Black Fall (The Black Year Series Book 1)

by D. J. Bodden

  I’m a vampire, Jonas thought. It made his heart race. Then he frowned. “I have a pulse.”

  “And I’m downwind,” muttered Bert.

  Phillip scowled at Bert. “Vampires have heartbeats, Jonas.”

  “Yeah, how else do you think the blood gets to their evil little heads? Magic?” Bert added.

  Phillip made a sound in his throat like a growl, but so deep it made Jonas’ bones hurt.

  “Sorry,” Bert said, looking at the ground.

  Jonas stood there, watching the two of them, and finally said, “Why are you scared of my mother?”

  The two men looked at each other. Phillip shrugged, and said, “Go ahead.”

  “When your mother—” Bert began.

  “No disrespect intended, of course,” Phillip added, arching an eyebrow.

  “Of course,” Bert said, clasping his hands. “When your mother came to America, she brought a few coffins full of soil with her, along with seeds and several live aconite flowers.”

  Jonas didn’t recognize the name.

  “Wolf’s bane,” Phillip explained.

  “Right,” said Bert. “Anyway, as the story goes, she was afraid it didn’t grow here, so she brought it with her.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Jonas.

  “Wolf’s bane,” said Bert. “You know… for poisoning wolves.” He pointed at himself.

  “Your mother was very good at killing us,” Phillip added, then shrugged. “Things were less civilized back then.”

  Jonas looked at them with his mouth open.

  “No, things were better back then,” said Bert. “We got to fight back.”

  Phillip frowned. Bert looked away.

  “If you hate vampires so much, why do you work for one?” Jonas said.

  “Food,” said Bert.

  “Breeding rights,” said Phillip, and Bert threw him an envious look. “Only so many pups born or bitten adoptions per year, legally, and Agency packs get bigger quotas.”

  Jonas blushed as Phillip wagged his eyebrows and gave him a big, toothy smile. His teeth looked sharp… very sharp, and Jonas felt the instinctive urge to run again. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

  ♚

  He couldn’t focus at school. His four morning classes just kind of slipped by without him noticing. Sitting alone in the cafeteria, he pulled out Marcus’s business card. It was still blank except for the name. How does he expect me to find him?

  His thoughts were interrupted as Amelia sat down in the seat across from him. “What happened to you?”

  Put on the spot, his carefully rehearsed story went out the window. “Someone tried to break into our apartment, and the door hit me.”

  Amelia gave him a bland look. “What are you talking about, Jonas?”

  “My black eye.”

  “You don’t have a black eye, though I’m starting to believe you did take a knock on the head.”

  He patted the area around his eye. It wasn’t sore anymore. He wondered if the cut on his elbow had healed, too.

  “Sorry. I thought I had one. It really hurt.”

  “Wait, you really had a break-in? On our street? Oh my God! Why didn’t you call me?”

  She believed him now, but Jonas wasn’t sure he liked it better that way. She seemed to be taking it much worse than he had, and he was the one who got hit in the face.

  “One of the neighbors scared the guy off,” he said, which wasn’t a complete lie. “There wasn’t any damage to the apartment, and I really just wanted to go to sleep afterward.”

  “Are you okay? Did you call the police?”

  “No. Like I said, there wasn’t any damage and we don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

  Amelia frowned. She didn’t agree, but he didn’t think she’d tell anyone except her family.

  Nothing I can do about that, Jonas thought.

  “Are we still walking home together?” she asked.

  Jonas realized he’d forgotten to wait for her that morning. “I’m sorry; things have been hectic. I forgot about this morning and can’t this afternoon. My mom thinks I should talk to someone about what happened,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Maybe she’s right. You may be more upset about this than you realize,” Amelia said, looking at him skeptically. She reached out and stroked his hand. They spent the rest of their lunch break talking about normal things, like music, movies, and plans for the weekend.

  ♚

  It was toward the end of fifth period and he still had no idea where to go. He’d asked his bodyguards before school, but Bert and Phillip had flat out refused to give him the address.

