Through The Veil (5 page)

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?

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.”

Marcus
gingerly laid the stranger down on the table, before he examined the room
critically. “Is it clean enough to do this here?”

Malcolm
nodded tersely, but then looked back down at Marcus’s grip on her. “Yes, but if
you don’t let go of her, I won’t have anything to do because she’ll be dead.
Marcus, we need room. Let us work.”

Every
fiber of his being screamed at him to not let her go, but he did and stepped
back. It only got worse when Malcolm started cutting the shirt off her body.
Marcus wanted to growl at him to keep his hands off her. Where the hell did
this possessiveness come from? He needed to get control of himself.

His
gaze swung to her face as Malcolm started probing the wound, examining it. Her
brows puckered into a frown so he stepped to her head and stroked that colorful
hair to soothe her. Her frown smoothed out and he wondered at her prolonged
unconsciousness. Hopefully, it would last a bit longer until Malcolm could
remove the bullet from her gut.

Malcolm
had been only eleven years old when the Veil fell, and he truly wasn’t even a
doctor, but he was the closest thing they had. He worked as their doctor and
technology guy. Mother Earth had blessed him with an additional ability to heal
and manipulate energy signatures with his mind. His gift wasn’t very powerful,
but it did provide a boost to his doctoring skills, especially when he worked
in the vicinity of one of the Earth’s natural
ley
lines.