The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (32 page)

After a long while, they both
drifted off to sleep.

Jes woke to the dark of the night.
She sensed that Justice was up, dressing. He came to her and kissed
her in a leisurely manner. She sat up and hugged him to her,
knowing it might be several nights before she saw him again. And
then he silently slipped out into the hall.

She didn’t go back to sleep for
some time. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had
happened out in the woods, under the silver witness of Grandmother
Moon. It raised the hair on the back of her neck.

And she knew that it had been
merely a dance—compared to what was bound to take place very soon
now. She could only hope they would be ready.

She frowned. What concerned her
most was that more than half of them were merely children compared
to the experience that Constantine brought to this war.

Out of all of them, he was the
oldest.

There likely wasn’t much he hadn’t
seen.

That made him a difficult enemy to
beat. He had not lived through so many enemies for no reason—he
would not be easy to defeat.

It was late in the afternoon the
next day and Jes was, once again, waiting for Justice. It seemed as
though she were
always
waiting for Justice.

She paced the room,
waiting.

She flopped onto the
bed—waiting.

She understood why it was so—why it
was the way it was. Justice had serious responsibilities to the
People—and Jes would never take him away from their people. But
that didn’t make it any easier to always have to wait. In some ways
it actually made it more difficult—because she had no idea when any
of this would settle down—and life could go back to something that
resembled normal.

Jes went still. What exactly did
that even mean? She had to wonder what normal would even look like.
She had an idea that nothing about her life had
ever
been normal.

And she had a feeling that if her
life was to somehow begin to resemble normalcy—she might sabotage
it to bring it back to what she had become accustomed
to.

She shook her head. She sounded
like a trauma junkie.

Besides, she was realistic and she
knew that her life, as she had known it, would never again come
close to anything she had once considered normal—not
ever.

Jes didn’t want to seem selfish.
The man she had thought of as her father, for all these years, had
betrayed them all. She knew she wasn’t responsible for that fact.
But she still
felt
responsible somehow. She knew she shouldn’t, and she wasn’t
going to take that on. She knew better.

But she also didn’t want to add to
what had become a very difficult situation.

She didn’t feel she really had the
right to even feel irritated with always having to wait.

The mere idea of becoming irritated
felt…selfish—and childish—with all that was going on right now, all
of which was so much bigger than her relationship with Justice. The
foundation of everything they had built was in danger. The very
existence that the humans, Fae, Jaguar People and, yes, even the
vamps, enjoyed was being threatened.

There was no place that existed
that would not be touched, if these rogue factions managed to win
this war.

These vamps had found their start
in Land of the Fae, when they had refused to die. And they had
learned to bridge the spirit world with the human body—but a body
that craved blood to live.

In a way, they had found a way to
live between the worlds. And now, they also refused to live
according to the rules of the more ancient civilization from which
they had sprung forth.

Jes stilled as a feeling crawled
over her. Something about all of this bothered her. But she didn’t
have any idea what. She had a feeling she was supposed to know
something. She had the feeling that the answers to their dilemma
with Constantine were hidden somewhere deep inside her. But she
didn’t have any idea what it was
she was
supposed to know
.

She moved as restlessness stole its
way through her limbs, anxious to speak with Justice, to talk to
him about these feelings.

And waiting wasn’t part of the
plan.

Chapter
Thirty-Six

Jes

Jes sat with her legs
folded
in front of her, her ring fingers
and thumbs touching together in a classic meditation pose. She was
meditating, just as her sisters were. They needed this—especially
after last night. But that needed recovery wasn’t actually why they
were currently meditating: they were meditating now to listen to
the spirit world for answers, answers that would tell them how to
deal with Constantine.

They were listening for their
ancestors, so that they might help to lead them toward victory.
They were listening for the
wisdom
of the ancients
.

Jes had yet to find time alone with
Justice since earlier that morning, when he had kissed her so
thoroughly: a kiss she could still feel.

She shook her head, trying to push
away her lusty thoughts.

After facing Constantine, the
sisters knew they were going to have to put all their concentration
into finding a way to defeat him. It was going to take all of
them.

But mainly, for Jes anyway, she
was meditating on that elusive thread of her thoughts—a strong gut
feeling that was telling her she should be following something
through—if only she knew what that
something
was, she was supposed
do—
and to what end
?

Justice’s sisters were back at
their hand-to-hand combat training—driven now more than ever to
hone their skills. Jes didn’t have much time to practice her
hand-to-hand combat skills at the moment, but she was careful to
put any time she could into it. She had a feeling it was going to
come down to a lot of hand-to-hand combat at some point. She had a
feeling that the day would come when she would need those physical
skills, even beyond the magickal skills she was learning in her
role with the Sisters of Three.

And she didn’t want to neglect any
part of her training.

She realized that she had, once
again, let her thoughts drift. She had already had to bring her
consciousness back into focus several times, and move it toward a
gentle blackness—and blankness—so she could listen.

After a long while, she received a
strong feeling of a pull toward Jared. She opened her eyes. She
needed to see Jared. And she needed to see him—now.

