Through the Veil

Book 1: A Veil Novel

by Shiloh Walker

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Synopsis

Found wandering in a field as a child, Lee Ross was given a name by the state and put in a foster home—without anyone realizing she wasn’t entirely human. All her life, she’s tried to forget the odd dreams that have plagued her, of monsters creeping through the night and a man fighting demons by her side. But the bruises she wakes with are all too real to ignore…

Then the man from her dreams appears—in the flesh. His name is Kalen—and he insists that her destiny lies in his world, the world of her dreams. To save their people, he must convince Lee to give up everything she knows, follow her heart, and cross over into the Under Realm—even though once she does, she’ll never be able to return…

Release date: June 3, 2008

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 336

Sample

One

Her body ached.

It wasn't anything new. Although Lee was only twenty-eight years old, she already felt ancient. Ex-hausted even upon awakening, with stiff aching joints and bruises that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Lee slowly flexed her muscles and tried to hold together the fragile wisps of the dream. But as always, it faded away, out of reach, out of mind. He faded away.

She didn't know his face. But each night he came to her. Each night, they found each other again. He would look at her with eyes that made her burn and want and wish, and for that brief period of time, she felt whole-complete-and that sensation lingered with her as she drifted from sleep into awareness. But the minute she opened her eyes, all memory of her dreams started to fade. All that remained was an ache in her chest, a knot in her throat and a body that felt as though somebody had tried to beat her to death.

Today, the ache was worse. The memories were fading fast although she tried to hold on to them. Like smoke, though, they faded away even as she grabbed the notepad by her bed and started to scrawl down what little she remembered. She didn't look down while she wrote-instead she clenched her eyes tightly shut and focused on him. Even if she couldn't remember his face, she could remember how he made her feel inside. Fo-cusing on that instead of trying to recall the dream made the words flow more easily.

Blood. Screams. Smoke. The cries of the wounded. Ugly snarls and fetid breath. People clamored for her and they had needs that she couldn't even begin to understand. And him.

Always him. Everything seemed to revolve around him, and everything inside of her yearned for him. As much as Lee dreaded closing her eyes and facing the strange dreams that assaulted her while she slept, she yearned for them as well. Because her dreams led her to him. He would make her laugh, even when the dreams were dark as death. There was a warmth in his presence that filled an empty ache.

But not this past night. There had been distance, anger, and disgust. He'd yelled at her. His fury had been so great that even now she felt chilled by it.

She opened her eyes and stared at the notepad in front of her. She hadn't just written words. She'd sketched out faces of people she'd never met and monsters the likes of which she'd never seen.

She stared at each of the faces she'd drawn, studying its features for something that would trigger her memories again. The notebook was filled with sketches and notes, and none of them meant anything to her. All of them were set against twisted, scarred landscapes.

Some of the figures appeared more than others, like the old woman and the two guys. Even on paper, the woman's smile had a decidedly mischievous bent to it, as though she was laughing and Lee had no idea why. The men were polar opposites, one pale, one dark. One looked like an angel and the other had the devil's smile. Both of them were enough to make a girl's heart skip a beat, but if the man she dreamed of was one of them, she didn't know which one he was.

Furious with herself, Lee hurled the pad of paper across the room and watched as it hit the wall. It slid to the ground, several of the pages bent and crumpled. With a scowl, she climbed out of the bed and stalked to the bathroom.

"He isn't real," she told herself as she turned the hot water on full before turning to tug off her T-shirt. "He isn't real." He's not, her mind insisted, even though something inside her heart argued.

Her reflection caught her eye and she stilled, fighting the impulse to turn and look. Damn it, she was going to take all the mirrors down. She couldn't not look, when the mirrors were there.

But every time she saw a bruise, a chill ran through her. It was no different this time. Her eye was black, swollen, raw looking. It had been fine last night. Her mouth trembled as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at.

The doctors had tried to tell her she was doing it to herself. They had even done a sleep study and watched her all night long to determine what caused the bruising.

The study had revealed nothing. And everything.

For when she walked out of the room where they had monitored her body all night, her ankle was swollen, twisted and discolored. It had been fine the night before.

The tape of the study had shown her lying quietly on the narrow bunk, never once rising in the night. She didn't toss. She didn't turn. The only weird thing was a blip in the middle of the tape that lasted no more than a few eye blinks. For that brief span of time, the bed was empty. But she hadn't gotten out of the bed. The probes and lines weren't long enough to allow her to leave it without one of the attendants disconnect-ing them. They hadn't done it.

