The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (9 page)

His eyes clouded with what looked
like rage—or pain—right before the shutters went down and she saw
no more. She had expected to see rage—but why would a killer have
so much pain in his eyes?

He sat there, still as stone. She
wanted to shake him. She should be able to read his thoughts.
Couldn’t he read hers? Why did she always get a blank
slate?

“
Because I have learned to shield
my thoughts from others,” he answered, almost as if he’d
automatically answered.

She frowned. She was going to have
to learn how to do that.

“
Well, then,” he said out loud.
“It looks as if we need to find some things out. So we’re going to
have to make a trip—together.”

She shook her head at the thought.
“Oh, no,” she shook her head again, “no. I’m not going anywhere
with you—so you can just get that thought out of your head right
now.” She tried again to listen to his
thoughts—nothing—damn.

He almost smiled. She saw the
beginnings of one, teasing at the corners of his lips.

“
Yes,” he said, “you
are.”

She frowned. She’d already
forgotten what they were talking about. Why was she so easily
distracted by him? When she remembered, she shook her head again.
“No! I’m not! So you can just forget it!”

He sprang forward and had gathered
her back into his arms before she could think to react. Where had
he gotten such reflexes? He made hers look tame in
comparison.

He touched the end of her nose with
a finger and gave her a light, chaste kiss on her lips. “Yes, you
are. And you’ll want to go, because now the postcard I received
last year begins to make sense.”

“
What postcard?” She was intrigued
in spite of herself.

“
The one I received, with some
cryptic message that the three of them were fine. It said we
weren’t supposed to look for them.”

She frowned. “Three of
them?”

“
Hmmm,” he said. “Apparently, one
of them is
not
fine.”

Her gut clenched. That didn’t bode
well. She might have lost a parent, and hadn’t known it all this
time. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“
When did your parents disappear?”
he questioned, his tone gentle.

“
Right after we went to
your
murder scene,” she
snarled, struggling to break loose.

He let her go, frowning—the
shutters going down on his expression once more. She almost
regretted her outburst.

Almost.

But then she remembered the bloody,
sliced-up bodies lying in the alley. “Are you going to deny that
was you, then?” She backed out of his reach. “Are you going to deny
killing those young men?”

He shook his head. Was that regret
she saw? His mask had actually slipped for a second
there.

He got up and headed for the door.
“Be ready at midnight. It will be a fast trip. I have deadlines to
meet, but I will have answers that will be met first.” His tone
held menace that ran shivers up her spine.

She stared at him.

How could she go anywhere—with a
killer?

But how could she not? Especially
when Kat had spoken of a book that would tell her everything she
needed to know. She said this, now, to Justice. She didn’t know why
she told him about it. It wasn’t like her to do so. But she felt
the urgency to tell him, and she always trusted her
instincts.

He frowned as she told him, but it
was the only indication he gave as to his thoughts. If this
concerned him, he gave no indication.

He only said for her to be ready by
midnight.

She was still arguing with herself
an hour later—while she packed. She had called her partner and
given him an excuse for her disappearance for the next couple of
days. He hadn’t been happy. She didn’t blame him. He didn’t know
Justice. And—well, what he did know was that she believed Justice
to be a murderer—even if he had been the one who had argued on
Justice’s behalf when he felt that perhaps she should have been the
one to do so.

But still, she
was the one
who believed he was a
murderer. And now she was going to go off with him. He didn’t think
it was a good idea.

And neither did she.

And what was she thinking,
anyway—to go anywhere with this man? But how could she not? He held
clues to her parents’ disappearance—apparently to both of their
parents’ disappearances.

How could both of their parents
have disappeared at the same time? She needed to know the answer to
that question. She needed to know what had happened to her parents.
What could have possibly happened to cause them both to disappear?
Whatever it was—it couldn’t have been good. She frowned.

She didn’t believe in
coincidences.

And it was a mighty strange
coincidence, wasn’t it—that a fourteen-year-old boy was forced to
transform—to take his jungle form so early in his life—when all the
others had to wait to reach their majority? And then to have two
sets of parents just disappear, right off the map.

No. Jes didn’t believe in
coincidences. Especially when she was sure—these occurrences were
not a coincidence at all.

She frowned again. But who could
have known he could be forced to change early? Or had they known it
could happen? Perhaps they hadn’t been trying to get him to
transform at all….

But that would mean—they’d been
trying to kill him….

That thought made Jes tremble. In
fact, she started trembling so hard, she had to sit down.
They
had
nearly
succeeded in killing him. But why would they do it?

And why was she always so hard on
him anyway? He’d been fourteen years’ old. Anyone would back him up
on what he’d had to do.

And be upset with her calling him a
murderer.

Because,
she thought, the Jaguar People were supposed
to
protect
the humans.

And he had left her
behind
, a little voice said in the back of
her mind.

Okay,
she
admitted to herself—so maybe she
didn’t
have a problem with him
defending himself—at all. Maybe she just felt
betrayed.

It couldn’t be that easy! She had
been hunting him for years!

