by May Dawney
THE VEIL CHRONICLES
Stolen Magic
MAY DAWNEY
CHAPTER ONE
There are only three statements needed to prove the existence of the conduits of the devil we call witches.
One: God provides only good.
Two: All evil stems from the devil.
Three: Evil can only enter our world through a medium, and that medium must be human.
I speak not of the evils of mankind, I speak of the evils of power beyond that of a sharp mind, fast wit, and a silver tongue. I speak not of orators, I speak of witches, mages, devil spawn. I speak of those who upset the balance of the world. Burn them all, I say, and with them, their evils.
– Rudolf Wagner, ‘A Guide for the Death of Witches’
‘BERLINGER MUST BE replaced.’ She circled the words on her notepad and then circled them again as a reminder to herself.
The man in question still babbled inanely about his past and present failures. He fumbled with the buttons of the beamer remote and landed on the slide that read ‘The End.’
If nothing else, she was going to have him stripped of rank for his horrible PowerPoint skills.
Viktoria glanced around the table and found others glancing back at her, equally unimpressed. Right. “Berlinger, please do be quiet.”
He snapped his mouth shut like a fly trap. Sweat trickled down the side of his head.
“So, in conclusion, you are telling me that the London operation was…how do the Americans say it, Steven?” She glanced at the man to her left, two chairs over.
“A bust? Sounds like it was a bust.” Steven Joyce leaned back in his seat.
“Hm. I was going to say ‘clusterfuck,’ but perhaps it’s better for Berlinger if I merely say it was, as the Americans call it, a bust.” She circled the words ‘Berlinger must be replaced’ on her paper again.
Berlinger shuffled on the spot. “I-I can fix it.”
She looked back up and cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, you can, can you? And how do you plan on doing that, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
He fidgeted with the projector remote and tried to catch the gaze of anyone but her.
None would meet it. Viktoria allowed a smirk. “Berlinger?” She added a sing-song lilt to her words that jolted his gaze back to her.
“G-Give me more time, I’ll find the Charter and arrest the mages.” He rushed the words out.
Should she be concerned he was turning from red to purple? “That sounds like a really bad plan, I must admit.” She leaned toward her right. “Wouldn’t you agree, Tempest?”
“I would.” Tempest’s low baritone hummed through the hall.
Berlinger took a deep breath. “I can do it.”
“I don’t think you can. Hands, does anyone think Berlinger can find the Charter? With or without a capture raid?”
Not one of the three Swiss House representatives around the table raised their hand, not even Anderson, who’d fought to put Berlinger in charge of the Vienna operation to begin with. Tempest didn’t raise his hand either, nor did their American liaison.
“Well, that’s settled, then. No one thinks you can do it. Please leave.” She added just a touch of ice to her voice. “And I would like to see you tomorrow at eight a.m. to discuss your future in the Inquistio. What little of it there will be.”
Berlinger dropped the remote. “S-Seriously?” He wiped the sweat off his brow with his shirt sleeve, which became stained.
“Please leave, you’re upsetting me.” She waved her hand. “Leave now.”
“Ms. Wagner, please!” He started his walk around the table. “Hans, please?”
Hans Anderson wisely looked away.
“Tempest?” She kept her tone airy and dismissive.
Tempest stood and blocked Berlinger’s path to her. “You’ll want to turn that way.” He pointed at the door, then folded his impressive arms across his even more impressive chest.
“Tempest, please. You know what—”
“Leave.” His baritone dropped another octave and spelled nothing but doom for the man, should he continue to resist.
Still, Berlinger hesitated. He tried to catch her gaze, but she returned it to her paper. She crossed his name out on her sheet. It was oddly satisfying.
“Final warning.” Tempest took a step forward.
Berlinger took two back. “I—”
“Just leave, man.”
Viktoria could feel her eyebrow crawling up her forehead as Anderson urged his life-long friend out the door. Interesting development. She made a mental note to reward him for his loyalty.
“Hans?”
Anderson looked away and shook his head.
Berlinger glanced from him, to Tempest, to her. His shoulders sagged and he nodded. “Eight a.m.” He was hoarse. “I’ll be there.”
“Leave.” Tempest never needed prodding to turn the intimidation up a notch.
Berlinger left and dragged his feet the whole way. The door closed behind him.
Viktoria waited for the minute click, then tore the page she’d scribbled on from her note pad and crumpled it. She placed it in front of her on the table to ward of any dissidence. “Well then. Vienna.” She glanced around and made sure to catch each and every gaze. “Who will find the Charter, hm?”
Silence.
Tempest sat back down. The old springs creaked under his weight.
“I’ve got a team near Milan I can mobilize.” Rainer Messerli looked up from his interlocked hands. “Berlinger gave us away, though. They’ll have gone to ground. My teams are good, but even they’d have trouble staying under the radar now every mage and Otherkin is on high alert. Maybe we have to give up on it for now?”
