The Darkened Veil Read online

  The Darkened Veil

  a Veilwalker novella

  KD Wren

  Byrd Books

  Contents

  About The Darkened Veil

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Preview of The Darkened Veil - Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

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  About the Author

  Copyright

  About The Darkened Veil

  The world you know is only the beginning…

  About to graduate, Skylar has no idea what do with her comparative mythology degree. But when she attends a career fair, she is drawn to a booth with a banner that reads TRIP. The strange thing is that nobody else can see it.

  Later that night, Skylar is attacked by a creature, plunging her into a reality she thought only existed in books. Our world is made up of many realms, which are all separated from each other by the Veil. Skylar was born a Veilwalker, one of a special few who can travel between realms without using portals. This is why TRIP wants her.

  But Skylar doesn’t want to be a TRIP agent. Agents face constant peril in their task of guarding the realms against dangerous creatures and the evil forces that would use them to undermine peace throughout the worlds.

  But Skylar just wants to go home and forget everything. But can she return to her old life now that she knows how small her world really is?

  Chapter 1

  This was not how I wanted to look today. The summer after junior year was the last time to get an internship before I graduated from college and I needed to be at my best. But the face that stared back at me through the mirror was ragged, to say the least. I didn’t even know that twenty-year-old’s could get bags under their eyes. That’s what I got for staying up half the night finishing my Oral Tradition mid-term essay. I needed to do well at this job fair. There aren’t a lot of career prospects for a Comparative Mythology and Folklore major, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go to grad school right away.

  I spread my tools out on the vanity and stared hard into the mirror. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube tutorials on contouring, but I can never seem to get it right. I settled for disguising the most obvious signs of exhaustion. I ran a brush through my deep brown hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. I didn’t have the patience for anything more complicated. I blinked away the sleep from my hazel eyes and stared at myself. I’d spent most of my teenage years criticizing every single part of my body. My shoulders were too broad, my nose too small for my face. But at this point, I had accepted who I was and was starting to embrace it.

  I laid out options for my outfit; respectable without being too professional. Despite my need for some kind of post-graduation employment, I wasn’t keen on the gray and blue suits that I saw many of my friends donning in their quest for internships at law firms or financial services companies. I had my limits. I finally settled on a black pencil skirt and a bright blue blouse with matching shoes. I always struggled to look calm and confident while wearing heels. For someone who was a good athlete in high school and has always had great balance, it was a bit embarrassing how wobbly I was when I put on a pair of pumps. Finally, looking about as good as I was going to get, I took the elevator down to the ground floor and out into the wet, sticky, North Carolina spring air.

  The internship fair was at the upper quad. The shade from the trees gave no reprieve from the heat. The Chapel Hill campus was about as far south as I cared to live. It was a far cry from where I grew up in coastal Maine. After almost three years I was still not used to the humidity. I walked about the grassy square, looking over the various signs and banners draped across the booths, what enthusiasm I had, began to wane. Bank of America, Duke Energy, Lowes, and Quintiles, some of the biggest companies in country that had headquarters in North Carolina, all had tables with long lines that I had no desire to join. None of the tables looked interesting. Even if it was just for a few months, I felt like this summer internship was going to set the course for the rest of my adult life. I didn’t want that life to be stuck in an office somewhere.

  After walking by nearly every table, the stack of resumes in my hand was undiminished and I could feel a blister starting to form on my left pinky toe. I had resolved to call it quits and just look for something online when I noticed a table I hadn’t seen before. It was spare; just a single banner across an otherwise empty table. The banner read: T.R.I.P., with no further explanation. A thin man sat behind the table wearing a brown suit that seemed a bit threadbare. He was older, small-framed, with wispy gray hair and large glasses that framed nearly half his face. He was staring right at me.

  There was nobody lined up, everyone walked past the table without so much as a second glance. That was enough to pique my interest. I dodged my way through the flow of people walking across and stepped up to the table. I felt a chill as I approached, like a cool breeze off the water. It was gone just as fast and the liquid heat enveloped me again. I tried to cover my momentary discombobulation with a confident smile and I handed the man my resume.

  “Welcome, young lady. I am very glad that you stopped by my table.”

  I was curious why nobody else was stopping by, but thought it would be rude to ask. He pointed to a chair and invited me to sit. The chair was too fancy to be sitting out in a field amongst the folding tables. It was solid wood, intricately carved with fantastic shapes. Animal forms merged with geometric shapes and a variety of motifs that I’d never seen together. The fabric on the seat was as faded and worn as the man’s jacket. He took my resume and spent a few moments looking it over, then set it down and regarded me over his long, delicate fingers which he had intertwined, resting on the table. I didn’t know how to begin, so I just sat there in silence, growing ever more uncomfortable under his gaze.

  “Your resume says that you took a graduate seminar in witchcraft. What spells do you know?”

