When the door down the hall opened, she kept right on brushing her hair, needing to focus on something other than the man prowling toward her. When he appeared at the edge of her peripheral vision, she tightened her grip on the brush.
“The other world is called Kalithia, and its sun is dying.”
Eli parked himself on the other end of the hearth. “Well, that’s a problem.”
She offered him a snarky smile. “You think?”
He held up his hands in apology. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Apology accepted, and I shouldn’t be so touchy. This is hard for me to talk about.” She set the brush down and picked up the threads of her narrative. “It’s been going on for forever, I guess, and the people there have adapted as best they can. Most are vegetarian, not by choice but by necessity. It’s too expensive and difficult to raise animals just for meat. Power is hard to come by, too, so they lack a lot of the technology that you take for granted in this world.”
Eli slid closer to her, his strong arm once again anchoring her to his side. “So that’s why your people try to cross over to this world.”
All right, here came the ugly part. “It’s why some of us come over, but it’s not true for everyone. There’s an illness that some Kalith are susceptible to. I don’t know if there is a more technical name for it, but we call it the light disease. As far as we can tell, it’s the increasing lack of bright sunshine that triggers it. When someone succumbs to the illness, they crave the light and will do anything to find it. Once that happens, he or she is no longer the person they used to be. They grow violent and have no conscience.”
It didn’t take long for Eli to put some of the pieces together for himself. “Your cousin and those other rogues—they have it.”
She nodded. “Yes, and it tends to run in families. My mother died of the disease, which is why my father and grandfather risked everything to bring me into this world to live. They were afraid that I would come down with it, too.”
“So it’s terminal?”
She wasn’t sure if the sympathy in his voice made it easier or harder to continue, but she’d promised to lay it all out for him, and she would.
“Not in the way you mean. What happens is what you’ve already seen with Tiel. They find a way to cross the barrier into this world. Most of the time, they are out of their heads and ready to kill.”
For the first time, Eli looked skeptical. “It can’t be easy to keep something like that out of the headlines. I’ve spent a lot of time out of the country the past few years on various deployments, but I think I would’ve still heard if sword-wielding whackos were running around the countryside.”
Wincing at his harsh description, she continued. “Fortunately, not all that many Kalith have the gift to control the barrier that Vedin and I have. Additionally, there are huge swaths of the world that don’t have any pieces of the barrier at all. They’re mainly located in areas where tectonic plates come together. A lot are in the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean. Others are near major fault lines like the New Madrid in the Midwest.”
Time to explain the role Paladins played in this whole thing and see if Eli figured out why both she and Vedin had mistaken him for one. “Regardless, this isn’t a recent development. According to our history, it has been going on forever. At some point in the distant past, a class of specialized fighters called the Paladins took on defending the known stretches of the barrier in this world. Now, a group known simply as the Regents oversees the Paladins, making sure they have everything they need to do the job.”
She shot him a quick look. “I’ve never personally met one, but I can tell you what I learned about the Paladins from people who have. They are all big men, most over six feet tall. Depending on who you talk to or maybe which side of the barrier you were born on, they are considered either cold-blooded killers or else highly trained warriors.”
Talking was thirsty work, but she kept up the explanation while she walked over to the fridge to fetch them each a beer. “Paladins fight with bladed weapons, mostly swords. I’m guessing they’re equally good with firearms, but it’s not safe to use bullets near the barrier. They tear holes in it that are hard to repair. It’s not good for anyone if the barrier stays down for any length of time. And since the stretches of barrier are usually in caves, ricochets can be a real problem. The Paladins guard the barrier, defending this world against the Kalith trying to cross over. I understand they call us Others, not Kalith. I guess it’s easier to kill people who have no real identity. And, to be fair, they’re not really wrong about that.”
She tried really hard not to picture her mother as one of those people. “You see, the Kalith they cross swords with are all sick with the light disease. By the time they encounter the Paladins, they are out of their minds with bloodlust. They’re no longer the people they used to be. To give credit where it’s due, the Paladins do try to force them back into Kalithia. But failing that, they’ll slaughter them to prevent them from going on a rampage in this world.”
“And that’s how your mother died?”
She really didn’t want to discuss it, so she just nodded and kept going. “There are never enough Paladins to go around, but at least they are really hard to kill. Remember that gift for healing that Vedin mentioned? Well, the Paladins have that ability, but on steroids. By all reports, there’s almost nothing that will kill them, and even if it does, they don’t stay that way.”
She held out Eli’s drink, but he didn’t seem to even see it. There was no telling where his head was right now, but it wasn’t with her. She had more to tell him, but maybe he needed a minute to absorb everything she’d already said. When the silence dragged on for another couple of minutes, she nudged him with her shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
He blinked a couple of times and then shook his head as if to clear it. “Any idea where these guys come from? I mean, are they Kalith like Vedin or are they human?”
“As far as I know, they originated here on Earth, but I’ve heard they have a few Kalith genes mixed in with their human DNA. It only stands to reason that some Kalith have managed to blend into this world. If they married humans along the way, their children would’ve inherited some Kalith traits and passed them down through the generations. I’ve always figured that’s where Paladins got the ability to heal like they do. Rumor has it that they also live longer than normal humans do. Kalith people often live well past a hundred years. The bad news is that the Paladins can only come back from death so many times before they go crazy just like the Kalith who develop the light disease.”
By this point, Eli was frowning big-time. “I noticed your family and Vedin’s bunch all have unusually pale gray eyes. I didn’t think anything about your father and aunt having salt-and-pepper hair considering their age. But Vedin and his men have it, too, even though they look like young men. Are those common Kalith traits?”
She nodded as she fingered a lock of her hair. “I’ve been dyeing my hair since my early teens to hide the gray. A lot of my people also wear colored contacts to blend in better with the human population.”
“Are the same things true of the Paladins?”
Something about the way he asked made her think he wasn’t simply being curious. “As far as I know, Paladins don’t have a specific type when it comes to looks or coloring. Why?”
Eli lapsed into another long silence. He shifted positions so his elbows rested on his knees as he stared across at the weapons on the wall. The flickering of the flames outlined the grim set to his jaw. Whatever he was thinking wasn’t good. She thought he’d known and accepted that she wasn’t human. From the way he’d kissed her earlier, she’d been convinced that didn’t matter to him, but maybe she’d been wrong about that.
