Veil of Shadows (29 page)

Xan leaned by one of the windows and he shot a faint smile in her direction.

Elina and Lee were studying the whiteboard. Lee looked curious. As always, Elina’s face was about as easy to read as a blank sheet of paper—her expression revealed nothing. But Syn could feel her excitement.

She liked the idea.

Both of her fellow witches did.

Egan waited by the desk, side by side with Syn.

He’d liked the idea, and more, he had a design in mind for some detonators that would work ideally. They could be rigged to have a limited, focused range, so they could hopefully minimize the damage.

“Getting them all planted in the key locations is going to be very dangerous,” Kalen said quietly, finally opening his eyes and studying Syn. “We wouldn’t be able to send out large units—too likely we’d clue the Raviners in that something was going on.”

“Absolutely.”

He nodded and then leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. He glanced at Elina and Lee, then at Syn. “Somehow, I get the feeling you don’t have my witches in here just to keep them updated.”

“The outer points are going to be the most dangerous, and the witches are best equipped to protect a small group.”

He grimaced. “How small?”

“Just two.” She swallowed and pulled her hands from her pockets. Her palms were damp with sweat, and she resisted the urge to swipe them down the front of her pants. “One witch, one combat-trained soldier. I want to take the caribins as well.”

The caribins were rocket fast, but they were also dangerous. The vibrations from their engines were noisy—the sort of noise that attracted wyrms.

Kalen’s mouth twisted in a scowl. “I like that idea about as much as I like the idea of having my eyeballs plucked from my skull, you know.”

“I don’t like it, either.” She met his eyes, held his gaze. “But we need to move quickly with this; otherwise, it won’t work. The baerns just aren’t quick enough and if the devices work, the blast will terrify them. The caribins are the best choice.” Kalen nodded, then looked away from Syn, and studied Elina, then Lee.

Shoving away from the wall, Lee moved to stand by his desk. “This could work,” she said quietly. “I mean, I’m not the military genius in this room, but it could work, right?”

He looked at Lee, then at Syn. Then he stood.

“Yes. I think it could.” Shifting his focus to Egan, he said, “Get to work on the detonators. We’re going to blow those demons straight to hell and back.”

Syn rested a hand on the comm-unit at her waist. She checked the time, made sure they were still moving on schedule. She guided the caribins through the woods with ease, following the familiar path that would take them around the heaviest pockets of demon life, while hopefully keeping them far enough out of reach that the demons didn’t make any move to pursue them.

So far, so good.

The caribins moved fast enough that the only real concern were the wyrms, and fortunately the big, ugly bastards didn’t move as easily in this isolated part of the forest. Like Sojourn Gap, the soil was thinner, rockier. The forest life here mostly consisted of skinny, tall pines that could settle deep roots despite the lousy soil and smaller vegetation. The soil itself was littered with rocks, some no bigger than pebbles, but there were sheets of rock in the earth the size of a small house.

“Check the reading,” she said to Xan.

He pulled a palm-sized scanner from his belt and flicked it on, studying the readings. “No sign of any life other than humanoid.”

Humanoid could be Anqarians, demons or rebels—not the wyrms. The wyrms were too fucking big, and nothing remotely humanoid. The only thing they really resembled were colossal, armored earthworms. Brought over by the Anqarians, the ugly behemoths had dug into their soil, and with little competition as far as predators, the things had grown so huge, just one of them could decimate an entire settlement in seconds. They could grow upward of a hundred feet long, and Syn had seen them almost twenty feet wide.

The one good thing about their existence—they might be able to burrow through dirt and mud, but not rock. They couldn’t go too far west because of the Roinan Mountain range, and the barrier on the outer limits would vaporize any wyrm . . . or demon . . . that crossed it. As the major Gates fell, the world’s military forces were able to eradicate the population until only the Roinan range still suffered the infestation. Syn had hopes they could do the same here, but first they needed to deal with the demons.

She flicked another look at the time and then glanced up, feeling Xan’s eyes on her. “We’re making good time, Captain,” he said, a soft smile on his face.

“Yeah, I know.” Then she glanced at him and added, “You know, we don’t have anybody around. You could call me Syn.”

He stroked a hand down her back. “I like calling you Captain.” Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her neck, murmuring, “I like calling you Captain and thinking about how you tore up my back with your nails last night.”

“Pervert.” A blush rose up to stain her cheeks red and she was damn glad they were alone right now. To distract herself, she grabbed her comm-unit and sent out a relay to Elina and Lee. Elina had Egan with her, and Kalen had accompanied Lee, despite arguments from some of the other high-ranked leaders within the camp. They felt the commander should be in the camp . . . safe.

Safe, while his wife made a dangerous run into demon territory.

He’d told them what to do with that idea, and it wasn’t anything pleasant.

Leaving the camp in Bron’s capable hands, he accompanied his wife to their designated location.

“Report,” she said after Elina responded. Lee checked in a few seconds later.

“I’m almost to my location,” Elina said. Through the unit, Syn could hear her voice lower as she murmured to Egan, and then Egan’s voice respond back. “ETA less than a half an hour.”

“Lee?”

“Forty-five minutes,” she responded.

“I’m at forty-five minutes, too,” Syn said, checking her monitor. “Report back in when you hit your location, Elina. Lee, the same to you.”

Elina ended the relay. Lee lingered long enough to say, “Don’t know why I need to report in, since I know you’ll be sending another relay out in fifteen minutes, give or take.”

Syn rolled her eyes and ended the relay herself. So she was nervous—it was perfectly understandable.

She continued to maneuver the caribin one-handed through the undergrowth, aware of Xan’s eyes. She slid him a look and saw the grin on his face. “I’m entitled to worry.”

