Beyond the Veil (13 page)

Sixteen

One Eidolon hideout nothing more than
charred meat and scorched earth, I went back to the first site where Rala and
Cyrill had played their destructive game of tag. Certain I was wasting my time,
doubt nagging me the entire way, I was glad to see there were still a bunch of
the aliens milling about when I snuck a peek from a neighboring rooftop.

The trucks were parked just where they’d
been earlier, the flaps of their beds wide open. From my vantage point, I could
see the metal canisters piled in the back. They were pretty close to full, so
I’d gotten there just in time from the looks of it. A handful of Eidolon paced
near the alley Rala had brought down, but they held their ground there,
clustered together. There were a few of the strange guns disbursed amongst the
group, but none of them seemed all that concerned with the actual duty of
guarding. They split their gaze between the empty alley and the other aliens as
they carted out more canisters, two on each tank, and slowly loaded them into
the waiting trucks. There was none of the energy they’d marched into the
building with at the start.

As I watched them go about their labor, a
flicker of motion caught my eye across the way. A spark of orange and black
appeared a few blocks away, and then vanished, only to pop up again a few seconds
later. I growled at seeing it. Someone else was keeping tabs on the Eidolon
just as I was, and I had a pretty good idea of who it might be. Lucy had some
splainin
’ to do.

I crept down the back of the building,
sliding down the exposed piping that lined the wall, and made it to the ground
easily enough. At the corner, I peeked around and waited until a couple of
Eidolon lugged another tank out to the truck. Once all the eyes shifted to
watch the pathetic aliens go about their job, I shot across the street after
making sure the watcher down the way was out of sight. I made it without anyone
yelling that they’d seen me.

Once there, I circled around the block,
doing my best to stay casual. The fact that I succeeded probably had more to do
with the lack of foot traffic in the area and the laziness of the guards than
anything else.

A quick glance around the last corner
confirmed my suspicions. Crouched, with her back to me, sat a little orphan
alien. My hand slipped to the grip of my .45, and I pulled it free of its
holster. Always a round in the chamber—against conventional wisdom—I drifted
off a ways so I could circle around behind without her spotting me. Too worried
about the Eidolon, she obliged me by sitting still. She waited quietly until I
stuck the barrel of my gun against her head and covered her mouth with my free
hand.

“Make a sound and the last noise you’ll
hear is a bullet going your skull and the wet splat of your brains as they hit
the wall.” The logistics of doing so and not shooting my own hand off in the
process made the threat a little less believable, but nobody really listens
when you have a gun to their head.

True to form, Cyrill nodded just enough to
let me know she understood. I spun her around and pushed her against the wall,
stepping in close as I shifted the gun under her chin and hovered menacingly.
She gasped, her mouth falling open, and I felt her chest rub against me, twin
points of surprise poking me in the ribs.

Boobs.

I stifled a giggle and slipped on my
meanest,
I’m gonna kill you
face, but
it was hard. The face, I mean…nothing else…yet. “We
gotta
stop meeting like this, people are starting to talk.”

She looked at me like I’d farted and asked
her to taste it, full of confusion and growing fear.

It was best to just move on. “Maybe it’s
just me, but I can’t picture these guys being real receptive to your advances
after all the building-busting and whatnot. Why are you really here?”

Cyrill managed to pull it together and shut
her mouth, which was good. She had a nice tongue and it was becoming
distracting.

“The same reason as before,” she answered,
a slight quaver in her voice that probably had something to do with the gun
still being pressed against her face.

Normally I’d have felt bad about holding
her at gunpoint, but there were just too many unanswered questions and whole
bunch of shit that didn’t make sense. Besides, Rala had turned into a
friggin
’ dragon without any hint of being able to do that.
Was it something all of the Felurian women could do? I didn’t know, so better
safe than sorry. Unless Cyrill turned into a
Fleshlight
,
I was gonna be doing all my investigations from the outside.

“I don’t believe you.” It wasn’t a bold
statement, but completely true.

She shrugged. “Baalth sent me to infiltrate
the group, and that’s what I intend to do. I might not be able to do so here, but
I can follow them and look for a better opportunity to do so after they leave.”

