“How is this possible?” Taise snarled.
Arnon looked at Char out of the corner of his eye. Char caught the warning there, but he ignored it. “High Lord, we knew of their technology. I gave fair warning that their unusual weapons might be a bigger threat than we were prepared to handle.”
“That is what the bloody wyrms were for!” Taise roared.
In a smooth voice, Char replied, “They found a way to kill the wyrms.” He still couldn’t quite believe what he had seen as he observed through the Veil. Yes, he’d been aware of their little weapons, but nothing could kill the wyrms. Even the Warlords hadn’t had much to control them once they had sent them into Ishtan. The wyrms were indestructible. Or so Char had thought. The ugly giants were Taise’s favored pet. The wyrms couldn’t survive in much of Anqar—the land was too arid and hot. Wyrms required less intense heat, but more, they couldn’t survive in the dry deserts that made up most of their world. The swamps where they bred were their only natural environment on Anqar, and seeing the destruction the beasties wreaked, it was a bloody good thing, Char figured.
The High Lord’s voice shook as he repeated, “They found a way to kill them?” Then he threw back his head and screamed. Char fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears as the scream droned on and on. Char braced himself as the High Lord’s anger spun out of control, and his magick along with it. The earth shuddered under their feet, and the glass in the windows trembled. Across the receiving chamber, an ornate mirror, dating back more than three hundred years, fell from its mounting and hit the floor. Little mirrored slivers went flying, and Char found himself staring at his splintered reflection.
“You.” The High Lord stopped screaming and pointed at Char. “You will go and fix this. You cost me thousands of my men and bring me back nothing. You will fix this—or I will see your head torn from your shoulders and mounted in front of the manse.”
Char cocked a brow. Finally. “Are you sending me into Ishtan, High Lord?”
Taise’s mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “Yes, Char. I am. Do you disapprove?”
With a respectful bow, Char said, “Of course not, my lord.” Disapprove? Hell, he had been waiting for this chance for nearly three decades. But the High Lord’s most trusted hand didn’t leave the homeworld unless the High Lord ordered it. As the High Lord’s health and sanity declined, it was required that Char remain closer and closer to High Keep, leaving him no other choice than to try and let others do his job. Others who failed.
But it wouldn’t do to appear too eager. “But are you certain that this is the wisest course of action? Your enemies are many, Devoted Uncle. I hate to leave you unprotected.”
Taise’s face split into an ugly smile. “Yes. I am sure you do. However, I am far from unprotected. Go, Char. And do not return until you fix the mess you made.”
Oh, I won’t . . . Uncle. Char forced himself to smile politely and bow once more. “I will prepare myself for the journey then. I may be gone for some time.”
Already, Taise had dismissed Char’s presence and was mumbling to himself. Probably counting his new body slaves. Well, Char would make sure a few pretty ones crossed over—a sad waste, but he’d have to if he wanted the old, sick bastard occupied elsewhere while Char dealt with his daughter.
He would find her. All it would take was being in the same world and he would find her. Blood called to blood. Anticipation had his blood pumping hard and fast as he walked toward his chambers. Char was tempted to move faster, perhaps even run. But Warlords didn’t show that sort of emotion. As long as he had awaited this moment, he could certainly manage to walk instead of run.
He would find her and somehow, he would learn who had helped the child’s mother slip across the gate. Whoever had helped them would be better off dead. Because if Char found the man who had aided a mated Tiris in fleeing her Warlord, the man would be put to death in a manner so slow, so painful, he would plead for death long before it came. Disgusted, Char acknowledged that if the High Lord had been in his right mind, Char could have sought her out before this.
He could have gone to the High Lord and requested a raiding party with the sole intention of finding his missing daughter. Daishan were highly prized, and a sane leader would have understood Char’s request. But Taise had parted ways with sanity when Char was still in formal training. Char had ascended through the ranks hearing tales of his uncle’s increasing paranoia and delusions.
