Through the Veil

by Walker, Shiloh

  Kalen glanced at her again and there was a weird look in his eyes. Like he was worried or something. Then he looked back toward Eira. He muttered something hard and unintelligible under his breath. “We don’t have time to do this here, Morne. The Sirvani—”

  “I know.” Morne glanced toward Lee and asked, “Will she make it to camp?”

  Lee scowled. Angel Face was talking about her. She didn’t like being talked about. She frowned at him and said, “I can speak for myself.” At least, that was what she planned to say. All she got out was . . . “I.” Then her teeth started chattering and she couldn’t focus her mind on anything. Not talking. Not walking. Nothing.

  Dimly, she heard Kalen’s voice. Then she felt his arms come around her and her feet left the ground.

  “. . . move. They’re close.”

  “. . . daylight . . . . no sense . . .”

  Their words were a blur, blending together and not making any sense at all.

  Who were they? Lee didn’t know what they were talking about. She could hear the steady, rapid beat of his heart and feel the warmth of his chest against her cheek. Wind on her face. They were walking. Practically running.

  And there was a noise—she could hear it. Almost like singing. Rhythmic. Almost tribal. Faint, but getting louder and louder . . . What is that? she tried to ask. But the words couldn’t get past her tight throat.

  She didn’t have to ask, though. That voice was in her head again, whispering, Sirvani. The monotonous, tribal beat of drums. Voices that rose and fell with the beat of the drum. Getting closer.

  Images flashed in her head. Men slipping through the dark, silent as death, pale ghosts, swooping down in the night like a hawk. They came and they went without making a sound. The only sign of their passing—homes empty of the families that once lived there. Sometimes the bodies of the missing were found. But only males. Beaten to bloody pulps.

  One image after another danced before her eyes, and Lee whimpered, trying to pull back from all of it. She felt a mouth caress her temple. A soft, rough voice. “Shhhh . . . you’re safe now, Lee. I promise.”

  Kalen—

  She reached out and her hand touched his chest. She bunched her hand in the soft, stretchy fabric of his shirt, clutching it as though she could pull herself closer to him. Safe. She felt safe—Kalen made her feel safe. If she could stay just like this, wrapped in his arms, maybe this strange, scary world wouldn’t seem so damned strange and scary.

  She dreamed of angels, demons and dark saviors.

  Demons that screamed and tore at her flesh. Fire that ate her. Weird dark eyes so black against white flesh—his mouth parted, but when he spoke, the words didn’t seem to be any language she understood.

  His hand on her face, forcing her mouth open. She gagged, choked and sputtered as he forced something thick and noxious down her throat. Kalen’s voice: “Calm down, Lee. Just drink it. It will help.” Then silence, sweet, blissful, black silence.

  She floated in the darkness for a while and then it started all over again. The man with hair as pale as snow and eyes as black as midnight was back and he was trying to kill her. Had to be. Whatever he was forcing down her throat had to be poison. Nothing that tasted that toxic could be safe.

  The third time he tried to get her to drink it, she spat it back out at him and punched in his direction. She caught him in the throat, and when he let go, she tried to jerk away from him. His hand came out, catching her upper arm. As it was, that hand on her arm was the only thing that kept her from hitting the floor.

  He laughed and said something she didn’t understand. Lee jerked on her arm and demanded, “Let me go.”

  Angel Boy cocked his head and studied her in a way that Lee decided she really, really didn’t like. Like she was some sort of smear on a slide and he was the scientist peering through the microscope, trying to figure her out. “What? You understand me?” she demanded when he still didn’t let go. Lee jerked on her arm again and very slowly said, “Let. Me. Go.”

  “I understand you perfectly, Lelia.” He let go slowly and remained standing close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off his body.

  Lee’s brows dropped down low over her eyes and she snapped, “My name is Lee. Just Lee. Capisce?”

  Now he looked a little puzzled. “Your speech is so very strange. Lelia, Lee, I shall call you whatever you wish.”

  What about a cab? Can you call me a cab that will take me home? she thought longingly. She took a step away and he followed her. Another step—yep, still mirroring her movements. “Can you back off?”