Sigh. She had me there. “No idea what
they’re doing or where they might be headed?”

Cyrill shook her head. “This is the last
location we know, which is the reason I am still here.” A slight grin
brightened her face. “Your
companion
made a mess of another site we might have used.”

“Yeah, he does that.” I peered around the
corner to see the Eidolon closing the flaps on the first truck, a couple of
guys lugging another canister over to the other one. They were getting ready to
bail. The guards near the alley drew back to the forming group, aliens lining
up in formation like they had before. The rustle of their voices filled the
air.

“What are they doing?” she asked, unable to
see.

“It looks like your ride is getting ready
to leave.”

She squirmed against me in an effort to
look around the corner, but I pressed into her to keep her in place. Yeah,
that’s what I told myself it was for.

Cyrill grunted and met my eyes. “Why do you
hold me here? Is Baalth not your master, too?”

“Hardly,” I said with a laugh. There was no
way I would admit the old demon had puckered more than his fair share of my
asshole over the years. However, given his current situation, I could honestly
say I wasn’t afraid of him…much. At least I wasn’t wearing a leash.

I held a finger to her soft lips when she
started to say something else. The roar of an engine pulled some of my
attention from the warm, taut body quite comfortably squeezed between me and
the unforgiving wall. As I pondered the possibility of alien sexual harassment
laws, the first of the trucks started to creep forward. The last of the Eidolon
on foot sealed up the second truck and ran to catch up to the others who had
started off at double time.

No time for romance, I pushed Cyrill to her
knees and dropped down behind her, pulling us both as tight against the wall as
possible. She trembled against me as I held the gun to her spine.

“Stay quiet.” I hoped she wouldn’t call my
bluff. One scream would be all it took to bring the Eidolon down on top of me,
and I really had no intention of shooting her. I sighed inside when she
listened.

The foot soldiers stomped around the
corner, across the street from where we crouched, and continued on with their
backs to us the entire time, moving further away with every step. One of the
trucks hit the corner a moment later.

“I need to go or Baalth will be angry.”
Cyrill put up a token of resistance, the pistol making it real clear there
wasn’t any way I was letting her go. “Please.”

As much as I love a woman to beg, I just
couldn’t trust her. Shit, I couldn’t trust anyone on this backwater dump of a
planet, but definitely not her. Too many people with phoenix tattoos had tried
to take my head off for me to find any level of comfort in giving her room to
maneuver.

The second truck started around the
intersection as Cyrill squirmed a little harder to make her point. She’d
definitely made it, but I’m sure it wasn’t the one she was trying for. I
adjusted the southern border and stood, keeping my hand on her shoulder to hold
her in place.

The green flap of the truck was tied down
tight, and the first truck and the Eidolon on foot were a short distance ahead,
blocked from my view by the vehicle. If there was a time for action—the
on the job
kind, though admittedly, it
could be either given Cyrill’s current position—now was it.

“I’m sorry,” I told her in my best James
Bond villain voice and pulled her to her feet, gun tight against her ribs.
“This is goodbye.”

There was a quiet sob as I tightened my
grip on her shoulder. She tensed, and that’s when I spun and tossed her into
the garbage at the back of the nearby alley. Cyrill let out a muffled squeak as
she flew, tumbling into the trash. I was off and running before she even stopped
rolling.

With the last truck close enough that
someone would have to be leaning out the window to see me behind it, as there
were no mirrors, I felt confident I could reach it before any of the other
Eidolon spotted me. I grabbed its bumper and pulled myself onto it, ducking
down as I looked for sturdy handholds.

Cyrill appeared out of the alley and glared
my direction, but she kept her mouth shut. She dusted her sleeves and stood
there until she faded from sight. It had been a good idea to follow the Eidolon
to the next batch of bad guys. It just made more sense for it to be me than
her.

The truck bouncing along, I loosened the
ropes holding the tarp and slipped inside the bed. Hundreds of canisters filled
the back. The energy they contained crawled over me as though I’d gotten cozy
with a hornet’s nest. There was a lot of power packed into the back of the
truck. Enough to jump start a wayward alien with a need for a recharge. I
figured that was where these guys were headed.

