The Veil: Corruption (HASEA CHRONICLES BOOK 2)

by Stuart Meczes

  I looked over at Alex to see if he’d noticed, but if he had, he gave no indication. I decided to pretend I hadn’t either, while I worked out just what I was going to do about it.

  “Hi, sweetie,” I smiled, leaning over and giving her a hug. She made no reaction; she simply allowed me to hold her. I felt the rigidness of her body. Sophia’s warmth had gone – replaced by heart-breaking apathy. Alex performed the same awkward hug and then we both sat on the edge of the bed. As we did, Tommy woke up and stared around with bleary eyes. Vincent crawled around the boy’s shoulder, settling near his neck. With a slow movement, the boy picked up the bunny rabbit by its single remaining ear and ushered it into Sophia’s lap. Then he hopped off the bed and quietly slipped from the room. The candles flickered with the shift in air pressure.

  A yawing silence seemed to engulf the room. All that could be heard were the soft sighs of Trixie in her sleep. Sophia stared through us, her expression worryingly close to catatonia. It made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I had to force my mouth into a smile.

  “Hey, bambina, Alex and I have missed you so much. Haven’t we, Alex?”

  He nodded in agreement. “We couldn’t wait to see you. We’re sorry it’s taken so long. It’s just that things have been so crazy at the Warren, what with the new Awakenings and everything.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that we forgot about you,” I was quick to add.

  “Not for a second.”

  Sophia continued to stare through us. The only movement she made was to roll the ear of the bunny rabbit between her small fingers.

  “So we...uh, well we had a pretty intense encounter with a Lamiae yesterday. But we managed to save a whole train full of people,” said Alex. He looked over to me for support.

  “Del brought in his first Infiltration target,” I added. “A new Chosen called Daniel. Everyone calls him Danny, though. He’s going to join Orion.”

  Like the flick of a switch, Sophia’s expression changed completely. It was as if the words had penetrated through her barrier of singular misery. She slipped a pad and pen from the side table and scribbled something on it before tearing the sheet from its binding and handing it to Alex. He looked at it and shook his head, before passing it to me.

  Have you got all nine yet?

  Sadness filled me up. I knew where the conversation was heading. I thought we were done with this.

  “Sophia, why are you asking me about this again?” Alex asked.

  The girl didn’t react with words. There was no answer to the question. Instead, she just tapped the paper.

  “Honey, you know how we feel about this,” I added.

  Once again, Sophia didn’t answer. She just tapped the sheet, more impatiently this time.

  Alex sighed. “Not yet Sophia. We only have four.”

  Sophia face broke into a smile so warm, I almost gasped. It was a glimpse of the old Sophia. As I looked at her beautiful face, all lit up the way it used to be, tears stung at the corners of my eyes. She scribbled on another piece of paper, tongue sticking out the way it always did when she concentrated. Once again the page was removed from its binding and once again, handed to Alex. We read it together and my fears were proven correct.

  Please let me be one of them. She had underlined ‘please’ twice.

  Alex clutched the paper, and I stared down at the floor as he answered. After all, it was his decision to make.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetie, I know you want to help, but I haven’t changed my mind. Like I said before, you’re too young. It’s too dangerous. I made a promise to Midnight to keep you safe. I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.”

  As quick as a click of fingers, the old Sophia was gone. Her expression crumbled, and the broken shell of a girl returned. The baby Witch slid down the bed and turned away from us, laying one arm protectively over the pillow. She wrapped the other around the deformed bunny and drew it up to her chin.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  *

  I paced up and down the living room of my apartment. “Mio Dio! Alex, what are we going to do?”

  “You’re sure it was a book on Demonic magic?”

  I stopped to glare at him. “Yes I’m sure, Alex!”

  He held out his hands in an apologetic manner. “Okay, okay, I believe you. But look, maybe it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “How could this possibly not be something to worry about?”