Taise had done the unthinkable, things no Warlord would dare, and he had done so without fear of recrimination. Not one soul dared to speak against him. He had taken body slaves that had been mated and bred, taken them away from the Warlord who’d sired the slave’s children, and he claimed it was his sovereign right. Many High Lords in the past had claimed sovereign right to take what body slaves they chose immediately after a raid, but none had ever taken a slave from a Warlord who’d impregnated and claimed a slave as his own personal woman. Taise had even sunk to claiming slaves so young they were naught but children, as though he thought claiming their youth would bring back his own.
Few spoke of it, but over the past ten years, the High Lord had become impotent and many Warlords breathed a sigh of relief. The raids, for so many years, had seemed vital to their way of life, providing females for a race that was, by far, predominantly male. Raids resulted in an adequate supply of females for all the Warlords, as well as the highly ranked Sirvani.
But as the High Lord went further into madness, he’d claimed more and more females, killing them with the fervor that had once been reserved for seducing the offworld females into accepting their new fates. Killing females . . . it was something most of them found utterly repugnant, yet the High Lord killed indiscriminately in his rages.
The younger slaves were no longer brought to the manse, not even for menial labor. There was little to be done about the High Lord claiming the best body slaves presented to him, although some of the Sirvani that led the raids had turned a blind eye to the Warlords waiting at the gate for their return. Char knew it happened. While it might be his duty as his uncle’s second to stop it and punish the Sirvani and Warlords responsible, Char pretended ignorance. Bad enough serving under a crazy High Lord—he wasn’t going to deny the men their well-earned rewards by letting Taise claim most of the body slaves for his personal use.
Those who survived the High Lord’s attentions were all but broken by the time Taise was done with them. Not because he used them too harshly, but because if they failed to arouse him, the High Lord had his personal guard beat and rape them. If they survived, no man could go near them without the woman going into hysterics.
Most of the Warlords were above using such brutality with their women. It was considered a mark of honor for a Warlord to learn to seduce a body slave so that her screams were of passion rather than rage, fear or pain. Even if she tried to run once she recovered. It was a slow, subtle possession, thoroughly binding the body slave to her Warlord, so that eventually she came to crave his touch more than she craved her freedom.
Beating them bloody was a needless cruelty that left Char with a bad taste in his mouth. It was not unheard of, but worse, too many of the younger generation saw the High Lord’s brutal treatment of the body slaves and began to echo it. More and more slaves began to run away, but they were ill-equipped to function in a world as harsh as Anqar.
Which led to death or recapture. The punishment for escaping wasn’t a pleasant one, and most of the escaped slaves would rather end their lives out under the harsh sun than return to a Warlord. So many wasted lives, so much wasted power and Warlords that were cutting their teeth on the ways of cruelty, undermining thousands of years of tradition. All because Taise continued to rule.
As long as that insane bastard breathed, Char wasn’t going to parade his daughter in front of the High Lord. If Taise would assert his sovereign right to take whatever woman he wanted, even mated and claimed women, then what was to stop him from crossing the line and taking a Daisha? Char’s gut in
stinct was that nothing would stop the High Lord if Char’s long-lost daughter caught his interest.
So he wouldn’t proceed with this under the High Lord’s blessing and rule. He would find his daughter, on his own, and he would bring her back to his personal province, and there she would stay until Char knew she wasn’t in danger from the High Lord. His daughter was a Daisha, the rare female offspring between a Warlord and an offworld woman with great talent. There was no telling what magicks ran in her bloodstream. She was destined for great things.
Char had always known that, and he had spent so many years searching for her, wanting to bring her back so she could claim her rightful place in their society. It was going to take time—like any other offworld woman, she was going to resent his interference in her life, but once she realized who she was, it would be better. Once she realized that she was the daughter of the man who would rule Anqar, that she would be loved, valued and worshipped, that she wasn’t to be a slave, she would accept her place.