She met Jared near the edge of the
meadow. She watched him walk across the grass toward her. She had
told him where he could park his car, near the river, when she had
spoken to him on the phone, and where exactly she had been hanging
out lately, and to where he would have to walk to meet her in the
meadow.

After she had snuck out the day
she’d gone to see the gangbanger, when she’d had Jared drive her,
he had been gone from Second Wind, working with a different group.
She had been meaning to find out if this was something he had
chosen to do—or if it had been something Justice had sent him off
to do in punishment for helping her. She didn’t want to think of
what she would do if he had been put there against his will. But
she’d been so busy with her training that she’d never had the
chance to look into it. Jes wasn’t one for allowing
anyone
to make her
decisions for her, and heaven help Justice if he’d…
persuaded
her old
partner to leave.

She wasn’t going to respond well
if Justice had made any decisions
for
her—
or
for her former partner—but she
really didn’t believe he would do such a thing, so she was even
more anxious to hear why Jared had left.

She wouldn’t tolerate overbearing,
controlling tactics—from anyone—so she figured she just needed to
hear Jared tell her that he had left because he had something he
needed to do. But what could have made him take off like that—and
not tell her?

When she started wondering about
that, the nagging
feeling
came back, which led her to believe that whatever
it was that had caused him to leave—must also be involved in why
she felt driven to see him
now.

Jes had asked him to meet her in
the meadow just past the manor. She wasn’t sneaking, exactly: it
was only through the trees. She went there to walk several times a
week. It was the only break she ever received from feeling herself
tied to this manor.

She just had found that she didn’t
want to explain to everyone why she had asked to see him—and so
suddenly—mostly because she didn’t have an explanation for
it.

She’d just a strong feeling that
not everyone should know she was having this meeting.

She didn’t know why she felt that
way—certainly didn’t understand it—but she always followed her gut,
or at least tried to.

And then, she also felt a need to
protect Justice—and she’d had the distinct feeling that her talking
to Jared made him distinctly uncomfortable. She would do anything
to spare Justice’s feelings. Not that this—sneaking out and meeting
Jared surreptitiously—would make him feel any better if he found
out.

It would probably make it much
worse.

But she needed to do it this
way.

Besides, the main dangers they
faced didn’t tend to walk around in the woods during the day—not
that danger didn’t lurk during the day, but it was significantly
decreased.

Only a few vamps had found ways to
move around during the day. And even then, most didn’t often choose
to do so.

Dracon, for example, could move
around during the day when he chose. She had realized, after she
had found him in her room that morning with the others, when she
had been assaulted by her father’s old witch, that Dracon was
making a conscious choice not to get caught out in the
sunshine.

His avoidance of the sun ran more
along the lines of an aversion than a necessity, since the sun
didn’t seem capable of killing him. She didn’t blame him; it wasn’t
surprising, after all. Most vamps naturally avoided the sun; even
if they had found a way to move around in it, they would at least
try to stay out of its direct rays.

Jes and Jared sat on a log near the
edge of the meadow. She listened carefully when he answered her
question about what he’d been up to.

That nagging feeling was back,
stronger than ever, and she had to force herself to concentrate on
what he was saying.

He told her that after he had
brought her back that day—the day she’d had him sneak her off the
compound—he had chosen to go. He had been thinking about everything
he had learned, and he had realized that if vampires were real,
then the vampire
hunters
were likely real too.

He’d gone to Dracon to find out how
to find them.

Dracon had been around a long time.
He knew exactly where to find them. So with Justice’s permission,
he’d set up a training program for vampire hunters.

Now, the vampire hunters were
showing up from all over the place, which is why he hadn’t had any
time to get together and talk with her about it. He’d been too busy
trying to get them all organized. He now had an army of several
hundred vampire hunters amassed.

Jes was blown away—both by what
he’d been up to and by Justice’s generosity—and she was doubly
impressed with the fact that Dracon had actually helped him find
vampire hunters.

She was happy to learn what her
partner had been doing, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure
out what it had to do with her, except that the feeling she’d been
trying to understand was now at a full-blown clangor within her
midsection.

What was it she was missing? Why
had she been so strongly pulled to see Jared?

She searched her mind and heart as
Jared talked, but she just couldn’t figure it out.

Jared had stood and begun pacing
when he reached the frustrating part of his story. He told her that
in spite of all the help Justice had given him in training the
vampire hunters, he couldn’t get Justice to agree to allow them a
part in actually
fighting
the vampires.

He turned to her, his face pensive.
“I’d been meaning to talk to you, too, Jes. I mean, I had been
meaning to find out how things went for you, you know, after you
snuck off the compound,” and he gestured toward the road, then
stopped and ran a hand through his hair in a purely frustrated
fashion. “I’ve just been as busy as you have been. But I need you
to talk to him, Jes.”

Jes winced and nodded. “I know,
Jared. And you know I will try. I’m not sure how much good it will
do. But I will try.”

He nodded. “That’s good enough for
me.”

They talked for a few more minutes,
but it was getting late and they both knew they had to head back
before it started to get dark.