White Winter (The Black Year Series Book 2) (6 page)

Jonas got the impression that something new and interesting was supposed to be him. “Movie,” Jonas said.

“What?” Damien said.

“It’s a movie, or a motion picture. Plays aren’t as popular anymore.”

“Really? I never thought movies would catch on. What else?”

“You said you were visiting a friend. Is that the puppeteer?”

“I don’t think anyone else is old enough.”

Jonas waited for him to say more.

Damien smiled, and said, “Your impressions of the town?”

“Utopia. I can’t see through the glamour, and it bothers me.”

Damien nodded. “I can’t either. He’s much stronger than I remember him being; stronger than he should be.”

♘

They parked the hearse by the town hall and went inside, the polished steel handrail cool under Jonas’ hand as they descended into the basement. The puppeteer was waiting for them in a room paneled in oak and cream wallpaper, lit by oil lanterns, and filled as much by the heavy, comfortable looking furniture as by the puppeteer’s grand gestures and personality. Paintings hung from the walls, their rich, dark palettes and depictions of mythical scenes reminding Jonas of the Renaissance paintings he’d been shown in Art History.

“Damien! Welcome, have a seat. Can I get you someone to drink?” the puppeteer said, waving to a trio of chairs, ice clinking in his glass. Jonas and Kieran just stared. He was wearing a silk burgundy dressing gown over a tuxedo shirt and pants, collar and bow tie undone, as if he’d just hosted a society ball and retired to his study for a cigar and some brandy.

“Drop the glamour, Arthur, we’re here on business.”

Arthur sighed, waved his hand, and the extravagant room vanished, replaced by what Jonas expected to find in a town hall. Filing cabinets had been pushed aside, clearing a small space where Arthur sat in an ornate, high-backed chair. Arthur rested his chin on his hand, glaring at Damien. “Must you always be so ugly about things? You never—”

“All of it, Arthur,” Damien said gently.

Arthur raised his head, eyes darting to Jonas and Kieran, then he sighed. He seemed to shrink into the chair in slow motion, face aging and thinning, his hair unkempt, filmy pupils staring straight ahead and dried bloodstains on his lips and chin. “Is this… what you wanted to see?” he rasped.

Damien didn’t move, he just stood with his hands in his pockets. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard again.”

Arthur chuckled. It was a dry, dusty sound, like he was choking. “End of a cycle. Can’t keep them all inside the dream. Always thirsty.” The sentences came out in gasps, as if he hadn’t used his own voice in years.

Jonas turned at the sound of footsteps on the metal staircase. A boy walked past them, saying “Excuse me” as he pushed back the hood of his jacket and pulled off his left glove. He tugged his sleeve back and pushed his wrist into Arthur’s mouth; the puppeteer swallowed three or four times while the boy stood, his attention fixed dreamily on something that wasn’t there, then Arthur gently pushed his arm away.

“Thank you,” Arthur said to him.

He blushed, looking at the four of them, and then hurried back up the stairs, pulling the sleeve over the neat, bloodless holes in his arm.

“He looked young,” Jonas said.

“Fifteen to fifty-five, per Agency regulations.” Damien said. “The young ones recover faster.”

Arthur nodded at Jonas. “You look young yourself, for a soldier. Too young?” he asked, straining to sit up and look at Damien.

“Black Alice’s son, born a vampire.”

“Ah. Jonas,” Arthur rasped.

Jonas felt a chill run down his back that the puppeteer, willingly exiled to the remote mining town, knew his name.

“I can’t see through the glamour, Arthur. How are you doing it?”

Arthur patted the arm of his chair. When Jonas focused on it, he saw traceries of light extending from the carved, dark wood, like the ones around his pendant and the ward he’d found, under the Agency. They twisted around the chair and Arthur like vines, sinking into the ground and reaching for the ceiling, plunging in and out of the puppeteer’s body. He could sense the chair was anchored to some greater spell beneath the town. “It’s magic,” Jonas said.

“You can see it?” Damien said.

“You can’t?” Jonas said. He looked at Kieran, but the werewolf shook his head.

“Just looks like a fancy chair to me,” Kieran said.

“A gift… from the Agency,” Arthur said.

Damien frowned. “You look like hell, Arthur. I think it’s time to pull you in. You need rest.”

Arthur shook his head. “One more year, Damien. Give me one more year to make sure they won’t fail. I’ll come back on my own, I promise.”

“And go right back out to another failing town?” Damien said.

Arthur shrugged, a sly, tired smile on his face.

“I’ll think about it,” Damien said. He turned to Jonas and Kieran and said, “Let’s go; we’ve strained him enough.” He paused, then added, “Jonas?”

Jonas jumped. “Sorry, I was just looking at the chair.”

Arthur stroked the wooden armrest affectionately, then croaked, “Good meeting you, Jonas Black. Make us proud.”

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, apparently exhausted by the exchange. Green light flowed from Arthur’s chest along the golden lines, feeding into the chair and the ground beneath.

♘

Damien sat cross-legged next to his coffin as they made the drive back to the city,

“You never told us how you met Arthur,” Jonas said.

“Storytime, is it?” Damien said.

Jonas shrugged.

“He sired me, I ran away, and he followed. We were enforcers together, during America’s push west; didn’t like each other at first, but there’s a lot to be said for shared hardship,” he said.

Jonas and Kieran looked at each other and grinned. The first time they’d met, Kieran had knocked him unconscious. Now, the only person he trusted more was Eve.

“We saw a lot of strange things, some wonderful and others sickening. Arthur started coming apart in the 1890s. The natives were open to supernaturals, both vampires and werewolves. They called us
Chenoo
,
Nagual
, Skinwalkers… they weren’t always friendly but at least we didn’t have to hide. Wounded Knee broke Arthur’s heart.