Odder still, an attendant had been in the room during the blip. They could see him at the edge of the screen. But he'd never seen her move. She hadn't done any more studies after that. Even though the doctors tried to urge her to agree, it had simply unsettled her too much. So no more studies. She'd just deal with looking like the loser of a boxing match.

Lee leaned forward and probed her eye, touching it gently, wincing at the tender flesh she encountered under her fingers. The eye itself looked fine, which was a relief. There had been one morning when she woke up and her pupil was blown. Her vision had been blurred, and the sickening pain made her think she had a concussion. By nightfall, though, the pupil had returned to normal and her vision was fine.

Today, her eyes seemed a little more bloodshot than usual, and the red looked unnaturally bright against the nasty mottled blue. Almost festive, the red, white and blue.

There was another bruise on her knee, like she had fallen down. The flesh was sensitive, and each step she took sent pain shooting through her knee. Much as the knee hurt, it was actually a rather light night. Lee knew from experience, though, that that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Light nights seemed to be followed by bad ones.

Her gut churned as that thought circled through her head. Bad ones came with concussions, broken bones-even burns. It had been a while since she'd had a real bad night, and it was like a little mental clock was ticking away the time. It wouldn't be much longer before she woke up one morning hurt so bad that she'd wish for death, just to get away from the pain.

Even if she did heal fast, pain was still pain and she was tired of feeling so much of it.

"Morbid, much?" she muttered as she turned away from her reflection. She climbed into the shower with one goal in mind. Shower... then caffeine. With caffeine, she could face almost anything.

***

Through the Veil, Kalen could see her. Stubborn little bitch. He could still just faintly smell the sweet scent of her skin, and his hands still itched to feel that satiny skin under his hands, to feel the silk of her hair brush against his body. The vivid bruise on her face infuriated him, even though her ability to heal rapidly was already lessening the vivid color and the swelling.

The Jorniak demon that had attacked her was dead. Dust in the wind. Not that Kalen had anything to do with it. Lee had taken damn good care of it herself. She was good at that. Always had been. Scowling, he wondered if maybe she was a little too good at it. Good at taking care of herself, good at rationalizing away prob-lems, good at everything.

Clenching his jaw, he turned away from the Veil and prepared himself to face the coming day without her. It was a frightening thought. But it always had been. One never knew what the day might bring. Not in this world.

There had been another demon attack, this time high up in the mountains, striking the small settlement of families living there. They had refused to come down into the valley. Too close to the Roinan Gate. It was as if they thought a few miles would protect them. They had been wrong, terribly wrong, and Kalen had to live with the guilt of not trying harder.

Raviners had killed the few men and taken their time with the women and children. It brought back memories too ugly for him to dwell on, staring at their remains. He couldn't even take a little bit of comfort in knowing that his men had slaughtered the Raviners. If he had taken them down himself, filling their bodies with the dangerous power of the pulsar he carried at his hip, it wouldn't have been any comfort.

They were losing a little more ground every day. The demons were breeding in his world now, and they didn't have to wait for the Roinan Gate to open for more of their numbers. There had been a time when finding a clutch of demons was a rare occurrence and they were killed quickly, if not always easily.

They might have a ghost of a chance if they could shut down the fucking gate. Though the demons were breeding in Kalen's world, they didn't breed easily. Kalen's people could hunt them down and kill them, but every time it seemed the resistance had gotten the advantage, the earth would rumble, signaling another influx of monsters as the gate was forced open.

It was an ugly, thankless job he was doing and one that often seemed pointless. No matter how many demons they killed, more sprung up to replace the dead. No matter how many lives they saved, they'd turn around and find more slaughtered. For every female they managed to save from the raiders, three more were taken.

It was to the point that the men now outnumbered the women four to one. Girl children were taken into the east, away from the gate, but Kalen heard rumors that girls were being kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder. As young as three or four; whoever the winner was, he'd care for the child and then take her to his bed as soon as she was old enough. Some didn't even wait beyond the girl's first menstrual period.

This damn war was turning his people into savages, and Kalen was losing hope. It hadn't been so hard at first;he'd been young and idealistic, convinced that with the loyal, devoted people that formed the resistance, they could face whatever hell Anqar threw at them. Convinced that Lelia would soon join them-truly join them. But instead, he was leading the resistance alone as he had for the past fifteen years.

Facing another day without her-and until she was ready to accept reality, not her idea of what reality was, it wasn't hard to imagine that each new day could be his last.

***

Lee stared with focused intent as she wielded the stylus, watching as the image took on life and color. It was a man. His features were familiar to her but that was no surprise. She'd drawn his face easily a hundred times. But he hadn't ever seemed this clear to her. This vivid.