  “Indeed. When you return to bed. If you remain upright for much longer, you will end up collapsing and then Kalen will threaten to pull out my tongue and strangle me with it.” A faint smile curved his lips, and Lee got the feeling he wasn’t too concerned about that happening.

  She sniffed and said, “Go on. I’m fine. And if Kalen did try to strangle you, I think you can handle yourself.”

  A pale brow, so blond it was nearly white, lifted and he gave her a weird little smile. “Regardless, I would prefer that you return to bed. I have my hands full dealing with one patient. I would rather you not join her in the medicon.”

  Lee wanted to tell him to take a hike. She felt fine. Really. Well, her head was hurting something awful. Throbbing, actually. And oddly enough now, her legs were feeling really weak. But she wasn’t going to let him see that. The dizzy spell had passed and that was all she cared about. Deliberately, she took a step to the side, away from the bed he was herding her toward. “I’m hungry.”

  She started toward the weird little refrigerator where Kalen kept food. She would have made it, too. Her legs weren’t that wobbly. Really. But the door opened and she looked toward it. Saw Kalen.

  Their eyes met and Lee thought, Whaddya know . . . a man looking at me really can rock my world. At least, it sure felt like it.

  His quicksilver eyes flared and he crossed the room in three long strides. Strong arms came around her waist, and she gasped as he pulled her against him in one quick motion. He pressed his face against her neck and muttered something too quiet for her to understand.

  Just that simple touch was enough to undo her. The strength drained out of her legs, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her so tight. Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision, and no matter how hard she tried to blink them away, she couldn’t stop them. And once the tears started, it was like a dam broke open inside her and she began sobbing. Soft little hiccups at first, and then they turned into deep, body-wracking shudders when he lifted one hand to her head and murmured, “Go ahead and cry, sweet baby. You earned it.”

  Lee broke in his arms. Kalen could feel her shattering. From the corner of his eye, he saw Morne leave. As the door closed behind the deiron, Kalen lifted Lee in his arms and carried her to the narrow cot. She’d spent nearly thirty hours in that cot, unconscious yet so wracked with pain that Morne had been forced to keep her drugged just so she could rest.

  The awful herbed teas the healer forced down her throat had restored her color, and Kalen could no longer sense that brittle, sharp pain radiating from her mind. No, now she was just a raw mass of confusion, fear and shock. She didn’t understand what she had done. She was horrified by it. Scared.

  Her hands balled up, clutching fistfuls of his shirt, and he could feel her tears soaking through the material. His heart ached, and he wished there was a way he could take this from her. Wished they didn’t need her so much. Wished he could just understand why they needed her. And it all blended with guilt, because even now, in the face of her tears, he couldn’t regret her being here.

  Kalen closed his eyes. For the rest of his life, he was going to remember how she had looked when he got to the clearing. They still didn’t know what happened—Eira wouldn’t have ever let the Ikacado steal up on them like that. She would have called for help. So something had happened to Eira—all sings pointed to a stroke, but they couldn’t know for sure. The medical equipm
ent that could have definitively diagnosed such a brain injury wasn’t the kind of equipment they kept on hand. Even Morne, as skilled a healer as he was, couldn’t look inside the brain.

  Eira had been lying near a tree, her eyes open but not really seeing anything.

  A dead demon lay a few feet away, his entire body blackened as though he’d been burned. That was what cold did to the Ikacado. Cold-beam lasers were very effective against the fire creatures, but neither Eira nor Lee had a cold-beam on hand.

  There was another lying at the very edge of the clearing, and he had a hole in his chest. A big hole, big enough that Kalen could have put his fist through it. No blood, though, and the edges of the wound were black and slippery, as if whatever had made it had melted the flesh. He’d seen wounds to the Ikacado like that before. Cold-beams, powerful ones, could do that, but they left a much, much smaller wound.

  That wasn’t the worst though. The worst had been the bits and pieces scattered all over Lee as she knelt by Eira’s side. Lee had been covered with ichor, thick black blood and pieces of flesh and tissue. The small clearing looked like a body explosion, and Lee seemed to have been caught in the middle of it.