  “Orders. Sorry,” they’d said.

  He examined the card for the tenth time, but it was still glossy black with nothing on it but Marcus Fangston’s name in bold white letters.

  I have to figure this out, Jonas thought. He needed to find Fangston and sign up for whatever kind of training his mother thought he needed. Bert and Phillip couldn’t walk him to school forever. Aside from the effect on his relationship with Amelia, someone would notice and ask questions he couldn’t answer. It wasn’t as if a couple of werewolves, even in human form, were easy to hide, and he couldn’t depend on his mother to protect him. His pride had already suffered enough.

  As he imagined the consequences of living with his mother for the rest of his life — which might be a very long time if he’d inherited a vampire’s longevity — the card flickered, and an address appeared under Marcus Fangston’s name:

  845 Third Ave, New York, NY 10022

  As the tension in his neck and shoulders disappeared, so did the address. His mouth went dry… it appeared again. It must be triggered by my needing to see it, he thought. He memorized the address and it disappeared again.

  The last ten minutes of class seemed to last forever.

  ♚

  Bert and Phillip were waiting for him outside the school.

  “Know where you’re going?” Bert asked.

  “845 Third Ave,” Jonas said, not bothering to pull out the card.

  Phillip grinned. “Good boy.” He turned to Bert. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

  Bert mumbled something under his breath that Jonas couldn’t make out.

  They walked him to the bus stop on Second Avenue and waited with him. He could tell that Bert and Phillip made the other people at the stop nervous — they subconsciously moved away from the pair, but kept glancing back in the bodyguards’ direction. Two elderly women decided to just walk away. Jonas fought the urge to laugh. It was like watching a herd of sheep in the presence of two impeccably dressed wolves. Once he was safely on the bus, Bert waved and Phillip gave him a wink before they turned and walked back in the direction of his neighborhood.

  Jonas showed his receipt to the bus driver and headed back, finding a seat that faced the center of the bus. It would take about fifteen minutes to get where he was going, so he put in his ear buds. He put on “Host of the Seraphim” by Dead can Dance and tried to zone out, rather than worry. One stop into the trip, he started to feel the same sense of confusion and vertigo he’d felt on the street outside Amelia’s apartment.

  The world around him twisted. He was still on the bus, but it was darker and had an eerie, dream-like quality to it. All the passengers looked the same — not just similar, but identical. They looked like Marcus Fangston.

  CHAPTER 5

  One by one, all the Fangstons turned to look at him as the bus careened down the street, ignoring stoplights. They grinned, showed their fangs, and whispered to each other. Jonas tried to snap out of it but the more he struggled, the more tired and confused he felt.

  “Trust no one!” they all cried out at once, causing the sound to echo through Jonas’ head.

  “Not the wolf,” said one to his right.

  “Not the hunter,” said another.

  “Not the demon,” said the Fangston directly in front of him.

  Then one of them walked down the aisle and touched his
shoulder.

  “Excuse me?” the Fangston said. Its voice was old, frail, and decidedly female.

  Jonas blinked. The Fangston morphed into a hunched old lady with a cloche hat and fingerless gloves. He’d learned about cloche hats in French class. The word meant “bell,” and they’d been popular in the 1920s and 1960s. Is this another dream? He pulled the ear bud out of his right ear and said, “Yes?”

  “Would you mind if I sat down?”

  A few of the other passengers stared and gave him disapproving looks, but were otherwise normal. No more Fangstons. “Of course not, sorry,” he said, standing up and moving out of her way.

  The bus driver sounded garbled over the intercom. “Fifty-Second Street!” he said.

  Jonas got off the bus and walked the remaining block to Marcus Fangston’s building.

  Finding the entrance wasn’t difficult. The two-foot-tall numbers over the lobby, that read 845, were a dead giveaway.

  For a moment, he stood there, looking around, frozen in place by indecision. The streets were filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic, the sidewalks choked with people. They were mostly corporate types in suits, carrying briefcases or shoulder bags. There were food carts, manned by locals who were often of Middle Eastern or Asian descent, and there were tourists of every shape, size, and color. They strolled along the walkways with their shopping bags, pausing now and then to gawk at the surrounding high-rises.