“I noticed spillover. That’s when a puppeteer starts projecting his unconscious thoughts. We were on a mission, and I thought we were being tailed. He’d been reading Twain’s translation of Joan of Arc the night before; the woman following us thought we were English spies.

“He enrolled in the peacekeeper program, and I went into storage, though I’ve been out about half the time since then.”

“Peacekeeper program?” Kieran asked.

Damien nodded. “The Agency sent peacekeepers to towns where ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions were boiling over. They shifted to economics in 1930, but did too good a job of it. If they hadn’t, Germany wouldn’t have been able to start World War II. Then again, without peacekeepers, the Allies wouldn’t have been able to stop them.”

“But what’s in it for him?” Jonas said, thinking of Arthur’s gaunt, exhausted body.

He saw Damien’s shrug out of the corner of his eye. “He doesn’t think like that.”

Jonas sat back in his chair. He couldn’t imagine spending a century holding strangers’ lives together, unseen and unnamed, in a constant state of starvation.

He stared ahead at the white, dashed line disappearing under the car, pacing the miles. He closed his eyes.

There was something wrong. Something wrong with the town. It might have been Sam’s paranoia leaking into his thoughts, or his own worries over the vision the priest had shown him, but he could feel it.

“You need to think about it like a werewolf, Jonas,” Phillip said, his yellow eyes gleaming under the brim of his bowler hat.

“How do I do that?” Jonas said.

“It’s all about the food supply,” Phillip answered.

Jonas woke, his body thrown against the seat belt as Kieran slammed on the brakes.

CHAPTER 6

“Kieran, what’s wrong?” Jonas asked.
Did I spillover the dream about his dad?

“I see it,” Damien said, tapping Kieran’s shoulder. “Turn around; let’s take a look.”

Kieran did a three-point turn and pulled up behind the deputy’s car. Its headlights were on, motor idling, horn blaring, broken glass like scattered diamonds on the road. They found Davison slumped against the steering wheel, ears bleeding, a shotgun and two shell casings down by the pedals, the top of his head blown off.

“Looks like he missed with the first shot,” Damien said.

Jonas and Kieran stared at the dead man who’d welcomed them to Temperance earlier that day.

“Why—” Jonas stopped himself.
I’m missing something.
He’d felt something was off from the moment they’d met the deputy. They were back where he’d pulled them over, an hour from Temperance and outside Arthur’s influence. “He came here because he couldn’t do it in Temperance. We probably interrupted him the first time.”

Damien raised an eyebrow, but let him think.

It’s all about the food supply
. Jonas fished the slender, silver pendant from around his neck and gripped it.

Madoc, I need to talk to you.
The specter had been dormant inside his phylactery since the fight with the Order, and only roused himself when Jonas called him.

What is it, Jonas?
Madoc said.

What does green magic mean?

There was a long pause.
You can see magic?

Yes. I saw it before, when Doris sucked the life out of Eugene. Is that what it is, life energy?

The specter didn’t answer.

Madoc?

Yes! It was probably life energy.

It felt like the specter was trying to shrink away from him inside the pendant. Jonas stuffed it back under his shirt.

“How much blood does Arthur need to do what he does?” Jonas asked Damien.

“A couple pints a day.”

Jonas crossed his arms. “Okay, but he’s using more than that, because he’s struggling and the chair is using his life to boost the signal. How many eligible feeders?”

“About half the population,” Damien said. “What are you-”

“So that’s—”

“Fifty meals a day,” Kieran said automatically. Jonas and Damien stared at him. “Sorry, it’s a werewolf thing; it’s all about the food supply. 3161 people, half of them eligible, and thirty days a month gives fifty.”

Damien shook his head. “They can only give the tithe every other month. One pint each.”

“So he could drink a pint an hour and people would still be fine,” Kieran said.

Why is this important?
Jonas squeezed his eyes shut. There was something he should have noticed, something his mind was screaming at him to see.

“How long does it take for the scars to fade?” Jonas said.

“The what?”

“The puncture holes, from when we feed,” Jonas said.

“A week or two,” Damien said.

Kieran took off for the car, and Jonas followed. “We have to go back!” Jonas said.

“Why?” Damien asked, climbing into the back.

“Because Lucy had scars on both wrists.”

CHAPTER 7

The streets were barricaded. Eight blocks from the town hall, Kieran parked in the middle of the road and they continued on foot.

The people of Temperance attacked in human waves, linking arms as they charged. Kieran transformed, shredding his clothes, and knocked holes in their lines for Jonas and Damien to run through. It was awesome and a little funny at first; Kieran was like a furry, white bowling ball trying to knock pins down without hurting them. But they kept getting back up, and more kept coming, and Kieran started to get tired.

“It feels like we’re in a zombie movie!” Jonas shouted to Damien.

“A what?”

“Never mind!” Jonas said. He felt overheated. They’d both ditched their coats as they ran, but every turn seemed to lead them into more of the townsfolk. He grabbed his pendant and thought,
We could really use a hand, here, Madoc.

Turn left.

“
Kieran!”

The winter wolf shook three people off his arms and back, then followed Jonas and Damien between the buildings.

With Madoc’s help, they managed to avoid the larger groups and make it to the town hall.

“You’d better wait here, Kieran,” Damien said.

“Not a chance,” Kieran growled, panting and baring his teeth.

“It’ll be worse when Arthur has line of sight. You could end up attacking us,” Damien said. He waved behind them, and added, “Someone has to stop them from getting in.”

Jonas and Kieran looked where Damien pointed. Hundreds of people were converging on them. Kieran hesitated, looking at Jonas.