White Winter (The Black Year Series Book 2) (32 page)

Only his footprints marked the snow on the roof. There were cigarette butts scattered around the door to the stairs, but whoever else came up here minded the cold weather a lot more than Jonas did. Looking west, he could see the sun setting behind the Met Life building, to the left of the taller GE spire.

“Are you okay, Jonas?” Doris said, sitting on the wall a few feet away. She was dressed in sensible white and light blue outdoor clothes and mittens. Her knit cap had a pom-pom on it, and she was kicking her feet like a kid.

Jonas gave his own legs a few experimental swings. It was nice, not caring if anyone was watching. “I’m okay,” he said.

“That’s good.”

There was still only one set of tracks in the snow. He wondered if she flew, or teleported around, or both. “What’s your name today?” he asked.

Doris giggled. “It’s Izzy! That’s short for Izabella,” she said.

Jonas nodded solemnly. “It’s nice to meet you, Izzy. Lena isn’t around?”

Izzy pouted. “No. She got bored. Besides, it was my turn.” She sighed. “I wanted to go see Aunt Aliz, but Lena said I wasn’t allowed to.”

She always comes back,
his mother had said. He wondered how many times Izzy had run away. “How many other people are in there with you, Izzy?”

“Dozens,” she said. “We’re like a family! But no boys.”

“No boys,” Jonas agreed. “What about Doris?”

“You mean Dora. This is her body, but Lena doesn’t like her very much.”

He was starting to understand what was going on. “Was Dora a vampire, Izzy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Izzy said, wringing her hands, and Jonas suddenly remembered how dangerous she was.

He stopped kicking his legs. “Why did you come here, Izzy?”

She shrugged. “I got lonely. Lena said I couldn’t come see Aliz, but I can come see you, right?”

“I think Lena wants to hurt me, Izzy. She wants to hurt Aliz.”

Izzy frowned. “That’s silly,” she said. “Lena won’t hurt you until she’s killed Victor. Until then, we can be friends!”

“I suppose that makes about as much sense as anything else, these days.”

Izzy nodded. She traced her gloved finger on the wall, and little roses made of ice bloomed on the concrete. He could see her drawing the heat out of the ambient air and weaving golden lines to shape them.

“Those are very pretty,” he said.

She looked up, startled, and blushed, brushing the roses off the top of the wall with her hand.

Jonas looked back at the setting sun.

“If you ever need me, Jonas, you just have to call, okay?” Izzy said.

Jonas chuckled. “I could have used your help last week,” he said. “We were-” He looked over and saw he was alone on the wall again. She was gone.

♘

The brick shattered when it hit the riot shield, knocking the police officer back a step before the row behind steadied him.

“Jonas! Try to spot who’s throwing those!” Frank said.

“I’m on it!” Jonas reached for his pendant.
Madoc?

One of the werewolves in the crowd of over a hundred glowed red.

“Frank!” Jonas said, pointing.

“Okay, I’ve got him.” Frank spoke into his walkie-talkie.

The police line moved forward two steps. The mob pushed back, shouting and kicking at their shields. As the highlighted werewolf kicked at a cop’s shield, the cop gave way instead of pushing back. Three cops grabbed the werewolf and dragged him in, knocking him to the ground as the shield line closed behind them.

“Nice work, kid!” Frank said.

Humph,
Madoc said.

You did a great job, Madoc. We couldn’t do it without you,
Jonas thought, giving Frank a thumbs up. The specter didn’t answer, but Jonas knew he’d be pleased.

The police line had moved two buildings past the butcher shop with the broken front window. Medics had evacuated injured customers; the dead store owner and one bystander were still in the looted store.

Two black vans pulled up to the roadblock. After a few seconds, the cops waved them through.

“Are those ours?” Frank said.

“No!” Jonas answered.

The vans stopped just short of the police line, and a man in gray army fatigues climbed out of the passenger seat of the lead vehicle. It was Edwards.

“I’ll be damned,” Frank said. “Kid! Go see what he wants!”

Jonas nodded and jogged toward his former history teacher.

Edwards’ eyes narrowed when he saw Jonas. “Jonas! I should have known you’d be in the middle of this.”

Ouch,
Jonas thought. “Good to see you too, Mr. Edwards.”

“It’s Lieutenant Colonel Edwards, but you can just call me colonel.”

“Yeah, well, it’s Mr. Black if you want to play that game.”

Edwards snorted. “What happened here?”

“Butcher was only getting two deliveries a week, so he raised his prices. He got into a fight with a customer over it and got killed.”

“Typical. Why hasn’t the Agency forced them to leave the city?”

Jonas crossed his arms. “The killer was
human
, Dave. He
shot
the owner.”

Edwards nodded toward the mob. “Well, they aren’t. What happened?”

“The police showed up. Customers - humans
and
werewolves - were looting the store. Cop tried to stop a werewolf, got hit pretty hard, and his partner shot the werewolf several times.”

“I assume the werewolf is fine?”

“He is, but he got angry and hurt the second cop pretty badly; it’s the full moon this weekend. At first, they were just standing around, but more cops and werewolves showed up, and here we are.”

Edwards looked to the right as the mob surged forward and the police line visibly flexed. A bicycle sailed over the crowd and landed on the cops. “Why doesn’t the Agency have more people here?”

“It’s daylight. If the sun wasn’t up, I’d have a puppeteer here and the riot would be over already.”

A werewolf tried to pull the shield from a cop’s hands. The second line of officers sprayed her with mace. She fell to the ground. The line opened, and the cops dragged her back.

“So you can’t handle this.”

“That’s not what I said!” Jonas protested.