  “Well,” he began in a diplomatic tone. “I reckon Sophia has gone through just about every book in that library. She was bound to stumble across one on Demonic magic eventually. The place is full of them. She probably doesn’t even realise the severity of what she’s doing.”

  I shook my head. “No, she knows. Even if she didn’t learn it through the handbook, it’s like the number one rule in the Guild of the Arcane. Every Coven has to adhere to it. She knows full well what the ramifications could be if she was caught. That’s why she was so quick to hide it from us.” I ran a hand sharply through my hair. “Oh my god, what are we going to do?”

  Alex placed his hands either side of my shoulders. “Ella, look at me.”

  I lifted up my head and stared into his vivid green eyes. Combined with his touch, it had a cathartic effect, and I felt my tension slipping away.

  “Sophia isn’t herself at the moment,” Alex said. “She’s not thinking clearly. You and I both know that. And Sage Faru will understand that too. No one is going to punish her for this.”

  “Wait, you think we should-”

  “Go to Sage Faru. Yes, I think we should.”

  “But…what if he…”

  “Gabriella. It’s Faru. He would never abandon Sophia. He loves her. We all do. It’s going to be okay.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to involve Sage Faru...not yet at least. We can’t know for sure how he’ll react. I don’t want Sophia going through any more stress than she already is.”

  Alex settled himself down on the back of the sofa, pressing his fingers into the red cushion. “So what do you suggest instead then?”

  “We tell no one what I saw. But we ask Claudine to keep a close eye on her and to report back to us. If Sophia does anything more than just read a few books on Demonic magic, then we take it to Faru, but for now we just give her the benefit of the doubt. That’s fair, right?”

  Alex considered the idea for a moment and then nodded.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief.

  “That sounds fair to me.” He swung his legs up and over the back of the couch, allowing himself to fall into the cushions. “Then we just have the issue of her obsession with being one of the nine.”

  I slipped around the sofa and perched myself on the arm. Alex stretched out his fingers, and I wrapped my own around them until they were entwined. The familiar electric buzz of our souls’ connection swept down my fingertips and up my wrist. Although strange at first, I’d grown to love the sensations.

  Alex’s words jogged an idea free in my mind. “Wait, do you think that Sophia’s research has something to do with her wanting to be one of the nine?”

  He went to answer, but instead let out a harsh gasp and snatched his hand from mine. He clutched at his upper arm and his eyelids fluttered in agony. Seeing him in pain felt was like a physical punch to my stomach. I slipped down onto the couch beside him. “It’s acting up again isn’t it?”

  He nodded through gritted teeth.

  “Let me see.”

  Alex tried to refuse, but distracted by the pain, he couldn’t do much to stop me from slipping his jacket from around him.

  “Oh god,” I breathed as I stared at his arm. The supernatural tattoo was growing again. It had started on the wrist – a few spiralling loops of tribal-like markings, but these days they resembled the shoots of a plant, one that spread all the way up his arm and across his shoulder. Pulling the neck of his t-shirt down, I watched as the ends of the tattoo crawled up his shoulder – spindly ends stopping just short of his collarbone.

&n
bsp; “Alex, we need to speak to Sage Faru about this.”

  He shook his head, eyes still clamped shut in agony. “We don’t. It’s okay.”

  “This is not okay!” I persisted. “Alex, that’s the second time it’s shifted in a month!”

  The tattoo had attached itself to Alex the moment The Sorrow died. For the few weeks afterwards, the Alliance had panicked about it. There had been meetings between the Sages to discuss what it could mean. It was believed it somehow related to Lafelei’s fragmented prophecy about being marked by Sorrow. But as the weeks went on and nothing happened, attention had waned – it was like a bomb that refused to detonate. Even its sporadic movements had been minimal. But recently they were happening more often, more aggressively and bought a serious amount of pain with each shift.

  I pressed a hand onto his other shoulder. “Hun, we need—”

  His eyes snapped open. The expression he wore was not one I’d ever seen before. It was the face of something dark and twisted.

