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 wholeÑcompleteÑand that sensation lingered with her as she drifted from sleep into awareness. But the min-ute 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 wroteÑinstead 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 himÑ
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 con-cussion. 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 bonesÑeven 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 won-dered 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 de-mons 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 fourÑwhoever 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 firstÑhe'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 themÑtruly join them. But instead, he was leading the resistance alone as he had for the past fifteen years.
Facing another day without herÑand 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 bar-ren 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."
***
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