A strong jaw, quicksilver eyes that could glint hot with fury one second and then be as cold as death the next. His long hair blew in the wind, tangling over wide shoulders as he stared out over a land that looked barren and desolate. There was something starkly beautiful about it, though. As if once it had been so lovely, it could bring a tear to the eye. Now it looked like some kind of hell.

He was crouched on a jagged outcropping, wearing a coat that billowed around a lithe, powerful body, tensed and ready... She added more color to his hair, a silvery sheen to the dense black. Then she added more definition to the muscles that rippled along his forearms under the rolled-up cuffs of his coat.

Lee worked in a daze. Once she finished with the man, she added to the background, working with the sky, the clouds, drawing in just the barest outline of creatures so monstrous they would have given her night-mares if she was prone to them. In her mind, they already had names. Jorniak demons. Raviners. Sirvani.

Battles raged in her mind as she worked. Hissing calls, furious shouts, the sounds of metal clashing, the hum of a laser weapon slicing through flesh. She could almost smell the scent of burnt flesh.

There were no battles for him now, though. The battles had already been fought. Now he rested. Now he prepared. Now he waited... waited for her.

I'm getting tired of waiting, Lee... We need you...

Then silence fell and she heard him, like he was whispering into her ear, from just over her shoulder. How much longer will you hide from what you are?

Lee snorted. "Just because I don't think you are real doesn't mean I am hiding," she muttered as she saved the work. Standing up, she wavered a little, her knees weak and shaky, as though she had just run a mile. Or fought a battle. Pressing a hand to her temple, she laughed shakily. "You're losing your mind, chick."

Actually, you're a little more sane now than usual, Lee. When are you going to stop fighting the truth, pet?

Lee ran her tongue around the inside of her cheek as she started across her studio. "I'm hearing things," she mumbled, shaking her head. "Man, I need a break. A vacation. Drugs. Something."

You need to stop being so blind, Lee.

"Damn it!" she shouted, spinning around. "Would you shut up?" That voice sounded so real... Holy shit.

It was him. The man from the picture.

He was standing right there.

In her studio.

With hair that flowed to broad, rock-hard shoulders, eyes the color of pewter, and a coat like Jack the Ripper would have worn. It hung down to the floor and had one of those weird little capelet things. Under the coat, he had a leather harness on his chest and she could see easily five different blades. His eyes glinted like silver and his hair was raven-wing black.

But he was also transparent. Lee pressed one hand to her mouth as black dots started to dance before her eyes. His teeth appeared as he grinned at her, a sensual twist of his lips before he faded away. She managed to whisper, "Oh, hell," before she hit the ground.

Long moments later, Lee groaned and forced her lids to lift. There was a throbbing just behind her brow as she sat up. With her hands on the ground, she stiffened her arms and forced her weight up, swearing as the world spun in dizzying circles around her. "Whoa... what in the hell... ?"

An image of that man danced before her eyes. "For crying out loud," she muttered, pressing a hand to her forehead. Damn it. "Working too hard."

Yeah. That had to be it. Had to be. She was working too hard, sleeping too little and stressing over it all. That was why he had looked so real to her. There was a life to him that was unlike anything she had ever drawn in her life. Everything, from the texture of his hair, the color of his eyes, to the demons that surrounded him.

She got to her feet, locking her knees when her legs wobbled underneath her. She needed to go to bed. But the dreams would chase her too vividly there. His image would follow her. Haunting her with that dark, quicksilver gaze and that mocking grin that seemed to taunt her every time she closed her eyes.

"I'm losing my mind," she groaned.

Rubbing her eyes, she shut her computer down and left her studio. "That's it. I'm done for the day."

***

Kalen watched with a faint smile as she walked away, shaking her head and probing the goose egg that was no doubt forming. She'd seen him. He'd seen the shock in her eyes, felt her gaze connect with his... at last. She was already rationalizing it away, but for once, he had managed to breach her conscious mind. He opened his eyes, and the vision of the Veil faded away, replaced once more by the physical world.

Not everybody could see the Veil, or see through it. It took years of training to see beyond what the conscious mind allowed. Kalen had been forced to learn to do it as he ascended through the ranks of their ragtag rebellion. Considering the demons they fought, they needed all the advantages they could get. It wasn't always handy, but the few times he'd looked through the Veil and seen what the Warlords of Anqar had planned for his people, he knew it was worth it. Saving just one life would have been worth it.

