The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (37 page)

Dracon was deadly.

Justice was learning he could be
equally so.

He had himself recently become a
worthy opponent. He took no pride in the thought. He honed his
skills for one reason only—to defend the People—to defeat the
enemy.

His strength and ability to fight
relentlessly and with precision meant only one thing for
him.

Victory.

And victory meant life for the
People.

He would be successful. He would
not accept defeat—not for
any
reason
. Defeat meant death for everyone he
loved. Defeat meant a monster ruled the Mother Earth he
loved.

He would never accept that—not
while he lived to stop it.

He fought with a Samurai-style
sword he’d had specially made for this occasion, designed
especially to kill a certain type of vampires. They all had some
sort of sword, even the humans. They had all been honing their
skills with the sword for months now.

Justice had been training with one
for years—but none of them had been training for as many years as
Constantine—not even Dracon. None of them were that old.

He would make a merciless
opponent.

Justice’s thoughts returned to Jes,
and he made a right turn at the next block. He felt a strong need
to see her. It didn’t feel dangerous—but it did fill strong—almost
urgent. And he didn’t stop until he had barged into their
room.

The sisters were sitting in a
circle chanting when the door was flung open. They had been
following him, so they knew he was about to enter. They had been
calling him and blocking the one who was following him. They had
tried to enter his thoughts, but for once they had been unable to
do so.

Constantine was getting better at
interfering with their communications.

This time he had been completely
successful at stopping them from reading Justice’s thoughts at all.
But Constantine had not completely stopped them from getting
through to him—if only by the feeling that he needed to see them at
once.

Still, this made things more
dangerous.

Now they knew another reason for
Constantine’s delay in attacking the city.

He was looking for ways to keep
them from coming to the rescue of the humans. And he was doing so
by interfering with every trick he had witnessed them using
before.

He would not be fooled by the same
things twice.

Justice stayed with the sisters
until the dawn.

Then Dara went with Dracon to
sleep, and Mira went with Micah, leaving Justice and Jes
alone.

Jes’s sisters hadn’t been gone for
more than a few seconds when she turned to him with some
urgency.

“
Justice, where are your
sisters?”

He frowned at the alarm he heard in
her voice. “They are at one of the townhouses a few blocks from
here, why?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.
These feelings I’m having about certain things are getting
stronger. And I cannot shake the feeling that they may be in
danger.”

“
You think he’s targeting my
sisters.”

She looked straight into his eyes
and said, “I think the whole reason for his delay is to get to your
sisters, and thereby—to get to you.”

He shook his head as if he could
ward off the seriousness of what she had just said, and then he
took her hand and went to find Dracon.

Opening the door to Justice’s
pounding, Dracon fairly snarled. Justice thrust Jes forward, “Tell
him what you just told me,” he commanded.

Dracon frowned at the intensity in
Justice’s tone. Justice knew it wasn’t like himself to show
emotion. And he knew he was doing so now—he was full of
panic.

But his sisters were his world—his
sisters and Jes and a few of his friends—like Dracon—were his life.
He would not let anything happen to any one of them.

Dracon listened to Jes with rapt
attention. It wasn’t long before their voices drew Dara from the
inner room—and when she heard what Jes was saying she pulled them
inside where it was less likely they’d be overheard, with Dracon’s
usual stern reminder: “The walls have ears.”

Dracon looked at her and nodded,
frowning.

They instructed Jes to stay and
sleep in the room with her sister. Dracon would sleep in the next
room. Justice was going to warn his sisters.

Jes was happy to do anything with
her sister—except sleep. And she particularly didn’t relish the
idea of Dracon being so close by while she slept.

She trusted them with her life;
that wasn’t the issue.

There was just something unsettling
about sleeping in the vicinity of vampires.

Dara grinned when she caught the
questioning light in Jes’s eyes. “I guess you’ll just have to wait
and see if you wake up a vampire by morning,” she
teased.

Jes laughed—but she didn’t think it
was particularly funny. However, she had nothing else to do except
sleep, and she knew she’d need her strength that night.

So, giving herself a stern lecture
about trust—she laid down to sleep.

Justice headed straight for his
sisters. He found two of them at the townhouse, looking at him with
some alarm when he came crashing into the house much the same way
he had crashed into the Sisters of Three’s ritual room.

They assured him that they were all
right, and that they had just seen Mia before they went to sleep.
They told him she was sleeping in, that they would know if
something was up, and that he needed to calm down.

Justice looked from one to the
other, and then he told them about his senses being blocked from
hearing Jes.

They promptly went racing up the
stairs to check on Mia.

She sat up in her bed, alarmed by
them barging into her room. They left her alone to dress, and she
soon joined them in the kitchen, where Justice filled them
in.

When he was done, Mia was frowning
at him. She bit her lip. “I haven’t seen you so upset in a long
time, brother.”

He didn’t deny it.

“
Okay,” she said, “then we’ll have
to lay in some extra security measures.”

He was relieved to hear it and told
her so.

Chapter
Forty-Two

Jes and Justice

Jes and Justice spent their share
of the next day wrapped in each other’s arms.
Neither of them said a word. Each was wondering if tomorrow
would be the day for the long-awaited battle. They had received
some intelligence that this might be it. They embraced the
possibility.

