“Lee.” He closed the distance between them and cupped her face in his hands. “Yes. You gave me something to eat when I’d been starved for days. I was weak, and there were Raviners waiting for just the right moment to overtake me. You saved my life.” He rubbed his thumb over her lips and murmured, “You actually remember.”
She blinked, looking lost and uncertain. “Yes. I remember. And I still don’t understand why in the hell I’m so important to this, Kalen. I’m just me. Maybe I’ll be able to fight now and not get myself killed in the first five seconds, but I’m just me. I’m no Joan of Arc or anything.”
Kalen had no idea who Joan of Arc was but he didn’t need to know. He understood what was bothering her, and as much as he wished he had answers for her, he didn’t. He had the same questions himself. Lowering his head, he pressed his lips to hers.
She kissed him back, sliding her arms around his neck and cuddling into him. “I’m scared, Kalen.”
He lifted his head and pressed his lips to her brow. “I know. But whatever happens, I’ll be with you. No matter what.”
Even before the ground started with that ominous rumble, Kalen knew it had begun. He kept alternating between physical sight and the inner sight that let him look across the Veil. On the other side, the Warlords’ armies were waiting patiently. Kalen could see them, and if he pushed a bit deeper, he’d be able to hear them, but he couldn’t risk strengthening the contact. He had to keep his attention focused on what lay before them, not what lay on the other side of the gate.
At least not until the gate opened. Which was going to be any second judging by the tension in the air. It was hot and thick, the way it was just before a thunderstorm. The forest was crawling with demons. The telltale tremor in the earth made Kalen suspect the wyrms were going to join this little hell-party.
All around him, his soldiers waited. Lee stood at his side, finally dressed in clothes that fit. Considering that they were going to be firing up the ion cannons and all their other tech, it seemed rather pointless to not use the synthit. Her cavinir clung like a second skin, the matte black outlining each subtle curve. As though she sensed his gaze, Lee glanced at him. “You ready for this?” he asked her softly.
She smirked. “Like it’s going to matter if I’m not.” Then she smiled at him. “Relax. I’ve still got a couple of blank spots, but I think I can handle a fight. You’re with me, right?”
Reaching out, he caught her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “No matter what.”
There was a screech somewhere out in the darkness. It was answered by a series of high-pitched hisses and low grunts. Jorniaks—cannon fodder. The Warlords always sent the Jorniaks in before a major raid, to cut down on the resistance. The ugly bastards were death on two legs. What they lacked in intelligence, the low-level bastards made up for in brute strength and sheer numbers.
“This is going to be more than a fight, Lee,” Kalen said quietly. If this wasn’t the final battle, then it was the one leading up to it. Their fight to survive was boiling down to all of these moments. Years of standing their ground, and if they faltered now, it was all for nothing.
“Don’t think like that.”
Kalen glared at Morne. The silent, spooky bastard stood just behind him, emerging from the darkness without making a sound. “Keep out of my head.”
Morne shrugged. “It’s not your head or your thoughts I’m reading, Kalen. That’s your ability, not mine. Emotions are harder to shield—and emotions can speak very clearly.” The healer moved to stand at Kalen’s left, dressed in black from head to toe. His hair was pulled back and secured, covered with a hood that Morne would pull down over his face when it was time. Morne always wore a mask when he fought. When the time came, he’d melt into the shadows, silent as death, and none would know he was there until he had already killed them. “Defending your world, your way of life, how can that ever be for nothing?”
Kalen almost answered him, If we don’t win, it was for nothing. But he kept silent. In his heart, he knew that no matter what happened, it wouldn’t have been an exercise in futility. Lives had been saved, and if those lives ended here and now in battle, it was better than being dragged across the Veil and forced into slavery.
“Dark thoughts, my friend,” Morne murmured for his ears alone. “They do you no good right now, and your control is so weak that I can sense every last one of them.”
