Through the Veil (27 page)

If they lived through the night, the Sirvani were going to have their hands full.

If . . . what a frustrating word.

If they lived through the night, if reinforcements came in time—if Eira hadn’t died.

That was the most enraging of all, and the most heart-breaking. Eira’s broken, lifeless body had been one of the first pulled from the rubble. She was gone, and her death left them vulnerable in ways that none of them were prepared for. Elina had contacted them. She knew about her mother’s death, and she’d be there as fast as she could, bringing her oldest two children with her, a witch-born daughter and a psychic. They were closer than he could have hoped for, but still, Kalen wasn’t sure they’d make it.

The few witches left had minor talents, enough to start a fire or divert the natural element flow, but not one of them had the strength they would need to weaken a gate. If they combined their gifts, it just might be enough to weaken the power flow that fed the gate, but it was a chancy course of action. It was also their only course of action, because they had to close the damn gate.

The gates were a strange creation—they wouldn’t open for any but the Warlords, but they did react to magick. Not directly. Magick fired directly into the gate was like feeding it, but the witches didn’t focus on the gate itself. They focused their power on the energy lines running through the ground, the power that fed the gate. Hit those and it made the gate unstable, and without a Warlord there to counteract the power flow, the gates closed. It always took a few days to get the gates stabilized enough to be useful again.

A few days. Might be the time needed for reinforcements to arrive. Maybe enough for Elina to get to them. His skin prickled, and Kalen turned his head, watching as Lee picked her way through the haphazard piles of rubble, salvaging food and materials and medical supplies. The sun shining down on her head cast a silvery gold nimbus around her hair. The sight of her hit him in the heart like a fist.

He still hadn’t recovered from the fear he’d felt as he watched her caught in the throes of the strange seizure that had struck when the gate opened. He hadn’t ever seen anything like it, and he didn’t ever want to see it again. But at the same time, he tried to work the puzzle of it out in his head. Why had it happened, what had caused it and was it going to happen again?

Holy hell, he hoped not. Fear bubbled inside his throat, digging in with sharp, angry claws. He couldn’t lose her. Part of him wanted to send her away with the families and nonfighters. Not that Lee would ever go for that. If he tried to shield her like that, she was likely to bite him. Whether Lee recognized it or not, she was a fighter.

A smile curved her lips as she looked at him. Kalen started toward her. He never realized he’d moved until he had her in his arms. Burying his face in her neck, he breathed in the warm scent of her skin.
I’ll do whatever I can to keep you safe,
he promised silently.

“I know.”

Kalen stilled. Slowly, he lifted his head and stared at her. “I didn’t say anything.”

Lee cocked a brow. “Yeah, you did. You said . . .” Her words trailed off and she swallowed. “You did say something, didn’t you?”

“No. I thought it.”

I thought it.

It was late afternoon. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since that bizarre moment with Kalen. It hadn’t happened again, but Lee couldn’t stop thinking about it. Everything and everyone had faded away for just a few minutes, and she’d felt the warmth and strength of his soul wrap around her, heard his voice murmur,
I’ll do whatever I can to keep you safe.
She had heard him. But he hadn’t said a word.

The brief connection had only lasted a few seconds, there and then gone again. It hadn’t happened since, and that was one thing she was thankful for. Nice to have at least one thing to be thankful for, she figured.

Well, two. They’d made it through the long, terrifying night. Outside the makeshift barricades they could hear the things moving around in the forest, hear the growls, the chittering, the screams.

And the rumbles in the earth coming from the wyrms, although the wyrms hadn’t advanced the way Kalen had expected. What they were waiting for, none of them knew. Most terrifying of all, though, wasn’t the demons or the wyrms, although those had scared Lee plenty.

The most terrifying sound any of them had heard was music. That primitive, seductive mix of eerie chanting and the tribal beat of drums. When the music had started just a little before midnight, far, far off in the distance, it seemed every survivor had jumped.

The attack they’d been bracing for never came, and come dawn they were exhausted simply from the strain. But things weren’t going to get any better now that the sun had risen.

Sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. Her hand shook as she reached up and wiped it away. Her back ached from the strain of the pack on her back, but taking it off wasn’t an option. Kalen had sent his people out loaded for bear. She knew how to use the laser in her hands, but most of the stuff in the sack was beyond her comprehension. Kalen hadn’t listened to her when she tried to tell him she wasn’t comfortable with the weapons, and it seemed like such a stupid thing to argue about considering what he had to deal with.

Even though she hadn’t said a word, Dais seemed to read her mind as he watched her strap on her pack and rig her utility belt with the odd hodgepodge of weapons that had been given to her. “You never did care for man-made weapons,” he mused, shaking his head. “Safer than magick these days. More reliable.”

Lee wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t know about that. I’m less likely to accidentally burn a hole in somebody using magick. I can control that a little. These . . .” She gingerly touched a couple of the pulse charges hanging from her belt. “These, I’m not so sure about.”

Dais just smiled. “If you’re that nervous with them, just don’t use them. But don’t bother arguing with us. You’ll go with the weapons or not go at all.”

And that wasn’t an option. Lee had to get away from the base camp for a little while, away from the stink of death, from the ever-burning fires and the morass of emotion that hung over the place like a cloud.

Part of her felt guilty, knowing that she was going out into the forest just to escape the job that lay before Kalen and the others. A grim, ugly job. Accounting for survivors. Disposing of the dead. Disposing . . . such a cold word. Like they were tossing out some Chinese food that had gone bad. These were people. Eira had been one of them.

Unwittingly, she slid a hand into her pocket and touched the disc Eira had given her. It was called an emsphere. Kalen said it could store thousands of images, but this one had held only the image of Aneva.
My mother
. Lee had few conscious memories of her mother, but looking at her face seemed to bring back memories long forgotten. Bits and pieces of songs that Lee used to hear as she drifted away to sleep. Warm arms holding her close. A soft, exotic fragrance and the most beautiful amber eyes. Just vague little things, but they were enough that Lee could understand one important thing.

She had been loved.

Ana, my Ana. She died doing her damnedest to protect you.
Lee was still a little too shaky to think about the woman Eira called Aneva. Right now, although Lee hated to admit it, she wasn’t ready to think about her mother yet, so she simply blocked it out. The coward’s way out, maybe, but the woman was little more than a stranger to Lee, and since she had died years ago, that wasn’t likely to change. Thinking about her now wasn’t going to change things, so Lee decided
not
to think about her.

But even though she could push her thoughts about her mother into a neat little box and not dwell on them, she couldn’t do the same thing with Eira. Eira’s death hurt. Lee didn’t know if it was because the old lady had been the only blood relative Lee actually knew, or if it had something to do with whatever memories she had suppressed of this place. But it hurt. The pain kept sneaking up on her, grabbing her by the throat and blinding her with the pain. Even now as she hiked through the dense undergrowth, tears stung her eyes.

She blinked them away. There wasn’t any time to cry right now. No time to mourn. But if she lived through this, she was going to mourn for the odd, old woman that she really never had a chance to know.

The ground rumbled and Lee swore, bracing herself for another quake. “It’s just an aftershock.” She looked up and saw Morne watching her from a few feet away. He stood with his legs widespread, and the little tremors rolling through the ground didn’t seem to faze him in the least.

Lee, on the other hand, felt sick, physically, mentally. Drained, exhausted, and terrified. And grieving. No, she hadn’t really known Eira, and now she had the rest of her life in front of her to think about how she had treated the only family she’d ever known.

Hell couldn’t be any worse than the past few days. It just wasn’t possible. Nothing could be worse. The base was in shambles. The earthquake that had hit two days ago had done a great deal of damage, and what had escaped the quake hadn’t necessarily escaped the subsequent raids.

Thousands were dead. Burying them all would take more time and manpower than Kalen had, so mass funeral pyres had been built. Lee had heard the words “Blessings on your path” so many times she wanted to scream. “Blessings”—not a word to say over the dead body of a child. But it was what these people said, like “Godspeed” or something. So Lee said it as well, even though that calm, lovely phrase made her nauseous.
Blessings on your path, brother. Blessings on your path, elder. Blessings on your path, poor little baby . . .