Being able to use it to spy on Lee was just a bonus.

Maybe tonight they would speak of something more than the battle against Anqar.

Hours later, Kalen growled to himself, "And perhaps kittens will fly."

Lee stood in front of the front line of the temp base set right at the city limits. Angeles lay before them in ruins. Until Kalen had moved his people here, the only living creatures in the ruined city were the few poor souls that had managed to evade both demon and Sirvani.

She stood quiet and intent, focused on something that he couldn't see or sense, although he wouldn't have been surprised if she was feigning that concentration just so she wouldn't have to look at him. From the time she had appeared out of the forest at sunset, Lee had been ignoring him entirely, like that brief, surreal moment earlier in the day hadn't happened. If Kalen had thought things would be different, he was very much mistaken.

It was business as usual for the pale, pretty blonde. The past few weeks had gone by with an uneasy quiet. It didn't bode well for them. Other than the encroaching bands of Raviners and the demon attack in the mountain settlement, there hadn't been much demonic activity on the radar. Small skirmishes, but very few out-right attacks and absolutely no raids for nearly two months. The gate wasn't completely inactive-weird little flickers that lasted a few heartbeats before it fell silent.

Their enemies never went this quiet for long. Lee's presence only added to Kalen's unease. The woman usually only showed up this regularly when trouble was brewing. She was silent and tense, her body practically vibrating from the nerves inside her as she paced the perimeter of the encampment.

Kalen didn't think it was the devastated landscape that held her attention.

Much of the city had fallen to ruins, but the inhabitants of New Angeles were determined not to lose one more square foot of their land. Anqar had been a blight on Ishtan for centuries untold. Entire families went missing in the dead of night. A horde of demons slipped through a gate and devastated small villages.

But Ishtan had always battled them back. The small raiding parties that came through were nothing that Ishtan couldn't handle. But the past two generations had seen drastic changes, and all of it for the worse. Gates were blasted open, unleashing a series of natural disasters that devastated the land. Entire armies re-placed the small raiding parties. Demons came through unchecked.

Ishtan was being overrun. Even though their resistance had battled back the invaders from Anqar, Kalen knew their luck wouldn't hold forever. When they fell, it was over.

Not because they were the only hope of an already broken world. Pockets of rebellion were scattered across the globe. But here in New Angeles, at the base of the Roinan mountain range, lay the gateway to and from Anqar. There were other, smaller gates but they were erratic and rarely remained open for longer than a few heartbearts. Many hadn't been opened for decades and were easier to protect. The Roinan Gate was huge, big enough for entire armies to pass through, and it remained open for hours, sometimes days, at a time.

There had been two other gates this size once. In Yorkton and in Jivan. A huge earthquake had rocked Jivan, and the shelf of land where that gate had resided crumbled. When the gate flickered next, it had proved devastating to what few people still lived on the big island. As well as to the creatures from Anqar that tried to come through. There was a second earthquake, more powerful than any in recorded history. A huge tsunami had resulted and no one had survived. What remained of the island lay under hundreds of feet of water. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of humans had died, but it had shut down a dangerous gate.

One hand giveth..., Kalen thought bitterly. The earthquake had probably saved most of that con-tinent, at least for the time being.

What happened in Yorkton, nobody knew. York had been the first to fall to the raiders, and nothing of what once was remained. Huge skyscrapers had been decimated by the endless battles. Ragtag rebellions had formed, just like they did with every other gate. The demons came through, destroying enough of the resistance that they would have less chance of fighting. Then the Sirvani came, capturing whatever women they could. Finally the Warlords.

Warlords could tap into the energy of the land with an ability much like Lee's. They fouled it, though. Poisoned it. The land weakened, and eventually the people fought less and less, as though the sickness in the land had spread through them.

The energy fluctuated each time the gate opened. An odd ripple effect. Power erupted from one gate, traveled through the land, triggered something that made the next nearest gate open. And so on and so on, until within a period of days, a hundred gates were open at any given time. Sensitives could feel it in the air when a gatestorm was approaching. There had been a huge storm brewing, centered around Yorkton. Resistance units throughout the world had mobilized, preparing for the coming onslaught.

But it didn't come. Instead there was a power fracture. Almost a hiccup, then an explosion. The resistance there had done something, but what, nobody would ever know. Nothing living survived. Yorkton was little more than a crater in the earth now, a hollowed-out, burned depression that stretched out for miles.

That had been three years ago and still nothing lived there. While it didn't exactly turn the tide, it weakened the remaining gates. The Roinan Gate was the only one strong enough now to trigger the others.

