The Veil: Corruption (HASEA CHRONICLES BOOK 2)

by Stuart Meczes

  Forty-eight people. Twenty-one I don’t recognise are attacking twenty-seven I do. Twenty-one targets. A mixture of enemies and friends, framed in red light, yelling as they stabbed, shot, and sliced their way through each other.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” everyone said at once.

  We all dived into the fray. A Hivemind pounced down the stairs towards me, but I turned and kicked hard and volleyed the squealing creature into one of the large columns near the stairs.

  “Diamond arrow, there!” I shouted to Holly, and she unloaded an arrow into the chest of an advancing male Pixie. She wrenched it back out and threw it back into her quiver.

  “Danny, wood to your three!” The recruit clicked and whirled his bo staff to the right, slicing open the chest of a Hivemind tearing at a Guardian nearby.

  “Alex, Skinshifter!” I shouted, pointing ahead. He charged forward, bringing it to the ground in seconds. A Bloodseeker with gaunt features and a bald head pulled a dagger out of the chest of a Bloodling Guardian and pointed a sinewy finger in our direction. “Dark Vessel!” he screeched. Several of the SOS stopped fighting momentarily and stared in our direction.

  Okay, problem.

  Most of the attention was now on us. We had to plough our way through an advancing group, who barely seemed to register the blows reigning down on them from the other Guardians. I grit my teeth as I punched, kicked, and hacked a path through the fray, heading for the Nexus elevator, which seemed miles away.

  “Gabriella, above!” someone shouted.

  I raised my head to see a Skinshifter pounce at me from the balcony. There was barely any time to react before the colossal beast was flying at me.

  CRACK!!

  Troy belted the Skinshifter with the war hammer. The creature yelped as it spiralled through the air. With a sickening thud, it landed on its back and slid along the marble floor. It tried to get up, but Danny rushed over to it and bought an end to things with a sharp stab of the bo staff. Immediately he was crowded by an angry Bloodseeker and its trio of scrawny Hiveminds. He twirled his staff around, deflecting blows and moving with expert precision. Each attack was sidestepped and countered with a sweep of the wooden-bladed end, causing small fires to appear on their wounds.

  Alex trained him well.

  But Danny was gaining the attention of others. We need to help him. As if hearing my thoughts, a series of arrows flew past me, taking out the three Hiveminds that had cornered Danny. He glanced over at Hollie, and the two exchanged a smile.

  A second later, Alex sprinted in and drew his sword diagonally down across the Bloodseeker’s back. It howled and ran away in my direction. I sprang up with the Blood Brothers, connecting under his chin. I watched as his face slowly dissolved into ash around the blades and his body thumped to the floor, sending up plumes of pale dust.

  A dagger slashed at my arm, and I felt the agonising sting as the skin separated. Blood poured down my arm. The Imp carrying the dagger met a swift end at the hands of Alex. He gestured towards me, but I shook my head. No time.

  “Come on!” I shouted behind me to Aran. She hoisted Grey up and dragged him through the path we’d cut through the battle. The other Guardians kept the SOS away from us, blocking their attacks and driving them backwards. We moved towards the elevator, dodging bullet shots and wild attacks from the diminishing SOS forces.

  In front of the metal doors, I saw Larik. He had an Imp’s head trapped between his arm and his side. He jerked upwards, snapping its neck. But as soon as he pushed the Imp’s body away, a Succubus caught him by surprise, slashing at his face with razor claws. Acting on pure instinct, I threw one of the Blood Brothers towards the Umbra. It spiralled through the fighters and buried itself into the skull of the Succubus. She inspected it with her fingers for a second and then folded into a heap.

  “Thanks, Gabriella,” Larik said as I retrieved my blade.

  I signalled the others to advance. “No problem. Help us defend the elevator whilst we get Grey into the Nexus. He’s wounded.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  We called the elevator and took out a few more SOS who tried to make a move. When the doors rolled open, I ushered Grey and Aran in, promising that we would come and check on him when things were safe. Aran nodded as the elevator doors slid closed.