The mob surged, forcing the riot line back.

Edwards brought his wrist to his mouth and said, “Sergeant, deploy both teams.”

“What are you doing?” Jonas asked.

“They’re only pushing us because they think we can’t push back,” Edwards said, walking toward the NYPD officer in charge.

The back doors of the two vans opened and soldiers spilled out. There were 18 of them in all.

“What the hell are those?” Frank said, coming up behind Jonas.

They were wearing heavy armor that made them look like robots, except he could see their faces behind the narrow, clear visors of their motorcycle helmets. Gray, digital armor plates covered their chests, shoulders, forearms, hands, and their shins. Grey metal struts ran along the outside of their legs, strapped to their hips, and connected to a power pack on their backs. They formed in a column-of-twos behind the police line; half of them carried heavy, metal shields. The last four carried shotguns.

Edwards said something, gesturing toward his men; a cop in the center of the riot line nodded. The line of cops parted in the middle, and the armored troopers charged forward. The sheer momentum of it made Jonas hold his breath. Each soldier had to weigh 300 pounds with all that gear on.

They slammed into the mob, pushing them back, knocking them to the ground. The nine with the shields formed a line. Five more troopers grabbed anyone who came close, laying into them with armored gauntlets before shoving them back toward the cops. A werewolf tried to come at them over a parked car; a trooper with a shotgun shot him at close range, and the werewolf fell to the ground screaming.

“Buckshot and silver powder,” Frank said. “Non-lethal, most of the time.”

“You’ve used it?” Jonas asked.

“I taught him the recipe,” Frank answered.

The troopers advanced two steps, letting the police handle the wounded. The mob had retreated a car length. No one seemed to know how to handle the new troops.

There was an electronic squeal, then Edwards’ voice sounded on a loud speaker. “We know what you are, and are equipped to deal with it. You have 30 seconds to disperse. This will be your first and only warning.”

“I’ll be damned,” Frank said.

The crowd wavered. A werewolf in the back turned around and walked away. Then two more did.

Crack!

One of the troopers pitched backward. The crowd panicked, some running away and some charging the troopers.

“Oh, hell,” Frank said.

The troopers fired their shotguns into the crowd. The shield bearers unsnapped silver batons and laid into the people pushing against them. Some of the werewolves transformed and flipped a car, shoving it toward the troopers. The troopers stopped it and surged around it.
Psssshhhhh!
Thick, gray smoke filled the street, and werewolves fell, scratching at their throats. Everywhere Jonas looked was more chaos.

I’ve got her!
Madoc said.

“You’ve got who?” Jonas said. Frank looked at him.

I’ve got the woman who shot at the troopers. It’s Heather Leigh!

Jonas saw her in the crowd. She smirked, tossed the rifle under a nearby car, then transformed. He’d recognize the black-furred werewolf anywhere.

He ran forward.

“Jonas!” Frank yelled.

He stepped up on the hood of a car and shifted at a 45-degree angle into the air. Heather was running, moving at 25 miles per hour as she vaulted cars and shoved other werewolves out of her way. Jonas was continuously shifting to keep up. She’d started all this, killed members of the Agency, killed civilians…
She is not getting away!

He was moving like a rocket and rapidly overheating. He shoved the heat out of his shoulder blades, just like in training, and angled down. The air behind him burst into flames. The wind whipped his hair and clothes. He pictured the center of her back as “down” and used all his willpower to plummet toward it.

He hit feet first and knocked her flat. She skidded; he rode her like a shaggy skateboard until she started rolling on her side and they both tumbled. He rolled and got back up facing her the way Damien had taught him. Her head flopped around, and her leg twitched. She had the worst case of road rash Jonas had ever seen.

Jonas grabbed the back of her furry neck. She was warded. He looked her over and found the lines of magic, tugged at them, and the two wards exploded like firecrackers, taking chunks out of her shoulder and hip. She screamed. “Let’s see what you have on your mind,” Jonas said.

♘

Heather drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. The squad car’s red and white lights flashed in her eyes. Her cell phone was on the seat beside her with the number already dialed.

The Agency van pulled up and soldiers spilled out of it, heading for the store.

She ground her teeth. She hated this plan - the indirectness of it. She hated that she might end up killing her own people. When she’d been a girl in England, she’d always thought the revolution would be werewolves, arm in arm, putting their collective boots to humanity’s throat. It turned out revolutions needed money, training, and equipment, and that meant working with fangs, and fangs were crazy.

Still, this was their one shot at freeing Fangston. They’d already lost three moles in the Agency that she knew of. If they waited much longer, Black Alice would find all of them.

The vampire leading the soldiers stopped in the doorway and looked right at her. He nodded. She hit send.

♘

Jonas gasped. Werewolves were running by all around him. Some climbed onto rooftops. Other’s helped wounded werewolves walk. They all ignored him.

He dug into his pocket, pulled out his cellphone, and speed dialed the Agency.

“This is Chalice Medical. All our operators are online with other-”

Jonas dialed his pin code.

“Yes, Mr. Black?”

“Get me Chief Grady.”

The line clicked, then Chief Grady said, “Yes, sir?”

“Micah’s a traitor!”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Mr. Sorensen, from Chicago! You need to lock him down right now!”

There was an uncomfortable pause, then Grady said, “I’m sorry, sir. He came out of the vat 30 minutes ago. He’s gone, and he took the former director with him.”

CHAPTER 31

“What happened?” Jonas asked, walking into the ops center.

Chief Grady said, “They’re both powerful borers. They climbed into coffins and made two of our werewolves load them into a stolen ambulance. There wasn’t much anyone could do to stop them, sir.” He grinned.