Black Fall Read online

CHAPTER 2

  His mother, Alice Black, eyed him with what looked like a mixture of amusement and concern. Jonas had spent the past few days getting ready to face her and, instead, she’d made the first move and put him on the defensive.

  “How long have you been sitting there?” he asked, self-consciously sitting up a little straighter and setting his book aside.

  “Just a few minutes. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “How do you know I—”

  She gave him a soft smile. “I’m your mother.”

  Jonas didn’t answer. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t matter if she’d just gotten out of bed, or just arrived home from work; she always looked impeccable. She wore a simple black dress. Her only adornments a plain, gold band on her left hand, and a small, black and gold rose pin high on her left breast. Her pale, white skin was flawless, every single one of her jet-black hairs stood perfectly in place, and she moved with the eerie, almost mechanical precision of a ballerina.

  She was beautiful… and he could tell people that without feeling weird about it. She wasn’t pretty, like Amelia, but beautiful, the way art was beautiful, like marble sculptures or crystal glass. She stopped conversations and turned heads whenever she glided into a room. Like Jonas and his father, she had eyes so black they seemed to drink in the light.

  It made Jonas feel foolish and clumsy. He bit his lower lip and looked down at his hands.

  She spoke first. “I’m sorry you and I haven’t been able to spend much time together lately. We’ve had a lot more demand, and I’ve been staying late.”

  “At a night clinic?” he asked.

  “Blood bank,” she corrected. “Lots of new faces in town.” She frowned, first looking pensive, then annoyed. “It’s not my concern anymore. But I’m able to stay a little longer than the others, so I do. Now… you have questions?”

  Where do I even start? he thought. “I wanted to ask you—”

  There was a thud, then another, followed by a loud cracking and splintering of wood as the door flew open, letting the late afternoon sun flood into the room.

  ♟

  Without thinking, Jonas moved to close the door as a pale man wearing a black suit and sunglasses stepped inside.

  Startled, Jonas said, “Hey, what are you—”

  The man in black backhanded him. It was like getting hit with a baseball bat. The blow spun him halfway around and knocked him to the floor, black spots dancing before his eyes as the man stepped toward his mother. Jonas grabbed the man’s leg and got kicked for his trouble.

  His mother blurred across the room, like his father had in the dream, and struck the stranger, full-force, across the face. How hard did that guy hit me? Jonas thought.

  The intruder staggered back a step, straightened immediately, and punched. Alice ducked under it and swung her elbow into his ribs, twice, almost faster than Jonas could follow. Amazingly, the stranger shrugged it off and brought both hands down on her shoulders while driving his knee up. She fell back, and he lunged forward, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and threw her toward the open door. She shrieked as the sunlight touched her, blurred, and ended up on the other side of the room, facing the stranger.

  I think I’m going to be sick, Jonas thought.

  “Where is it, Mrs. Black?”

  Alice’s face was red. She didn’t look scared, she looked almost apoplectic with anger. “Where is what?”

  “Your husband’s journal. Give it to me, and I walk away.”

  “You dare threaten me in my home?” She looked like she wanted to rip him to shreds with her fingernails. She moved toward the man, but stopped short of the doorway, glancing at the light.

  The stranger in black smirked and stepped through the light toward Jonas’ mother. Her eyes darted to the set of knives by the kitchen stove just as the man blurred, crossing the space between them in an instant. He kicked her into a wooden cabinet, rattling and breaking the dishes inside, and then punched her in the stomach so hard she doubled over. He shoved her back into the cabinet, snapped a fast kick at her midsection that she was able to block, and a wicked left hook that found her face, knocking her to the ground.

  “Tell me where your husband put it, Mrs. Black, and I won’t have to hurt the boy.”

  Suddenly, every trace of emotion drained from her face. The man, previously in a crouched position, began to rise, unnaturally, almost bending backward.

  “You were… supposed to be…” the man said through clenched teeth.

  There was no response; she just stood there, glaring, as the man’s body spasmed.

  Jonas, head finally clear enough he could be something other than useless, rushed forward and smashed a heavy black lamp over the guy’s head. Instead of knocking the man out, the blow only snapped him out of his daze, and he kicked back, launching Jonas across the room and over the back of the couch.

  Still gasping for breath—he’d never been hit that hard before—Jonas pulled himself up in time to see two almost comically large men step through the doorway.

  How bad can this day get? he thought.

