by Christi Snow
“Be that as it may…”
Aaron’s voice trailed off into the background as Marcus sensed sudden terror from Audra.
“Audra!” He tried to connect along their mental pathways, but all he could get from her was pure panic and fear. The blood iced in his veins. He tried to connect to Shane, but they were too far away and he didn’t share as strong a telepathic bond with the boy as he did with Audra.
“Marcus, what’s wrong?” Brooklyn noticed his sudden stillness and glanced around the room in concern, looking for the threat.
“Something’s happened. Shane and Audra went out into the forest this afternoon. I have to go.” He looked to Aaron for permission. Please, don’t fight me on this.
“Is it a Predator?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can just feel her panic. Something’s very wrong.” He had to go to her. Now.
“Go!” Aaron urged. “Take Brooklyn with you for backup or medical help, although I hope you need neither.”
Brooklyn had skills in healing, though his brother, Malcolm, was their doctor and more skilled. But with the delegations here, they couldn’t have their doctor leaving the village.
Another mental scream of anguish came from Audra. “Come on.” Every warning bell inside Marcus told him they had to go, now, or it would be too late. They took off at a run through the building, busting through the mingling groups standing outside in the hall. Several disgruntled exclamations followed in their wake, but the two of them ignored them. Marcus couldn’t even waste the time to answer his brother, Malcolm’s, questioning voice in his head.
During the meeting, dark had fallen. Marcus found Shane and Audra by following their mental trail above the forest, pushing his wings as fast as they could go. Why were Shane and Audra still outdoors? They knew the danger became much, much higher after dark.
Sudden pain came across their telepathic pathways from both of them, but they were both too wounded to handle a full telepathic connection with him. He had no idea what kind of situation Brooklyn and he were going into as they swooped down over the tops of the trees, searching the forest floor. Luckily, one of the gifts that had developed for them in this new world was their night vision. It was dark outside, but he could still see as if in the twilight of dusk.
His first glance of Audra stole his breath. She was hunched over at her waist holding a gaping wound in her stomach with one arm and shielding Shane behind her with the other. So much blood.
And a Predator stood before her, his arm drawn back to deliver a death blow. Audra never flinched. She had nowhere to go, backed up to huge boulders, but she wasn’t going to let this creature get to Shane.
Marcus drew his sword out of the scabbard between his wings. The two people he loved most in this world were pinned against that rock. Audra clutched at her abdomen, as if to hold her organs in. Something she wasn’t succeeding at. How the hell was she even upright with that injury? Behind her stood Shane—pale, terrified and losing blood, too. His wing looked broken.
Terror for his family laced with adrenaline and the need to punish and protect. How dare this thing hurt them? They were his life. His heart. The two people he cared about most in this world.
Swinging his sword with all his might, Marcus’s blow sent the Predator’s arm flying off its body in a macabre spray of blood. The seven and a half foot creature swung around with a maddened scream of pain. Marcus landed with a thud on the ground, needing the creature completely focused on him, not his family. The Predator aimed the claws of his one good arm at Marcus, poising his talons like long, razor-sharp knives and dove toward him. Marcus leapt using his wings to narrowly avoid the blow. That was fine as long as they were no longer aimed at his family. He had to protect them.
“Get them away from here, Brooklyn,” he instructed as he slowly stepped back to draw the Predator away from Audra and Shane.
“Come and get me, you bastard,” he taunted. “Let’s see how you do with someone a little closer to your own size.”
The creature bellowed. Completely covered with tangled, dark grey fur, matted with twigs and Goddess knew what else mixed into it, the monster reeked. His eyes glimmered with madness and pain as he charged at Marcus, his single arm swinging.
Marcus fought it off with his sword and a shorter knife he’d drawn off his waist, swinging both in conjunction to do as much damage as possible to the creature. Already out of breath from his mad flight here, his breath sawed in and out as he pummeled at the creature. The quiet of the night was only interrupted by the creature’s deep growls and bellows as it came at Marcus again and again. The creature swung slower now, tired and weakening from his loss of blood, but Marcus’s energy flagged, too. He needed to end this.
Predators were so large and weren’t easy to take down. Because the creatures were so tall, a death blow was difficult to render that far above Marcus’s head when he was so tired. He couldn’t put his weight behind the swing from the ground. He looked around frantically trying to find an advantage so they could end this fight.
There. A boulder.
He ran to it, launched himself off the side of it, and flapped his wings once to propel himself forward quickly before the creature had time to react. He swung his sword in his right hand toward the neck and slid the knife in his left hand into the creature’s chest.
Those blue, crazed eyes momentarily widened in shock before they went sightless in death as the head fell away from the spine. The creature dropped to the ground and Marcus crumpled with it, bleeding profusely from several places. He heaved and struggled to stand, needing to get to Audra.
Now with the adrenaline from the fight waning, he could feel her wavering life-force through their mental connection.
Oh Goddess, no. She couldn’t be dying.
His wings burned from exertion, but he flapped them to propel him back where he’d left Audra, Shane, and Brooklyn. All three were on the ground, and Brooklyn worked on Shane.