Now, my only hope was that I had enough
bullets to take out everyone before they got me. I didn’t know shit about
tapping into the canisters to augment my own magic the way Gorath intended, but
I’d thrown enough spray cans into the fire to know what happens when
pressurized containers meet open flame.

Boom!

It wasn’t the best of plans, but it was
better than the ones I usually came up with.

Seventeen

The ride was long, bumpy, and more than a
little unforgiving on my tailbone. Bounce, bounce, bounce, we went, as if the damn
aliens had never heard of shocks.
You can
build houses but you can’t squish a spring between two pieces of metal?
Bastards. The canisters clanged and rattled and shifted and had me praying to
the almighty God of Slow the Fuck Down.

Not only did I know what pressurized tanks
did when you torched them, I also knew what happened when you manhandle one and
blew the lid. Trapped in the back of the truck, the first one to pop would
start a chain reaction, magically enhanced shrapnel ripping me up like Freddy
Krueger’s bondage partner, and I sure as fuck didn’t know the safe word.

My eyes clung to the tanks, drifting off in
spurts only to check for landmarks or hints of an unexpected stop, neither of
which appeared, but I was able to determine the general direction we’d gone in.
The Eidolon on foot had veered off earlier, before we’d gotten very far,
actually, which was great. The two trucks left them marching about the crowded
streets and had pulled out of town, leaving only about eight of the aliens for
me to worry about. I’d take those odds.

The twisting and turning had stopped a long
ways back and we’d been trundling along—picture a kangaroo with a pouch full of
C-4—for hours. I like a good blow, but this was one I’d pass on. At least the
constant throttling and panicked clenching kept me awake because the hum of the
wheels was hypnotic, the soft crunch of dirt bringing to mind Janis Joplin.
Who, of course, reminded me of alcohol, which only made shit worse because I
didn’t have any. That sour realization having settled in about fifteen minutes
into the drive, I was more than a little happy when the truck finally began to
slow. And then came the paranoia.

A quick glance out the tarp gave me some
hope, despite it all. We’d rolled up someplace rural, like
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
rural. There wasn’t anything around but a
tiny cluster of worn and weather-beaten, single-story buildings and miles and
miles of open, unkempt fields. I didn’t want to think about it, but this was
the quintessential horror story opening. Some idiot sneaks onto secluded,
private property, overly confident without ever picturing someone out here in
the boonies wants to turn the skin of his face into a pair of ass-less chaps
for special occasions.

Worse still, this story had the potential
for a sci-fi twist. There was the definite possibility of some alien probing.

Before I could get too carried away with
narrating my eventual impalement and fudge-packed demise, I slipped out from
under the tarp and dropped off the bed with the truck still moving. I lay flat in
the dirt until the truck pulled off a short distance, hiding me in the dust of
its passage. The first one was just rolling to a stop outside the largest of
the buildings as I darted for cover near the rear of the place. It looked like
a farmhouse, but I didn’t see any activity or animals. They’d have been the
first ones probed, I was sure.

Hidden by the wild grass and weeds that
grew rampant just a short distance from the buildings, I circled around to
where I could get a better look at what was going on. A soft breeze stirred the
air. Other than the acrid tang of the trucks’ engines, burnt oil with a hint of
exhaust, there was only the dry, dusty smell of the yellowed grass and dry dirt.

Relative silence had settled over. Muffled
voices drifted to my ears along with the quick slamming of doors, but I
couldn’t hear anyone beyond the Eidolon I’d rode in with. They filed into a set
of wooden, double doors, which were already open, the aliens walking out of
sight. There were no shouts of recognition or greeting from within, so I
suspected they were the only ones around. Or maybe they were waiting on
someone.

That last thought brought a lump to my
throat. Eight of these guys I could handle, but if the cavalry galloped up with
spurs and boom sticks, I was gonna be up shit creek without a snorkel. My gaze
drifted off across the barren fields, but there was no evidence of dust trails
beyond the ones we’d left behind, those drifting hazes already settling back to
earth. If someone else was coming, they weren’t near yet. My stomach rumbled.

