Page 40 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Balor roared again, the soldiers on the stairs unable to react out of shock. He lifted his hand to his emerald-encrusted eye patch.

“Don’t look.” Diego turned away and threw his arms around Zack’s head to protect him. “Close your eyes.” He knew enough of the stories to suspect what came next.

With one eye cracked, facing the oncoming soldiers, Diego watched as a dark cone swept down from above.

It couldn’t be called a beam, since it was the absence of light, a darkness that sucked all the surrounding light into its depths.

The cone swept over the soldiers, engulfing them one by one and leaving crumpled, unconscious bodies in its wake.

Balor’s Bane Eye, which could kill at a glance if he uncovered it fully.

Balor’s heavy tread advanced down the stairs. Shots fired at him vanished into the darkness. A panicked attempt at retreat ensued, the remaining soldiers at the top unable to shove past their comrades still advancing from below. Balor mowed them all down until silence returned to the stairwell.

“Well, boy?” Balor growled as he replaced his eye patch and turned to Diego. “Are you whole?”

“More or less, majestad .” Diego gulped a breath, trying to calm his hammering heart.

The Fomorian King pointed a claw at Zack. “This is ours?”

“Yes, majestad . He’s injured.”

With a snort, Balor scooped Zack up in one arm. “I will have some choice words for my blasted grandson. Leaving a wounded companion behind.”

“To be fair, I don’t think he knew it was this bad.” Diego clung to a broad shoulder as he was picked up as well.

“You lead a war band, you bloody well know the condition of your warriors,” Balor snarled as he leaped back up the stairs that bent and creaked under his weight.

“Perhaps the scolding can wait, majestad ,” Diego urged. “I think I might need some help making a doorway.”

“Just the request I would make of you. My strength is yours.”

When they reached the top, Diego saw why Lugh had not come back for them himself. Most of the fae warrior band had gathered on the rock outcropping where the fire exit hatch let out. Below them lay the field of battle. Four lonely figures still held the field, retreating slowly toward them.

Danu and Lugh stood with arms outstretched, supporting a dome of magic which stopped the missiles and bullets fired at the fae.

Faolchú stood beside them, and when a small tank rumbled from the cavern mouth serving as the entrance to the base, he placed both palms flat on the ground.

A tremor rumbled through the earth, centered on the tank, which wobbled and toppled on its side.

Morrigan, armed with only a wooden club, zipped back and forth across the field, felling any soldier foolish enough to try a flanking maneuver.

“Time to go,” Diego murmured. He reached for the flows of magic and bit back a sob of relief when the currents swept over him. Like the return of his sight, or a missing limb, his body felt whole again. “Balor, I will need you to steady me.”

A huge, clawed hand closed over his shoulder, unexpectedly gentle.

The white sphere of magic fire gathered in Diego’s palm, and he pulled mercilessly at the strength offered him and the flows around him to concentrate the magic enough to punch through.

He had done this enough times now to know the exact instant, the exact pitch of magic singing along his nerves.

With a sharp cry, he flung his tiny, dense sun and pierced the Veil.

There would be no building of permanent doorways here, though.

“Get them all through! Danu! Fall back! We’re clear. Get to safety!”

The fae war bands, sidhe and Fomor, rushed past him, twenty warriors from each court, carrying the wounded and incapacitated.

Balor remained by his shoulder as one by one, the last defenders reached them and crossed over, Morrigan, then Faolchú and Danu, with a nod to him, until only Diego, Lugh and Balor remained.

“Go, you ninny!” Balor roared at his grandson. “Diego holds the way open, and I hold Diego!”

“But Grandfather—”

“Don’t argue with me, boy! Gods of rock and stone, you’ll be the death of me!”

A rocket-launched grenade hit nearby, sending a shower of rock down from the nearby mountainside. With an anguished look, Lugh lunged through the doorway.

“ Majestad ,” Diego said in a strained voice. “I just realized I can’t hold it open and get through as well. You’ll have to leave me.”

Balor surprised him with a huge, scary grin. “Just shows how much you have to learn, m’boy.”

He snagged Diego around the waist, crushed him to his massive chest and flung himself through the doorway, which snapped closed just as he rolled clear, shutting out the dust and the din of the modern battlefield so abruptly, Diego thought he had gone deaf.

“Leave me, he says,” Balor said with a snort. “I wasn’t going to all that trouble just to leave the prize behind.”

Diego surveyed the Otherworld field where they had landed, the wounded already being seen to by fae healers. “A little warning next time, maybe?”

Zack lay on the grass nearby, his earnest gray eyes wide in childlike wonder as he took in the scenery of the Otherworld and all the fae moving around him. Eithne knelt beside him to begin working his body armor off.

“You’re a…kitty,” Zack blurted out.

Lugh crouched down on his other side to assist. “Careful what you say, Sergeant,” he said with a little smile. “That’s my mother.”

“Oh.” Zack gulped a breath. “Sorry, Your Highness.”

“Do you need help with the pain, Sergeant?” Lugh’s brows drew together in a concerned frown. “You’ve gone dreadfully pale.”

“No. Thanks, though,” Zack murmured and let his head fall back onto the grass. “It’s just a lot of stuff to, you know, take in at once.”

Diego rose unsteadily, found a stick to use as a cane and limped off in the direction of the trees.

“Where are you going now, boy?” Balor called after him.

“I have to close the Montana door. It’s not safe. If there’s anyone out there in the human world, I need them called in.”

“Faolchú! Help Talies—er, Diego. Call them home.”

The scene through the stable doorway looked peaceful enough, but Diego wouldn’t let Faolchú step through, just in case.

Faolchú raised his head to the sky and howled, a long keening that could have carried through several worlds.

A few little fairy lights answered his call and rushed through the doorway, but otherwise everyone seemed to have known of the danger and had returned to the Otherworld already.

“That’s everyone?”

Faolchú nodded. “There are no stray voices, Diego. We are all home.”

“Back up a step, hon. I don’t want you caught in any backlash.

” Diego reached out to the doorway and grasped the lower right corner, where his magic had melded with Balor’s.

He yanked hard, a sickening jolt running up his arm as the magic bond tore.

Destabilized, the quadrangle of magic collapsed in a howling vortex.

He had shut out the human world. For the moment, they were safe.