Marcus crumpled to Audra’s side. The ground below her had turned to a puddle of mud and blood. Fuck, fuck, fuck. So much blood. Her entire abdomen had been split open. He looked frantically at Brooklyn for help but she just helplessly shook her head with tears in her eyes.
No!
“Audra. Oh, Goddess,” his voice choked and wavered. “Please, please don’t…don’t leave me. I need you.” He cradled her head.
Her eyes fluttered open and a trembling hand reached toward him. “Marc, it’s okay. Shh.” She coughed, a shuddering, rattling sound, and blood dribbled out of her mouth.
“No,” he soothed, smoothing the hair off her forehead, the exact same color as her blood on his hands. As her life force flowed out around them, he could only sit there useless. Why hadn’t he been here with them today?
“You’re going to be okay,” he told her. “Just hold still. Let the Earth heal you. She won’t take you from me. She knows I need you.” He sobbed, trying to believe that she could recover from this.
She lightly touched his cheek. “You…you made me happy.” She gasped. “Take care of Shane. I’m sorry.” Her eyes closed and her chest rattled a final time.
“No, no, no.” He gathered her up in his arms and rocked her. She couldn’t be dead. No! How could he have failed her so completely? He was a Warrior. It was his job to protect, but he hadn’t even been able to do that.
He had no idea how long he sat there holding her, but like all that died within the WS now, within minutes her body completely disappeared. Like she never even existed. Only the blood staining his hands and the ground proved that this hadn’t just been a horrible, devastating nightmare.
A whimper of pain echoed over the glade.
Shane. He’d forgotten.
Turning to where Brooklyn worked on him, he rubbed the tears from his face and asked in a low voice, “Is he going to be okay?”
She nodded. “I think so, but we have to get him back quickly so Malcolm can set his wing before it begins to heal incorrectly. He just passed ou
t, so hopefully he will stay that way until we get back to the village.” Her eyes were filled with compassion and tears as she gazed at him. “I’m so sorry, Marcus.”
“The only person who should say that is me. This is my fault. I should have been here with them. I should have been here to protect them, but I wasn’t and now I have to live with that.” His soul was shattering piece by piece inside his chest, but he had to get Shane back to the village. It was too late for Audra, but he wouldn’t allow anything else to happen to this boy he loved as if he were his own child.
He lifted him up, ignoring the agony—both mental and physical—and pushed toward the village.
* * *
A week later, Marcus sat on the floor of the darkened corner of Shane’s bedroom.
Empty.
This room.
His house.
His heart.
He’d screwed up and lost them both. Shane had fully recovered, but he blamed Marcus for not being there to save Audra. Rightly so. And because he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Marcus anymore, Shane had moved in with his brother, Drake.
The agony pulsed within him, a living entity eating at his soul.
Now Marcus was all alone. A week ago he had a family—a mate and someone he considered his son.
Now he had nothing, but an empty house.
An empty life.
He curled into himself on the floor, cold and alone.
What was the point?
Part Two
Renewal
Six years later…
Crouched behind the rock, gasping for air, Lori surveyed the decrepit bridge below swinging eerily over the deep gorge. Measured at a mile deep, the quarter-mile wide gorge was edged by stone cliffs with even more treacherous looking rocks jutting out from the bottom of it. Would that old, worn out, rickety structure support her? No one had been able to use it for eighteen years.
Pressing the bullet wound at her side to stem the flow of blood, she glanced behind her, trying to ignore the pain that sizzled along every nerve ending. She hadn’t heard her pursuers for several hours, but that didn’t mean they weren’t nearby.
A bead of sweat rolled down her spine as she glanced at the bridge again. It had been built decades ago, a few years after the gorge had suddenly appeared. And, damn, that gorge looked scarily deep right now.
The only reason Lori even knew about this bridge was because her family came here for vacation a year before the Veil appeared. The riskiness of climbing this bridge so far above the ground became the highlight of her trip back then. She’d been nine years old at the time and it remained as one of her best memories of time with her family, a family that disappeared from existence ten months later.
Now this bridge featured as both her nightmare and salvation. If she stayed on this side of the gorge, the men after her would kill her—or worse, imprison her again. She’d rather die than spend any more time as a lab rat. And with the blood oozing from her side, that remained a very good possibility. Survival meant she could come back and help the Others escape, too.
Gritting her teeth, Lori stood and crept down the hill. The closer she got the more flimsy the bridge appeared. It was simply a foot bridge made of wood and rope, suspended across the gorge. The irony of the situation didn’t pass by her. They only wanted her for her gift. She counted on her ability to manipulate space to save her life now.
But she had to escape. If that meant using every last drop of energy she had, she would.
She let go of her side and sucked in a breath to focus her concentration. Grasping the rough ropes, she took her first step onto the bridge. It shifted slightly under her weight with a creaking sound which reverberated through the quiet of the surrounding forest. It was as if nature held its breath to see if she would survive this. The swaying bridge took more effort from the muscles of her core. She hissed at the added pain and fought off the black spots encroaching on her vision.