Her place as his daughter. In time, he’d present her to his most loyal men, and when she chose her mate, she’d breed. Char would get grandsons, possibly even granddaughters, off her, securing the family line. Securing his power base.
Taise was such a doddering old fool. The man actually thought that the gates were representative of his power. He was wrong, though. Char knew just how wrong the High Lord was. In all his years, Taise had failed to realize the one lesson that Char had learned early on. The gates weren’t a sign of power.
Children were.
ELEVEN
Lee stood in the middle of a slaughter. At least it looked that way to her. The atmosphere was bleak, and those around her moved with a grim focus as they gathered their dead. Already the smoke from the mass funeral pyre had painted the air with its heavy, acrid taint, and the fires wouldn’t stop burning anytime soon.
But from what she could tell, these people were considering the past night a cautious victory. The families and elders, along with a heavy escort, were already far away. Word had come in that reinforcements were close, closer than Kalen had anticipated.
Despite the loss of life, the general consensus was guardedly optimistic.
But Lee had lost count of the bodies she had seen. She had helped move more than fifty before she stopped counting. In a numb, trance-like state, she had moved bodies until she simply couldn’t lift any more. It had been near dawn when she started, and twilight had fallen long before she stopped.
Lee had given up long before most of the others. She had stopped frequently to empty her stomach, and though she had pretty much purged herself, she still had to fight the dry heaves. Morne had told her to leave the care of the dead to others, but Lee hadn’t walked away until Kalen came and forcibly carried her away.
Guilt was eating her alive.
Kalen was so certain that she was important to this fight, and Lee had believed him. Arrogant, much? One person couldn’t hope to make the kind of difference these people needed. Not unless it came with divine intervention. Because she couldn’t figure out what it was she was supposed to do, thousands had died.
More were going to die unless she could figure out what in the hell it was. Those dark, depressing thoughts chased her through the night as she tried to make herself rest. It was an exercise in futility, she decided, after nightmares woke her for the third time. Climbing from her mat on the ground, Lee stared up at the sky. It was clouded and a dark gray that was only a few shades lighter now at dawn than it had been at midnight.
She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. The air stank of smoke, burning flesh and putrid death. Her gut threatened to revolt, and in self-defense, she turned away from the camp and headed into the forest. Several of the men guarding the line called to her and one actually blocked her path. “We haven’t completely secured the forest, Lelia.”
Lee squinted at him in the dim morning light, trying to recall his name. Reshen. Reesen. Something like that. “I can take care of myself,” she said and went around him. He caught her arm as she passed by, and she stopped in her tracks and looked down at his hand. Then she lifted her eyes and stared at him.
His hand fell away and Lee turned her head to hide her smirk. She was still trying to come to grips with the memories in her head. They still felt foreign, but every time somebody demonstrated that deferential courtesy, it drove them home just a little more. The cynical bitch apparently wasn’t some figment of her imagination. The years she had spent sliding in and out of this world had established her reputation as one seriously kick-ass bitch.
Too bad she didn’t feel up to the title.
As she pushed through the undergrowth, she breathed in slowly and let the scents of trees and earth fill her head. The nausea churning in her gut eased a little and some of the tension seeped out of her body. It was still riding on her, and she would have severed an arm just for an hour in her whirlpool tub back home.
The communal bathing areas had been transformed into a medical shelter for the injured, so Lee had been forced to clean up using a jury-rigged portable shower. The lukewarm water did nothing to ease the knots in her muscles even if it did clean away the grime and gore.
“You finally took that bath.”
Lee looked over her shoulder, watching as Kalen separated himself from the fog. Little wisps of it wrapped around his legs as he headed toward her—the effect was both seductive and eerie. Which, she figured, described Kalen Brenner pretty damn well. He was mouthwateringly gorgeous, all that power and raw sensuality all but oozing from his pores. He was also death incarnate, and he wasn’t at all satisfied to stay back from the front line when the demons and Sirvani pushed through.
