And the small clearing she sat in was completely empty, except for herself.
Eira was nowhere in sight. A breeze drifted by, bringing with it a sharp, metallic scent. Blood.
Lee licked her lips. “Okay. I’m now officially freaked out.” She didn’t like knowing what blood smelled like. She didn’t like knowing that she knew she should know what blood smelled like, and worse, that she had smelled it before.
Part of her wanted to walk away. Screw walk.
She wanted to run. She was alone in a weird place and the woman who had been with her had disappeared into thin air. Lee was pretty sure that Eira couldn’t literally disappear, right? But would she have just left? Or had she been taken?
“Eira?” she said quietly. She didn’t want to call out. She didn’t want to make too much noise, because then it would hear her.
It. That nameless, faceless evil that she had sensed when she looked through the Veil, but Eira had told her that nothing was there. Eira had been wrong. It was out there in the woods, something devastating and deadly, waiting in the darkness. Her skin felt tight and her heart pounded within her chest, a horrid, breath-stealing fear that whispered to her, Run—run away and don’t stop. She couldn’t run, though. Not until she found Eira.
She kept seeing that stooped little figure in her mind, how Eira had looked out at the base camp, her black eyes softening as she spoke of times long past. There had been a longing, an emptiness in her voice that had brought tears to Lee’s eyes, as she told Lee, “It hasn’t always been like this here . . . Once it was different.”
“Different, how?” Lee had asked. She shouldn’t have asked.
“It was better.” Eira had laughed bitterly, staring out over the broken landscape.
Lee hadn’t thought. That was all there was to it. She should have thought before she spoke. “Better? Holy hell, what wouldn’t be better than this?”
Eira had looked at Lee with tears in her eyes. “Aye. Even hell would be better than this, love. And this is the only home I’ve ever known.”
Blocking the memory of that voice in her head, Lee blew out a breath. “Where are you, old woman?” There was no answer. Nothing but the rolling crawl of evil that she sensed in the air. It stung her skin, like a hundred angry hornets. It left her with a nasty taste in her mouth and the urge to just run away. Run far and fast. But Lee didn’t know where she’d run to.
Somewhere in that black forest, there were monsters. Like the kind she used to have nightmares about when she was little, except these monsters were real. Staring out into the night, she whispered, “If I live through the night, God, it’s going to be a damned miracle.”
She pushed up off the stump where she’d been sitting. Her muscles were aching and stiff, but each beat of her heart sent adrenaline pumping through her veins. The tension changed, going from the stiffness of inactivity, to the tight, preparatory state, to fight or run.
Run—she only wished. As much as she wanted to take off and get as far away as she could, it wasn’t going to happen. No, the adrenaline buzzing through her system was preparing her to fight.
Her body didn’t even feel like her own. Lee didn’t usually move this quietly. She wasn’t a klutz, but she was pretty certain that when she walked, she made noise. People did make noise, right? Yet her feet moved over the uneven, unfamiliar ground with an easy grace, sidestepping the hundreds of little things that would have given her away—a stray leaf, a skinny branch.
Part of her mind was screaming and raging, demanding she run somewhere and hide. Hide from the monsters. You’ve lost your mind, Lee! Run away before you get yourself killed! The weird thing was—she knew she wasn’t going to get killed, not now, not this time.
Lee felt alive. She hadn’t ever felt this alive.
Her mind was ticking away, cool and clinical, taking note of everything. She could see each obstacle in her way: a fallen tree limb, some dead, dry leaves that would crunch and crackle underfoot. She automatically took the quietest path to the tree line, not the quickest.
She couldn’t even hear herself breathing—she felt it. Damn it, she hadn’t ever been so aware of her own breathing. But it was like she could feel the air moving in and out of her lungs. She could feel each beat of her heart. A bird flew overhead, and she imagined she could feel the change in the air currents above her as the falcon’s wings pumped up and down.
