Black Fall (The Black Year Series Book 1)

by D. J. Bodden

  Jonas wrung his hands. He hadn’t meant to get anyone in trouble. “Well, the voice said not to trust the wolf, the hunter, or the demon.”

  Marcus smiled. “Well, Jonas, it sounds like good advice to me. You obviously can’t trust wolves, or Phillip would have been guarding you when this happened.” The expression on Fangston’s face was pleasant, but his tone was anything but. “And hunters are mostly murderers, plain and simple. Some do it for kicks, some because a family member or friend was hurt, but they don’t differentiate between us. We all look like monsters to them.”

  Jonas felt a light pressure in his head, like the beginning of a headache, but it disappeared as soon as it started.

  Fangston’s eyes were distant. “No, mustn’t do that,” he muttered.

  “And what about demons?” asked Jonas. “Are those real?”

  “Yes, there are demons. Never trust them. We use them when we have to — the Agency, that is — but they’re only interested in destruction. Now,” Fangston said, looking Jonas in the eye, “I’m very sorry, but I am going to have to check you, and it’s going to hurt a bit.”

  Jonas felt like he was being pressed back into his seat. It wasn’t a light pressure; it was a full scale lightning-bolt-out-of-the-sky migraine. He could feel someone tearing through his mind, knocking things over, looking at parts of him he’d never want exposed.

  “You didn’t tell me about seeing your father die, Jonas,” Fangston said, pushing harder.

  “It was just a dream,” Jonas said, through clenched teeth.

  Flecks of light danced before his eyes. He tried to push back with his own mind, or willpower, or whatever he could muster, but all he got for his trouble was a sharp, stabbing pain above his left eye and a ringing in his ears.

  “This will hurt less if you don’t fight it.”

  Jonas convulsed, coughing. He’d held his breath a bit too long. Water streamed from his eyes. He couldn’t control his body. He tried to shove his mind somewhere safe, to run, hide, push, pull… anything. Finally, he felt himself grab onto something.

  He doesn’t know anything, said Fangston’s voice, in his head. Jonas was reading the vampire’s thoughts!

  It was Madoc, but he didn’t tell the boy anything useful.

  Then it stopped. He was still sitting in the chair, with the worst headache he’d ever felt. He groaned and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples with his fingertips.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Fangston said, as he let go. “But now that I’ve seen what happened, I think it’s imperative we train you as soon as possible.”

  Anything to stop that from happening again, Jonas thought. His breath still came in ragged bursts, as he tried to regain control of his body.

  “Good. Now I need you to picture a wall, or some kind of enclosure. It doesn’t matter what it’s made of, or if it’s real, but it should be familiar — the more detail the better — and you should believe it to be absolutely unbreakable. Do you understand?” Fangston sat perfectly still as he spoke, like a statue, his voice almost mechanical.

  “I think so,” Jonas said. His mouth felt dry, like it was full of cotton.

  “Good. Now picture your barrier, and I’m going to test it.”

  Jonas opened his eyes and stared at Fangston. His skin felt cool and damp, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his forehead. “I don’t think I’m—”

  “Starting now.”

  Driven by fear, Jonas pictured the walls of Hunter College High School, one of the most exclusive schools in the country, and close to where he lived. It looked like a fortress made of bricks, with towers, crenellated walls, and narrow windows. He injected every detail he could think of, from the texture of the bricks to the black-painted fences around the playground. HCHS only accepted one-hundred-seventy-five new sixth graders out of the top ten-percent of the five boroughs. It wasn’t just solidly built, it was also virtually impossible to get into academically.

  He wrapped the image around the thoughts he’d stolen from Fangston during his first attack: the fear, the anger, and the name “Madoc.” He didn’t think it would be good for his health if Fangston found out Jonas had spied on him. He pictured a larger, outer wall around the first image, but it was difficult to give it the same level of attention, and it flickered in and out of existence in his thoughts.