When she had said it the last time over the still body of a toddler, Lee had lost it. She had pulled away from the pyre and just started to walk. She probably would have walked clear out of the camp, into the mountains and on and on until she dropped from exhaustion, if Kalen hadn’t stopped her.

Kalen had made a command decision and ordered the complete evacuation of all remaining families. By the time he was done, there would be only soldiers left in the camp, and Lee figured that was how it should be. Part of her wished she could join the refugees.

She wanted so bad to run. She was still trying to come to grips with the fact that what she had seen over the past few days was real.

Raviners, Ikacado, the wyrms, Sirvani—Lee felt like she had fallen into some kind of comic book but the artist had neglected to give her a decent superpower. She didn’t belong here. She couldn’t keep up with these people, these soldiers. They knew how to fight, and if they were scared, they didn’t show it.

Lee, however, was pretty sure she had a huge, neon-lit sign over her head with flashing letters that read,
I’m scared and I can’t handle this. Please send me back home
.

The ground shuddered again, and this tremor was stronger than the last. She heard some muffled voices, a couple of harsh exclamations and then a huge crack. Distantly, she heard people screaming out warnings, and she sensed Morne moving toward her with a speed that was inhuman.

She wanted to look up, but her body took over as death came hurtling down toward her from the sky. She dove to the side, rolling her body in a tight ball. Debris hit her back. Something crashed into the ground—Lee felt the rush of air on her body, and slowly she lifted her head to look.

Dust and leaves floated through the air. Lee brushed at her hair as she stared at the massive tree bough. As she gaped, one last tremor shuddered through the ground below her and then all was silent. Apparently destroying one of the forest giants was enough to appease whatever had the earth so pissed off. Lee cast a glance up into the canopy of leaves, studying the empty piece of sky. She could see the path the huge limb had taken. Smaller branches had been broken during the descent. Small by comparison at least. Some of those limbs were as big around as her waist.

The biggest limb, the one that would have crushed her if she hadn’t moved, was probably as big around as a VW Bug and its branches reached upward so high, she couldn’t see over it.

Morne’s blond head appeared over the rubble, and he took one look at Lee before closing his eyes. Lee recognized the sentiment. As soon as she could breathe again, she was going to roll over, kiss the dirt and thank God.

Dais’s voice intruded on her attempts to catch her breath. “Anybody hurt?” There was silence and she felt all eyes on her. Dais cocked a gunmetal gray brow and asked, “Are you well, Lee?”

She slowly pushed up on her elbow and looked at the older man. Under her breath, she mumbled, “Depends on how you define
well
.” People started toward her and she waved them off. “I’m okay. Just give me a few minutes.”

The sudden onslaught of voices was too much for her spinning head, and instead of climbing to her feet to inspect the damage like everybody else was doing, she fell back onto the forest floor. Lee squinted up at the empty patch in the canopy overhead. She could see the dismal gray clouds through the patch. It hit her like a pang, then. The sun didn’t shine here. She hadn’t seen blue sky in nearly a month.

God. Had it only been a month?

It seemed like a lifetime, yet oddly, it also seemed like no time at all had passed. She could remember sitting at her workstation, the smell of the pencils she liked to use when she was sketching, the scent of paper, the weight of it in her hands, the feel of a keyboard under her fingers—the feel of the stylus. Watching the monitor as her dreams took on life before her eyes.

How many times had she sketched out memories from this world? Suppressed memories that only appeared in her dreams? It was unsettling to realize there were probably many, many memories. The piece she had been working on in the days before she fell into the bizarre place had come from a dream about the war. About Kalen.

“You aren’t injured.”

Lee opened her eyes and found Morne staring down at her with his unsettling blue-black eyes. “Is that a question or a statement?”

He blinked. “We need to get moving. There isn’t much time before nightfall, and we must all be back at the base before then.”