The Veil: Corruption (HASEA CHRONICLES BOOK 2)

by Stuart Meczes

  I watched with curious detachment as the tattoo slipped below my t-shirt sleeve and slid along my arm like pouring ink. It stained my skin black, a shadowy tidal wave that moved with incredible force and speed towards my fingers. When it had reached the tips, it didn’t stop, spreading onto Danny’s skin and seeping into the veins on his face, staining them black. His lips turned the same dark shade. Even his eyeballs became ringed with dark veins like spindly branches from a decaying tree, creeping inwards.

  The voices hissed with maniacal happiness and the voice chanted, urging me to end the boy’s life. I could feel his heartbeat through my fingers. His poor heart thrummed like a hummingbird, trying its best to keep him alive. But it started to slow. Slower and slower, as he circled the edge of death.

  KILL HIM!

  I squeezed tighter and felt his throat start to collapse under my fingers. The black ink had invaded nearly every part of his face and was rolling through his veins and arteries, appearing in his arms. Wrinkles began to appear in his face, as if he were aging prematurely. I clamped my teeth together, barely able to contain my excitement as I felt him slip away.

  White light streaked across my vision, and I could taste pain. A warm, wet feeling spread across the back of my head. The boy slipped from my fingers and crumpled into the dirt. He was fitting, white saliva spilling from his open mouth as he jerked.

  I fell to my knees and saw in strange fractured images a metal club being thrown down by my soulmate. Then a snapshot of her crouching down to check on Danny, wedging the handle of a blade in his mouth to stop him biting off his own tongue. Then kneeling in front of me, wearing a look of utter shock. She alternated between concern and anger, demanding to know what had happened.

  The whispers faded, carrying the voice with them. Things started to swim back into focus and the white-hot pain of the tattoo retracting back up my arm filled me up.

  I could see then the absolute horror of my actions. Danny was still seizing, the white foam of his spittle covering both of his cheeks and pouring onto his top. His eyes had turned back to normal and his wrinkles had disappeared as the blackness drained from his features. But still he looked in a bad way. Gabriella had a large gash on her face where a piece of the broken fence must have cut her. I stared down at my hands, unable to comprehend what I had done.

  What is happening to me?

  I staggered over to Gabriella and Danny. She had pulled him onto her lap and was doing her best to calm him down, assuring him over and over that he wasn’t dying. As soon as I reached them, Gabriella recoiled away from me and held up a hand. “Stay back!”

  “I-I’m okay now. Gabriella, Danny, I-I’m so sorry.”

  “Just get the hell away from us, Alex! You’re not acting like yourself. Something’s wrong with you. You almost killed him!”

  “I…I know. Please believe me, I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what happened…” I trailed off. My pathetic apologies sounded hollow compared to the horror of what I had done.

  Gabriella helped Danny to his feet, draping one of his arms around her shoulder. I tried to help, but she pushed a firm hand against my chest.

  She glared at me. “No, Alex. Go back to your apartment and do not leave. I’m going to take Danny to the Recovery Centre. I’ll come there afterwards.

  “But Ella—”

  “Don’t you dare argue with me about this, Alex. I don’t want to be around you right now. I need to figure out what the hell is up with you.” She turned to Danny. “Do you think you’ll be able to walk okay?”

  He nodded and together they walked off towards the base, leaving me standing alone with my shame.

  *

  The guilt of my actions gnawed away at my insides like a feral animal the entire drive home. The atmosphere had been so tense that I couldn’t face staying at the Warren, even though it meant disobeying Gabriella. I just couldn’t get my head around what I’d done. She meant everything to me – hurting her was as alien as breathing water. And what I had done to Danny was simply unforgivable. I hadn’t been able to control myself. If Gabriella hadn’t stopped me when she did, I would have killed him, no question. And the worst part of all, the thing that scared me the most, was that some part of me had liked it.

  Something is very wrong with me.