I was hesitant to let my senses loose for
fear of triggering some kind of alarm or letting someone know I was there. Just
because I couldn’t see anyone else, didn’t mean they weren’t lurking there, in
the darkness, waiting for me so they could…

A chill kicked my imagination in its pansy
ass. So far, all we’d run into were aliens, and none of them were packing
enough heat to make Pamela Anderson look twice. If I was gonna do something, I
might as well do it now before they figured out I was there.

Guns out, I took the scenic route around
the back of the building the Eidolon had walked into only to find out there was
only the one set of doors up front. So much for a strategic entrance. Outside
of going through the wall, I wasn’t being left a choice that didn’t result in
collateral damage and a blind entry. I couldn’t raze the place if there was any
possibility Karra, or some evidence leading me to her, was in there.

Muffled voices sounded through the walls,
but they were too distorted for me to understand. It did, however, offer some
optimism.
 
I was able to sort out enough
to make me think all the aliens were near the rear of the place rather than by the
doors. If they were huddled in back, there was a chance I could slip inside without
being seen. Shrugging, for no particular reason other than it made me happy to
pretend I wasn’t actually on my own, I made my way around to the front. A quick
peek inside told me I’d been right. The aliens were nowhere to be seen.

I went in. Each footstep was a boom of
thunder as I tried to be quiet. My ears hummed, and I could have sworn I overheard
my balls arguing over which was gonna crawl up my ass first. Turned out, neither
made it to the Promised Land of shit and honey. The doors slammed shut at my
back, the metallic
thump
of steel
belying the fragile looking wood of their exterior. A follow up
thud
sounded at my back. No need for me
to turn around to realize the way out had just been bolted shut.

“It’s a trap!” Admiral
Ackbar’s
voice rang through my skull. There’s nothing like a Star Wars meme to usher you
into the next life.

The gloom deepened and the crunch of dirt
all around me threw my presumption to the dogs. It wasn’t just the eight aliens
I’d seen walk in. There were way too many shadows welling up in the darkness at
the back of the room; more than I could keep track of.
Fucking Cyrill.
She had to have ratted me out. I should have known.

“Kill him,” someone shouted.

Lovely. Unless
kill him
translated into, “Buy the demon a hooker and some blow,”
in Felurian, there was no misunderstanding their intentions. The shadows
charged as my eyes finally adjusted, the alien forms taking shape as they
closed. There were lots of them. Swords and spears led the attack. All that was
missing was a pitchfork and some torches.
Fire
bad.

Nowhere to go, I raised both guns and
emptied them with abandon. The reports drowned out everything as hot lead
thumped
into alien flesh. The first line
of them took the bullets head on, green goo and orange pieces splattering the
unfortunates behind them. Bodies slumped to the ground in the echoes of
gunfire, a deafening silence settling over after. The aliens stared at me with
wide eyes, feet planted as they stared down the barrels of my guns.
Fortunately, they didn’t know they were empty.

That gave me the time I needed.

I pushed deep down inside and snatched at
my magic while I holstered the .45’s. It welled up without hesitation, swirling
about my arms and hands as I extended them toward the roof. The energy took on
the shape of my limbs, two gigantic hands that shimmered with power. I was
gonna have to remember this spell the next time I was alone.

The aliens snapped out of their fugue and
started forward while my mystical fingers punched holes in the ceiling and
clasped desperately at the wood as though they were honking boobs. I yanked my
arms back and the roof tore loose with a roaring shriek. Daylight spilled into
the building, a whitewash of brilliance flooding in. A quick twist of my
extendo
-arms sent the pieces of wood and roofing smashing
into the wall at my back. While the doors might have been reinforced, it was
obvious the rest of the place hadn’t been. The wreckage crashed into the doors
and sent them toppling over, the frame and wall around them shattering as they were
swept away, a million toothpicks exploding to spear the yard outside. I was
through the hole and gone before any the aliens had stopped gawking.

Well…almost.

A shape leapt from the back of the group,
resolving as it hurtled toward me. It was clearly no alien; it was an angel.