  I laughed. “Umm, I guess we didn’t get to that. The class was on the history of witch persecutions and the popular representation of witches from the Medieval to contemporary settings.”

  His face betrayed no sense of humor. “Did you do any field research?”

  “You mean, like, with actual witches? I guess we talked with some modern Wiccans, but mostly it was just working with texts and images.” I was confused by this line of questioning. It was a good course, but I had no idea what it had to do with an internship at T.R.I.P. Of course, I didn’t know what T.R.I.P. was or what they did. I took advantage of the man’s silence.

  “I’m sorry, but I have never heard of your company. What is it that you do? And can you tell me a little about the internship?”

  “We are a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering cross-cultural exchange and education. As an intern, you would be involved in outreach efforts to work across boundaries and promote harmonious relationships among diverse populations.”

  I sat back, processing the bulk of nonsense that I had just heard. Everything he said sounded good, but it was so vague that it could have meant anything. He picked up my resume again and started taking some notes.

  Without looking up, he said “Ms. Dufresne, are you comfortable with travel?”

  I immediately leaned forward. The opportunity to travel for work would more than make up for the fact that the internship was probably unpaid. “Yes, yes, I love to travel.”

  “Good.” He continued to make notes on my resume. I peeked at t
he paper, trying to see what he was writing, but the characters were strange. Even upside down I could tell it was a language I wasn’t familiar with. It wasn’t Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, or any other character system I could recognize. He looked up and met my eyes before I was able to look away.

  “You haven’t asked the question you had when you first sat down.”

  “What do you mean?

  “Go ahead. Ask.”

  The directness of his command made me uncomfortable. How would he know what I wanted to ask? I wanted to look away, but his eyes held me. For a small and unassuming man, he suddenly felt very intimidating. It felt like he was drawing the question out of me.

  “I, uh, I was wondering why nobody else was coming to this table.”

  The man broke the tension by smiling and leaning back. Tension I hadn’t realized was there melted away from my shoulders.

  “Why are there no other applicants at my table? That is an easy question to answer, Skylar. You are the only one who can see it.”

  Chapter 2

  The man offered no further explanation. He just let that hang there for a moment. He must have been speaking metaphorically. He was sitting there at the table in the bright sunlight, clearly visible. I mean, the table was bare and boring, no wonder there wasn’t a line of applicants.

  “Well Skylar, thank you for your interest. We will review your resume and determine if you are a good fit for our organization. You will be hearing from us shortly.” He then stood up and walked around the table. I stood and allowed him to usher me back into the rapidly thinning throng of people wandering the tables. I felt another chill when I left the man and walked back onto the main pathway. I felt unsettled. Something was very clearly off with this guy and his mysterious organization. Mindless of my destination, I walked around the various tables, some of which were still bogged down in long lines. I reflected on the normalcy of the scene in front of me, the well-dressed students, the glossy brochures. It was all perfectly ordinary. So why couldn’t I manage to sit down at a single one of those tables? Why was I drawn to the one weird one? What did that say about me?

  I ended my aimless walk and turned toward my dorm. My big internship day was ending with a single resume dropped off with the strangest organization. One that nobody else seemed to have an interest in. Maybe that was what I found so attractive. My parents thought I was deliberately sabotaging my future employment prospects by choosing what they referred to as a ‘useless’ major. In part, it was the lack of apparent utility that drew me to the study of folklore and mythology. Even as a child I had often been drawn to things outside of what the popular kids were doing. And as an almost adult, I knew that I would never be happy working in the kinds of jobs that my classmates were clamoring to get. Could I spend my life climbing the ranks of the pharmaceutical industry? Where was the adventure in that? Whenever I talked about living a life of adventure, my grandmother called me a romantic soul. My parents called me naïve.

  When I walked into the apartment I shared with my roommate, Diane, I could feel her excitement and enthusiasm crackling in the air. Her interviews had gone well, it seemed. She was on the phone with someone, probably her parents, describing every detail of her time with the recruiter at PPD, a clinical research company. Diane wasn’t really into medicine, she was majoring in business, but she wanted to get into the pharma or biotech industry because the salaries were great and, according to her, it was one of the best sectors for a woman to move into management.

  I listened absently to her blow by blow account of the five minutes she probably spent with the recruiter. I didn’t begrudge her excitement. We had been friends since orientation, despite our different interests and goals. She was kind, a good listener, and very outgoing. The last was a real help since it got me out to parties I would never have gone to on my own.

  What was I going to tell my parents? That I walked around looking at all the jobs I didn’t want before handing my resume to some weirdo company that I’d never heard of? I decided to put the conversation off as long as I could manage. Diane wrapped up her call with lots of ‘thank yous' and ‘I love yous’ and then tossed her phone on the bed.

