White Winter (The Black Year Series Book 2) (27 page)

Jonas winced as pain spread across the front of his skull, digging in like roots, but he kept running down the trench line. His barrier was being overrun. The servos of his powered armor whirred with each augmented step. He could see Phillip sprinting parallel to him on the berm above.

A werewolf rounded the corner of the trench, coming the other way. Jonas snapped his rifle up and fired, 15 rounds counting down in his helmet display. The werewolf collapsed, and Jonas went to one knee as his whole head throbbed. Above, Phillip tore out a guardian’s throat, then used his victim’s rifle to bash in a second guardian’s visor. It went about as well for him as it had for Jonas. He groaned and toppled into the trench.

For a moment, all Jonas could do was stare at the blood-spattered dirt. He struggled to his feet, the sounds of howling and distant gunfire hollow in his ears. He could hear Phillip’s breath like bellows pumping. He stumbled toward the sound.

“Let’s call a truce, Jonas,” Phillip said, looking up at him with one yellow eye. His fur was matted with the guardians’ blood. “There’s enough room for both of us here.”

“Why should I give you anything? No one is stronger than me in my dreams.”

Two more guardians rounded the corner.

“You can’t beat me, kid. I
am
you.”

One guardian ripped his helmet and breastplate off, then transformed. The other guardian managed to get two shots off before the beast was on him, tearing and biting.

Phillip grabbed the back of Jonas’ ankle and pulled him off his feet. The world rotated.

♘

Jonas fell through the floor and stood up in the dark.
It wasn’t so much the absence of light as the absence of anything, except for the stars, linked with lines like constellations, arranged in a loose sphere around him. “You’re not me,” Jonas said, starting to get angry. “You’re the partial memories of a dead man.” He focused on the part of the sky that felt different. Alien. “You know nothing of my life or my hopes. You don’t know the first thing about being a vampire.”

“I’ll learn,” Phillip said, climbing up out of the ground behind him.

“No, you won’t.” Jonas grabbed the offending star clusters with his mind and ripped.

♘

Jonas pushed his way into his mother’s office without knocking and almost fell over sideways.

“Hold on a second, Chief,” Alice said. She took off her earpiece. “Jonas?”

He looked around the office, heart racing. “Is this real? I need help.” He pitched forward.

She shifted to him and caught him.

“He’s still in there. I couldn’t dig all of it out,” he said. Tears streaked uncontrollably down his cheeks, but he felt like laughing.

“I know, I know,” Alice said. “It’s okay.” She touched his face.

♘

It was funny seeing the old neighborhood again, after a few trips overseas. Smaller, somehow, and safer than it had seemed growing up. He was about to knock on his parents’ door when he smelled her walking toward him.
Leticia Gregor. Pureblood, flawless genes, hell on wheels, and sexy as a fox.

“What the hell are you looking at, soldier boy?” she said. Her two lackeys frowned at Phillip, trying to make themselves look bigger.

He grinned, baring his teeth.

♘

Jonas’ whole body shuddered. He tried to jerk away, but Alice gripped his head like a vise.

♘

The dune buggy raced across the desert floor. Phillip held onto the turret-mounted machine gun, the wind in his face, but they were far from enemy lines. They were headed home. His buddy, Toby, in the driver’s seat, ramped off a dune, and for a moment they were airborne, weightless, the smelt of salt, sagebrush, gun oil, and gas in the air. God, it was good to be alive!

♘

Jonas whimpered.

“Just a little bit longer,” Alice said.

♘

The vampire stood in the shadows of the old warehouse. He wore a black duster with a large courier bag slung across his body. He would have looked Persian, with a sharp, straight nose, dark eyes, and full eyebrows, if not for the pallor of his skin.

“Come here, child,” Alam-Baal said.

“Get lost, fang,” Phillip answered. He was only six, but he’d heard enough stories about Black Alice to know he should stay away from vampires.

Alam-Baal chuckled. “Don’t be foolish, child. I’m going to give you a very great gift. A destiny.”

Phillip couldn’t seem to stop himself. He dropped the ball he’d chased into the building and stepped out of the light.

♘

“It’s done,” Alice said. “But it will grow back.”

Jonas gasped sitting with his back against the wall. His vertigo was so bad he felt sick. “How do I kill him?”

“There is no ‘him,’ Jonas. You absorbed someone else’s thoughts, and they controlled you. Every child does, whether the thoughts are their parents, their teachers, or their friends.”

“Then how… how do I stop it?”

“You study. You learn the information from your own sources and reach your own conclusions. It’s why I didn’t let Victor raise you Catholic, even though he showed you his faith in other ways. And it’s why we hid your heritage from you. I’ve done everything I can for you.”

Jonas nodded. As soon as the room stopped spinning, he’d get some blood and make his way to the library.

“How do you feel?” Alice asked.

“Like I’ll never trust my mind again.”

She hugged him and rested her cheek on the top of his head. “That’s a lesson every vampire has to learn, sooner or later.”

♘

“You wanted to see me, Jonas?” Kieran asked.

Jonas looked up from the table. It was covered with history books, a primer on werewolf psychology, and empty blood packs. He had a copy of the codex of werewolf laws open in front of him. “Yeah, Kieran. Thanks for coming. I need you to tell me everything you know about your family.”

CHAPTER 27

Jonas found the priest sitting alone in the cafeteria. He grabbed a blood pack from the fridge and walked over. “Mind if I join you, father?”

“Not at all, Jonas. Take a seat. You look well.”

Jonas smiled. “Yeah. You can’t even tell I caught fire four days ago.” He sat down and pulled the tab on the pack. “I can’t stay long.”

