Black Fall

by D.J. Bodden

CHAPTER 9

  He felt nothing. His mother had said he might go up like flash paper. Maybe if it was that fast, he wouldn’t feel anything, it would just be… gone. He pulled his hand back, opened his eyes, and stared in relief at five healthy wiggling fingers… another normal day.

  He sat on the couch and checked his phone again. Most of the messages were from Amelia, asking where he was. But, there were also a few about the French test, which was that morning during second period. I completely forgot. He pulled out his notes and crammed until his security detail – Bert and Phillip – arrived to take him to school.

  ♟

  He’d passed. At least he was pretty sure he’d passed. He might have even aced it. The mental exercise of maintaining his barriers and doing the staking drills with Eve had somehow made rote memorization seem easy. Plus, he was running on more sleep — or what felt like more sleep — than he usually did. When he’d first looked at the test, he hadn’t felt the usual dread. The trick questions seemed obvious, and the answers flowed easily from his pen. He’d finished the test well before everyone else, surprising both Amelia and his teacher.

  The more pressing question was, did it matter? Any morning could be my last, he thought, trying to keep his cool. It was difficult with the sun hanging over him like a death sentence. He was just grateful he had no scent because, otherwise, Bert and Phillip would have smelled his fear during their morning walk to school.

  Maybe I should just stay indoors during the day, he thought. There wasn’t anyone at the school that he cared to socialize with anyway, just acquaintances and classmates, certainly no real friends. Any relationships that were even close had withered in the year since his father’s death. The only one left was Amelia and, at the moment, she was talking to her friends, deliberately keeping her back to him. I probably deserve that, he thought, since he’d ignored her all weekend. He knew she only wanted to help. On some level, though, he knew his mother was right. He couldn’t tell her the truth. At best, she’d think he was crazy. At worst, some kind of monster.

  He sat through third and fourth period in a daze, drawing squiggles and patterns in the margins of his textbooks. He rolled a quarter back and forth on his knuckles, the way his father used to, until the teacher caught him. And all he could think about while she threatened to give him detention, was that the light hurt his eyes and made him blink more.

  If school and Amelia aren’t important, what is? Mom, Dad, barriers, not getting myself strapped to a roof? Not dying, he answered himself. Suddenly realizing the teacher was still standing there, Jonas said, “I’m sorry ma’am. It won’t happen again.” He stared at the board and took notes, occasionally raising his hand to answer a question. The only thing I can control right now is my barrier.

  Viviane had spent the entire weekend trying to provoke some sort of reaction in him, and hadn’t explained much. But between what Fangston, his mother, and Doris had told him, and what he’d witnessed from Viviane, there were several ways to breach a barrier: permission, trickery, widening a small gap, and brute force. He talked it over with Sam — slipping momentarily into the mental world — and the imaginary officer agreed. The barrier could stand an overhaul, but what they needed was a fresh perspective.

  Fourth period history was taught by Mr. Edwards, an older man with a permanent limp. Jonas had heard he’d been in a war, though Mr. Edwards hadn’t mentioned it himself. Jonas approached him after class.

  “Mr. Edwards?”

  “Yes, Jonas?” he said, as he tucked a textbook under his arm and stepped toward the door.

  “How would someone defend something from attack?”

  Mr. Edwards paused and said, “From a historical standpoint, or are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Just historical. I’ve been trying to learn about walls and barriers.” Jonas thought that was close enough to ring true.

  “What is it you’re defending?”

  “Information,” Jonas said.

  There was a flicker of something on the teacher’s face — surprise, interest, greed — but whatever it’d been, it vanished before Jonas could be sure. “Well, the usual way would be to destroy the information before it fell into enemy hands. Burn maps, destroy communications equipment. That sort of thing.”

  Torching his brain didn’t seem like a good idea to Jonas. “What if that wasn’t an option? If you couldn’t destroy the information, and you had to stay in one place?”

  “This is a very broad topic, Jonas. Why don’t you pick up a book on military fortifications to get you started, and we can schedule some time to discuss it next week?”

  It was longer than Jonas wanted to wait, but he didn’t think pushing the issue would be a wise move. “I’d appreciate that, sir.”

  “Good.” Mr. Edwards turned back toward the door, then added, “Of course, fortifying a place is only a temporary solution. You remember the Alamo, right? You would have learned about it two years ago.”

  “Yes, sir. About two hundred Americans were attacked by the Mexican army. Outnumbered at least five to one, in spite of solid stone walls, they were overrun and killed to the last man.” He recalled the particulars effortlessly, like he was reading from a textbook. Becoming a vampire definitely had its benefits.