  Fangston barged through the outer wall like a man kicking over a sandcastle. It hurt. Jonas kept throwing up new walls to slow him down, but Fangston knocked them over like they were nothing. He felt the older vampire getting near his inner defenses, but fear of discovery made Jonas clamp down on them so hard that Fangston’s attacks glanced off them and passed by.

  “Were you hit in the head during the break-in, Jonas?” Fangston said.

  Jonas could feel him testing the inner walls for weaknesses. “Yes,” he said truthfully. “I got a really bad headache from it.”

  “You have a damaged area, here,” Fangston said, as pain bloomed around his inner walls. “Not to worry though; that kind of thing will heal in time, for a vampire.”

  Jonas nodded. Sweat ran down his forehead, neck, and back, but he held onto his defenses and the second attack was over much sooner than the first.

  “Well, that’s the idea anyway. You’ll get better at it, with practice. That’s called a barrier.”

  Jonas didn’t say anything. His chest hurt, and he wheezed a little. He kept the secondary wall in place, shoring it up as best he could without making his headache worse. Can you still hear me think?

  Fangston cocked his head, like he’d heard a faint sound. Jonas felt something push against his walls. A few imaginary bricks fell, and Jonas slammed the brick fortress down on his innermost thoughts again. Everything he did was painful.

  The pressure receded. “Good. At least Alice will thank me for having a little more quiet around the house,” Fangston said, smiling.

  Jonas smiled weakly in return.

  “Come back Friday night, and we’ll get you started with a training partner.”

  “Friday night? I had…” I had plans with Amelia.

  “You have something more important to do?”

  Jonas thought of his father, and the vampire breaking into his house. He thought of Amelia getting dragged out of a theater, like Eve, and not being able to do anything to stop it. He needed to get stronger, find out who Madoc was, and make sure no one could ever rip through his mind the way Marcus Fangston just had.

  “No,” he said, after a moment. “I’ll be here Friday.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jonas walked the perimeter of his barrier, checking the brickwork. It was as solid as the last time he’d checked, but he kept coming back because the thought of another mental attack terrified him. What Fangston did hurt, but he hadn’t broken anything, even though Jonas wasn’t sure what would have happened if his father’s friend knew he’d read his thoughts. He didn’t have much hope of stopping Fangston, not in a deliberate assault, but he could at least try to keep Madoc, or whoever was attacking him, from turning him into a mindless vegetable.

  “You can sleep, you know. The wall will still be here in the morning.”

  Jonas spun around. There was a cop leaning against the inner side of the wall, watching him. Jonas felt something twist in his abdomen and looked around frantically for a hole the intruder might have come through.

  The cop pulled out his nightstick and tapped it against the wall. “She’s solid. Can’t help but think she’s a little low and a little thin, but we can manage.”

  Jonas stared at the man. He was an adult, and looked familiar. He might have been Jonas’ older brother, except Jonas never had a sibling. “Who are you?”

  “Call me Sam. I’m the part of your mind that’s obsessing about the wall every moment you’re awake or asleep. About two-hundred-thousand in case you were wondering.”

  “Two-hundred-thousand what?”

  “Bricks. I’d give you an exact number, but you can’t seem to make up your mind how big the o
utside wall should be,” Sam said, his tone mildly reproachful. “So I was thinking, maybe tighter and taller, until we get the hang of this thing?”

  Jonas looked at the wall. It pulled inward and grew about two-feet.

  Sam sighed contentedly. “Thank you, sir. Now, why not get some sleep? I can handle everything here, and I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”

  Jonas didn’t know what to say. This can’t be healthy, he thought, but Fangston had said that a little bit of disconnection happened to all vampires. He’d worry about finding an anchor in the morning. “Okay. Good night, Sam,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be talking to himself.

  “Good night, sir.”

  Jonas slept.

  ♚

  By Friday morning, Jonas had developed a mild but constant headache from maintaining his barrier. He wasn’t having any strange dreams, but he wasn’t sleeping well either. Sam, the O.C.D. part of him, accompanied him every time he checked his barrier, sometimes making suggestions. It was becoming normal and that worried him a little, but not enough to risk having his barrier drop in his sleep.