He came at me, teeth bared as he snarled,
and took a swing at me the moment he hit the ground. I recognized him
instantly: Iriaal, the guy I’d shot back at the church.

His hair whipped in the wind, and I could
pick out the singed scent of his rage. A golden blade cleaved the air just
inches from where my neck had been a heartbeat before, but I held back on the
applause as the wash of magical energy rippled past. While the aliens could
drag me down and overpower me, this guy could straight up kill me.

My magical hands still shimmering, I
grabbed his weapon arm with one and reared back with the other. His eyes went
wide, and then narrowed, all right before I smashed the fist into his face. He
grunted at the impact and went flying back into the darkness of the building,
taking out a handful of his henchmen along the way. The rest kept coming.

I sunk my mystical fingers into the ground
in front of them and ripped it up as though it were a carpet. A quick shake
sent the aliens tumbling into each other, a Benny Hill skit at its finest,
minus the scantily clad British chicks. That would have definitely made it
better. So would have a little more endurance.

My magic fluttered. While I hadn’t taken
anywhere near the beating Longinus had on our way here, it must have been
enough to weaken my battery. I was suddenly very tired. As much as I wanted to
take a nap, there wasn’t much hope these guys would take a time out seriously.
But that was cool. I had an alternative, so I let the magic slip away with a
sigh.

Guns back in my hands, I ejected the clips
and slammed new ones home while the aliens scrambled to get to their feet. I
didn’t let them. More discriminately than I had before, I fired into their
clustered mass. Bodies danced and grooved beneath the hail of lead, their
screams ringing against out against the translator that turned them coherent.

“Retreat!”

I looked up to see Iriaal screaming at the
aliens from the wreckage of the building he’d crashed into. The golden dagger he’d
come at me with had been slid into a sheath at his thigh. My eyes were drawn to
the pommel. It looked just like the piece I’d found at the Eidolon site. The
angel turned and the weapon dropped out of my line of sight. He didn’t look too
hurt, but I could barely feel the vague tinge of his magic. It was as if he was
holding back. His eyes were slits in his handsome face, mouth curved into a
frown. And while I hadn’t hit him that hard, he looked like a whipped dog, his
tail tucked between his legs.

The aliens scrambled to follow his order,
but I unloaded into their backs until my pistols ran dry. Angel boy didn’t even
bother to wait for them to get clear. Glimmering wings erupted from his back
and he was airborne before the first of his subordinates fell. I reloaded and
shot a few more as they fled, slipping into the tall grasses on the other side
of the building they’d ambushed me in. I could hear their huffed breaths in the
air and see the sway of the weeds, firing a few last shots to keep them on
their toes. After a few minutes, silence settled over the farm. I was alone.

Which made no sense.

They’d
lured me all the way out here just to run?
I grunted, tired
of the
why
that kept popping into my
head. The angel had the means to kill me, the dagger definitely empowered, and plenty
of cannon fodder to keep me busy while he stabbed me, then why did he stop?
Having taken a shot at him once already, I would have thought he’d be dying to
get me back.

I waited a few moments, making sure the goon
squad wasn’t coming back, and then unleashed my senses. They squirmed out,
tendrils creeping into every nook and cranny of the nearby area, but there was
nothing there. Only the cylinders of energy stood out against in the barren
backdrop of Feluris’ essence. Karra wasn’t there.

My heart thumped hollow, and I swallowed
hard against the emotion welling volcanic in my throat. This had been nothing
but a trap; poorly executed, but a trap nevertheless. There was no trace of
Karra having ever been there, no hint of her essence or even the soft scent of
her perfume. Tears moistened my eyes and cast bright halos about the edges of
my vision. Every moment I wasted running across Feluris took her further and
further away from me. And as much as I tried to deny the feeling, the slow
creep of cold certainty, I couldn’t help but think I had lost her once more.
Only this time, there’d be no happy ending to the fairy tale, no surprise
return from out of the blue. With all the energy Gorath was stockpiling, it
wouldn’t be long until he took his shot at Lucifer and realized the old boy was
long gone from his reach…again.