He wasn’t wrong. She still fixed him with a glare. “Berlinger’s team had an easy task: keep an ear to the ground, try to locate the Society Charter, track comings and goings, suss out their magic if possible. He didn’t have to mess up like he did.” She made sure everyone around the table nodded. “Slide me that remote.”
Messerli reached out and pulled it across the table’s surface. Then he handed it down along the line of House Heads.
“Thank you.” She took it from Tempest and went back through the slides of the PowerPoint until she got to the Vienna aerial map. “I think the rumors of an underground location are true.” She stared at the map, projected on a bare wall. “Maybe we can use a—”
It hit her with the force of an explosion and rolled over her like a tidal wave.
Magic.
Pure.
Powerful.
Her legs gave way and she crumpled beside the table. Her chair crashed to the floor behind her.
Every nerve ending flared and she gasped as her muscles contracted in a way that was both excruciating and arousing. Her brain numbed in a rush of dopamine. She’d spent years researching what magic did to the human brain; she knew how it worked and yet, to be overwhelmed by such purity of it and in these quantities, was undefinable
Tempest growled beside her. He doubled over as if someone had punched him in the gut.
“Ma’am?” There was a note of panic in Anderson’s voice.
The wave passed as suddenly as it had come and she sank down onto the rug below. She struggled for breath, and the strength to push herself up on her hands, but her legs sprawled behind her and her muscles were unruly and unable to function.
All synapses still fired, and there wasn’t sex good enough in the world to replicate the stars that danced before her eyes. A strangled moan tore from her throat.
Already, hands wrapped around her upper arms.
She shook them off. “G-Go!”
“What’s—?” Reisch’s voice had gone up an octave.
“L-Leave me!” The almost orgasmic, destructive power still surged t
hrough her veins. Her skin buzzed, her blood pulsed. She glanced up and caught looks of surprise, fear, and barely contained disgust.
Punishment would befall the latter group as soon as she got herself under control again—if only to establish her dominance again—but right now, there was only the magic that coiled and slithered where it wasn’t supposed to.
Wild magic, it had to be that. Nothing felt as good as channeling magic, and nothing traversed the Veil like this, other than the pure chaotic energy of the Veil itself. She’d never gotten a taste before, but she suspected any mage in the world would know what this was.
She struggled for control of her own magical energy. The urge to channel her powers was only ever one slip of her control away, but this surge tore at that resolve more than anything else ever had. The Veil seemed to pulse in tune with her own magic and it was a siren song.
They still looked at her. Even when she dropped her head back down, she could feel their gazes.
There was the urge, always the urge, to unleash on their pathetically easy to manipulate bodies and small little brains. To seize control over them and twist them inside-out for every snide remark behind her back and every attempt at political assassination. “Out!”
“Let’s go.” Angela Reisch, of course. Always eager to take control from her. She herded board members away as if they were sheep instead of wolves.
Tempest struggled to get out of his seat. His muscles rolled under his too-tight shirt.
She licked her lips. “N-Not you, Tempest. Everyone else, out. Out!”
He sagged back into the chair with a groan and watched her.
Their gazes locked as they waited for the others to leave.
The door fell shut with a bang and resounded through the estate’s main hall.
“Magic.” His usual dark rumble turned even darker. Sweat pearled on his forehead and streaked down from under his fedora.
She managed to pull her legs under her and pushed up onto her hands and knees. “Wild magic.”
“You shouldn’t have sent them away. There will be questions. Rumors.”
“There always are.” She sat up on her haunches. Her body ached from the strain as well as for release of the energy still coiling inside of her.
“Orders?”
“Help me up.” She extended her hand to him.
He watched it and seem to realize that would mean getting up. Tempest didn’t usually hesitate, but he hesitated now.
“If I wasn’t looking for that, I’d have sent you away with the others.”
He regarded her for a few seconds longer, then placed his hands firmly on the armrests of the chair. They creaked under his weight. His arms trembled. Clearly, he was as affected as she was.
She let her gaze run down his body as he rounded the chair and couldn’t help another shiver.
His grip was strong and his palms sweaty. He pulled her up as if she were a ragdoll.
She pressed against him and relished the promise of strength in his muscles.
A wild mage had manifested somewhere, and she would have to deal with it, but magic coiled in her veins and begged to be released. She cupped his strong jaw and scanned the lips she knew to be soft, although it had been a while, and she’d been lonely and angry then. Not unlike now. “Will you regret this as much as last time?”
He held her gaze. “Yes.”
Of course he would, just like her. Those were thoughts for the future. Now, she kissed him, and then gave him free reign. Of all the tricks in the world to quench the hunger for magic, sex was simply the easiest, and most readily available.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, they all looked at her, except for Tempest. His gaze was on his hands, and he had pulled his fedora down to just above his strong brow.
The others had no qualms. Reisch’s gaze was hostile. Anderson caught curious glances of her. Messerli looked concerned, but there was ice in his gaze. They were all ambitious, but Messerli hid it best—usually.
Joyce clacked his tongue. “So.” He drew the word out. “Since no one’s asking, let the American put his foot in it. What the hell was that?”
Tempest tensed. It was minute, but she was very entuned to him right now.