  They were so big they almost had to duck and turn sideways to fit through the door. Both were wearing three-piece suits, and the first man had a full set of muttonchops. The second was older, smooth-shaven, and wore a bowler hat. Their eyes glowed yellow, like an animal’s eyes in a flash photo, and Jonas fought an instinctive urge to run away.

  “Mom, look out!” he shouted.

  His mother spun to face the new arrivals, but Muttonchops gently pushed her aside and launched himself at the man in black.

  There was no contest. The new arrival was over six feet tall and three feet across. He grabbed the man in black by the face, one-handed, and slammed him against the cabinet, then through the table, and several times against the floor. There was no emotion to it—he might have been wiping the furniture clean. The man in black clawed and kicked; it just didn’t do him any good.

  The man in the bowler hat closed the door, blocking out the sun. He handled the doorknob gently, with two fingers, as if he was afraid of breaking it, then turning to Jonas’ mother he said, “Are you okay, Mrs. Black?”

  “I’m fine, Phillip,” she said, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth.

  Muttonchops growled and dropped the man in black. There was blood on his hand where the man had bitten him. Phillip chuckled. “Careful, Bert. He nips!”

  Bert’s eyes gleamed yellow, and he kicked the man, folding him in half and sending him skidding into the oven door with a loud clang.

  The man rolled, flipped up, then headed straight for Jonas, who stumbled backward and tripped over the broken coffee table. At the last moment, the man jumped over him and dove through the black curtains and the window beyond. Jonas rushed over and looked out. The man in black, having survived the five-story fall, thrashed wildly, tangled in the curtains, before managing to throw them off. There was a puff of smoke, and he disappeared. Jonas blinked, seeing the afterimage of the intruder, frozen in mid-step, but the man was gone. “Aren’t you going after him?” his mother said. There was a sharpness to her tone that Jonas wasn’t used to hearing.

  “No, ma’am,” said Phillip, holding his bowler hat in his hands and protecting her from the sunlight with his body. “We’ve been ordered to stay here until nightfall.”

  “Well, it took you long enough to get here,” she said, as she assessed the damage to her home and son.

  “There were others, Mrs. Black,” said Bert, pulling Jonas away from the window.

  Jonas caught an odd scent as Bert touched him. It’s like wet dog, he thought.

  Looking out the window, Bert added, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that one anymore.”

  “We came as quickly as we could,” Phillip added, apologetically.

  ♟

  With Jonas and his mother safely settled on the couch, Bert— Muttonchops—cleaned up while Phillip made tea. The two men were different
. Phillip had an air of nobility to him. He was older, with thin lips and groomed eyebrows. Bert looked like a boxer, with a thick nose and jutting brow. But they were both big, like bodybuilders wrapped in custom-made Italian suits, and both had flat, brown eyes. Jonas thought they’d been yellow before, but it must have been a trick of the light.

  It was almost comical watching the two of them tiptoe around his mother, although Jonas couldn’t blame them. She was still so angry that Jonas felt the urge to scoot away from her and go to his room.

  Phillip carefully poured three cups and then sat on the far end of the couch, his bowler hat perched on his left knee. He sipped his tea, gripping the handle of the mug with two fingers as if it was a teacup. Jonas wasn’t crazy about hot tea but drank a little to be polite. His mother’s went cold as she got more heated.

  Night fell, sunlight gave way to street lights, nearby honking to distant sirens. Jonas was starting to feel a little tired. Bert was still cleaning, sweeping broken glass into a dustpan with a foxtail brush. The big man picked up one of the candlesticks that usually sat on the table and dropped it with a snarl.

  “It’s silver,” Alice snapped. “Jonas, go pick that up.”

  Jonas did as he was told without hesitating, giving the big man a sympathetic look, wondering if Bert had some kind of allergy. Then another thought occurred to him. How am I going to explain all this to Amelia?

  “You won’t,” his mother said. “We may be leaving tonight.”

  “Um… won’t what, Mom?”

  Phillip raised an eyebrow.

  Alice scowled. “Never mind.”

  There were three sharp knocks on the door.

  “He’s here, Mrs. Black,” Phillip said, rising from the couch.

  Jonas saw his mother’s grip tighten around something she’d picked up from the floor—the man in black’s sunglasses.

  Phillip opened the door and spoke quietly to someone Jonas couldn’t see, then said, “Come on, Bert. We’re leaving.”

