The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (7 page)

She waited for him to ask about the
others, but he seemed disinclined to have any more shocks for the
night. She didn’t blame him. It wasn’t every day you learned that
your entire world was built upon an illusion.

An illusion that could change in
the blink of an eye—and take away the world you thought you knew
with it.

Chapter Five

The Killer

Jes
woke
with a start.
She could feel Justice, as
clearly as if he were standing in the room. The bonds between them
were stronger than ever. He was in Chicago. That must why she could
feel him like this. It unnerved her. She had been dealing with her
connection with him for her entire life, but it still unnerved her.
It was so strong, now—she felt as if she could hear his heartbeat.
Why could she feel him so keenly? She could sense others too, but
she had never sensed anyone as strongly she sensed Justice
now.

The power between them was
stronger, now, than ever before.

How would she ever be clear of him?
How could she ever break herself free from him, when the closer she
was too him—the more power he had over her?

She glanced at the clock. It was
3:00 a.m. She wondered what he was doing up at 3:00 a.m. She felt
like… her gaze flew to the shadows of the room. He was sitting
there in the shadows.

Goosebumps traveled up her arms.
She opened her mouth. She wanted to scream, but fear paralyzed
her.

Fear—and something else.

No. She quickly realized—it wasn’t
fear that paralyzed her at all. She was actually happy to see
him.

Her breath lodged in her
throat.

He didn’t move. Every sense in her
body was heightened—electrified to his every breath. But he didn’t
move. She was heady with emotion. She was heady with unnamed
desire. She couldn’t fathom why she should feel this way—for
a
killer
.

That
thought
gave her back some of her
control—control she needed over her mind—and over her
body.

That’s it, Jes
, she told herself.
Just keep
reminding yourself of who he really is. He fooled you once—he will
never do so again
.

After a moment, her heart slowed
just a tad. “What are you doing here, murderer?” she asked in a
voice much more steady than she felt. She knew that he could feel
her, and smell her blood, just as keenly as she could smell
his.

She could feel his
heartbeat.

Just as surely as she could feel
her own.

She could smell everyone’s blood.
It had been that way since she had come into her power. She wasn’t
at all surprised that the smell of blood could drive a
blood-thirsty killer—crazy for the feast.

Her heart picked up another
notch.

“
Relax,” he said in a low voice.
“I didn’t come here to scare you to death.”

“
No,” she snarled, “more likely to
eat me to death!”

He laughed. “It’s a
thought.”

Another round of goosebumps
traveled up her arm. But this time they had nothing to do with
fear, she realized with a new round of alarm. No. What she felt was
pure—desire. And she couldn’t seem to keep those feelings at
bay.

She sat up in panic.

“
Talk to yourself, Jes!” she
commanded in a whisper. “Talk some logic into your stupid
head!”

How on earth could she feel desire
for a monster? He was a killer! He was pure animal—murderer! She
could never feel desire for such a beast.

There—yeah—that was
it—
that was working.

He stepped forward, as if he could
read her mind. Oh Goddess, he couldn’t read her mind,
could he
? She had spent
the last fifteen years hating this man for what he did, even if
it
was
to
gangbangers. That was not what the Jaguar People were about. They
were here to help the humans—not help make them extinct. He was a
killer. He might
think
he was doing justice….

She laughed out loud. Did he really
think he was doing justice?

She felt him scowl.

In the next instant he pounced on
her. He covered her lips in a brutal kiss before she could even
think to scream. She clawed at him, hit him, but to no avail, and
then she lost all sense of what was happening. The next thing she
realized—she was kissing him back.

She was
kissing—
a killer
!

She was kissing Justice—oh Goddess,
how she had missed him. She was kissing Justice.

And Justice was a
killer.

She started to struggle, but before
she could put two thoughts together, he was up—and gone.

Jes had worked herself into a fever
pitch by the time the sun rose the next morning. First, she paced,
going over every possible, logical explanation of why she had
reacted to him the way she had.

When that didn’t work—she told
herself that they had been very close. That she had missed his
sisters—yeah—that was it. Mia had been her best friend. They were
the family she didn’t have.

She turned around and paced the
other direction, not paying attention to where she was going in her
frantic state. She quickly reached a wall and was forced to turn
around once more.

Well, and she’d had a family—but
she’d been an only child, and her grandparents were quiet, subdued
people, who always had their own life, their own things to
do.

She had missed Justice’s
sisters—she had felt abandoned when they all
disappeared.

That must be why she had reacted
to Justice in such a manner. That
had
to be why! Why else would she
have missed him so much?

By the time the sun broke the sky,
she was busy poring over every one of the writings her grandparents
had handed down to her. She couldn’t remember the first three years
or so of her life—and then her parents had disappeared when she’d
been a teen. She knew something had happened when she was very
young—and wondered if it had anything to do with why they had
disappeared later on—but something always threatened her whenever
she got too close to remembering the first time period—a period of
time that was missing from her memory bank—when she had been very
small.

When she had been eighteen or so,
she had tried to approach her grandparents about it. But they
wouldn’t talk about it—which had only made her more
suspicious.

