The Veil (53 page)

I got drunk and then I got angry. Started trashing my dorm room hard. I mean like yankin’ books off shelves, smashing my TV, rippin’ the blinds down, throwin’ my mattress off the bed, that kind of thing. When there wasn’t much of anythin’ left to break, I started on the furniture. I threw the desk chair against the wall where it smashed into like fifty pieces – which was pretty odd considerin’ it was made from solid wood. But it was when I yanked at the wardrobe door and it tore off right into my hand like a fold of cardboard, that I started to get weirded out. I snapped it in half without a second thought…this door that was made from solid wood two inches thick. It was then that I remembered the words of that Sage, which I’d thought was all a part of my imagination.

‘Call us when you experience things you can’t explain.’

My strength was somethin’ I sure as hell couldn’t explain. Nor could I explain why it seemed like I’d been given a new body overnight…or the way that I’d managed to get a bottle of Advil to float into my hands when I’d reached for them, and controlled the angle of a baseball just by thinkin’ about it. It might have been to test myself, or maybe to prove to myself that I wasn’t actually going bananas, but either way, I reached out my hand again right there in the middle of the room and willed all the pills from the spilled bottle to come to me. The pills didn’t move an inch, but the bottle went zipping right into my hand again, followed by a Russian-to-English phrasebook and DVD player – which smacked into me so hard it knocked me right off my drunken feet and into my open wardrobe.

I started freakin’ out again, crying hysterically as I scrambled out of the mess of hangers n’ clothes and stood back up. Still trembling and sobbin’ like a little girl, I held out my hand again, petrified of what would happen. Long story short, by the time I called the number that Sage Navarro had given me, I had a broken lamp, a smashed TV, two glasses, a poster, and an American History textbook flying around the room.

The Guardian – Tara – came again, and when I finally let her in the room she assured me that I wasn’t losing my grip on reality. That just as the Sage had tried to explain, I was a Chosen and that meant I had abilities no normal human could explain. I returned to Blackwall, and this time when the Sage spoke, I was all ears.

*

I didn’t see Kieran Delagio again for another three years.

I’m not really sure why I didn’t call him. I told myself it was because my new world was dangerous and that it would be safer if I kept him at arms length. But if I’m being honest, I think its because I was still ashamed of the way I’d acted durin’ college, as well as jealous of his success with the Longhorns – which I never stopped followin’. It just reminded me of all the ways that I’d let him and myself down.  

I joined the Alliance almost straight away, and found my second callin’ in life. Discoverin’ that there was this whole other world out there, full of all these dangerous species, and that it was up to Guardians like me to keep them in check…it gave me something to be proud of again.

Not to mention, I felt like an absolute badass.

I was real good at telekinesis. In fact I was one of the best the Alliance had. It made me happy to naturally excel at somethin’ again, and I worked hard practicing the skill day and night, just like I had with baseball, ‘til I’d honed it to a level that hadn’t been seen before.

I started my career with the HASEA as a recruit Guardian for a unit called Gladiator. They were a second response team, used as backup for the primary Hunter squads in big missions. But it wasn’t long before my hard work and dedication to the Alliance was noticed by Sage Navarro. Within two years I’d worked my way up to a primary squad, and in my third year the Sage made me second in command for a stealth Hunter unit called Silence. It was our task to take on the jobs that required a bit more finesse, the ones that would have us in and out without anyone ever knowing that we’d been there.

Guns were out of the question…too loud for the sensitive ears of Pandemonians – even with silencers – so beyond learning close combat to a ridiculously high level, we all had to learn how to use our skills to be most effective in covert operations. For me that meant learnin’ how to become deadly at range with telekinesis. At first I thought about using a baseball to honour my old passion, but that would have been too big and clumsy, so that’s when I came up with the idea of the apotrope marbles. Yep that super popular weapon among us Kinesists was the brainchild of yours truly. How’s that for glory.