  No one had attacked him, at least not physically, since the break-in, but he’d felt light pressure against his barrier at home, outside, and during school, as if someone was testing it. His outer defenses were now a seven-foot tall and two-foot wide brick wall, topped with long metal spikes that slanted outward. After every inspection, Sam would goad him into building more. When he tried, the results were piles of loose brick, metal bars, and trash. It was too much for his mind to handle at one time, though he was getting better at it. And, as far as he knew, it was enough to hold “Madoc” at bay.

  Amelia hadn’t been pleased about him bailing on her for the weekend, especially when he wouldn’t tell her why. She told him to call when he was ready to talk. At least he didn’t have to come up with an excuse for not walking her to and from school.

  His mother was back in one of her reclusive phases, only leaving her room and saying goodbye as she headed off to work. He’d hoped the new openness about her past would jolt her out of the gloom she’d been mired in since his father vanished, and she was more active, she just wasn’t including Jonas in the activity. Once, he woke up in the middle of the night and thought she was in his room, but when he turned on the light, there was nobody there.

  After school, Bert and Phillip would be there to walk him to the Agency. They’d been more vigilant and less friendly since his talk with Fangston, and he suspected he’d gotten them in trouble.

  “I’m sorry about—”

  “Not your fault, kid,” Phillip said.

  “Not ours, either,” said Bert, his voice a growl. “Nothing we could’ve done about a mental attack, anyway.”

  “We could have killed the thing doing it,” said Phillip, “or carried Jonas away.”

  Bert grunted.

  “Anyway,” Phillip continued, “just a smack on the nose. No food out of my bowl, or yours either, Bert.”

  Bert shrugged, “Just rubs me the wrong way is all.” He gave Phillip a sidelong look, and they both grinned.

  Dog jokes? Really? Jonas thought.

  Before they left him at the front of the building, Phillip lowered his voice and said, “You be careful, now, Jonas. There’s a stink to the Agency these days.”

  “Rotten eggs,” Bert said, nodding.

  Jonas frowned. “Rotten eggs? As in… sulfur?”

  The two werewolves looked at each other. “Told you he was a smart one, Bert.”

  Bert made a face.

  “Just keep your guard up,” Phillip said, “You wouldn’t want me and Bert answering to your mother for not keeping you safe.”

  “Wouldn’t want us answering to her, period,” Bert said. Phillip made the low throat-growl Jonas now equated to a smack on the back of the head. As the two walked away, he saw Bert give Phillip a wounded look.

  Jonas watched them go, almost laughing as pedestrians parted in front of the two giants like water flowing around a stone. He was still smiling as he walked into the building.

  “Hi Jared,” Jonas said to the security chief, and reached into his pocket, then froze. He’d left Fangston’s card at home and, for a moment, thought he’d have to show it to get in. A lump formed in his throat.

  Jared stared at him, stern faced, then winked. “Don’t worry about it, Jonas, I remember you. Just head downstairs.”

  How did he know? Jonas thought. By all appearances, Jared was human. He hadn’t felt anything breach his barrier. Maybe Jared had seen the look so many times he didn’t need to read thoughts.

  Jonas stepped into the elevator, looked at the console, and pictured the underground lobby. The doors slid shut and, a minute later, he was at the reception desk.

  “Hi, Doris!” he said, waving.

  “Ehoh, Ohash Ah.”

  …Jonas Black, her voice echoed in his head.

  Jonas stopped and looked at Doris. “Was that you?”

  She looked at him, and he heard something between electronic static and a whisper. Doris made a frustrated noise that sounded like a dog snarling, along with the usual wheeze of air through the hole in her throat. “Ohp Awsh.”

  Drop walls. She wanted him to drop his barrier.

  “I’m sorry, Doris, I can’t do that. It’s not safe.” He thought about how upset Sam would be, then shook his head. Was he really worried about how his imaginary friend would feel? Definitely not healthy.

  She shook her head, and the motion made her wig spin around. She snatched the hairpiece from her head and threw it under the desk. Her smooth, bald head was as gray as the rest of her skin. She stared at Jonas, and her eyes glowed neon green. It made the hair on his arms stand on end.