  Then there was the tattoo. It had somehow come out of me when I attacked Danny. Is this the darkness I feared, the one Midnight talked about before he died? Is this how he felt? It was like the tattoo was somehow tapping into all my repressed feelings of anger and despair and intensifying them. Using them. It was changing my personality, and I knew, if I let it continue, that it would destroy every relationship I had until I was alone. It bred on my hates and fears and wanted everyone around me to suffer.

  Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of me.

  I settled the Audi onto the driveway and climbed out. I didn’t have to park it down the road anymore after I’d ‘accidently’ let it slip that Gabriella came from a very wealthy family and that she’d let me borrow a car. It wasn’t met with much approval – John gave me a stern lecture about keeping my feet on the ground.

  Mum and John still didn’t know that I was a Chosen, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as possible. Although, if what Faru had told me that day in the Sanctuary was true, it might only be a matter of time before Mum broke through the charm placed on her and remembered everything.

  I slammed the front door shut and shuffled into the house. The muted drone of the television floated through from the lounge. I pushed the door open and saw Mikey and Scarlett draped across the sofa. My brother was half asleep. His Vampire girlfriend had one arm wrapped around him, the other absently stroking his hair as she watched a news broadcast. They both looked up as I stepped into the room.

  “Hey bro,” Mikey said in a croaky voice as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. “How did the training go?”

  I sank into the nearby chair. When I spoke, I tried to sound nonchalant. “It went okay, actually. He’s a good fighter. Won’t be long until he gets the hang of it. He’ll do well in the Trials, I’m sure.”

  That’s if I don’t kill him first, I thought with a flash of shame.

  Scarlett studied my face and frowned. “And you, are you okay?”

  Does she know? Did Gabriella speak to her?

  I gave a non-committal shrug. “Okay, I guess.”

  The Bloodling shifted in her seat, sitting up, but she didn’t say anything more on the subject. No, she doesn’t know…yet.

  “You look tired. Seriously, I can come in if you need some help with things,” she offered.

  I shook my head. “It’s fine, Scarlett. Like Gabriella said, we’ve got it handled. There’s no need to drag you off relief. Besides, you’re back in on Monday anyway.”

  The vampire gave a sigh. “Okay.”

  Mikey dug under his body and retrieved the television remote. He aimed it at the screen and pressed the mute button. The news reporter – an aloof-looking woman with badly Botoxed lips – was silenced.

  “Tim called me a few hours ago, by the way. Said he couldn’t get through on your phone.”

  “Training,” I repeated.

  Mikey nodded. “Anyway, he asked me to remind you about putting in a good word for him at the base.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, not the agent thing again. He’s full time with it.”

  “Why don’t you just do what he wants, then?”

  “Because he is a maths and science genius. He should be designing spaceships, not risking his neck in a job that is overworked and underpaid.”

  Mikey shrugged. “I’d say that’s his choice, bro, not yours.”

  I thought about it. Mikey was right. If Tim wanted to try to secure a position as an agent, then it was up to him. He was certainly intelligent enough to be of good use. The problem was more that I was trying to keep that side of my life as separate as I could out of concern for everyone’s safety. But the lines that kept them apart were blurring.

  I said n
othing and let the conversation peter out into silence. Glancing at the wall clock above the side table, I noticed it was almost eight. “Where are Mum and John?” I asked.

  “Mum’s at Tennis Club, and John’s gone to the Horse and Hound with a few workmates. Oh yeah, Mum said there’s some lasagne in the oven if you want it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, standing back up. “I’m going to get an early night I think. Catch you guys later.”

  “Alex, are you sure everything is okay?” Scarlett asked as I was leaving.

  So far from okay it’s a joke. I produced the best smile I could. “Yeah, I’m good. Just exhausted, that’s all.”

  Scarlett nodded, and Mikey unmuted the television.

  In the kitchen, I slipped on a pair of red oven gloves from their hook on the wall. They had a picture of the British crown in white on one side and the words keep calm and carry on cooking on the other. After removing a small helping of the overcooked lasagne from the oven, I then proceeded to push it around my plate with a fork for the next ten minutes. Sliding the food away from me, I lowered my head into my hands and stared at the tabletop.