  “Shut up, bitch!” he hissed and slapped my hand away. I winced at the pain – the blow hurt far more than it should have. Alex glared at me, and I recoiled away from him, cradling my throbbing hand. “Just shut up!” he repeated.

  Then, like a shadow had passed, his expression switched to one of shock. He looked to be on the brink of tears. “Ella…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

  I shook my head and slid back towards him, trying to ignore the humming pain in my hand. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t.”

  Alex lifted up my hand gently and kissed it, but his shame made his gestures clumsy and awkward.

  “Ella, I-I really don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked up and saw the mix of guilt and embarrassment on his face. With a weak smile, I pulled him into my arms. “It’s fine,” I reassured him, kissing the top of his head. “You’re just tired and stressed.”

  But we both knew that I was lying.

  I knew what was happening; I’d noticed the subtle changes in the last few months. The dark expressions when he thought no one was looking. The increasing irritability. The feverish nightmares that made him cry out in his sleep. I’d just chosen to ignore the signs. But they were becoming too hard to ignore now. It’s the tattoo. It’s affecting him.

  Then I thought about Sophia. How she was breaking apart in front of our eyes. Heading down a path she couldn’t come back from.

  Nothing was fine. Nothing was fine at all.

  4

  Alex

  Three Golems lay in a crumpled heap on the dirt.

  It was early evening on Friday, five days since Gabriella and I had been to visit Sophia and I’d had my shameful outburst. Since then the whispers had been relatively quiet, which made me both relieved and nervous at the same time. It had taken longer than expected, but finally, at Gabriella’s request, I had been cleared to teach Danny combat skills.

  Training was going well.

  Danny was resting, using the bo staff he’d selected as his choice weapon to prop himself up while he caught his breath. A sheen of sweat clung to his forehead.

  Unlike when I’d done my training, Danny was practicing without a blindfold and minus the aid of Farsight. There were far too many new recruits for Faru to loan his gift to speed up the training process, especially because doing so effectively left him blind. He was simply too busy to be without his unique sight these days. So training had to be done the normal way.

  As Chosen were effectively superhuman, it still only took a week or so to master marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat, but that was still six days longer than it took with Faru’s help. Thankfully Danny was already a red belt in Taekwondo and a skilled fighter. I had little doubt we would smash that timeframe if we kept training him hard.

  We’d been at it for most of the day, and the sun had slowly started to lose its heat as we approached evening. Still, the air was warm enough for me to welcome the cool breeze that rustled the trees around the makeshift arena.

  Gabriella was overseeing. She perched on the fence of the overspill arena that had been set up on the Warren grounds to accommodate the growing number of Guardians requiring training. Every now and then we would catch each other’s eye, and she would give me a wink or a quick smile to let me know I was doing a good job.

  At first, the arena had been busy with recruits practicing for the Trials, but as the day had worn on, they had peeled off. Now only the three of us remained.

  “Okay that was really good, Danny,” I said, moving over to the defeated clay guards. I put my fingers into their mouths in turn – the insides were hard like granite – and pulled out the stone tablets that contained the Fae words that bought them to life. As soon as I did, they dissolved into dust. I dropped the stones into the pocket of my jogging bottoms. Then I walked over to the sheltered weapons rack and pulled out a bo staff, identical to the one Danny was holding. “I think we’re done with the Golems for now. Let’s step this up and do a bit of sparring.”

  He looked alarmed. “Me and you?”

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to keep it light and friendly,” I smiled, trying to put him at ease.

  He glanced at Gabriella, who gave him an encouraging smile.

  “Okay, as long as we do.”

  I spun the bo staff around and poised it behind my back, my other arm stretched forward and legs wide to create a strong combat stance. Danny pinned one end of the staff to his side with his elbow and held the rest palm upward, tip pointing diagonally towards the ground. He lifted his free hand up to protect his face. Also a strong stance.

