Veil of Shadows (32 page)

Not that she expected to learn much.

As she started toward the west hall, she ran through all of the other chores awaiting her attention. She had to get together a team to go gather information on the damage in the forest. They had managed to clear out the areas with the heaviest demon infestations; according to the reports Kalen had pulled up, they’d managed to kill quite a few.

Now they just needed to evaluate the damage, and figure out how to kill the rest of the things.

She managed to put together the recon team before she reached the west hall. Bron had already selected men and once she got on the comm-unit, he gave them the order to head out.

By the time she reached the west hall, the majority of the soldiers were finishing their daily rotations. With the exception of those on active guard and scout duty and those in food prep, most of the camp was done with work for the day.

And little surprise—many of them were gathered at the west hall.

She could have happily gone her whole life without having this mess dumped in
her
lap. Shouldering her way through the crowd gathered in front of the hall, she mounted the steps and turned to face the soldiers.

The low rumble of voices stopped and all eyes moved her way. She met the gazes of those standing nearest and then moved, from one row to another to another. “Did I request your presence?” she asked, singling one of the fighters out.

“Captain?” He blinked.

Cocking a brow, she repeated, “Did I request your presence? I’m thinking I didn’t. So why are you here?”

He glanced over her shoulder and gestured toward the front of the hall. “Well, we heard you all caught a Warlord,” the fighter said.

“We didn’t catch him. He walked right up to us—after he assisted in a Raviner attack. That doesn’t explain your presence here. Leave.” She raised her voice and called, “All of you—leave. If you are not here at my orders or orders from the commander, you don’t belong here.”

A rush of whispers lifted in the air. Syn narrowed her eyes. She was getting damn sick and tired of having her orders questioned today.

With a disgusted sigh, she crossed her arms over her chest and did a quick count. Probably close to a hundred people were there and more were trickling in.
Fine, you idiots. Have it your way.
She glanced over her shoulder and caught the eye of one of the guards.

It was Kiri, a wiry, redheaded female with a big mouth, a quick temper and an even quicker pulsar. “Kiri, call the security detail. I want an entire squad dispatched to this location.”

Kiri pulled her comm-unit off and made the request as ordered. While she did, Syn faced the crowd. “Anybody still in this area when the security squad arrives will be detained. They will be placed in detention—screw being confined to quarters, because apparently that isn’t enough to deter you.”

She hadn’t even finished speaking and probably a tenth of the group had already disappeared.

Those lingering shot her varying looks of surprise and anger.

One of them, a medic, pushed free from the crowd and said, “With all due respect, Captain, I wasn’t made aware this area is off-limits.” She gestured to the soldiers and said, “We just want to know what is going on.”

“And when the commander and I have an answer, we’ll make it known,” Syn snapped, not bothering to temper the edge of her voice. “Have you all forgotten what you were told when you arrived? This is a military unit, and you will carry yourselves accordingly. If you were serving in the AMC, would you
dare
go to your commanding officer and demand an answer?”

“You’re asking us to blindly go along with whatever you say,” the medic bit off.

“That’s generally how it works.” Syn jumped off the steps and faced the medic. “This is
not
a democracy. It’s a military base—the commanding officers make the decisions. You all follow—if you don’t like that, you
are
allowed to leave. There is no penalty for deserters here. You are all here of your own free will. But there damn well is a penalty for disregarding a direct order, and you’ve been ordered to evacuate this area.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the sunlight flashing off clear plastin—the shields the security squads carried. She hadn’t called for riot gear, but apparently somebody had deemed it necessary. And it just might be, she realized.

Please don’t let it come to that,
she prayed.

She should have just executed the Warlord, she realized. Just ended him and been done with it.

For some reason, though, the thought made her belly twist.

She’d killed before. Always in the heat of battle, but still, this was just a Warlord. This was the enemy. Killing him would have saved her this headache, wouldn’t have left her wondering if she was endangering herself, Lee, Elina . . . not to mention the rest of the camp.

Killing him would have been easier.

Yet even thinking about it left her feeling cold and queasy.

Confusion flooded her, and she shoved it aside, focused on the medic. The door behind her had opened, and she was being watched—she already knew by whom. Her body recognized Xan’s presence easily. She took some comfort in it.

“Security is here.” Raising her voice, she called out, “Last chance. Either disperse or spend the night in the detention center.” A mean smile curled her lips. “And since there’s a whole hell of a lot of you, you will not go into the few cells created for human prisoners. You’ll go to the pit where we used to hold Jorniaks.”

The pit was huge and it would hold all of them. But it wouldn’t be fun. The pit was exactly that—a huge pit where the prisoners would need a ladder to reach the bottom without breaking bones, and without a ladder, it wasn’t possible to escape it.

As they dispersed, she turned and mounted the steps. Xan met her halfway, eying the retreating backs of the soldiers. The hostility in the air wasn’t lost on him. “Was that wise?” he asked quietly.

“Maybe not. Ignoring it would be even less wise.” She took a deep breath and said, “We shouldn’t have brought him here, Xan. It was one huge, motherfucking mistake.”

This was
not
how she wanted to handle this mess.

“What else were we to do?” he asked. He shook his head. “The commander wouldn’t have let him go—his presence raises too many questions. But could you have killed him? He helped us.” Xan brushed his fingers down her cheek. “Some of us—
you—
could have died without his aid. Could you have killed him?”

Syn muttered, “I wish I knew.” Muscles knotted in her neck, and all she wanted to do was sit down. And bathe. Damn it, she wanted a bath, to get rid of the blood and gore still splattering her clothes from the earlier Raviner attack.