“Yes.” His smile faded and he said softly, “It sounds as though the three of you are close.”

“Elina, Lee and me?” She jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, I guess. Common bonds and all of that.”

“How long have you been friends with them?”

“With Elina, most of my life. She was the one who found me and my brother after my mother was taken.” She focused on the path ahead, refusing to let herself think about that time. “She was a teacher of mine for a while, up until she decided she wanted to take her kids back east. She offered to take me, too. But I didn’t want to leave. I already knew I belonged here.”

“And Lee?”

“Not long.” She frowned absently, thinking back to her encounters with Lee over the years. Up until Lee had shown up in the camp in the middle of broad daylight a few months earlier, Syn had only seen Lee sporadically. She’d thought maybe the other witch was something of a recluse, living alone in the forest and only showing up to kick a little ass from time to time. She hadn’t established any kind of friendship with the woman, not until recently. “Right up until things started to come to a head with Anqar, I hardly ever saw Lee. She didn’t come here very often.”

He grimaced and said, “Please tell me that woman wasn’t living in these mountains alone. That’s suicide.”

“It’s a long story,” she said, shaking her head. One that seemed to go better when accompanied with a nice, cold glass of wine. Wine . . . A grin curled her lips and she said, “Hey, I wonder if we could get Elina to request the general send some wine with the next drop. Something other than the home brew we can make around the camp.”

“Wine.”

Syn sighed. “Yes. Good wine. I miss a good glass of wine every now and then.”

Xan stroked a hand down her back and kissed her shoulder. The caribin hummed as she slowed it down. Just ahead, the trail narrowed. The wind kicked up, bringing with it a familiar stench—rotting flesh. The foul odor tended to appear in areas thick with Jorniaks. Syn lifted a hand and pressed her finger to her lips, catching Xan’s eye.

The Jorniaks might or might not associate the loud purr of the caribin with human presence, but she wasn’t taking any more chances than necessary.

The rest of the trip dragged on. The forty minutes seemed to take three times longer than normal. She flicked a glance at the time as they jumped off the glider. Xan had the device in his pack, and she took up position at his back as he got to work.

She kept her senses peeled, listening for any slight noise, a breath, a tree branch.

Her heart almost jumped out of her chest when Xan touched her shoulder just moments later. “Done?” she asked quietly. He nodded.

Just as she lifted her comm-unit, the others chirped.

Elina and Lee, almost in sync, each said, “Done.” Lee added in, “This baby is locked and loaded.”

Syn shook her head and muttered, “Don’t refer to the device as a child, Lee.”

Lee just laughed.

“Just need to get this set,” Syn said, ignoring Lee.

“Once we set them, we have forty-five minutes to get clear and then these little bastards go boom.”

“I’m ready,” Elina said.

“Me, too. Let’s get this done.”

Syn caught Xan’s eye and nodded.

With one flick of his wrist, he armed the device. A timer flashed onto the display as they ran for the caribin.

Forty-five minutes. It should be plenty of time to get away safely, as long as the devices weren’t disturbed. They’d been set to detonate immediately if they were disturbed after being armed. For the next twenty or thirty minutes, Syn knew her heart was going to be somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, just out of nerves.

If a demon so much as touched one of those devices while they were in the area, they were dead—the demon
and
whatever team was unlucky enough to be in the area.

But as they drew closer to the rendezvous, nothing happened. She kept having Xan check the monitor and it showed the device was ticking away the minutes exactly as it had been programmed, and no life-forms showed up even remotely close.

They had eight minutes left when they hit the rendezvous. Elina and Egan were already there.

Off in the distance, she heard the quiet hum of Kalen and Lee’s caribin. They had two stops, setting the fourth and final device, the one that would be closest to the camp, but they’d planted that one earlier and the monitor showed it to be in sync with the other three.

“Went off without a hitch,” Egan murmured, meeting her eyes and smiling.

But even as he said it, something cold settled in the bottom of Syn’s belly.

The monitor in Xan’s hand started beeping, sending out a warning.

Demons. Moving fast.

The wind kicked up, bringing with it the stink of brimstone. Death. Slowly, she turned and stared through the trees, in the direction she and Xan had come from.

Black-robed figures. Raviners.

“Shit.”

Elina was at her side before the word even left Syn’s mouth. She met the older woman’s gaze and said, “We should have known it couldn’t be that easy.”

“As long as your little boomers go boom, then we win,” Elina said, her voice flat. “Might be a bloody victory but who the hell cares?”

Bloody.

Yes. It got very bloody. The Raviners were alone this time, but there were nearly two dozen of them—and they were enraged. Even once Kalen and Lee arrived, just minutes later, the rebels were outnumbered.

Separated from Xan, Syn fought against two of the Raviners. She fought with both metal and magic, using her knife because they were too close for her to use her pulsar without injury to herself as well. She used small, focused bursts of fire, afraid to use anything larger for fear it might beckon to any other Raviners that lingered nearby.

He
came out of nowhere. One moment he wasn’t there. The next moment, he was. He wore his blond hair in a club down his back and carried nothing but bladed weapons. A fighter that cut through the Raviners with the flash of metal. For one second, Syn thought it was Morne. He moved like him. He bore a vague similarity to the healer. Was it . . . ?

No. It wasn’t him. As he turned to take down the Raviners coming at her, she caught full sight of his face.

Syn hadn’t ever seen him before in her life and every instinct inside her screamed as he used his blade on one of the remaining Raviners, laying the thing’s neck wide-open, nearly severing the head with one powerful blow. He moved like a pale shadow. Like death.