The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (6 page)

And not just to bring him
in.

She wanted answers—answers to where
he’d been all of this time. Answers to where his sisters had
disappeared to. Answers to why she’d been left
behind—abandoned.

She watched her partner scarf down
his burger with a hearty appetite. In fact, he didn’t seem shocked
at all. He seemed—calm: just plain quiet and calm.

She swallowed. She couldn’t eat a
thing.

Finally, he looked at her, raising
a brow at her lack of appetite. “You’d think that you had been the
one to see two jaguars walking around in the middle of Chicago, in
the middle of the night. Two—human-
like
jaguars. You know the type.
First they
are
jaguars—and then they are
human.
Or human-
like
. Are you human when you’re not
jaguar?”

Her brows shot up at this—joking.
He was joking.

He grinned at her. “Settle down,
Jes,” he cajoled. “It’s not everyday that a man gets to see
something that sets his whole world right again.”

Her eyes narrowed at this. “If
you’re talking about me standing in the street naked….”

He laughed. “Well—that too, mind
you.” But he shook his head, belying his words. “No, Jes. I’m
talking about The Jaguar People.”

She frowned at him now. “I don’t
follow.”

His face grew serious now. “It’s
just… Jes, I’ve gone my whole life thinking that this couldn’t
possibly be it. That nothing else happens, except for cleaning up
scum off the streets. And then tonight—it’s like a whole world of
possibilities opened up—right before my eyes.”

She stared at him. Was he serious?
“I’m glad you see possibilities.” She frowned again, her suspicious
nature taking over. “What possibilities?”

He grinned again. “Relax, Jes. I’m
just happy that there’s more to this world—than there appears. And
if there’s that much—then perhaps there’s also really—a spirit
world.” He’d almost whispered that, like people were going to look
down their noses at him for believing.

She really frowned at him now. “Of
course there’s a spirit world.” She watched as his stoic face lit
up for a split second, then the shades went back down. She couldn’t
believe what was happening. And then she frowned again as she
realized that she’d never once in five years had a conversation
with him about the spirit world. Was he really that afraid to
believe?

Worse, was she that out of touch
with her own people?

The Jaguar People were an extremely
spiritual race. It was telling for her not to know this about her
own partner. Well, she also wanted to protect the people and so
tended to avoid all conversations that led her thoughts in that
direction, so as not to accidentally give away something she would
regret.

But perhaps she had been just a
little obsessed lately.

“
You said something to him about
thinking he was an ancient one?” he prodded.

She almost smiled. The cop was
back, asking questions. She nodded. “There are ancient ones who
hunted the murderers. Justice seems to think this is what he
was
meant
to
do.”

“
Is that why he didn’t kill me? He
seemed like he was contemplating what to do with me—even before you
arrived…. As if he was trying to decide—whether or not he should
kill me….”

“
Well, there’s that at least,” she
breathed, almost in relief.

He seemed to study her for a
moment, contemplating. “What do you intend to do about
him?”

She looked up in surprise. “Bring
him to justice! Why? What else would I do?”

He looked a bit surprised at her
answer. “And say what to the police—or to the judge for that
matter? What could you say? Hmmm? Judge, the boy killed all those
gang members when he turned into a large, jungle cat! A jaguar to
be exact.” He laughed at the thought of it. “They’d laugh you out
of court—and you’d be out of your job.”

“
I’ve thought of that.” She toyed
with her napkin, deep in thought. “If I can’t bring him in, then
I’ll take him before the Tribal Council.” She looked up at him
then. Not that the Tribal Council would agree with her. “But he
must be brought to justice—to some sort of justice.” She laughed at
the irony. “Now there’s a concept.”

He leaned forward in the booth, his
big body closing the distance significantly in spite of the table.
“Why do you want him so bad?”

“
You’re a cop!” she snapped.
“
You should know
.”

“
Humor me.”

“
No!” she snarled, then pulled up
short, shocked at her own behavior.

“
Why
?”
he demanded.

“
The People
are not supposed to harm humans!” she whispered furiously.
She looked at him desperately. “We are supposed
to—
protect them
.”

He raised a brow. “But you just got
through telling me there are ancient ones—who hunted the
murderers,” he shot back. “So why do you judge him for doing
so?”

She wasn’t happy to have what she’d
revealed about her people’s history thrown back in her face. It
felt like a betrayal. And Jes had a problem with
betrayal.

He held up a hand in penance.
“Look, Jes,” he appeared to search for the words. “I’m not saying
he
should
just
play vigilante. But… there is some difference here between a true
vigilante and a man fulfilling the role of an entire
race.”

“
No!” she snapped. “There’s not.
There’s no difference at all!”

“
Okay,” he appeased—but then
ruined it. “So would you mind explaining the—umm—chemistry I saw—,”
she saw him wince at the rage building inside her, but he still
finished, if somewhat lamely, “between—the two of you?”

“
Don’t you
ever say that again
!” she growled,
still in a heated whisper, and with more than a little heat. “I
don’t want to hear something like that spring forth from your lips
ever again!”

He grinned. He tried to smother
it—and failed. “Wow, Jes!”

She held up a finger. “Don’t!” she
warned.

He seemed to think better of saying
any more, but after a moment he asked, “What happens when the
Jaguar People mate with humans?”

She sat back in the booth and
stared at him. “What did that take you—all of an hour?”