  “Time for some clean-up.”

  Less than five minutes later, it was over. We had mown through all of the SOS, and now there were only genuine Guardians remaining. The hall – like most of the base – was a mess, full of bullet holes, bloodstains, bodies, and broken statues.

  As soon as the last body had hit the floor, I moved over to the elevator and hit the button.

  “I’m going to take this lot to help get the wounded to the Recover Centre,” said Larik.

  I nodded. “We did what we could for them. We’re heading for the Interrogation Cluster. It could be the reason they’re here today.”

  Larik nodded. “Okay, I’ll send support straight after.”

  “Thanks.”

  We jumped into the car that appeared a few seconds later. As the elevator hurtled towards its destination, everyone except the recruits reloaded their guns and cleaned their blades. The recruits just stood very still, looking queasy. Alex encircled my bloodied wound with his hand, and I felt it stitch back together.

  The doors opened into the drab interrogation area. We stepped into an asterisk-shaped hub leading to six separate interrogation rooms and one temporary holding cell. The interrogation rooms were austere. One two-way mirror. Two reinforced chairs. One reinforced table. One set of thick adamantine restraints.

  It was what the interrogators bought into the rooms with them that mattered.

  I’d only ever stood in on one interrogation with Vidar before, and it was not an experience I’d been keen to repeat.

  The place was eerily quiet. I paced towards room six, where the first prisoner from the Indigo attack had been taken for question prepping. The door had been kicked open. Fractured wood lay scattered all over the place.

  They’ve gone, I know it.

  But I was wrong.

  I peered through the glass, and my stomach churned. The ‘kit’ used to extract information was open, and it had been used in the worst possible way. One of Vidar’s interrogators was face down on the desk with a myriad of injection needles poking out of the back of his head and neck. A long trail of white foam had leaked from his mouth onto the side of the table and was dripping onto the floor in slow taps.

  The prisoner was barely recognisable. Still chained to the chair, most of his blood was splashed on the walls and ceilings. A sign hung around his neck. I leaned in close, reading the words.

  We’ll never talk.

  It took a few seconds for me to realise that Alex was talking to me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I’ve just checked the holding cell. It’s a bloodbath.”

  I pressed a hand against the window and let out a long breath that I didn’t realise I’d been holding. The SOS had taken no chances. They didn’t want any secrets being revealed.

  Every single prisoner had been murdered by their own.

  21

  Alex

  The light in Sage Faru’s office was too bright. My eyes struggled to deal with the iridescent glare radiating from every angle. I could feel the creatures inside me scrambling to hide in the dark recesses of my mind. It’s too bright. I feel sick.

  A sharp pinch to my side.

  I snapped to attention. Gabriella’s hand fell back to her lap.

  “Huh?”

  “Sage Etorre was speaking to you.”

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said how are you feeling, Alexander? You appear tired,” said Sage Etorre.

  I rubbed the heels of my hands across my eyes. “I am, sir.”

  Sage Etorre nodded. “I can imagine after what you have both been through. But I wanted to thank you for your quick actions today.
You and your team saved eight Guardians we would otherwise have lost.” He turned to me. “Not to mention your raising of the alarm, without which, the death toll would be unimaginable.”

  “How many did we lose?”

  The Sage looked downcast. “Including new recruits, twenty five.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to forget the faces of all the dead and the wounded scattered throughout the base, screaming in pain and fear.

  “That explosion was like nothing I have ever seen. It was so powerful,” said Gabriella.

  The Sage pulled a small shard of pale rock from his uniform pocket. One side of it was flecked with scorch marks. “Whiteore,” he said. “A devastatingly combustible mineral from Pandemonia. We recovered this from the wreckage of the Prolesium. This alone is enough to take out this office and all of us with it. The bomb they made had far higher quantities attached to a timer. Anyone within a fifty-foot radius never stood a chance.” He set the rock down on the table with a dull clacking sound. “If the SOS have access to these types of materials, then they are still a far greater threat than we gave them credit for.”