The most she’d been able to do was wash her hands, face and arms. But she needed a bath; she needed to burn these clothes. It was a luxury that would have to wait. Turning, she gestured to the highest-ranked in the security squad. He approached, his face void of any emotion.

“Contact your officer—I want a security squad in this location around the clock for the time being. I’ll clear it with the commander. Nobody save the assigned squad, the commander or one of his seconds are allowed in this area unescorted until further notice. I’ll draft up a notice once I’m done here.”

“Yes, Captain.” She stepped away as he made the call.

Unable to put it off another second, she went inside.

The prisoner stood at the far end of the west hall, staring straight ahead. He didn’t seem at all concerned with his current situation. The soldiers guarding his sorry hide might as well not have existed for all the attention he gave them.

But when he saw her, his demeanor changed.

A smile curled his lips, and he inclined his head—an oddly regal action.

“Captain . . . It is Captain, yes?”

Syn ignored him. “You realize that I’ve got about fifteen hundred men and women in this base and most of them would just as soon slit your throat as look at you, correct?”

“Yes. I’m quite aware of that.” His smile widened and he said, “Perhaps I should thank you for taking such care of my sorry self.”

“I’m not
taking
care of you. I’m seeing to the safety of a prisoner—we do not mistreat prisoners.” She curled her lip at him and said, “We leave that to your kind.”

His blue eyes went midnight dark and the smile faded from his stare, replaced with a flat, unyielding stare. He said nothing.

Syn returned his stare and fought the knee-jerk instinct to flee.

His kind hunted hers.

From the time she’d even known how to form words, she’d had a fear of Warlords. She dealt with them from a distance as often as possible—burn them to ash, put a blade through the heart, using a pulsar to cut them down from twenty paces away, anything that kept her from being close.

This was the closest she’d ever been to one outside the heat of battle. She’d much rather face one in battle, she decided. Then she knew what to do. Cut them down. Kill them. Move on. Thwart whatever raid they’d been involved in and then get the hell away before reinforcements arrived. The bastards let the demons do most of the dirty work as far as battles went. With the exception of raids, they rarely dirtied their hands to engage in any sort of combat.

Syn hadn’t ever spoken to one.

Well, except Morne.

But Morne was a unique case—he wasn’t one of
them
—he wasn’t the enemy.

Syn doubted she could say the same for this man, no matter what her senses told her.

Breaking eye contact, she sauntered across the raised platform and settled behind the narrow desk. It was designed to seat only three or four people. Settling in the middle chair, she forced an air of calm as she studied him. “Now we need to decide what to do with you.”

The table between them served as an effective barricade and she reached down, drawing a blade from her boot. It helped, the solid weight of the metal in her hand.

“What are you doing here?”

That faint, amused smile curled his lips again. “It appears I’m being detained.”

“Yes, it does. If that doesn’t bother you, then be as much of a smart-ass as you please. I can leave you in restraints for the rest of your life. Doesn’t bother me. But if you’d rather have a chance to get out of those restraints, answer me.”

The humorless smile on his mouth did nothing to light the dark depths of his eyes. “You won’t let me out of these restraints as easy as that, madam. I’m not a fool.”

“That’s still up for debate. After all, you put yourself pretty deep into enemy territory.”

“I’m in an alien world. I deserted my men, my captains and my High Lord—no matter where I go, I’m in enemy territory.”

“Let’s start there, then. Why did you desert? When did you desert?”

Deserters in any army were pretty much unwelcome; however, Syn couldn’t find it in herself to get worked up over somebody walking away from a Warlord’s army. Assuming he had, of course.

A muscle jerked in the man’s jaw. “It is a personal matter.” Something flashed through his eyes.

There was determination in his eyes, but also something else, an emotion she couldn’t identify.

If he wasn’t a Warlord, she might have just thought it was grief. Loss.

Did Warlords know how to grieve? Did they even understand emotion?

Just beyond her shields, she felt the echoes of the emotion she glimpsed in his eyes, but she didn’t want to lower her shields, try to understand it better. She didn’t want to understand
him
better.

“Why did you help us?” she asked, shoving aside the issue of why he’d deserted,
if
he’d deserted. She’d need to think that through later, but right now she was just trying to wrap her mind around having him here. And the fact that she could have died, might have lost friends in the attack, if it hadn’t been for him.

“You needed the help.”

Syn scowled and leaned back from the table. She crossed her arms over her chest, drumming her fingers against her arm as she stared at him. “We’ve needed help quite a bit over the past few decades—more and more demons coming through the Gates raised by
your
kind. They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for
your
kind, so I’m curious as to why you felt the need to do a damn thing.” She gave him a tight smile. “I doubt there is anything altruistic in your motives.”

“There isn’t.” He stared at the wall just past her shoulder, but somehow, she didn’t think he was seeing the wooden walls.

He said nothing else.

Staring at him, she felt a headache creeping up on her. He was going to be one major pain in the ass. Taking a deep, controlled breath, she leaned back over the desk, resting her elbows on the scarred surface. “So you admit you didn’t act out of altruism. So my question remains unanswered—
why
did you help us? If some of us, all of us, had died, what would it matter to you?”

His lashes lowered, shielding his eyes. “The loss of life always matters, Captain.”

“Yes, because I’ve noticed how very sacred life is to the Warlords—so sacred you have no trouble enslaving women, killing their spouses before their eyes and dragging them away to serve as your personal whores.” Ice edged its way into her voice and she gripped her blade harder, tighter. “Try again, Warlord. Why in the fuck are you here?”

He just stared at her.

Syn took it for about five seconds and then she shoved back away from the desk. Gesturing to three of the men guarding him, she said, “Escort him to a containment cell. Three guards on duty, at all times. I’ll draw up a rotation.”

Without looking at him a second time, she left the west hall.