  Turning his attention back to the building, Jonas didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was of an average height for the area — 15 to 20 floors — and looked like several rectangular boxes of decreasing size stacked on top of each other. It was tan with a dark-gray border below the second floor, its front riddled with rectangular windows spaced less than a foot apart. Some of them had the blinds down, but the rest looked like normal offices.

  The bottom left of the building — the corner pointing north — was a bank, and the bottom right was a sports’ clothing store. This is… unexpectedly boring, he thought. He’d been hoping for one of New York’s gothic castles, a cathedral, or at least something with gargoyles on it, not a cubicle farm. Jonas could see the lobby through a large pane of glass, flanked by two revolving doors. He pushed his way through the one on the left.

  It was a nice lobby. The walls were faced in marble — white on the far wall, brown to the left and right, dark gray on the floor — and there were three black stone bowls filled with little red flowers and two black marble pillars between the two entrances. There were two corridors, also faced in marble, branching off from the rear left and right corners of the room.

  “Can I help you?” said the man behind the security desk. He was one of the many blazer-wearing, exceedingly polite men who guarded the lobbies of New York’s buildings. He was older and smaller than most of the guards Jonas had seen, either past his prime or, more likely, the security chief. Either way, he had a friendly look to him.

  “I’m here to meet Marcus Fangston?” Jonas answered. He dug the card out of his pocket and showed it to the guard, who nodded.

  “Follow me, please.” The guard stepped out from behind the desk and Jonas followed him to the right corridor where a younger guard was standing. “Mind the desk, would you Jimmy?” said the older man. “Need to take this one downstairs.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  And the winner is: security chief.

  In the elevator, the guard turned to him and said, “I’m Jared, by the way.”

  Jonas shook the proffered hand and said, “Jonas Black.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Jonas. Have you used one of these before?”

  An elevator? Jonas thought, looking at the control panel. Twenty-one floors, one basement; looks pretty straightforward. Jared had told the other guard they were going downstairs, so he pushed the “B” button.

  “I’m going to take that as a no, then,” Jared said, giving Jonas a smile that looked friendly but felt condescending.

  The elevator slid down a floor and the doors opened, but Jared made no attempt to get out.

  Jonas sighed. “Okay. No, I guess I've never used an elevator like this one before.”

  Jared beamed. “That’s a good lad. Approach everything like it’s the first time and you’ll live much longer.”

  Jared stared at the control panel. No buttons lit up, but after a few moments, the doors slid shut and the elevator started moving downward again.

  “It senses thoughts,” Jared said, tapping the control panel. “If you've been to one of the special floors and you can picture it clearly enough in your mind, it’ll take you there.”

  He’s messing with me. A machine can’t do that. Then he remembered the business card in his pocket. If a piece of card-stock could sense his thoughts, why couldn’t an elevator?

  Jared gave him a wink. “It’ll make more sense once you’ve used it a few times. Just make sure you remember what the lobby looks like.”

  “The one upstairs?” Jonas asked.

  “No, you can just push the button for that. This lobby.”

  The doors slid open and the old man smiled, making a shooing motion with both hands. Jonas stepped out.

  “One last thing, Jonas,” Jared said. “No matter what she tells you, Doris is never to leave the lobby… under any circumstances.”

  “Okay,” Jonas said, as the elevator doors slid shut. But who’s Doris?

  The underground lobby had a light gray marble floor, smooth plaster walls the color of mocha, and a curved ceiling that sported two golden chandeliers. He was disappointed to see the chandeliers held light bulbs, not candles, and there were comfortable chairs and lamps set on small end tables that gave the fifteen-foot long space a light airy feel. A wide, solid oak reception desk stood at the far end, with a woman sitting behind it. She looked up, and he could tell she was speaking, but all he heard was “Aaayyy iiiii ehhh ppppooooo?” Her voice had an odd hiss and gurgle to it, like she was inhaling when she spoke.