  Gabriella and I glanced at each other.

  Sage Etorre gave a solemn nod. “These are truly dark times.” He inhaled a sharp breath and stood up. “As I am sure you can appreciate, I am only filling in for Sage Faru for a short while, and we were not excepting something like this to happen. Nevertheless, as acting leader for the Warren, I must follow my duty of investigating this cowardly attack, organising the memorial for the fallen, and keeping the other Sages informed.”

  He gestured down the hallway behind us. “Not to mention organising the repair of the destruction.” Just beyond the corridor, several Alliance workmen balanced on stepladders were attempting to scrub the bloody graffiti from the giant portrait. “Although I would love to talk more with you both, I must be brief. So how may I help?”

  Sage Faru still hadn’t returned from wherever he had gone. Sage Etorre was still acting as leader in his absence and had taken the reins at the very start of chaos. It had taken the whole afternoon and most of the evening with all hands on deck to get the Warren back into some kind of order. The fallen Rogues had been dealt with, but the Warren was a different place after the attack. Security had been tripled. Everywhere you looked there was a Guardian armed to the teeth, or a gun turret sweeping from side to side. The place was in lockdown mode.

  I’d wondered how I was going to explain the semi-dissolved corpse in my room, but by the time the clean-up team got in, it had dissolved into what looked just like vampire ash, so no questions were asked, much to my relief.

  Nearly everybody believed that the bomb attack was the reason the SOS had been at the Warren and that all the destruction, vandalism, and murder had been intended to confuse and distract from the attack on the Prolesium. Only a handful of us knew the truth. They had come to take me.

  Gabriella nudged me. “Tell him what you found out.”

  I cleared my throat. “I believe I was the main reason the Soldiers of Sorrow came here.”

  Etorre raised his eyebrows. “To kill you again?”

  “No. They tried to kidnap me. To take me to meet someone called Yeth.”

  My heart stalled when I saw the horrified expression on Sage Etorre’s face. “You’re certain they said Yeth?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Caro Dio. If Yeth is here on Earth, then things are far worse than I could have imagined.”

  Gabriella and I exchanged a look. “Who is Yeth?” I asked.

  Sage Etorre perched himself against the edge of the desk, pulling his cape away from his knee.

  “Yeth is a Skinshifter. The few records that exist on him are unreliable at best. What we do know for certain is that he’s one of the oldest of his kind and as powerful as he is intelligent. The more reliable rumours are that he’s vastly bigger than even the biggest Skinshifters and completely invulnerable to silver. The more questionable rumours are that he swallows his opponents whole and can imprint on any creature he desires with very few side effects. We know that he was one of the respected leaders of his species long ago, but that he defected and joined the Umbra cause. Yeth became one of the three Highguards, who protect and enforce Hades agendas. The Sorrow was the unofficial fourth. Although that monstrosity was really more of a right arm to Hades than anything else.”

  “So why are we only hearing about him now? He’s not in any of the handbooks,” Gabriella pointed out.

  “Because he’s not been heard of for decades. None of the Highguards have. One of them was killed in a battle years ago, and we assumed the other two had met a similar fate.” He smoothed a hand through his black hair. “After all, Yeth isn’t immortal, as we believed The Sorrow to be, just incredibly powerful.”

  The Sage clasped his hands together. “If he is on this side of the Veil, then he has been hiding here for a long time. His resurfacing for whatever reason would certainly explain the sudden increase in Rogue activity. But random attacks aren’t really his style. He is organised, and his followers are deadly. It doesn’t really make sense.

  “Plus by making his presence known just to meet you, he is risking his cover. He wouldn’t do all this without very good reason. Therefore, the order must have come directly from Hades. Of that I’m certain. But my question is if Hades still wants you dead, why not do it during the attack? By my understandings you were alone. They could have overrun you easily. So why take you to Yeth alive and potentially reveal his location?”