On his other side, Lee moved a little closer, leaning into him just a little. She was standing so close that when they saw the flicker of fire through the trees, he felt the tremor wrack her body. The Ikacado. Was she reliving those moments in the forest when the Ikacado had attacked Eira?
The ground pitched beneath their feet and Kalen moved with it, absorbing it with years of practice. “Here it comes,” he said needlessly.
Off to his right, he heard Dais order, “Ready the cannons.”
Seconds later, the low-level hum of the cannons powering up filled the air. There was another sound, a crackling little hiss—the cold-beams, every last one they could find. When the first Ikacado came skulking out of the forest, long, thin beams of icy cold went blasting toward them. Smoke from their flesh filled the air, and their black blood spilled onto the ground as one after another was cut down.
Deeper in the forest, Jorniaks roared and came rushing forward. They didn’t move with the grace of the Sirvani or the predatory prowl of the Ikacado. They were like lumbering bears, heavy on their feet and clumsy. An easy target for the ion cannons.
The stink of Jorniak blood was now strong in the air, growing thicker and thicker as more of the things pushed closer toward the front line. Their dying screams were joined by the cries of Kalen’s people, and red mortal blood mingled with the black demon blood. Bodies fell, and soon they were so thick that Kalen couldn’t tell the dead from the wounded.
Next to him, Lee’s body all but vibrated with tension, and Kalen reached out, caught her hand in his. He squeezed gently and she slid him a grateful look.
It was still too surreal. Part of Lee had wanted to believe it was all a dream and that she could wake up if she tried hard enough. But the last bit of her that clung to that belief had died in the forest when she stood listening to a language she shouldn’t understand but did. Accepting the reality that lay before her meant accepting the fact that she had left behind her old life, probably for good.
Instead of e-mailing with her clients, arguing back and forth over the lack of shading here or why the image couldn’t be done that way, she was caught up in the middle of a flat-out battle. The things that were her former life seemed so far away now. None of the headaches she had dealt with back there could even hold a candle to this.
This wasn’t a headache. It was a nightmare. Her belly pitched and rolled as she saw a couple soldiers go down on the front line. All the new memories crowding her head hadn’t prepared her for seeing people cut down in front of her. She had memories of battle, memories of when she’d joined Kalen on the front line as they fought back would-be raiders, memories of late-night demon attacks on the camp, memories of seeing friends and acquaintances cut down before her eyes. They still didn’t feel like her memories— and some vague recollection of people dying was a far cry from actually seeing them fall.
A soft, weird little moan filled the air, and Kalen’s hand came up to rest on her shoulder. She smothered the next moan with her hand and had to force herself to remain silent. Silent, when all she wanted was to rush down there and join in the fray.
The ground shuddered and shook. Instinctively, Lee flexed her knees and managed to remain upright. But the earth shuddered again, and again. Each progressive quake got stronger and stronger, and then the skies started to echo the rumble. Huge thunderheads piled up overhead, clouding the overcast sky, and as peels of thunder echoed through the air, the rain started.
Off in the distance, just above the tree line, Lee saw the colors flicker, so out of place in the ugly, stormy sky. Bright ribbons of blue, jagged streaks o
f gold, flashes of red. The gate stood wide open, and the entire horizon seemed to burn with a rainbow of colors. The earth shook and rumbled, and Lee swore under her breath.
“Hang tight—it will level off in a few minutes.”
Lee glanced at Kalen, envious of the way he stood so confident and relaxed, even with the ground shaking under his feet and rain pelting down on him. In no time flat, the rain had soaked all of them through, and while many of them looked like wet dogs, Kalen looked as sexy soaked through and through as he did any other time.
It took a good twenty minutes for the rumblings from the gate to settle down, and Lee breathed a sigh of relief when she could finally stand on the ground without it wobbling under her feet like Jell-O. The Warlords and their Sirvani were miles off, but Lee could hear them, their chanting resounding deep inside. It made her heart shudder within her chest, that bizarre, unearthly rhythm, causing a reaction inside her that she couldn’t quite explain.