Glancing behind her, she didn’t see any movement except the leaves rustling on the trees. Looking forward again, she tried to peer through the Veil to the other side. She had about fifty feet of bridge before she hit the wall of fog. Slowly, she edged her feet across the rough wood, stepping gingerly to avoid falling through the rotted boards. The farther out she creeped, the more the bridge swayed over the huge expanse. She couldn’t look down. Her breath came out in gasps as she inched across.
Finally, she reached the Veil. She reached forward with a hand, and could feel the semi-transparent barrier like a huge wall in front of her. She closed her eyes and gave a silent prayer this would work.
“She’s on the bridge!”
Lori swung around. Men in camouflage holding guns poured out of the forest behind her. Damn. This was her final chance. She closed her eyes and faced the Veil again. Using every ounce of energy she could pour into it, she focused on creating a hole big enough she could climb through it. Finally, the energy moved and the wall shifted. She scrambled through the invisible hole she created.
Once through, she let go of the energy to seal the wall back up and not a moment too soon, as the energy reverberated under the hail of bullets striking it. But she couldn’t see or hear the men on the other side anymore. The fog had enveloped her. She held onto the rope supports and felt her way across the rest of the bridge on wobbly knees.
She’d made it through. Falling wasn’t an option now.
When the solid ground of the other side met her feet, she collapsed in exhaustion and relief. She lay there gasping and trying to find energy to stand. Manipulating the Veil had taken everything she had. The darkness was slipping over her consciousness when strong arms lifted her up.
The fog still surrounded them, but that didn’t keep her from seeing the gorgeous, scowling, concerned face of the man holding her against his naked chest or the dark purple wings at his back.
* * *
Stunned, Marcus looked down at the unconscious, fragile woman in his arms and then to the rickety bridge. No one had been able to get through the Veil in eighteen years, but this slight beauty had somehow done it. Her weight in his arms felt miniscule. He lifted the hair which had fallen across her face and gasped. Blood covered his fingers.
She wore a black T-shirt so he couldn’t see where she bled. Slowly he crouched, looking across the bridge to see if anyone else approached. He didn’t see any movement so he laid her down gently on the ground to examine her side. He lifted her shirt and spotted a puffy, small hole oozing blood. It looked like a bullet wound, not that he got to see too many of those here. Some of the districts to the north still used guns, but in this area of the Western States, they’d lost that technology. The ever-present moisture from the fog made it difficult to maintain metal weapons left over from before.
He rolled her body slowly but couldn’t find an exit wound, although he did notice her lack of wings. Definitely not from around here. But the missing exit wound meant the bullet remained inside her somewhere, possibly causing more injury. He needed to get her to his brother Malcolm as quickly as possible.
Before he made the call, he looked into the face of the beauty. She had chin-length hair. With the light gently filtering through the fog, he could see it held several shades of red, brown, black, and gold, almost like a calico cat. Her skin was pale and smooth. So smooth, it looked like porcelain. Her lips were pale pink and full.
He felt the tug to kiss them to see if they tasted as luscious as they looked. His cock twitched with interest at the thought. What the hell? He hadn’t had this kind of reaction to a woman in six years. Why would he have it now, with a wounded stranger passed out and hurt in his arms?
He mentally connected with Malcolm as he took off into the sky with her in his arms. “Malcolm, I’m at the bridge. I’ve found a wounded woman. It looks like she’s been shot. I need you to grab Brooklyn and your medical supplies and meet me at the mill.”
“At the mill? Why aren’t you bringing her into Springlake?”
“She’s not one of
us. She came across the bridge and has no wings.”
“Across the bridge? You mean she came from the ES? How is that possible?” Stunned disbelief echoed in Malcolm’s mental voice.
If he knew anything about his little brother, his scientific-minded wheels were already spinning with the possibilities of what this meant.
“I don’t know, but I don’t plan to risk the village by bringing her there until we know more. Hurry. She’s bleeding and her pulse is weakening.” He looked down at her in his arms as he soared low above the trees. She seemed to be even paler than before and her skin had taken on a gray tone which worried him.
His pulse-rate thundered at the idea of her dying. For the first time in so long, he felt hope. From all appearances, she’d come from the ES. Maybe there was more for them out there than this day-to-day existence with no hope for a future beyond this generation. He pushed his wings harder with a sudden urgency to get to the mill faster.
The mill sat only a couple of miles from Springlake, so Malcolm and Brooklyn would easily beat him there since he had to travel a good fifteen miles. By the time he was within a half a mile of his destination, Marcus’s breath came out in gasps and the muscles of his wings burned with the effort he’d exerted.
As he touched down, Brooklyn and Malcolm rushed out of the building with matching expressions of curiosity. Malcolm quickly morphed into doctor mode when he saw the blood. He reached forward to take her pulse. “Her pulse is weak. We need to work quickly. We’ve set up a table in the anteroom. Take her there.”
Marcus nodded and followed Malcolm into the room.
“She really doesn’t have any wings, does she?” Surprise echoed in Brooklyn’s voice. “I need to get hold of Bethany and see what she thinks about this.”
Marcus nodded but warned, “Tell Bethany to stay away, though.” He nodded toward the wounded woman. “I don’t know how she got through or why she’s here, but we don’t want to risk Bethany’s safety.”