  Because they think I am some sort of Dark Vessel. That I am important to their twisted cause.

  I glanced at Gabriella. She gave nothing away, but I knew what she was thinking.

  “I don’t know, Sage Etorre.”

  He continued to survey my face, as if searching for hidden clues.

  “We will know more once Vidar has interrogated those captured today,” added Gabriella, taking the pressure off.

  Not including those who escaped, one hundred and thirty two Soldiers of Sorrow had gone up against one thousand and twenty six Guardians. It had been a suicide mission. All had fought to die, and they had tried to kill themselves when they’d been defeated. But we’d still managed to keep three alive. And now they were under twenty-four hour suicide watch. That was one thing the SOS hadn’t counted on. We’d lost five potential leads in the battle, but we gained three new ones.

  Gabriella glanced at me. “I was hoping to sit in on the interrogations.”

  Sage Etorre folded his arms. “It would probably be better to let Vidar and his interrogators carry out their work privately.”

  “Per favour, Caesar. These Rogues attacked my home and killed my friends. They tried to take Alex. They have a lot to answer for, and I want to help get those answers.”

  Sage Etorre looked conflicted. “I don’t know…”

  “I won’t get involved, just suggest question lines.”

  The Sage looked set to argue and then sighed. “You always knew how to twist me around your finger, Gabriella. Very well, but as long as you do remember that you are a Huntmaster, not an interrogator. There is to be absolutely no direct involvement as you are too emotionally involved. Am I clear?”

  Gabriella nodded. “Absolutely, sir.”

  “Very well. Then we shall wait to see what comes to light from the interrogations and plan our route forward from there.” The Sage glanced up suddenly. I turned to see Larik stood on the threshold of the office, waiting to be noticed. “Huntmaster Larik, how may I help?”

  “Sorry to interrupt, Sage Etorre, but the representatives from the bases with fallen Guardians are waiting in the Feasting Hall to speak with you about transportation of the deceased.”

  There was to be a one-hour vigil of silence in honour of the fallen Guardians the next morning, followed by the burial of those based at the Warren. In an act of defiance against the SOS, the rebuilding of the Prolesium was set to take place after the funeral service. But that would take months. The joining ceremony – which
had been moved to the following evening – would be the last for some time.

  “Thank you, Larik, please tell them I will be with them momentarily.”

  “Of course sir,” said the Vampire, and he disappeared as fast as a click of fingers.

  Sage Etorre sighed. “As you can see, I must press on. Gabriella, you are to witness the interrogations, which are set to begin in two hours. Please keep me apprised of any findings.” He turned to me. “What will you do now?”

  I placed a hand over my Biomote in my trouser pocket. A call had come through an hour before that had stopped me in my tracks.

  “I’ve had a message from Scarlett. Doctor Hudson says that my brother has woken up. He wants me to go and see him. I don’t know if you heard about him.”

  Sage Etorre’s expression became one of sadness. “I did hear about your brother. I am truly sorry. Of course, go and be with Michael.”

  He placed a hand on my shoulder as we all stood. “We will find out who organised these attacks, Alexander, I promise you. And we will make them pay for what they have done.” I could tell from the fierce expression on his face that a more sincere word had never been spoken.

  *

  Gabriella had offered to come with me to see Mikey as soon as I’d received the call, but she’d already been through more than enough. Plus I wanted her to find out where the son of a bitch who had organised the attack on my brother was hiding. So when she’d offered again, I’d assured her that I would be fine without her.

  When I felt the nausea building as Scarlett and I followed Doctor Hudson into the Recovery Ward, I wasn’t so sure.

  The room itself was something stolen from a science fiction film set. Huge black walls, strip lighting, and dozens upon dozens of glass cubes, some holding vampires, who stared with silver-stringed eyes.