There was the faintest lessening of the darkness ahead of her. They hadn’t set a fire. These particular demons didn’t need to. They were fire. Ikacado demons. The fire things from her dreams. More—it was one of them that she had sensed when she looked into the Veil. Eira had said there was nothing, but the old woman had been wrong.
And because Lee didn’t know what in the hell she was doing, something bad had happened to Eira. And Lee herself was in a heap of trouble. Lee wasn’t sure exactly how she knew that, but the knowledge was there nonetheless. It was like some weird curtain in her mind had parted just enough to let little bits of knowledge filter inside.
Ikacado demons. Lee hated the Ikacado. They weren’t walking pillars of fire—they were humanoid, but their skin got fiery hot in battle, hot enough to melt flesh and internal organs. That wasn’t their only built-in weapon, either. They were living, breathing vacuums, feeding off the terror and fear of others.
Psychic and magickal energy was a particular treat for them. Random little memory flashes danced through her mind. People killed by the Ikacado—their bodies melted down so that they no longer looked remotely human. Bodies drained of power and left behind like empty husks.
Even though the Ikacado demons were formidable bastards, they acted more like coyotes. They didn’t attack outright. They stalked. They hunted. They looked for the weakest link: the old, the sick, the young—the solitary.
If it wasn’t for her magick, the old woman probably looked like a damned feast to them: old, weak . . . alone. But Eira did have her magick. Typical Ikacado wouldn’t have wanted to fight that, not without a hell of a lot more firepower—literally—on their side.
They would have left her alone . . . right?
Unless . . . what if Eira had gotten hurt before the Ikacado showed up? What if she’d gotten hurt, or sick . . . Oh, hell. That would have explained it. More of that weird knowledge flickered through her head. Ikacado were scavengers by nature, usually bypassing anything that could put up much of a fight.
Lee drew close, pressing her back to a tree and peering out at the horde of Ikacado with narrowed eyes. The things couldn’t see too well unless magick was being lobbed around—Lee bit her lip as she absorbed that piece of information.
All the statistical kind of information filtering into her head wasn’t going to do her any good. Becau
se Lee was in no way ready to fight something like that. What she needed was a good, old-fashioned cell phone, or this world’s version of it, so she could make a 911 call. Lee had gotten this far. But she didn’t know where to go from here and she was likely to end up dead.
A misshapen head turned her way, and she eased back out of sight, pressing against the tree. Closing her eyes, she prayed silently. This is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.
High-pitched, chittering shrieks rang out. Had they seen her? But before that thought had even really circled through her head, she knew the answer. The words made sense when they shouldn’t . . .
I don’t want her. She’s old. Old power is tough. I want something fresh. Let’s go to the human camp. We can find one of the guards.
I’m not going there.
Coward! Humans—bah. Thin-skinned things. They break and tear too easy.
Lee wanted to press her hands to her ears to block out those ugly, alien voices. It was almost easier if she didn’t understand. Because now she had to wonder, what else did she know?
You know how to hurt them. This voice spoke to her from inside her own head, sounding oddly like her—yet not.
Everything inside her went still. That curtain wasn’t just parting and letting little bits filter through. It was like it had been ripped wide open and she could see herself standing on the other side. Well, at least, it looked like her. Physically.
She wasn’t just looking at a reflection, either. She could hear herself arguing. With herself. The urge to laugh wildly and hysterically rose inside her as she met her other self ’s gaze. The blue eyes were her own, but they were filled with cynical, cool knowledge that made Lee feel vaguely useless.
Fight them. You know how.
No. I don’t.
That reflection of herself smiled a little. Yes, you do. Fire creatures do not like anything that is not what they are. They are fire. Be what they aren’t.
Then the curtain dropped again, cutting off the weird, internal dialogue. Once more, Lee felt like she was alone in her head. Alone and totally, completely confused. A little scared, too, because as much as she’d like to write everything off as a hallucination, as much as she might like to think she was suffering a mental breakdown and that was the root of the strange twists her life had taken, Lee knew she couldn’t.
Through the Veil Page 13