But it didn’t seem to affect any of the others like it did her. Nor could she tell if this was a new reaction for her, or if the hypnotic pull of their chanting had always affected her like this. She hadn’t even noticed that she had started to sway, until Kalen’s hand closed over her arm and he shook her lightly. “Are you well?”
Lee blinked, feeling a little dazed. Looking up at him, she nodded. “Yeah, I just . . .”
The world seemed to explode. Lee hissed under her breath and backpedaled, crashing into Kalen. His arms came around her, bracing her weight as the ground bucked beneath them. It was different from the gatestorm. Instead of an irregular series of tremors, something seemed to vibrate and thrash in the ground under their feet.
Under—“Oh, shit,” Lee whispered. She followed the impulse in her gut and turned her gaze off to the south. The wyrms were coming, fast and hard. Judging by the dust trails kicking up from the earth, there were three of them. At least three adults. There could easily be some juveniles or hatchlings, although the younger wyrms didn’t pose the same kind of threat that the big bastards did.
Too much information circled through her head again, and Lee wished there was some kind of spigot she could turn that would shut the flow off, or at least slow it down a little. Her mind whirled, processing all that information.
Kalen stroked a hand down her back, and when she looked at him, he had an eerie smile on his face. “They’ve got some ugly beasties, Lee, but we’ve got something they don’t.”
Lee swallowed. “What would that be—a death wish?” Shit, what in the hell were they thinking? Did they actually have any prayer against something that could shoot dirt three hundred feet into the air as it traveled through the ground?
Kalen’s grin widened. “No. Firepower. We’ve been stockpiling it all for a rainy day.” He slid his glance upward at the sky, rain splattering on his face. “Looks like it’s going to be raining for quite a while.”
Lee had been impressed, and a little intimidated, when she saw the ion cannon in action. But that long-range weapon was nothing compared to what was hidden in the earth along the front line. The strange-looking tripod things that came out of the ground reminded Lee of the alien vessels she’d seen in War of the Worlds. In more ways than one. The things were a lot smaller than the ones in the movies, but they packed some firepower that made the Hollywood flick look like child’s play.
The light that pulsed out of them was sliver-thin. It didn’t seem possible that it could cut through the huge trees like flame ate through paper. Whatever that pulsing light touched was incinerated.
“Drop!”
The order sounded from somewhere near the front, and Lee watched as the front line fell as one. Arms came up, protecting the head as the Jorniak demons looked around, a little confused. There was another tripod weapon, smaller scale. It seemed to work on auto, sighting out demons, emitting one single pulse that turned the Jorniaks into gooey puddles of ash, one right after the other.
The rumbling in the earth was increasing, and Lee looked away from the front line to see a wyrm as it burst through the earth. Probably a good quarter of a mile away but easily visible now that the tripods had cut down the trees along that sector, it swayed in the air, dark as the earth it emerged from, its big mouth open and gaping.
Hearing a mechanical hum, Lee turned her head, watching as the tripods turned as one, locking in on the wyrm. Those things could cut through trees and the smaller demons, but Lee couldn’t believe they’d cut through that mammoth monster.
Until she saw it. Its death scream echoed through the air, and it continued to scream even as the tripods severed the head from the body. Two of them continued to work on the body while the other sighted on the head and pulsed away, moving in small increments and delivering a series of strikes along the length of it.
The wyrm continued to scream even after its body started to melt into the earth. It shuddered and trembled, its body jerking as though it was still trying to free itself from the earth. A second wyrm ripped through the earth. Two of the tripods turned on the new threat, while the third pulsed up and down, emitting those eerie, deadly lights that soon turned the body of the first wyrm into a decaying, stinking mess.
A little dazed, Lee looked at Kalen. “Whoa.”
He grinned, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was savage and just a little mean, and his quicksilver eyes gleamed with the light of victory.
