Excerpt of Realm of Shadows by Shannon Drake

Prologue

The Trenches

Germany

September 1944

A shell exploded not ten feet in front of the fine. Despite the days and nights the men had spent in their hellish hole in the earth, some jumped at the sound.

Others barely twitched.

They'd been holding the line nearly a week, waiting for reinforcements. Though word kept coming through that the men from Airborne would be shoring them up, none had arrived. Some of the men were bitter, but Brandon Ericson shrugged at their comments without replying. He was certain the men from Airborne had been sent out.

They just hadn't made it yet. Gut instinct warned him that the paratroopers had been dropped from their planes with all good intentions. Some of them had tangled in the trees. Others had been shot down while their chutes were still billowing in the absurdly blue skies. Some of them had met death on the ground. And some were wasting away in the enemy's prison camps. No lack of intent or valor left them as they were now. Just the brutal determination of a foe determined to conquer all Europe.

"Jesus! That was close!" Corporal Ted Myers muttered, crossing himself. His pale blue eyes were bright against their red rims and the dark grime on his face. Beside him, Jimmy Decker started to shake. What began as a trembling turned suddenly into a full-force spasm. Then Jimmy slammed forward, crashing against the wall of earth that shielded them, and back again.

"Better get him out of the line," the lieutenant said quietly. "Back to the infirmary."

"Ain't no infirmary anymore, Lieutenant," Sergeant Walowski said. He leaned back against the earth and sank to a sitting position, drawing a cigarette from his pocket. "Caved in last night."

"The medics have something else rigged up. Myers, get Decker out of here," the lieutenant said. He stared across the earth. Pretty soon, dusk would fall. Until then, there would be another barrage of mortar fire. After that, the enemy would make a run at their position again. He didn't need anyone in the line who was cracking. They'd held here now for nearly two weeks under impossible odds. They'd done so because, for the most part, the men were crack shots. They weren't budging, and from where they were, they could have a field day with troops approaching them-- even the trained professional German soldiers who had been ordered to root them out.

Still, they could only hold so long. The enemy powers had ordered those soldiers--family men, many of them, like their French and American counterparts--to give their lives, as many as need be, for the Fatherland. They'd just send more and more troops, night after night. Even if fifty of the enemy were killed for every one of his men, eventually, they would fall. Unless reinforcements could reach them. And quickly.

A whistling tore through the air.

"Take cover!" the lieutenant ordered. Myers, running with the shell-shocked Decker, ducked and kept running. The men remaining in the trench flattened themselves. This one didn't explode .quite so close.

"Keep down!" the lieutenant warned, and sure enough, the first explosion was followed by a second, and then by a third. On the last, great piles of earth fell like rain upon the already filthy men, but there were no cries of pain, no shrieks indicating an imminent death among their shrinking number.

"They'll be coming through the dusk and fallout," the lieutenant warned. "Remember that amino is low. Hold your fire until I give the command."

"Don't shoot till we see the whites of their eyes," Myers muttered.

"Hell, we'll never see the whites of their eyes in this powder and dirt," Lansky said. Lansky was something of an old timer. Forty-five when the war had broken out. He'd joined up anyway, two days after his son was killed in Italy. By then, the recruiters hadn't cared much about his age. He was a damned good man to have on the line. He'd learned to shoot hunting in Montana and he rarely missed his mark, no matter what the conditions.

"Every shot counts," the lieutenant reminded them all. He was less than half Lansky's age, but Lansky never batted an eye at an order. Lansky had proven to be his best friend out here. He'd seen action at the end of the First World War. He'd learned a lot about digging into the trenches, and he had a way of giving damned good suggestions. Quietly. Without irritating even the officers with higher ranks than the lieutenant's.

He saw Lansky's eyes now. "They're coming," Lansky said. "I can feel it."

The lieutenant gave him a nod. And a moment later, Lansky was proven right. From out of the dusk, powder, and drifting dirt, the soldiers suddenly appeared. Knowing that they were within sight, they let out strange cries, like warriors of old. Maybe battle never changed, the lieutenant thought. Just the time, the place, the argument. Maybe men needed to scream, to run into a maelstrom of bullets, even if they were armed and prepared to deal out death themselves. Perhaps a battle cry was a man's last roar to heaven or hell that he was, indeed, alive.

"Fire!" the lieutenant shouted.

The earth seemed to split apart with the roar of the guns. The line coming toward them stumbled and broke. The eerie battle cries turned to screams of pain as men fell and died.

And yet, where the line had been broken, new men came rushing in, and the battle cry they had taken up seemed to soar and echo into the darkening sky. "Fire!" he roared again, and another barrage filled the night, and more men fell. But like ghost soldiers, the enemy kept coming, more soldiers filling in where the others had been. The line was coming closer and closer, and the enemy soldiers were firing as well, aiming blindly for the trenches.