Something about this didn’t set
well with Jes. But she couldn’t get either of them to talk about
it—and boy, had she tried—so she couldn’t begin to unravel it. She
had kept trying to get answers until her grandmother had finally
become upset with her. Then, she had begun to look around more
quietly, and not so openly—or vocally.

She wouldn’t rest until she
knew.

And she wouldn’t rest until she
had figured out
why
she had kissed that monster back last night. What could she
have possibly been thinking?

She was dragging her finger down
one of the ancient, hand-written books—a book written much like a
Book of Shadows—when goosebumps swept up and over her arms and
back.

Her hand flew to cover her mouth,
and she wildly shook her head back and forth, as if she could make
it all go away. But it wasn’t going away.

And you couldn’t unlearn a thing
once you know it.

A member of the Jaguar People could
mate with a human, but only at a price. What that price was, she
wasn’t sure. But if one found their true mate, they would be able
to sense them from miles away. They could also smell their mate’s
blood more keenly than that of any human, which was saying a lot,
she thought. And they could read each other: hear one another’s
every thought.

But
she
hadn’t been able to hear
his
thoughts last
night.

She’d only heard silence. She sat
up straight. “He kept his thoughts blank!” she nearly yelled out
loud.
And yet he had read her every
thought
!

Her face went up in mortified
flames.

It was then she realized what she
had been thinking.

Justice was her mate, whether she
liked it or not
!

Jes had never yelled at her
grandparents in her life—and she wasn’t about to start now. But she
wanted answers, and she was determined to get some.

She stared at them. They were both
sitting there looking—mutinous. Yes, mutinous was a good word for
it. She had told them what had happened. They had looked at each
other as if they’d swallowed something bad, looking green,
and—mutinous.

“
Out with it!” she demanded. Her
grandfather shook his head at her grandmother. “Poppie!” she nearly
yelled. “Spill it.”

Her grandmother’s shoulders hunched
down, like a great weight pressed down upon them. She couldn’t
imagine what it was they were keeping from her, but whatever it
was—it didn’t look good!

Finally, it was her grandfather who
spoke. “Jes,” he nearly whispered. “I cannot—we cannot tell you
what we do not know; there is much we can only guess at…
but…”

She shivered. “What is it,
Poppie?”

“
Your papa.” He took a deep
breath, as if it were too difficult to go on. “He disappeared, when
you were…”

“
Fourteen years old,” she finished
for him.

“
At the same time,” he stopped and
took a deep breath, “as Justice’s parents disappeared from
him.”

She took a deep breath.
“
What does that have to do with
us
?”

Her grandmother folded her hands in
her lap, looking down at them. “Justice’s father,” and then she
looked up at her granddaughter, “was your father’s best
friend.”

Jes frowned. “Okay, I know that. I
grew up with them… I still don’t understand….” She shook her head
in denial. “I don’t see what this has to do with me…”

Her grandmother frowned at her. It
wasn’t like her to deny what she was hearing.

“
Jes, dear,” she said. “They were
together for a reason. That reason has something to do with why
they had to disappear together.” She shook her head in mute appeal.
“But we don’t know why. We don’t know what happened to cause them
to go into hiding. We can speculate. But we really do not have the
foggiest notion why.”

“
I figured that out. And,” Jes
stopped. She sniffed. Her head throbbed. She put her hand up and
rubbed her forehead. She didn’t like where this was heading. She
didn’t like it at all. She finally looked at her grandmother. “Why
can I sense him like this? Why have I always been able
to—
sense him like this
?” There. She had asked the question. But she didn’t want to
hear the answer.

“
Why, for the same reason I can
sense your grandfather, dear. Didn’t your mother explain this to
you?”

She shook her head—her mind
screaming at her. “No, she didn’t.” She looked at her grandmother
with pleading eyes. “If she knew why Justice and I had this—strong
bond—then why didn’t she?”

Her grandmother looked back at
her—her eyes full of worry. “I can’t imagine, child.”

Jes didn’t want to examine the full
implications of what her grandparents were trying to say to her.
This is was what she’d been afraid of. She shook her head, again,
in mute denial at the implications. She didn’t understand what had
made the boy she loved—change so much. How could she be connected
to him in the way that she was connected to Justice? The passion
she had felt for Justice last night, well, it had floored her. She
couldn’t think her way out of a wet paper bag today. She’d never
felt like that with anyone. Not ever. What was she going to do? How
could she ever go back to her what she had known? It was as if her
life had never truly existed—until now.

He had changed
everything.

And she knew she couldn’t go
back.

She didn’t know how she’d ever gone
this long without him—when being near him had upended her entire
world—again. How had she managed when she’d only been a very young
woman—coming into the first throes of her womanhood? How had she
managed to live without him—without her parents? And then without
her friends that had been more like her sisters, all at the same
time?

Jes wasn’t one for living in
denial. It was the cowardly way out, to pretend things didn’t
exist—just because you didn’t like the answers—.

But she wanted to deny this. She
wanted to deny this so badly. How could she ever go back to her
life? Yet, she could never go forward with Justice either—he was a
cold-blooded, murdering killer.

Her eyes pleaded with her
grandmother to take back what she had revealed to her. Her
grandmother looked at her with sympathy. She could see that her
granddaughter struggled with the implications of what she’d just
learned. But she couldn’t take it back.