  The whispers started.

  They rushed across my mind like a vocal tidal wave – incessant chatter surging in from every direction. I clamped my hands to my ears, trying to squeeze the noise out of my brain. Slowly they began to fade, but I knew what was going to happen next. The whispers were only a precursor. Oh god, please not again!

  A sharp ripping sensation in my collarbone made me gasp in pain. I stared down to see a shoot of the dark tattoo slipping across the length of the bone, stretching up towards my neck. I stood up, knocking the chair over. Running upstairs, I crashed into my room and ripped off my t-shirt. Staring into the mirror, I watched as the entire tattoo shifted. The uppermost tendrils slipped from my shoulder and slithered onto my chest. Another settled a few inches below my ear.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Practically my entire right arm was covered in the supernatural ink. It had filled most of the right part of my chest and was spreading to the left. I turned slightly and saw that a few tendrils were creeping onto my back. My heart thudded against my ribcage. If it keeps going at this rate, I’ll be covered by the end of the month. Then what’ll happen to me?

  The pain subsided, but it left me feeling agitated and unsure of what to do with myself. I closed the door and lay down on my bed. Staring up at the ceiling, I let my mind wander. I kept replaying what I’d done to Gabriella and Danny over and over in my head, like a nightmare film reel stuck on loop. I contemplated calling her, but pushed the idea away. She would be furious at me for leaving; it was better to let things settle.

  Plus I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have a clue what was going on with me or why I felt the way I did. All I knew was that I didn’t really feel like me anymore. The darkness I’d felt inside me when I’d been human had returned stronger than ever. In addition, my internal voice, the negative one that had made its duty to gloat when I was being uncool, was back. Except this time, it didn’t feel like it my internal voice. It was like something else had taken residency inside of me and was slowly taking me over.

  As I lay there, fretting over everything, my eyes grew heavy, and I felt myself drifting off to sleep.

  *

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. A cloying scent that seized my nostrils and poured down my throat like liquid fire. My eyes flicked open. A dense cloud of thick smoke surrounded me, an impenetrable grey wall that engulfed the horizon in all directions.

  I was lying in a foetal position on a bed of hard rock. Uncoiling, I squinted against the sting of the smoke that stabbed at my eyes and stared down at myself. I was in my HASEA uniform. It was covered in dirt and blood and ripped to ribbons, hanging off me like rags. My hands were bleeding. One of my thumbs was broken – it stuck out at an unnatural angle, bone pushing against my palm, almost breaking the skin. I rolled into a sitting position and using all of my effort, heaved myself onto my feet. Pain rushed up my leg. My left ankle was either sprained or broken, I couldn’t tell.

  Even though there was smoke, I couldn’t hear the sound of a fire anywhere. Everything was completely silent. In fact, it was more than silent – it was a complete absence of sound. As if anything capable of producing a noise had long since died.

  “Hello?” I croaked, descending into a coughing fit as more smoke slipped into my lungs. Using my good hand, I unzipped what remained of my jacket and tore off a section of my t-shirt, using it as a makeshift mask. It didn’t do much good.

  “Hello?” I called again – shouting this time. My voice, muffled by the cloth, echoed around me, reverberating into the hidden distance.

  No one answered.

  Shifting my weight onto my working foot, I shuffled forward. As I moved, a shape appeared in the distance. A black mass, rising up from the ground. There were silhouetted shapes attached to it, long and spindly, like Medusa’s snakes.

  My heartbeat stuttered, but as I edged closer, I realised it was only a tree. Or had been one once. It had been stripped of life and now existed as a carcass – a blackened husk that stood as an echo of what it had once been. Littered around the bottom were black mounds. I had to get within a few feet of the tree before I could see what they were. And when I did, I felt my stomach lurch with nausea.

  Birds. Dozens and dozens of dead birds, lying in heaps on the ground, burned so badly that even their bones had been scorched black.

  What the hell is going on here?