“
Come on, Jes. Enlighten me a
little here. I just learned that humans are not the only race on
the Earth. Give a man a break.”

“
Well, if the human species wasn’t
so arrogant, they’d have reached that
obvious conclusion
a long time
ago!”
She moved to get
up—disgusted.

His gentle laugh stopped her.
“Yeah—I can see where you’d come to that. In hindsight, it seems
more than a little arrogant.”

His honesty took the heat out of
her next words. “There are a lot more races than you’d like to
know, living their lives here on Earth. They walk amongst you every
single day.”

He looked at her with more than a
little surprise. But his face didn’t show the concern she would
have expected. No. His usual stoic behavior was giving way to
full-blown curiosity—the same curiosity that was always stamped out
by human adults when they spotted it in their children, she thought
with some disdain. She frowned. What was wrong with this man? She’d
known him for more than five years. This is the last thing she’d
expected from him.

“
How many more?”

She laughed at his obvious
enthusiasm. “Too many to count.”

“
The Fae?”

She nodded.

“
Wow!” He thought about that. “The
UFOs?”

“
They’re trying to keep some other
races from taking over the Earth, but sometimes one sneaks by and
abducts humans…,” she muttered.

His brows shot up. “Okay, double
wow!” He let out a low whisper. “How about…
vampires
?”

She could see he was kidding now,
but he wasn’t going to like hearing that answer, so she didn’t say
anything.

He looked at her, amazed. “No!
You’re
not
saying…,” and for once he was shocked. “You
are
saying.”

“
Oh, yeah!” She grinned briefly,
but then sobered. “But they are
badly
misunderstood.
The tales have become
interwoven between their two lineages, from one race of beings—part
of who had… mutated, so to speak, and part of the race who were…
invented, for lack of a better word—or perhaps I should
say—genetically altered with a virus.”

Jared frowned at her.

She groaned. It really was—going to
be a long night.

“
A long time ago, way before the
Earth—there existed a race of people called the Crow People. They
came here, much like my own people, and we lived in
harmony—alongside many other races.” Jes watched his face to see
how he was receiving this before she went on. “But after Atlantis,
some of them didn’t want to—die. They didn’t like the fact that
they
had
to die.
It’s not that they hadn’t before,” she shrugged, “but we lived for
so long, it was as if we didn’t. And so, when they were supposed to
cross over, they went to the fifth dimension instead—the dimension
of the Fae, and they learned how to stay there.” She set her plate
to the outside of the table where the waitress would take
it.

“
Over time, they figured out how
to—come back as a being that was like a human, but more spirit. But
they had to—consume blood to stay human. The other races didn’t
agree with them taking over—like Gods. There were wars. Over
time—those who agreed, developed a code, so that they didn’t
control the humans.

“
But another race existed, too,
who liked to—experiment on people. They are the Grays….” She made a
face. “They still like to experiment on people.”

He sat forward. “That’s why people
claim they’ve been abducted?”

She winced. “We try to keep that
from happening. But they experimented on making another form of Cat
People, another form of Crow People—and some others. And they—used
a virus for some of these experiments. The species who mutated from
these were—genetically modified—by this group, a group who wanted
to gain control over the world. There were a few other such races
who were genetically modified also. But none like this
one….”

She hated talking about these
beings. It made her sick inside to think of it. She cringed,
thinking about how anyone could have done these thing.

“
They used the Crow People for
this because they were a winged people. I guess—perhaps in part
because they had already learned how to walk between two worlds
with some human form—but they used a virus from bats to expand on
this.”

“
And they created the
vampire
?” Jared nearly
shrieked. “Vampires are
mutants
?”

“
Only
some of them
are mutants,” she
corrected, and winced again. “Some of them are a very powerful and
a very old race—who consider themselves the pure race.”

“
And these feed off of
humans?”

She saw when he grasped the full
implications of what she had told him.

“
No,” he said. “The virus… the
mutated race is the race who
infects the
humans
….” This time he was the one to
wince.

She nodded. “And the
old ones
do try to keep
some kind of control over their people—but as you can see, some of
them don’t think they should be—controlled by anyone. Some of them
don’t consider themselves part of the old race at all. And to make
matters worse—some of the old ones don’t want
to—
claim them
—as
well.

He frowned at her. “So the rogue
ones are the bad ones? Do these
old
ones
ever go bad—or rogue?”

She shook her head. “No. They are a
very—disciplined race. And the… ummm—mutated race, they are not a
bad race either, it’s just some certain rogue members that are
bad,” she muttered again, “like the rest of us—races that is—who
also have those who go rogue. And these rogue members are very
powerful, and like to play upon the fears that the humans have of
vampires, from all the stories over all these
centuries.”

His mouth rounded in amazement. It
was obvious he hadn’t expected this—not at all. Of all the stories
he’d ever heard, this one had obviously had been chalked up to pure
fiction.

“
Were your people… genetically
modified?”

Jes shook her head. “Well, like the
Crow People—a little of both. We have some who came from a
different planet. We are—were—one of the races of the Starborne. My
ancestors were from… ummm… a long way from here—and a long way from
most of the other Starborne. But…” she didn’t like to think of
this—much less speak of this. “There were some who were also
genetically modified, yes.” She held up her hand to ward off more
questions. She wasn’t comfortable with this conversation. She had
never been put in such a position—of having to talk about this,
about any of this—before. “It was a long time ago…,” she finished
lamely.