The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) Read online

  He would make sure they brought Constantine down.

  He didn’t stop analyzing and reanalyzing his battle plan, looking for flaws, and making contingency plans for when things changed.

  But he intended to face Constantine himself, when the time came. He had told Dracon as much. Dracon wasn’t happy to hear this; he had promptly tried to talk Justice out of it. When he couldn’t do that, he spent many hours in hand-to-hand combat training and sword-fighting practice with him.

  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.

  Jes didn’t know what was inside, but Dara smiled, and then left the room, saying she was going to share it with Dracon.

  Mira frowned at Mia, and Mia grinned. “It was just something they’re learning to put together at the lab for the vamps.”

  “Nothing harmful, I hope,” Mira teased.

  Jes almost choked.

  Mira laughed. “Sorry. I guess that was a bad joke, considering the vaccines the labs have come up with.”

  Mia laughed. Her honey-colored curls bounced with her movements. Her skin seemed to glow from within. She always had a ready smile.

  Jes wondered, and not for the first time, how she did that. How she always seemed filled with such happiness, when everything she had loved had been stolen from her as a child.

  She had spent years growing up without her parents, and had to also spend most of that time without her sisters—or the brother she loved so much.

  She’d had to spend all of her time training for a war that she had been taught would come one day, and she had followed that belief without hesitation—never questioning the validity of the prophecy—or the part they were to play in it.

  And yet, she always came in like a ray of sunshine—unfailingly believing in good.

  Jes wished she had such faith that good would prevail.

  On top of that, Mia always laughed and joked with the Sisters of Three, pulling them out of the stupor that inevitably fell throughout the room as the minutes, hours, and days ticked by with agonizing slowness. She took the sting out of the day for a few minutes, and made the next hours seem somehow lighter.

  Everyone loved Mia.

  Today was no different. She sidetracked Mira and Jes until Dara returned, catching them up on the rumors that were floating around the city and telling them about what both of her sisters were up to.

  But today, something was different. The feeling that had been building in Jes, the one that had started as just a nagging feeling that they needed to watch over Mia—was back—and much stronger today.

  Jes tried to shake away the feeling as Mia talked, but it wouldn’t go away. Who would want to hurt Mia? No one would want to hurt Mia. She was the one who lightened the burden of anyone who needed it, even if they didn’t deserve it.

  In Mia’s mind—just as when she had brought the storms—when the storm had passed and the sun came out again, everything was always fresh and new. So, too, Mia believed that every day was a chance for making each new day a better day—a new chance to begin again.

  Jes thought that if human angels existed—Mia was one.

  Mia joined them there on the floor, now, as they began their usual circle work. She chanted with them for over an hour, helping raise the vibrations, watching for enemies who would try to sneak into the city while determined only to bring harm. Her open heart brought a quiet strength to the circle, which could be felt by all. They welcomed her there with open arms. And she frequently stopped by to help.

  And then, she left to do her usual training in the late afternoon.

  But Jes couldn’t concentrate on finding the vampires. She had a hard time caring where they were—at the moment—
when she was worried about the woman who had been her best friend as a child, and never stopped being her best friend, even when they had spent all those years apart.

  She could only follow Mia in her heart and thoughts—willing her safety.

  And somehow knowing—it wouldn’t do any good.

  Hours passed and Jes had been unable to shake the darkening feeling that was quickly pervading her every thought and feeling. Finally, she asked a guard to send a message for Justice.