“Are you going on a mission?”

Jonas shook his head. “Just training. First time since my accident. It’ll be okay, though.”

“I’m sure it will,” the priest said, taking a bite of Salisbury steak. The smell of meat made Jonas a little queasy after what happened with Phillip and how far along his vampirism had gotten.
Hopefully it’ll get better as I get closer to human,
he thought.

“I was doing some research,” Jonas said.

“Oh?”

“I pulled a Bible off the shelf.”

The priest nodded and set his silverware down. “You have a question?”

“I read some of the stuff about guys who had prophecies and dreams given to them. Noah had his world destroyed by a flood, Jonah was eaten by a fish and puked up on a beach, Daniel was thrown into a lion’s den, and Samson was blinded and crushed. I mean, it pretty much seems like their lives sucked from the moment God decided they were special, but I figured I must be missing something.”

“I like to believe it was the best way out of a bad situation,” the priest said, smiling.

“What do you mean?”

The priest shrugged. “Take Daniel for example. He was taken captive, raised as a hostage in a foreign court, his friends were burned, and he was fed to lions - unsuccessfully - and generally plotted against by jealous courtiers for most of his life. He was also given positions of great power in both the Babylonian and Persian empires. His legacy was so enduring, magi came looking for a child in Bethlehem over five hundred years later, based on his teachings.”

“But he spent his whole life looking over his shoulder,” Jonas said.

“Yes,” the priest said, eyes flicking to the empty seat next to Jonas. He scooped up a forkful of mashed potatoes and peas and shoved it into his mouth.

Jonas took a sip of blood.

♘

Damien was already in the training room when Jonas arrived.

“Am I late, sir?”

“No, Jonas. I came early,” he said as he finished drawing a chalk circle the size of a dinner plate on the floor. There were similar circles all over the walls, floors, and ceilings. “I needed to figure out how to teach this to you. This is usually something people learn after a few decades, but your mother thought you might be able to do it.”

She did?
Jonas thought.

Damien dusted his hands off. “Good. What do you know about shifting?”

Jonas grinned. “A vampire exerts a uniform force on the volume of blood in their body, translating them out of harm’s way. While for most vampires shifting happens as an unconscious survival reflex, a trained enforcer can shift at will.”

Damien raised an eyebrow at him. “Been reading, have you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, this will be easy for you then. All you have to do is use less force than usual over a longer duration to counter your weight. You’ll burn less blood in the process. It should look like this.”

Damien blurred onto the left wall and ran across two circles as if the wall was the floor. Then he shifted to the right wall, the floor, the ceiling, until he’d touched every chalk circle with his foot, hand, or knee, and blurred back to his starting point.

Jonas closed his mouth.

“The doctor said not to push it until he can get more measurements,” Damien said, “so all I want you to do for starters is put your feet up on the wall, then come back down.”

Jonas looked at the nearest mark on the wall.
Pffff… Okay,
he said, feeling his senses sharpen.
She said I can do this, so I can do this.

Damien winced. “Remember, try to use less force than you usually would, like a thread is gently pulling you toward the wall.”

“Yeah. No problem,” Jonas said.

He slammed into the wall shoulder and head first, then dropped to the ground.

“Maybe start closer to the wall,” Damien said.

♘

Jonas and Kieran stepped under the awning and pushed their way through the heavy, brass-trimmed, revolving glass door into the lobby of The Pierre. They walked up to the dark wooden reception desk, shoes clicking on the black and white marble floor. Both attendants looked up. The one on the right looked at Jonas and said, “Good morning, sir. Can I help you?”

Jonas was surprised by the man’s tone. This was one of the most expensive hotels in New York. He’d never been in here before today. He’d expected the staff to be stiff and formal, but this guy was totally friendly. “I’m here for the Meat Packers’ Association meeting?”

“Of course. If you take the elevators to the fourth floor, it’s the Madison boardroom. They’ve already started.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

He and Kieran waited while a family of four got off the elevator then climbed in. Most of them were wearing jeans.

“Did you notice how laid back everyone seems here?” Jonas said.

“Is that unusual?” Kieran asked.

“Yeah,” Jonas answered. “We had to leave the apartment, once - mold in the walls - so my parents checked into the Waldorf Astoria for a couple days. They were pretty stiff. Treated us like royalty, but you weren’t allowed to wear t-shirts or jeans in most of the hotel. It wasn’t even that nice. My mom got annoyed and said the place was a disgrace compared to what it had been in the late 40s. I thought she was joking at the time.

“Here, it’s like if you can afford the room rates, no one cares what you look like; they just want to make you feel at home.”

“I think I’d prefer this,” Kieran said.

“Yeah, me too.”

The elevator stopped. They followed the signs across oceans of deep, navy blue carpeting, following the signs to the room. A werewolf in an expensive suit opened the door and said, “Welcome, clan leader, sir. Your clansman will have to wait here.”

Kieran looked at Jonas and raised an eyebrow.

Jonas nodded, then walked in.

The conference room was beautiful. Fourteen cream-colored chairs big enough to hold werewolves stood around a wooden banquet table. The walls on the left and right were tan with eggshell trim. The windows set in the right wall were glazed - Jonas figured they were on the city side of the building - but they allowed natural light into the room. There was a big flat screen TV on the back wall; the table was stained mahogany.

“Good morning, Mr. Black,” Councilor Dorner said, looking up, his tone and demeanor stiff.

Jonas reminded himself they were supposed to have parted on bad terms. “Arbiter.”

“Please take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair at the far end of the table. The councilors sat across from each other, six to a side.