  Kalen guessed that was about what had happened, too.

  Lee had done that. How, he wasn’t sure.

  He knew she had powerful magick inside her; he’d seen it. But the power to blow something up just by touching it—it was mind-blowing. The look of horror and fear in her eyes was going to haunt him. If she hadn’t killed them, they would have killed her, and Kalen was damned glad she had been able to defend herself.

  But what he wouldn’t give for that to have not happened.

  He’d give his very soul up if they could live in a world where none of them had to fight just to survive.

  Gently, he stroked a hand down Lee’s back. Her sobs had subsided to soft, broken little sighs that caught in her throat. He pressed his lips to her brow, felt the warm, damp silk of her skin.

  More.

  He wanted more. Lee had come too close to death—she didn’t understand it yet, but that kind of magick was deadly, even to its user, until control was learned. She could have died, using a power that was too strong to be held inside a mortal body. She would be weak for a few more days, and it could be a couple of weeks before her mind healed enough to use magick again.

  But his body didn’t care.

  All his body cared about was hers, warm and soft against his. She shifted a little, turning into him, and her hip rubbed against his cock. Already swollen, already demanding that Kalen do more than just hold Lee, the unyielding length of flesh jerked and throbbed. Lee stilled in his arms. Blood rushed to his face and he muttered, “I’m sorry.”

  Slowly, she lifted her head and stared up at him. Her lashes were spiky and wet from her tears, her eyes a deep, dark blue. She had tears drying on her face, and her eyelids were red and swollen. But she looked so amazingly beautiful to him.

  She licked her lips and shifted. Kalen’s heart thudded to a stop as she turned and straddled him, placing one knee on each side of his hips. “Don’t be,” she whispered. Then she lowered her head and kissed him. He tasted the salt from her tears and something so sweet, so intoxicating, he could have it every day for the rest of his life and he’d still be starving for it.

  Her hands, soft and cool, cupped his face as she kissed him. He wanted to haul her against him, roll her onto the narrow cot and tear her clothes off. He wanted her naked and open for him, reaching for him. Then he wanted to mount her, push inside her and watch her face as he took her. Over and over, until she screamed his name. He wanted her addicted to him, craving his touch the way he’d craved hers for years.

  Craved, but couldn’t have. Not until now. She was warm and soft in his arms and he tasted the hunger in her kiss. But he also tasted the tears. She was still weak—Lee was so damned lucky she hadn’t killed herself. Lucky she hadn’t knocked herself out. Unconscious and vulnerable. Suffering saints, he didn’t even want to think about it.

  It made his hunger burn brighter. Sex reaffirmed life. Making love to her would ease—maybe ease—the knot of need inside him. But she had cried so hard. Finally broke under the pressure of all the bizarre changes life had handed her.

  Easing away from her—hell, it would have been easier to stop breathing than stop kissing her. Less painful, at least. But he pulled back, bit by bit. She tried to follow him and he cupped her chin in his hand. “You don’t need this right now, Lee. You need to rest. You need—”

  She smiled. When God made women, He shouldn’t have given them the ability to smile like that. It was like glimpsing both heaven and hell. That kind of smile held the promise of paradise and the threat of hell because when a woman smiled like that, it meant she knew. She knew she was driving a man insane, and she could either put her soft hands and mouth on him, put him out of his misery, or she could pull away and leave him suffering.

  With that smile on her pretty mouth, she reached down and grasped the bottom of her shirt, pulling it off. That silvery blond hair floated free around her face in a riot of curls. Her eyes glowed like blue fire as she uncurled her body and pulled away, standing up.

  At some point, one of the women had cleaned her up and dressed her in something comfortable to sleep in. That didn’t include much more than that thin shirt she’d already peeled away and a plain, simple pair of panties that rode low on her hips. Plain white cotton hadn’t ever looked so erotic as it did hugging her hips.

  “I know what I need, Kalen. And it’s not more rest.” She moved toward him, and when she went to straddle his hips again, he cupped her ass in his hands and rocked up against her. Three rough, convulsive thrusts—but it wasn’t enough. He surged upward and turned their bodies, putting her beneath him on the cot, just like he had fantasized. Her blond hair framed her flushed face and she gave him a feline smile, all heat and satisfaction.