  I backed away from the tree and changed direction, wanting to put as much distance between the macabre gravesite and myself as I could. I staggered forward blindly for what seemed like an eternity. My eyes were streaming from the smoke, and it was getting more and more difficult to see. As I moved, a new smell joined the smoke. It was one that I’d smelled once before, when I’d dreamed about The Sorrow and its corrupted Unicorn – the stench of death and decay. It coated my throat, spilling down into my stomach and pressing against my insides like a fist.

  Saliva filled my glands and I doubled over, retching as bile, blackened from the smoke, splashed onto the ground. I heaved until there was nothing left. Pressing on, I limped forward into the curtain of smoke. Blindly, I took tiny steps forward, grabbing outwards with my hands, trying to find something familiar. Eventually the smoke began to thin, and I could make out the sweeping black of the night sky. I moved faster, wanting to free myself from the cloying death trap.

  I broke out onto a flat patch of rock and gulped down as much pure air as I could manage. But as I did, I realised it wasn’t pure at all. I’d inhaled lungfuls of the death stench and had to swallow hard to stop from vomiting again. When I’d recovered, I stepped forward and almost fell to my death. I was hundreds of feet up, standing on the precipice of a towering cliff that overlooked the Warren.

  I cried out in horror.

  From my vantage point, I could see the wasteland that had once been Chapter Hill. Our base had been destroyed, reduced to nothing more than a pile of smouldering rubble. The grounds around it had been scorched black and heaving fires burned in every direction I turned. The absolute destruction carried on into the town. Cars had been abandoned; some were turned on their sides or had smashed into walls or each other. Buildings had crumbled. Others were encased in ice and partially melted from the heat of the surrounding fires, collapsing in on themselves.

  At the station, a train had derailed and a long streak of flames burned along the tracks behind it. The tube station was a large pile of scattered bricks and mortar. Thick rolls of smoke looped into the night sky, covering the blackness in blemishes of grey. The destruction was everywhere. It was a scene lifted straight from an apocalypse film. But the devastation wasn’t the worst bit. It wasn’t the bit that made me want to scream in fear.

  It was the bodies.

  Human bodies everywhere. My Chosen eyesight allowed me to see them all in hideous detail. There were piles, some burning, others smouldering in the afte
rmath of fires. Some were hanging out of cars, some spread-eagled in the roads and gardens. More could be seen dotted among the burning ashes that had once been Susurrate Forest. Hundreds more floated face down in the Munroe River, meandering along with the lazy current and bobbing against the banks.

  “Oh my god!” I shrank back from the terrifying scene. Covering my eyes, I tried to remove the images from my mind. This can’t be real, this can’t be real, I repeated over and over.

  You did this.

  The words were harsh and struck my mind like hammers. I flinched and turned around to see—

  Me.

  The doppelganger was sitting on a tree stump that had appeared on the cliff edge – one foot crossed over the knee, casually staring down at its fingernails as if inspecting for dirt. It was wearing my HASEA uniform, complete with a black Crimson Twin. The version of me looked up, and I saw that our similarities ended there. The dark tattoo had consumed this version of me. The tiny black tendrils had reached its face, looping along the forehead, encircling its mouth, nose, and even eyes, which were now a deep, pulsing red.

  You did this, it repeated, mouth curling into a dark grimace.

  “I— I did not do this!” I stammered.

  With a movement as quick as a bolt of lightning, the Doppelganger stood up and seized me by the throat. I choked as the tattooed hand hoisted me into the air, crushing my windpipe. It turned me around and forced me to stare out at the horrifying scene once more.

  “Please” I wheezed.

  Your choices will destroy everything and everyone you love. And when your world has been reduced to ashes, all that will remain is us.

  The doppelganger wrenched my head back around. As I stared into the terrifying eyes, which shimmered with darkness and malice, I knew it meant every word.

  And then it threw me over the cliff.

  *

  I thrashed my arms about, trying desperately to find something to hold onto. It was only when I heard a thump and saw my bedside lamp hit the floor that I understood I’d been dreaming. I was hyperventilating, and my arms and feet were tingling from too much oxygen. I buzzed like a human tuning fork.