Their intelligence resources in Anqar were limited, but there was a theory that the Warlords somehow forced the flickering in the gates, the surge in power that made a gate open. Once the Warlords had the gate open, Sirvani and demons flooded through while other Sirvani worked with the Warlords to maintain the gate.

"She's tense tonight."

Kalen glanced over at Dais, his mouth quirking in a smile. The older man's face was heavily scarred-a long, ugly jagged mark started at his right temple and ended just above his lower jawbone. It was twisted and puckered, and thanks to days without medical treatment, infection had set in and damn near killed him. That had been forty years ago, a few years before Kalen was born, and he'd grown up seeing the old man's scars. Under the cavinir vest, there were probably twenty other scars. Some older. Some newer. All of them received while fighting the demons back.

Kalen looked over at Lee and studied her. Yes. She was quiet. Her mind was heavy; he could sense it even if he wasn't trying to touch her thoughts. Out of respect, he turned his back to her and focused on his weapons lieutenant. "You left your position to discuss her silence?"

Dais grinned. "No. I left my position to tell you that my men found two younglings out in the woods. Boys, seventeen or eighteen at the most. Looking for you, Cordain." The older man smirked a little as he used the rare title. Roughly translated, it meant "wise one" or "leader." It was a term that had once been used for governing males in Ishtan, while corida was the female equivalent. Over the past century, as their world sank further and further into chaos, many of the traditions had fallen to the wayside. Dais's use of the title now was more humorous than aught else. The man had nearly twice as many years on him as Kalen had, but when the role of leadership had fallen to Kalen over the years, Dais had settled comfortably into his role as Kalen's lieu-tenant and only rarely made jabs at Kalen's fewer years.

Thinking about the boys, Kalen rolled his eyes. Yeah, he could imagine why a couple of foolish boys were searching for him. Same reason men twice their age searched him out, but at least grown men had a place in Kalen's army. He didn't know what to do with the kids. He knew what they would want him to do, but as des-perate as he was, Kalen hadn't taken to putting seventeen-year-olds on the front line.

He prayed that day didn't ever come.

"They have an escort?"

Dais gave Kalen the same look he'd give a dullard. Chances were Dais's men had been watching the kids for days. And protecting them. With a smirk, Kalen said, "Fine, fine. Send them on in. Send them to Eira. She'll know what to do with them." He waved a hand back toward the main camp. If anybody deserved the respectful title of corida, it was Eira. She'd seemed ancient when Kalen was a boy, but she still continued to train those with talent.

As Dais headed off, he beckoned to his men hiding in the trees. They separated themselves from the foliage in a fluid, easy motion, invisible even to Kalen's eyes until they moved.

No. Kids had no place in his army. Kalen knew that, even as he knew that he probably had kids serving under his command. Kids that looked older than they were, had led lives that aged them far too soon. Kalen had been like that, orphaned and forced to fight to stay alive.

He'd been twelve when he killed his first demon, was serving as a courier by thirteen and fighting in bat-tle before fifteen. He would have died on his first battlefield if Dais hadn't found him, lying there with a demon's poison swimming through his bloodstream. If Kalen had been fighting when he was fifteen, then chances were he had other fifteen-year-olds out on his battlefields and he didn't even know it.

It was an unpleasant thought, but there was little he could do about it. He had a war to fight and people to protect and if he started questioning his soldiers about their age and their right to serve on the battlefields, more people would die. So he had to live with the knowledge that he likely had kids serving under him, and it left him sick inside with the image of them out there, fighting and dying.

Unless there was some sort of miracle, it would keep happening. "If we only knew what they did in Yorkton," Kalen muttered as he stared off into the west. The Roinan Gate was quiet tonight. Very few flickers lit the air around it, but he knew that didn't mean much. There were so many demons from Anqar here now, death would come even if the gate never opened again.

Dais's joking use of cordain circled through Kalen's head and he thought bitterly, Wise one, my ass. What's the term for useless one?

"You want to see your home turned into another crater?" Lee asked softly, silently appearing at his side and interrupting him before he could travel too far down the path of self-flagellation.

Kalen didn't bat an eyelash. "If it meant shutting down the Roinan Gate permanently? In a heart-beat."

He would try to evacuate the area as best as he could, but if the knowledge to destroy the gate ever fell into his hands, Kalen knew he'd sacrifice himself and every soldier in his unit if it meant destroying it. If the Roinan Gate fell, this world might actually have a chance.

Without that knowledge, Kalen didn't know what he was going to do, and he didn't know what to say to his men when they looked to him for