I loved being a Guardian. Just when everythin’ I cared about had been taken away from me, these strangers had come along and given me a renewed sense of purpose. I was part of this amazin’ oddball family – some of them previously wealthy and successful, others lost souls, dropouts, rejects and outcasts, and some just completely average in every way…the wallflowers no one noticed. This massive group of complete misfits, who in another life wouldn’t have had more than one word to say to each other, but had become brothers and sisters through a universal callin’ to a higher purpose. It was awe inspirin’.

My slide back into addiction was slow.

It started with women. I’d never made any secret of the fact that I loved the company of the fairer sex, and I used my new skills and improved intellect to win them over at bars and clubs. Pretty sleazy I know, but I never confessed to be an angel.  I’d never had much trouble gettin’ them before, but it became so easy that I grew frustrated. I think if I’m being honest, I just wanted to meet someone who was part of the same world as me, who could relate. Someone I could actually love.

Someone like Rachel I guess.

Anyway, I was lookin’ in all the wrong places – findin’ a perfect match rarely happens in a bar or a club. I should have looked within the Alliance itself, but we were told that relationships between Guardians were frowned upon and I didn’t want to jeopardize my callin’ like I had with my baseball. 

So I kept hookin’ up with all these girls and feelin’ worse and worse about myself each time. Thinkin’ back, I guess it also didn’t feel the same without Del at my side. We’d always chatted to gals together…we’d been a team, and although I’d found this new group of people I really cared about, there was a void in my life that I knew only my closest friend could fill. I remember the exact point I popped a drink – I’d been teetotal from the moment I’d trashed my dorm room. It was during a joinin’ ceremony about six months after I’d become part of Silence. As usual I’d asked for water in favour of champagne. No one ever questioned why I didn’t drink – there could have been a variety of reasons – the most obvious being that I was part of an important execution and exfiltration unit, which required a serious level of focus.  

But as I looked around at all these smiling, happy Guardians in the Feasting Hall of Blackwall, the void inside me grew so big that I needed to numb the depression. I asked for a glass of champagne, which turned into four, which ended up as three bottles and me passed out on my bed. You know as well as I do that because of the enhanced senses of a Chosen, we’re
more
susceptible to intoxication than most humans, a lesson I learned the hard way. 

The drugs came soon afterwards. There was never any danger of being caught in an official capacity. In the early naughties the Alliance didn’t – and still don’t – drugs test. I knew that I was not only riskin’ my position in the HASEA, but also the lives of the other members of Silence with my habits, so I always managed to keep it to a controllable level. I kept my addictions a secret – going off-base to meet party girls, drink and do drugs with them – n’ then slip back in before anyone noticed I’d gone off the reservation…in more ways than one. Chosen get drunk quickly, but we also recover fast – especially if we need to. I was always up n’ relatively level-headed by the time a mission rolled around. So no one noticed that I was an alcoholic, drug and sex addict…’n because no one noticed, I kept doing it.

Everything changed in my fourth year as a Guardian.

It was 2006. I’d been promoted to Huntmaster of Silence after Jason Baker, the Guardian who’d originally bought me into the fold died from Heptacemia after he got bitten clearing a Bloodling nest. It was no ones’ fault – unless you count the bastard who bit him and we gave instant justice to, of course – just one of those terrible things that happens from time to time. But Jason was my friend and leader, and I took his death hard. I started drinkin’ and doing more drugs than I had before, and it wasn’t long before I became cloudy during missions. Nothing too obvious, just my reactions weren’t quite as fast, and I’d miss the target sometimes when taking shots with my marbles.

Anyway, this was around the time that new Awakenings had taken a nosedive, so any premonitions that the local Coven received were taken very seriously. When news arrived of an imminent Awakening, the Sage tasked me with the infiltration. I was shocked when I was told that the person I was infiltrating was a catcher for the Longhorns. I was completely floored when I was handed a file with the target’s name and picture inside. When I opened it, I saw a man with thinning blonde hair covered by his father’s old Stetson hat and blue eyes that always seemed to be half closed as if he was about to fall asleep. 

It was Kieran Delagio.