After all, Constantine had been
making them all
wait
for this moment.

But they were also well aware that
tomorrow might change everything, for all of them, and so neither
of them wanted to move, both of them content to simply soak up the
moment. They were happy to just hold each other—enjoy being
alive—and just
hold each other.

Jes leaned up on her elbow,
watching Justice. His eyes were closed. His chest moved up and down
with each breath. He had his arm loosely around her waist. She knew
he was awake, but he didn’t open his eyes. She knew that he knew
she watched him.

Just as she had known he had been
watching her—and why.

Jes had always tried not to think
in negatives, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that they were going
up against Constantine, and there was no such thing as a sure thing
when it came to Constantine. There was always the very real
possibility that they wouldn’t be able to defeat him—and just in
case, she’d spent each night looking forward to the day—when she
would see Justice.

She always wanted very much
just to be
with
Justice.

She had always loved the
nights—especially with the full moon shining her silver patterns
across the ground. Grandmother Moon was her grandmother. Mother
Earth was her mother. Jes was a daughter of the moon.

But days were all they had left
right now. The nights were stolen by the constant threat of
Constantine, and the sisters’ constant vigilant circle work as they
watched and waited for the men to sound the alarm.

Right now, all that any of them
could do was to reach out and grab what little the days could
offer. And right now, the days continued to offer the only brief
reprieve they all very much needed—from the constant watching in
the night.

They were all exhausted by the
promised threat—that never seemed to arrive.

They were all on edge—though
surprisingly remaining strong—yet each still wished to just get it
over with—while knowing that “getting it over with” might mean the
end of everything they’d ever known.

Life for them had the very real
possibility of becoming something nothing of them could recognize,
with humans being served up as dinner while the Fae and the Jaguar
People—and even the vampires of old, like Dracon—would be slaves
for the vile and the debased pleasures of Constantine.

Justice pulled Jes close. He came
to visit her every day, now, sometimes giving her sisters a
much-needed break to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, even if it
was just for just a few minutes, while Jes and Justice played
upstairs, sometimes taking Jes outside so they could enjoy the sun
themselves.

Dracon and Dara did the same, but
they went to the darkest room in the house, not out in the
sunshine. Justice teased him that he should try lying in the sun
for once, that he might enjoy having a tan instead of his pale,
white skin—to which Dracon would only grunt, which was his usual
replacement for a laugh—and then say something inside their heads
about cats taking catnaps in the sun—lazy creatures that they
were.

Justice would always act as if he
took exception to that barb—in response to which Dracon would
actually grin.

Justice and Dracon had been
exchanging such teasing barbs since Justice had been a youth,
learning under Dracon’s tutelage—though Jes hadn’t known he was
actually teaching Justice at the time.

Back then she had been left to
wonder what an old vamp had in common with a young
Jaguar.

Still, it was a familiar banter—one
she still enjoyed—one that made all seem right with her world, if
only for a little while.

Jes was always very happy to see
Justice. Sometimes, they would sneak down to her room, hiding away
from the hands of time like laughing children, looking for a way to
play when everything around them kept trying to steal the joy out
of life.

Each of them was the only one who
could put the joy back into his or her own life. None of them were
content to allow the bad things in life to just steal away the best
part of living.

They had to fight for a way to
bring back the happiness, and, barring that—to steal the moments
they could.

Only they couldn’t go back. They
couldn’t put anything back. All they could do was to rebuild with
quiet strength and determination, like the survivors after a
storm—finding a way to rebuild their lives out of the wake of
whatever had been the means of destruction.

Isn’t that what the humans had
proven each and every day? Wasn’t that what their countries were
founded on? That strength—that determination? Could they now do any
less?

Justice hugged Jes close to him—and
today she whispered to him how much she had wanted to tell him she
was sorry: sorry that she had spent so many years judging him for
something he could not possibly have been able to foresee or
stop—not at fourteen years’ old.

He kissed away her tears. And
together they healed those old scars—as they made way for something
new to grow from the ashes of destruction and pain, both of them
knowing that whatever it was—it would be stronger for it, for
whatever was built from the ashes and pain of destruction—would be
forged of well-tempered steel, and what was born of ashes—had the
power to heal a nation.

They would survive—even
Constantine.

Chapter
Forty-Three

Jes

Mia came to see Jes.
Justice had told her that the Sisters of Three
were stuck in, or at the very least, around their room—until the
vamps hit the city. The Sisters of Three were keeping their
ever-vigilant watch for Constantine’s destruction.

Mia came to help brighten up their
day, as had become her usual routine—at least when she was
around.

Jes noted that she brought a ray of
sunshine with her—the way she always did. Her golden, kinky hair
and honey-colored skin was alight with a joy that seemed to come
straight from her heart. She spread chocolates across the bed,
which had Mira and Jes squealing. Dara hung back, watching
them.

Then, Mia reached into her bag—and
brought out a thermos. She held it out to Dara, who hung back for a
moment longer, until her curiosity got the better of her. She came
forward and opened the thermos and sniffed. Jes noticed that her
eyes darkened.