  We both edged forward, kicking up dust. When we were a few feet away from one another, we began to step sideways in slow circles.

  Danny struck out with the staff, and I used my own to knock it away. There was a sharp clack sound as wood met wood. The move left his front open, so I spun my staff around and nudged the tip into his chest.

  “Don’t leave yourself so exposed,” I explained. “If you’re fighting a Rogue, that one mistake is all it takes for it to be over. Keep your vital parts protected all the time.”

  He nodded. “Got it.”

  This time I spun my bo stick in a figure eight and bought it down lightly towards his head. Danny pivoted out of the way and spun his own horizontally across his body, catching me in the side a lot harder than he intended. I let out a little cough as the sharp sting burned my skin.

  Bastard!

  The word flicked across my brain in a shock of colour, catching me by complete surprise. It had come from the part of me that I feared. The whispers started, a baseline hiss that bubbled in the background.

  “Oh crap, I’m sorry!” Danny apologised, lowering his staff.

  I spread my gritted teeth into a smile. “No worries, that was good. Keep it up.”

  We put ourselves back into fighting stances.

  Show him how much better we are. Hurt him. The whispers grew louder, forming a chorus. Hurt him. Hurt him.

  Shut up! I tried to squeeze the noises from my mind. They refused to budge.

  We both attacked at the same time. A series of loud clacking sounds echoed through the grounds as our staffs connected. I swept my weapon up in an arc, but Danny countered, blocking it with his own.

  We sparred back and forth for a good few minutes, me still going fairly easy on Danny, but the new recruit was far from being a pushover. Then, trying to bring the weapon down too hard on my shoulder, he made a slight mistake. I sidestepped and struck the end of the bo against his cheek. Not hard, but firm enough to make a point. He sucked in air through his teeth.

  The creatures that lived in my head laughed at his pain. Enjoyed it. “Don’t try too hard to win. A fight takes as long as it takes,” I explained.

  Danny rubbed at his sore cheek and nodded. “I hear you.”

  We carried on sparring, and I started to push him harder. He can handle it.

  I stared to move faster and attack with more force. Inside, the voice willed me to hurt him
. To break him. I tried to ignore it, but it was becoming harder to tune out. My tattoo began to itch. The whispers grew into a torrent of noise that filled my brain until I couldn’t hear myself think.

  Clack.

  Clack!

  Clack!!

  Danny fought back with equal ferocity. His attacks became full-powered swings that would have taken a regular human’s head clean off their shoulders. I blocked them with ease, deflecting them with my own staff or knocking them aside with my palms. I glanced up at Gabriella. She was frowning, dark eyebrows covering most of her blue eyes.

  Then Danny made a serious mistake.

  He helicoptered the staff around horizontally and attacked at the very second I went to do the same. The end of his bo staff caught my throat, and it closed up like a fist. I dropped the staff and clutched at my neck, trying to suck air through a pinhole.

  From my doubled-over position, I saw Danny’s own bo staff clatter to the ground. Gabriella’s legs appeared nearby. Yellow spots blotted them out of my vision. Ella and Danny were speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear their voices through the flood of furious whispers that consumed my mind. The loudest one – the one in charge – screamed in a voice that was all knives.

  KILL HIM.

  Rage seeped into every part of my body, somehow collecting at my tattooed arm. It thrummed like it had its own energised heartbeat. I stood up and marched towards Danny.

  He tried to apologise, but I didn’t let him finish. I hoisted him up by his throat and started to squeeze. His eyes bulged like a fly’s, and his face turned an ugly shade of red. Gabriella tried to prise my hand away, but her hands were like a child’s fingers. Ineffectual and pathetic. I swatted my hand out and she flew away from me.

  Fly little insect. Fly.

  She smashed through the arena fence and landed in a storm of grass and dirt. I could hear her groaning in pain. It made me happy.