Resolutely, she turned her
attention back to why they had been trying to kill him in the first
place. Had they been sent to kill him—on purpose?

That couldn’t be right.
That
couldn’t have been
what they were trying to do. Yes, the gangbangers
would have been up for it. They hated him. But why would someone
want to hire them to do such a thing?

Justice wasn’t the only one who was
determined to have answers. She was just as determined to find her
parents as he was to find his. And why shouldn’t they be? Anyone
would—wouldn’t they?

Was she only making excuses for
going with him?

No. She was sure anyone in her
position would do the same. So she would go.

But why
midnight
?

Chapter Eight

Jes

Justice couldn’t believe he was
doing this.
He didn’t need to do this. In
fact, he didn’t have time to do this, but he had felt compelled to
do so. This was the time that he and his sisters had banked on him
finding their opportunity—their chance.

He needed time with Jes. He needed
to get through to her; he couldn’t bear her hate. He couldn’t take
it. He could take his own; he could take anyone else’s—for what
he’d done, for what he had continued to do.

But he couldn’t take
her
hate—not from
her.

He needed time—time to get her to
realize she was his life mate—and without her—well, she may as well
take the air that he breathed, as do that to him.

He’d been forced to leave her
once.

He would never do so
again—especially after seeing her walking toward him… no—make
that
stalking
toward him—stark naked.

He’d had no choice but to leave her
the first time, all those years ago. Had no choice but to walk
away, again, the other night.

Not with a human standing there
watching him.

And not with the terrible things
Jes had been thinking about him.

He looked over at her now. She
hadn’t said a word since they’d started driving. He wished she’d
say something—anything. But she hadn’t said a word.

And she continued to think those
hateful thoughts—about him being a murderer; she continued to judge
him for what had taken place that day.

It didn’t help at all that he could
usually read her mind—not as often as she seemed to think, but most
of the time.

But it still hadn’t helped
him.

He didn’t
understand
women—even
when
he knew what they
were thinking.

It was more than a thousand miles
to Colorado, and he had driven her half-way there without saying a
single word to her. She watched him. She didn’t try to hide the
fact that she was doing so.

It wouldn’t have done any good to
pretend otherwise.

He would have known—no matter how
hard she tried to hide it.

She didn’t try to hide her thoughts
from him either. She didn’t have the faintest clue how to do so
anyway. She watched him now, half leaning against the pickup door
to do so. He finally stopped staring straight ahead at the road, as
if he was ignoring her, and actually looked at her.

She frowned. “When, exactly, did
your parents disappear?”

It was his turn to frown. “They
didn’t come to the hospital. And they were gone when I got out.
They had changed—a lot—but not so much that they wouldn’t have come
to the hospital to see me—so I always assumed they didn’t
come—because they couldn’t come. Not that it made much difference.
They were gone long before then. That was just the day that they
left physically.”

She chewed on her lip, absorbing
that. “What do you mean they left long before that?”

He half-shrugged. “I meant that
something happened long before that day,” he muttered. “Something
took them away from me and my sisters long before that day. One day
we were a family—close—doing things that all families do. And then
the next… suddenly they just weren’t there anymore—didn’t pay
attention anymore. It was as if they had become a shell of who they
had been before.”

She cocked her head to one side,
thinking about what he’d just revealed. “When, exactly, did they
change?”

He did look at her then, and he
frowned again. “I suppose a few years before. They’d had a
business. We were all doing really well. Then, one day, it was all
gone. Along with it went the loving parents we had always known.”
He stared ahead at the road. “It was like, in their place, was a
replica of the people they had been. They looked the same—but
nothing about them was the same. I was too young to really
understand what was happening to them—heck, I still don’t. By the
time I would have started to figure it all out, all hell broke
loose—then, on top of it, they disappeared.”

Jes frowned—again—at this. “I don’t
believe in coincidences.”

He nodded. “I never thought too
much about it—but neither do I.”

Then she abruptly changed the
subject. “Why midnight?”

He actually grinned at her at
this.

She glared at him.

He turned and gave her a quick look
of appraisal before returning his gaze to the road. “Because it
would make your head churn around with ideas of what it could
possibly mean.”

She gasped. “You set me
up?”

He grinned openly.

“
Okay,” she gave him a reluctant
smile. “I asked for that—with all my high-and-mighty judgments. But
watch your back.”

He seemed surprised at her
honesty—her frank appraisal of her judgments against him. Some kind
of hidden tension seemed to leave him then.

After a moment, she asked. “How do
you do it?” She turned and looked at him. “Get into my apartment, I
mean?”

He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for
you to ask that.”

She glared at him.

It only made him give her a
playfully lecherous look. After a moment, he sobered. “I’ve had
years of experience breaking into places where people don’t want me
to be, Jes.”

She dropped her gaze to her lap,
fidgeting with her fingertips. She took a deep breath, scared to
hear the answer to her next question. “What happened to you that
day?”

He turned his head, but looked
right through her this time. “Nothing I care to talk
about.”