  Bert dumped the broken glass into the kitchen trashcan, put the foxtail and dustpan back into the pantry, and walked to the door.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Black,” he said.

  “Sorry for the trouble,” Phillip added.

  Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, they were gone, and Marcus Fangston, his father’s old friend, walked through the door. Jonas hadn’t seen him since the funeral.

  ♟

  “Alice! It’s been too long,” Fangston said.

  “Sit down, Marcus. Explain these to me.” She held up the broken sunglasses for him to see.

  “Those are sunglasses,” he said, picking up a wooden chair from the dining area and placing it across from her before sitting down.

  Jonas frowned. The dining room chairs were solid oak and very heavy. He usually had to strain not to drag them across the floor. But Marcus had picked it up like it was made of plastic and carried it across the room one-handed.

  “They protect one’s eyes from the harmful rays of the sun,” Fangston continued, pulling his own pair off and waving them.

  “They’re Agency issue, Marcus.”

  “Jonas! So good to see you,” he said, ignoring her. “You must’ve grown six inches since I saw you last.”

  “You leave him out of this! Explain the glasses!”

  Leave me out of what? Jonas thought.

  Marcus looked at him. “The Agency, your father’s death, your—”

  “That’s enough, Marcus!” Alice said, rising from her seat, arms straight at her sides. Her hands were curled into fists, and Jonas thought she might be gearing up for another fight.

  Marcus stared at her with unblinking, gray eyes that looked like chips of slate. His skin wasn’t just pale; it was white. Like Jonas’ mother, he had an air of imperturbable neatness about him that didn’t feel quite right to Jonas.

  “The boy should know,” Fangston said.

  Jonas was getting a little tired of people talking about him like he wasn’t there.

  “That’s my choice… and Victor’s. Right now, you have a problem,” she said, brandishing the broken sunglasses.

  “What I and the Agency have is, sadly, no concern of yours, Alice. You shouldn’t have left.”

  He didn’t look that much older than Jonas’ mother, but he was treating her like he was an adult talking to a child. Jonas cringed and looked at his mom, who was leaning forward like she was about to launch herself at the man. His cheerful façade faded and he cleared his throat. They stared at each other intensely, as if they could somehow communicate without words.

  Alice crossed her arms and looked away. Marcus stood and reached into his suit, pulling out a shiny black card. He extended it to Jonas. “If you want answers, come by and—”

  “Over my dead body, Marcus,” Alice interrupted, snatching the card from his hand before Jonas could take it.

  Marcus sighed. “You can’t keep doing this, Alice. It’s been a year. Victor wouldn’t have wanted you to—”

  “Get out of my house!” she shouted, gesturing at the door.

  Fangston rubbed his eyes and walked to the door. “I’ve added people to your security detail.”

  “I want Phillip.”

  “You’ll have him, though God only knows why I still let you give me orders.”

  “I think we both know why, Marcus.”

  Fangston looked at her, as if he was hurt but couldn’t think of what to say, then sighed. “I’ll send a team to fix the place up,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

  ♟

  Alice sank back down on the couch. She didn’t flop, or slouch; if anything, there was something tentative about the way she reached for the seat before letting the weight of her body rest on it. At that moment, she seemed more fragile than she had all night.

  “Your father would never have let this happen,” she said, staring blankly.

  Jonas couldn’t believe her. He’d recovered from the shock of the evening’s events. Now he was annoyed. Any concerns he might have had about her frailty were gone, and he had a lot of questions. “Who was my father? I mean, who was he really? And what are you?” The words came out in a rush, without thinking, but they somehow seemed right.

  She hesitated. He could tell she was trying to think of a way not to answer him. She’d have the perfect explanation that would stop him short, because… because she could…

  He saw the way she was looking at him and something clicked in his head. It was that feeling of déjà vu and being watched, only stronger. “You’re reading my mind, aren’t you? You were both doing it earlier, and you’re doing it now. I was scared to ask you about Dad, about everything that’s happened, and you knew it, and you never said a word.”

  A flicker of surprise flashed across his mother’s eyes, then a look of defensiveness.

  “I was hoping we’d have a little longer before—”

  “You and Fangston… what are you?” he said, interrupting. He backed the words up with a thought. There is nothing you can say that will make me let go of this. I want answers.

  She cocked her head to the side and unexpectedly smiled, the way she did when she looked at pictures of his father. She almost looked relieved.

  “We’re vampires,” she said.