  “Be certain, Lee. Very certain.” He held himself away from her, bracing his weight on locked arms. Hellfire, he wanted her so bad, he was shaking with it. But he had to make sure, because if this went much further—hell, any further—he wouldn’t be able stop. It didn’t matter if a new gate opened up at his feet and the worst Anqar had to offer came boiling up around him. Any more, even one more touch. Shit, she wouldn’t even have to touch him to push him over. Just keep smiling like that—

  A soft, husky laugh fell from her lips and she reached up. The soft pads of her fingers touched his lips and he caught one in his mouth, sucking it gently. “I’m certain. Actually, it’s the only thing I’ve been sure of since . . . well, for a long time.”

  “Good.” He covered her body with his and kissed her. He didn’t rush it, though. He wanted to, suffering saints; he wanted to tear that small scrap of underwear off her, rip his clothes out of the way and shove his cock inside her. Hard, fast, until they both came, and then he’d do it again, but slower.

  Instead, he traced the outline of her lips with his tongue. She opened for him and he pushed inside, slowly—so slowly that Lee reached up and fisted her hands in his hair, clutching him close as she tried to take the kiss deeper.

  “No.” He lifted his head just enough to break contact with her mouth. He nipped her lower lip gently. “I have waited far too long for this—I will not rush it.”

  Lee lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. “I want to rush—I don’t like waiting.”

  Her legs tightened, pulling him against her. Kalen let her, rocking against the soft heat between her thighs, but when he kissed her, he kept it teasingly light. He kissed his way over to her ear. She had three silver hoops piercing the lobe. He nuzzled them and then murmured, “Do you know how long I’ve waited, Lee?”

  Lee groaned and turned her face, trying to kiss him, but Kalen was content to nuzzle her neck, or press little biting kisses to the soft, sweet-smelling flesh. “Years. I’ve waited years, sweet baby, and I’m not going to hurry this.

  “Years,” he muttered again. Her breasts were
small, but firm and round, topped with pink, diamond-hard nipples. His mouth watered just looking at them. He flicked a glance up at her and smiled. “I’ve dreamed about this more times than I can count. I’ve made love to you in every way imaginable—in my dreams. But those bloody dreams can’t even compare to the reality.”

  A weird look flitted through her eyes. “We never . . . ?”

  He bent his head and licked one round little nipple. “No. Never. But we’re going to remedy that, right now.” He bit her gently and she gasped, arching up against his mouth. He took her deeper in his mouth with a gentle suction. With his tongue, he teased and stroked her nipple. Lee groaned. Her hands fisted in his hair, urging him on. He didn’t need the encouragement, though. The woman in his arms was the only one he’d ever really wanted, in all his life.

  Lee’s body was an endless delight. Those small, ripe breasts; narrow torso that gave way to round hips. Long, strong legs and the most perfect ass he’d ever seen. She had a woman’s body, sweet curves in all the right places, and under all those curves lay the strength of a warrior. Satin-soft and steel-strong. Her skin was pale and smooth as ivory, but so warm under his mouth. The soft, sleek muscles in her tummy rippled as he pressed a kiss to her navel.

  When he pressed his lips to her sex, Lee mewled, a broken, hungry little female sound that twisted him into knots. He slid his tongue through the slick folds and she bucked against his mouth. Kalen lay his arm across her belly, holding her still as he took the intimate kiss even deeper.

  Her taste was sweet and spicy, intoxicating and wild. He could do just this, forever. With slow, lazy strokes, he teased the tight bud of her clit. Under his arm, she twisted and squirmed, as though she couldn’t get close enough. He pushed his finger inside her and she clenched around him with a ragged scream. She was still shuddering from the climax when he pushed up on his knees and stared down at her.

  Her face was flushed. Her thick, black lashes lay on her cheeks, shielding that dark smoky blue gaze. Ragged breaths had her breasts rising and falling in an erratic rhythm. Her nipples were flushed, swollen and nearly the same shade of pink as her lips.