He had sliced, hacked and punched his way through the demons that had tried to surround the leader. The weapons he used seemed to come to his hands of their own volition, and he used them with startling ease. Damned seductive and damned eerie.
His hair was pulled back from his face, fastened in a tail at the nape of his neck. The dirt smudges were gone from his face, and his bloodied clothes had been replaced. “You, too.”
Kalen glanced down at his fresh clothes. “Morne all but threw me in the river. Then he told me to check on you.” He looked around them and then looked at her. “It isn’t safe out here alone, Lee. We haven’t secured the forest yet. They aren’t done, Lee.”
Something hot and ugly moved through her. She smiled and whispered, “Good. Where can I find them?”
At that, Kalen cocked a brow at her. “Hungry for blood, are you?”
“Aren’t you?”
A smile tipped up the corners of his lips. “Oh, always.” The smile faded and his eyes softened as he studied her face. “You handled yourself well out there.”
With a snort, Lee muttered, “I don’t know about that. How much good did I do you?” The dead were going to haunt her. Lee didn’t know if she’d ever close her eyes without seeing them again.
Warm hands cupped her face. Lifting her lashes, she looked up at Kalen, and the understanding she saw there undermined all her efforts not to think too much. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to find someplace dark and quiet and safe so she could hide. She couldn’t do any of those things, though.
So instead, she pushed up on her toes and pressed her lips to the hard, firm line of Kalen’s mouth. He was unresponsive for a moment and then his hands skimmed down, closing loosely over her waist. When she licked his lips, his hands tightened convulsively.
He smelled so damned good. Clean, sexy, male, and something dark and mysterious. It was addictive. When his lips parted, she pushed her tongue into his mouth. They groaned simultaneously and, greedy, Lee pressed her body completely against his.
“This isn’t a good idea,” Kalen growled against her lips.
She pulled back just a little and smiled. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.” She tugged at his shirt. He held still. For a minute there, she thought he might pull away. But then like a spring uncoiling, he leaped into ac
tion. The world spun around as he lifted her, turning so that he could press her back up against a tree. He slid a hand down the front of the sleeveless matte black protective gear he wore, and the cavinir parted in its wake, revealing deeply tanned, hard flesh. The muscles in his belly jumped as she touched him. He caught her hands and lifted them high over her head, pressing her wrists against the rough bark for a moment, his gaze holding hers. When he slid his hands back down her arms, Lee held the position. There was a branch just above her hands and she curled her fingers around it.
Kalen unfastened her shirt and it parted. Under it, she wore a skintight tunic of midnight black. It served as both undershirt and bra, pressing her breasts flat against her chest. Kalen’s dark head dipped, and Lee realized that as sturdy as the black chemise thing seemed, it was proving to be little barrier to Kalen. She could feel the heat of his mouth through the layers, and her nipples stiffened. Through the clothing, he licked, nuzzled and bit until she was moaning and rocking against him.
His hands moved to her waist and made short work of the form-fitting black pants. Her boots fell to the forest floor with a dull thud, and she opened her eyes, watching as he smoothed his palms down the outside of her legs, taking the pants with him. When they pooled around her ankles, he stripped them completely away and threw them aside.
His gaze lowered, focusing on the core of her body. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against the blond curls covering her sex. Lee moaned and arched against his mouth. Her heart pounded, her breathing kicked up, and the roaring in her ears drowned out the memories of people screaming as they died. Under his touch, the stain of death fell away, replaced by the pleasure of life.
Hard, calloused hands cupped her hips, holding her steady as he caressed her. His tongue circled over the bud of her clit, quick and teasing. She panted and rocked against him. She lowered her hands, clutching at the black silk of his hair, trying to pull him closer. But he stopped. He lifted his head, looked up at her and then flicked a glance over her head.
Through the Veil Page 24