  “Sky! Oh my god, I am so excited!” She squeaked. As if it wasn’t obvious from the way she was bouncing on the balls of her feet. “The woman told me she was super impressed with my resume and that I should be expecting a call soon!” Without waiting for a response she bounded over and wrapped me in a crushing embrace. I found myself involuntarily bouncing right along with her. Her happiness was infectious. It was one of the reasons I loved spending time with her. I got to leech off her positive vibes.

  “That’s great Diane,” I said, extricating myself from her arms. “I am really happy for you.”

  “Ugh, I hope they call soon. I can’t wait! The recruiter was so awesome, she is only like thirty, and we totally hit it off.” I just let her bubble for a few moments. Then she seemed to realize that social convention required some kind of reciprocity. “So, how did it go for you? Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Umm, not really.” I wasn’t really interested in talking about it. I kind of felt foolish for avoiding the other tables. Who knew what was going on with this TRIP. Maybe my parents were right and I wanted something that wasn’t real, that would never happen in real life. “There was one that was interesting, I guess. Some kind of non-profit.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s it called?”

  “T.R.I.P. It was weird, they had nothing at the table. It was really spare.”

  “Huh, I never saw them.”

  A little chill passed through me. Had Diane just been busy and not noticed the table? I mean, there were probably dozens of companies that I had just looked past and not noticed. Or was that strange man telling the truth about nobody else being able to see his table? And if so, what the hell did that mean?

  “The guy was kinda vague about what they do. Something to do with cultural exchanges.”

  Diane grabbed her phone off the bed. “Let’s look them up.”

  I walked over to the window overlooking the square. I love older buildings because of the windows. Our room had huge windows that started just above knee level and went all the way to the ceiling. It made the small space seem more adequate.

  “I can’t find their website…oh, hang on. I’m getting a call.”

  I tried to push the sound of her conversation to the back of my head. It was fairly easy since it consisted of “uh huh’s” and “oks”. I focused on the view five stories down. Dozens of people sat on benches or on the grass in little groups. Most of the campus was done with mid-terms, so there was a general air of relaxation that I could feel all the way up here.

  As I swept my eyes across the grass, trees, and bushes, I saw something strange. A form was moving in the bushes. It looked like a man, but it was too thin, its limbs were over-long and spindly. It’s body was covered in leaves, like that camouflage that you see snipers wear in movies. But more than that, it was like the leaves, twigs and other plant matter were a part of its body instead of a covering. It stopped moving and I almost lost sight of it.

  I felt a hand grab my arm and I jumped, letting out a little scream.

  “Jeez, Sky. You ok?” Diane looked more scared than I was.

  “Sorry, I just drifted off, you startled me.”

  “Well, you scared me half to death. So we’re even.” She was beaming a smile. The call must have been good news. She stayed there, bouncing up and down, clearly waiting for me to ask her about the call.

  “So, good call?” I obliged her.

  “They offered me the internship!” I filled in the last word in my mind because it was delivered in a pitch audible only to canines. But I smiled along with her and gave her a big hug. I was happy for her, but a part of me was a little envious that she knew what she wanted and was about to get it.

  “We have to go out and celebrate. My treat!” Diane started tearing through her closet. I looked back out the window at the bush where I ha
d seen the strange form. It was gone.

  Chapter 3

  I pushed my way through a crowd and made my way back to our table without spilling a drink. A fair accomplishment, given my state of intoxication. The 919 Bar was notorious for being very lax with their fake ID checks and was a favorite among the underaged students like myself. A lot of my guy friends complained that they always let pretty girls in, no matter how crappy their ID was. Ah, the many advantages of being a young woman in North Carolina. I didn’t need alcohol, I could get drunk on my power. Tonight, though, it was the alcohol.

  I slid into the bench seat next to Diane and set the cocktails down. A handful of her other friends were crowded around the booth, talking over each other about their midterms or their summer plans. I stayed quiet. Not only did I not have anything much to say, but I was still mulling over what I had seen earlier. First the strange man from the organization I’d never heard of, at the table that he said nobody else could see. Then the weird form in the bushes that was there one moment and gone the next. None of the people in the square reacted to it, or seemed to notice it at all.

  The conversation at the table blended in with the general sounds of revelry in the bar. My mind was elsewhere. I kept thinking about my childhood. When I was little, I spent a lot of hours in the counselor’s office. Like nearly all children, I had imaginary friends. My parents used to praise my active imagination, wondering at the detailed descriptions I made of the fantastic creatures and characters that I made up. But most children grow out of their imaginary worlds. I didn’t. I was nearing middle school when my parents decided enough was enough and enlisted me with a child psychologist. Working with her, I came to see how I had allowed my imagination to draw on the stories I’d read and lost my grip on the separation between what was real and what was fantasy. I saw her every week for three years until finally I saw only the same things that everyone else did. That is, until today.