“That was magic. Wild magic, to be exact.” She glanced around the table. Of all the House Heads, only Joyce openly reacted.
He raised both his eyebrows. “Wild magic? As opposed to controlled magic?” He chuckled, as if he’d joked.
“Yes, exactly. That is exactly what it means.”
His chuckle died off.
Since she knew what he would ask next, she decided to fill in the blanks. They didn’t have time for twenty questions. “I don’t know what they teach in American Houses, but here we are taught about the Veil.”
He puffed out his chest. “Of course I’ve heard about the Veil. I’ve been doing research into the Veil forever.”
Since Joyce was thirty-two, she took his ‘forever’ remark with a grain of salt. “All right, and what have you learned?”
“It’s energy. It’s an energy barrier that separates this world from the Otherworld and keeps creatures where they belong.”
Tempest met his gaze dead on but remained silent. He knew better than to antagonize a Head of House, and she suspected that she didn’t think the man half his age was worth the effort.
“And where do creatures like me—” She thought it best to take the wind out of his sails with that bit of information as well. “Where do we get our magic from?”
“From the Otherworld, from the other side of the Veil.” She could hear the ‘Duh’ in his voice, although he kept it in.
“Exactly. We—at least those who practice—pull energy through the Veil to power our magic. We are in control of it, it does not control us.” She made sure to meet everyone’s gazes in turn to drive that point home.
Reisch smirked and shook her head, but she remained silent
Messerli nodded. He’d been a close acquaintance of her father and he’d known her for most of her life. He had been in charge of detoxing her of her magic when she’d returned to the Inquisitio. He knew control was possible, either out of free will, or through torture and heavy medication.
Anderson dropped his gaze. At least one of her so-called colleagues was still firmly under her control.
Tempest still refused to look at her. He’d come around eventually, but he’d brood until then.
“Okay, so what we call magic is controlled magic.” Joyce leaned back in his seat. “What’s wild magic?”
“Besides the obvious?” Messerli smirked.
Viktoria allowed the smallest touch of a smile to tug at her lips. All right, so he was on her side still as well. At least for now. “Wild magic doesn’t come from beyond the Veil, it is of the Veil. It’s pure magical energy, and it’s not drawn from, it’s poured in. That’s why wild mages always die.”
He frowned. “Die?”
She nodded. “If there was anything left of the wild mage’s body, they’ll be scraping bits off the ceiling. They get so much energy pumped into them that they explode. Usually, they take half a block of houses with them. The first documented case was a little boy in Samaria, Israel. A lost work by Simon Magus allegedly detailed his manifestation and subsequent death somewhere in the first century A.D., but we only have references, and they are fragmented at best. My ancestor, Rudolf Wagner, quoted one in ‘A Guide for the Death of Witches’, for example.”
“Okay, impressive. So, now what? And why did you do your best orgasming snake impression?”
Reisch chuckled, then waved her hand. “Apologies, the American has a way with words.”
Viktoria straightened her back and chose to let the comment slide. “Messerli might know better, but I suspect the effect was felt by every mage and Otherkin around the globe. My theory is that all energy in the world stems from the Veil, and that it’s the purest source of it. Magic is addictive. Using it causes a high unlike any other. It’s pure power, pure dominance. Thi
s wave of wild energy felt like getting shot up with the cleanest heroin.”
“Speaking from experience?” Joyce grinned.
Now, she allowed a scowl. “Of course not. One can imagine.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, as if suggesting she was lying. “Whatever you say, Ms. Wagner.”
“Steven, do be quiet.” She forced her posture to relax. “What matters is that a wild mage manifested. I want to know everything about them. I want to know who they were, what they had for breakfast, and most of all I want to know what their genetic profile looks like.”
Reisch hummed. “If they, indeed, exploded, then the first shouldn’t be an issue. Steven, you will find that out, would you?” Her voice was sickly sweet.
“Sure. Can’t be that hard. It’s not like a million things blow up every day.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll get a team on it.” He picked up his phone, unlocked it, and started to type.
“All right, with that sorted.” Reisch combed through her hair with her fingers; a tick that indicated she hadn’t found the right words to continue yet. “I suppose your comment about their breakfast indicated that you want to know if there were environmental factors at play in the wild mage’s manifestation?”
“I do.” Viktoria nodded.
“That might be hard.”
“Harder, at least, than getting some of her DNA.”
That’s got Reisch’s attention. “Oh? You have a plan?”
Viktoria inclined her head. “I do.” It wasn’t the best of plans, but it was a plan. A thrill of the forbidden course to loan her spine, but this was no time to question her own motivations.
By the way Tempest perked up, and finally looked at her, she could be sure that he would do all the questioning later.
Messerli sat up straighter as well. “And what would that be, Viktoria?”
She squared her shoulders and tipped her chin up. “As soon as we find out where they manifested, I’ll go get them myself.”
CHAPTER TWO
There can be no such thing as mercy where a witch is concerned. They will cause you nothing but grief. Their blood is cursed, and families are destroyed by their failures to control themselves.