“I thought the wyrms were a bigger threat than that.”
Kalen shrugged. “Up until recently, you would go weeks without coming to us. We’ve been developing these weapons for years, but this is the first time we’ve really been able to use them. They power up from the so-gens.”
The so-gens were the generators that converted solar energy for use in most of the weapons and transports. Some of their smaller equipment had been designed solely for use of solar power, but the larger equipment hadn’t been intended for it. Modifications were made where they could be, and they had a surplus of equipment that could be fueled with the energy processed for the so-gens, but not directly. The energy was transferred to the power grid, and while Lee didn’t understand the tech behind it, the basic explanation was that the power was modified, broken down into its most raw form, and from there it could be manipulated and modified to suit whatever uses they needed it for.
Of themselves, the so-gens were reliable and safe enough. They could store the energy without posing a threat, but transporting that energy was the threat. Power grids couldn’t store the energy safely, so until it was needed, it was kept in the so-gen. When the energy was transferred from the so-gen to the power grids, the power grid gave off the minute vibrations that lured the wyrms.
Strange that the things that called to the wyrms were the same things that gave Kalen’s army the chance to destroy them. “How strong are those tripod-looking things?” Lee asked softly.
“We call them plas-beams—same basic tech we use in the plasma rifles. Just with more kick.” Then he smirked and added, “As to how strong . . . well, they cut through the wyrms.”
That was answer enough. Although the knowledge still didn’t feel like her own, she knew that wyrms had skin that would make Kevlar look fragile. Under the tough skin there was a membrane of thick, nearly indestructible tissue, so the wyrms were doubly protected. A weapon that could cut through those built-in protections—damn. “Whoa.”
Intrigued, Lee looked westward. The brilliant blue of the gate continued to glow against the sullen gray sky. The gates seemed to eat whatever energy was launched at them, but no matter how hungry a creation got, eventually it could eat too much. “I wonder what would happen if we turned those on the gate.”
But by the look on his face, Lee guessed Kalen had already made an attempt. He shook his head. “It won’t work. We don’t have enough of the plas-beams, and we can only maintain the energy for the ones we have, so building more is a waste of time and materials.” Aggravated, he added, “That’s assuming we could scavenge up the materials we’d need. We’ve been working on
these for years. It took ten years just to develop the idea, and another five to build them and work out all the problems.”
A little discouraged, Lee looked back to the gate. Okay, so the tripod/beam things wouldn’t work.
But still . . .
“How many casualties?”
Arnon murmured, “Early estimates are in the thousands.”
A cut crystal goblet went flying across the room, striking the wall and shattering in thousands of tiny little pieces. Neither Char nor Arnon even flinched. As the shards fell to the floor, the High Lord turned around and looked at Arnon, his black eyes cold with fury.
“Thousands.” Taise shook his head, an incredulous look on his face. “Thousands.” It was as if the old Warlord couldn’t wrap his mind around the number. It was as though he’d been told fleas had mounted and managed to wipe out entire contingencies of men. It had been decades since Taise had begun his slow slide into madness. At first, he hadn’t seemed so irrational as he ordered more frequent raids on Ishtan. But Char had seen the damage that was being done to the Veil and had advised caution. It was as though each piece of advice pushed the High Lord that much further along on his decline into insanity. Then Taise had decided he no longer wanted to raid the offworld’s female population. He wanted to own it, all of it, from the oldest crone to the newborn babe. They’d begun construction on Anqar for the massive dwellings that would be needed to contain all of the slaves.
Char, once more, had warned the High Lord against his plan. Ishtan’s people might be primitive, but they were, in their own way, as arrogant and proud as the Warlords. They would not quietly go into slavery. They would fight, and they would do considerable damage. That had been nearly thirty years ago, but Taise hadn’t listened then any better than he listened now. It was as though the High Lord had never entertained the possibility that the resistance wouldn’t break under their full strength.
Through the Veil Page 23