I couldn’t believe it. The odds of a new Awakening even being in Austin were slim, considering the rate at which they were slowin’ down; the odds that out of the eight-hundred-thousand that were livin’ there that it would be my old friend were massive. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. After all those years of lost contact, Delagio was about to become part of my new world. It was strange – in one way I was so happy to know that I could finally speak and see him again, but in another way I was sad – Delagio was making a name for him in baseball, and that would all be over for him in a flash, just as it had been over for me.

Still, there was no way that we could leave Delagio to his own thing; it was and still is a rule that all new Awakenings have to be approached. Besides, the longer he was on his own without contact, the more vulnerable he was to an attack. The Soldiers of Sorrow were thrivin’ at this point, and Delagio was livin’ way too close to a Veil section to go unnoticed. He wouldn’t have lasted a week if we’d left him unprotected.

So one evenin’ I went to his house when I knew he was alone. He’d graduated college and was livin’ with a couple guys from the baseball team in a shared apartment. When he opened the door to me, his face was so shocked. But Del man, he was never one to hold grudges, and within’ five minutes I was sittin’ on his couch and we was catchin’ up. He told me how he’d tried to find me but it was like I’d vanished off the face of the earth, that even my folks’d had no clue where I was. Of course they’d been charmed into automatically forgettin’ my whereabouts whenever they were asked.

I was sad to hear that not long after I’d joined the Alliance, Del’s ma had left his pa for some ex-bodybuilder with a couple of dollars behind him, and that it’d driven Delagio senior to finish himself off with the bottle. He told me how he’d sunk into a bit of a depression after losing both my friendship and his pa so close together. I felt awful that I hadn’t been there for him when he’d needed me the most, that as usual I’d been so wrapped up with my own life, that I hadn’t even bothered to check up on him beyond his baseball stats. His ma had taken the house from the dissolvin’ of his pa’ assets, and all he had been left with was a couple thousand dollars and his pa’s old Stetson.

We carried on catchin’ up for a while and then it was time for me to bite the bullet and tell him the full reason that I’d come knockin’ on his door after four years. I backed up my words by pulling all the signed baseballs he had on his mantle off with my mind, spinning them around us and then setting them back one by one in their stands. I remember that he just stared at me opened mouthed, and then his face broke into this massive, excited smile. He asked me to take him to Blackwall. Good old Del was always just so acceptin.’

I wish I’d been more like that.

That void in my life vanished the day that Delagio joined the Alliance. We fell back into our friendship like there hadn’t been a four-year gap. Like me, Del’s gift was telekinesis. I became his personal mentor, pushing him hard and trainin’ him. Not just with his gift, but all aspects of being a Guardian. I wanted him to become one of the best, so that when it was time for him to officially join, he would nail the Trials of the Chosen at the international Prolesium event, and choose to be placed in Silence under me.

He came seventh.

As difficult as it is for me to say, the hard truth is that Delagio was an average Guardian at best. He always tried his hardest, but he just didn’t have the skill to be in a team like Silence. I should never have requested him to join…as always it was a completely selfish action. All I could think about was us being a team again, like we’d always been.

The other problem was that although everythin’ was back the way it should have been, I still couldn’t shake my addictions. That monkey was well and truly on my back. So I kept goin’ out to drink, doing drugs and sleeping with chicks. The first time, I invited Del with me. I tried to hide the drugs, but he caught me huffing some coke in the bathroom. I could see the disappointment in his eyes when he realised I hadn’t really turned a corner at all, that all I’d done is moved my habits to a new location. He went home early and I carried on partying. The next day was the first time that Delagio actually got angry with me, he pounded on my door and practically knocked me to the ground when I opened it. I’d never seen him so furious. He was shouting about how I was puttin’ the lives of all those under me at risk, and that I couldn’t be messin’ around with that pointless shit anymore, when we had such an important job to do. He shouted about how it was only a matter of time before somethin’ went wrong and I was thrown out of the Alliance. He held my shame up for me to see, and it was ugly. I promised that I would get a handle on my situation and get back on the wagon.