  Window! Just me! she said in his head. Even though he could barely hear her, he got the impression she was screaming, broadcasting as loud as she could. Against Sam’s — against his own protests, he pictured an opening the size of his fist in his outer barrier.

  Can you hear me? she shouted, telepathically.

  Jonas winced at the volume of the thought. “Yes, you don’t have to shout now, Doris. I can hear you.”

  She sat back in her chair, rooting around on the floor for the wig. Thank goodness. Do you know how irritating it is to speak with a lisp? Even when they replace my tongue, it’s still mortifying. The voice in his head was precise, feminine but not soft, someone accustomed to power.

  “Why are you the receptionist?”

  I enjoy talking to people, she answered. And if there’s a breach, they can just put me back together again. Her “voice” was cheerful, but there was anger hidden behind it.

  “A breach? You mean someone attacking the Agency?”

  Yes. Happens every so often. That’s how I lost my tongue in the first place.

  Jonas looked around. The cream and tan lobby didn’t seem like an ideal place to fight.

  Three-feet of warded iron behind the walls, and blast doors on every exit. They have a warehouse full of the paneling and furniture, they just replace it, like me, she said, winking at him.

  Jonas realized he was broadcasting his thoughts again.

  Just to me, Doris said.

  “Can anyone else use the window I made in my barrier?”

  Yes. You’d better close it. You have to get to the training rooms anyway, or you’ll be late. At least I can talk to you, now, instead of all the oohing and moaning.

  Jonas smoothed his barrier shut. “Thanks, Doris. I’ll see you later.”

  ♚

  He barely made it to the training room on time. It was the one with gym mats covering the walls and floor. There were nine people — vampires — already there. He assumed they were vampires, anyway. They all had a slightly unreal smoothness to them, as if they’d recently been airbrushed. Several were working in pairs, going through a slow series of punches, grabs, parries, and counters together. One was flailing around as if he was fighting an unseen attacker — fighting and losing, Jonas thought. Anot
her pair, a male and female, were just staring at each other. Every so often, one or the other would flinch, as if stung. All of them looked to be in their mid-twenties, and were wearing normal street clothes. Crap, should’ve asked, Jonas thought. He’d gone out and bought a jogging suit and sneakers. No use worrying about it now, he thought, spotting Eve in the back corner with a vampire who looked to be in her late twenties. His mother looked like she was about thirty, too, he recalled, and his guard immediately went up.

  “Jonas, come over here. You’re late,” the older vampire said.

  Jonas resisted the urge to look at his watch. He gained nothing by being right, and Eve had warned him about the instructors.

  “Good, you’re not stupid. My name is Viviane Lefèvre,” she said, speaking with a light French accent. “I am your trainer. For all future sessions, you will wear your normal clothes. The object is to train the way you would fight on the street. You will come early to observe the others before class. But first, you will fight François,” she said, pointing behind him.

  Jonas turned and saw “François” standing five feet away. He was of medium height, with wide shoulders, well-muscled arms, and big hands. He had short blond hair and a handsome face, except for a scar that started under his left eye and snaked down across his cheekbone. Jonas turned back to Viviane. “I’ve never—”

  “Everyone fights François,” Viviane said, looking bored. He looked at Eve, but she looked away.

  “Hey, kid!” François said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  Jonas turned around, and the man slapped him. It was a limp-wristed slap, and though it stung, it surprised him more than it hurt. “What are you—?”

  François slapped him again and spat on the floor.

  Jonas saw red. He punched François square in the face, rocking him back on his heels. The man shook it off and struck at Jonas again, but he blocked it, tackled Francois to the ground, and climbed on top of him, pounding mercilessly at his face. François tried to deflect Jonas’ punches and worm out from under him, but Jonas was too strong. He could feel himself getting tired, but he was lost in the moment. Besting a man the size of François felt good… Maybe my vampire strength is starting to kick in, he thought. He’d been keeping his barriers up for two whole days, maybe it triggered—