  Mr. Edwards’ eyes widened a little. “That’s right, so remember, any defense can be overrun given enough time and resources. If you’re forced to defend something valuable, the key is to make it more trouble than it’s worth or, better yet, to disrupt the attack before it reaches the walls. A castle without defenders is just a man-made hill. Does that help?”

  Jonas tried to hide his surprise. I need to make Sam a few friends. “Yes, sir, thank you, that helped a lot.”

  ♟

  About halfway through lunch, Amelia sat down at his table and said, “Are we breaking up?”

  “What? No… are we?” Jonas asked, the last part slipping out in a whisper. He looked around, and saw a table of Amelia’s friends nearby. They were glaring at him, pissed, like he’d been beating her instead of ignoring her phone calls.

  “You ignored me all weekend,” she said.

  “You told me not to call until I was ready to talk.”

  “I didn’t mean…” She looked at the table. “I meant ‘call and talk,’ not ‘don’t call at all.’”

  Jonas pinched the bridge of his nose and bowed his head, shutting his eyes. So much for being a mind-reading vampire, he thought. Looking back up, he said, “I’m sorry. There was the break-in, and I found out some new things about my dad…”

  “What? That he was in the mob or something?”

  Jonas winced. “More like law enforcement.”

  Amelia leaned forward. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you? I thought the whole break-in thing was just an excuse not to walk home with me anymore. That’s what we all thought.”

  Jonas glanced up at Amelia’s friends. They were still glaring. “I am serious, and I really need you to not talk about it with… them.” He motioned toward the table of onlookers with his head.

  Amelia blushed. “I’m sorry. I won’t tell anyone else. They only know about the supposed break-in. Is that okay?”

  He looked at the table of angry teens. What are they going to do? he thought. “Yeah, it’s okay.” A moment of awkward silence followed, while Jonas figured out how to slip back into the role of teenage boyfriend.

  “Um… so how did you do on the test?” he asked.

  Amelia rolled her eyes. “We didn’t cover half the stuff on that test in class,” she said, then proceeded to explain how Monsieur Frederique should spend less time making snide remarks about Americans and more time on his curriculum. Jonas just listened, not saying a word. He loved the way she talked with her hands… the faint sheen of her lip gloss… the curve of her neck.

  “Jonas? Did you hear anything I just said?”

  “Of course. I guess we’ll just have to go off the textbook from now on. He doesn’t teach juniors, does he?”

  Amelia
nodded, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Listen, I need to go to the bookstore after school,” Jonas said, grinning. “Want to come with me?”

  Amelia looked back at her friends. A blonde with sharp cheekbones and thin lips, mouthed something to her, as if Jonas wasn’t there. Amelia shook her head and turned back to Jonas.

  “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  ♟

  “Those are the largest men I’ve ever seen,” Amelia whispered.

  Bert and Phillip trailed behind them, thirty feet behind. Exactly thirty feet, even if they had to push people aside or ignore traffic signals. Jonas was starting to think the intimidation people felt around them was like a vampire’s glamour. The people in cars — several regular commuters and one taxi driver — didn’t even honk at the two werewolves when they strolled across the street against the light.

  “They’re harmless, really,” Jonas whispered.

  Bert snorted.

  “He heard that?”

  Jonas looked back over his shoulder. “My, what big ears you have, Grandma.”

  Bert guffawed, and Phillip punched him in the shoulder.

  The two werewolves followed Jonas and Amelia into the bookstore and browsed through the aisles, which were almost too narrow for them to share with others. Phillip went to the self-help section. Bert went to the aisle on pets, wagging his eyebrows at Jonas, before moving on to the exercise and sports section.

  “You’re sure your dad wasn’t in the mob?” Amelia whispered.

  “Positive. They’re just here until we’re sure that the guy who broke in won’t come back.”

  Jonas went to the military history section, while Amelia wandered the young adult fiction aisle. He thought about going to the spirituality section and looking up angels, demons, and other supernaturals, but figured the Agency’s library would have better material. Plus, he’d have a hard time explaining a sudden interest in the occult to his girlfriend.

  He met Amelia in the coffee shop a few minutes later.

  “What’d you get?” she said.

  He showed her the cover. “Fortifications and Siegecraft.” Before she could ask, he added, “Extra credit from Mr. Edwards.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t hear him say we could do anything for extra credit.”

  “He hasn’t. Yet.” Jonas grinned. “Trying to improve my grade.”

  They sat at a small table and read their books. Jonas drank water, while Amelia sipped something frothy that smelled like coffee and chocolate. After about half an hour Jonas knew a lot more about obstacles and protection and, from Amelia’s sudden interest in her phone, that his girlfriend was bored.

  “Ready to walk home?”

  “Yeah. My dad’s asking where I am,” she said.

  He finished his water, stuffed the book into his backpack, and caught Phillip’s eye. They almost made it to Amelia’s apartment before the attack came.