  “Excuse me?” Jonas said.

  The woman waved him over; the gesture wasn't quite right — her hand flopped loosely from her wrist — but Jonas got the idea and walked toward the desk. As he got closer, he saw she was wearing a blonde wig, which sat crookedly on top of her head. Her skin was ash gray, and she was missing some around her cheeks, mouth, and the bottom of her nose.

  “You’re a zombie!” Jonas said, taking a step back.

  The receptionist rolled her bloodshot eyes at him. She plugged the hole in her throat with her wrist, hand still dangling, and said, “I eh, ay I eh ooh,” gesturing with her free hand.

  “Are you saying you can help me?” Jonas asked, trying not to stare too obviously at… any of her.

  “Esh!” she said, followed by a string of gurgles and hisses Jonas thought was probably cursing. “I ee aaah ooo aah.”

  She opened her mouth wide, and Jonas saw she had mismatched teeth of different materials, shapes, and sizes, and no tongue.

  “You need a new tongue?”

  The receptionist crossed her arms and nodded. The wig shifted forward a little, and she pushed it back.

  “I’m here to see Marcus Fangston,” Jonas said.

  “Aym?”

  “Jonas Black.”

  “Ohash ah? Ah ih, ahish ah?” She pointed to one of her canines.

  “Yes, as in Alice Black.”

  She looked startled, then raised the index finger of her left hand, which appeared to function just fine, and said, “Ah, oh ay.”

  She punched a number into her desk phone and put it on speaker. “Ishah ahoh? Ohash ah ish ee-eh ooh-eeh-ooh.” She spoke faster to Fangston, who must have been used to hearing her moan.

  “I’m sorry, Doris, but I’m occupied at the moment. Tell him I’ll send someone to show him around.” He hung up.

  Doris looked at him and started to speak, but Jonas said, “It’s okay, Doris, I heard. I’ll just take a seat over there.”

  “Ah ooh,” she said, smiling. The flaps of skin on her cheeks lifted
well clear of her gums and teeth… not a pretty sight.

  “You’re welcome,” Jonas answered, doing his best to smile in return.

  ♚

  After two minutes of listening to Doris hiss, gurgle, and drip, Jonas put his ear buds in. As a child, his mother had been strongly opposed to him making “mouth noises” while eating and, as a result, he found them maddening. Doris didn’t seem to mind. Four songs later, a girl about his age walked into the lobby carrying a covered plate. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and looked fairly normal, except that her shoulder-length hair looked like it was made of polished copper, and her skin like porcelain. When her eyes met his, he felt a pleasant warmth inside. She was slender — taller than Amelia, but smaller in the chest and hips — and moved with the effortless grace he was used to seeing in his mother. Just a little too perfect, Jonas thought, recalling the glamour his mother told him about. He tried to ignore it.

  “Hi, Doris. I brought you a plate from the cafeteria.”

  Doris gave the girl an intense look.

  “Yes, sheep brains today,” she said, removing the cover from the plate and showing Doris the contents, before setting it down. It looked like gray scrambled eggs.

  The receptionist looked at her again.

  “You’re welcome, Doris.”

  Then, turning to Jonas, she said, “I’m Eve. I’ll be showing you around.”

  He pulled his ear buds out. “I’m Jonas.” Then, nodding toward Doris, he added, “Was that some kind of sign language you were using?”

  Her eyebrows pulled together. “You can’t hear her? When were you turned?”

  Jonas felt like the stupid kid in class. “I wasn’t. I was born a vampire.”

  “Don’t be stupid, vampires can’t… wait, you’re Alice Black’s kid, aren’t you?”

  She stared at him open-mouthed, and he thought her fangs looked a little longer than normal. She must have read his mind, because she covered her mouth with her hand and turned away. “Sorry, still learning.”

  “Learning what? And can all vampires read minds?”

  “Yes. No. I didn’t — I mean, I can’t yet, but I will, I just — I saw you staring at my teeth. We’re supposed to keep our mouths shut so humans won’t notice if we accidentally extend them.”