The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (36 page)

And Dara—well Dara was a match for
Dracon. Justice nearly grinned when he saw Dracon frown at him at
this thought.

Justice unrolled the plans he had
brought in a cardboard tube. He had removed these before the men
had arrived and set them on the table. Lucius sat quietly while
Justice carefully laid out the new part of their plan. He only
watched as Justice carefully explained the journal. If he approved
of this plan, nothing showed in his eyes. Justice would have been
surprised if he had shown any expression, so he wasn’t surprised or
put off by his lack of emotion. Caesar was much more emotive. He
openly smiled.

Justice knew if he had the approval
of this military man—then it just might work.

They worked on that plan for quite
a while. Justice deliberately waited for all the drunken humans to
empty out of the tavern, as they finally lost all interest in
continuing to wait for a show from Lucius, before he quietly told
them the rest.

It was Lucius who felt he might
know a way to locate Justice’s father. Lucius had some insight into
where they might have wanted to take the vaccine to do further work
on it. They talked this over for some time, trying to decide the
best course of action for finding the place.

Lucius also asked to read the
journal for clues—stating that Justice’s father may have had his
mother put some clues in there that would be easily misunderstood
or overlooked.

Justice agreed and told him he
would provide it to him as soon as possible.

They spent more than an hour after
that exploring the complications of such powerful vaccines. None of
them liked the idea of using a vaccine against Constantine—or his
men. The outcome was unpredictable. No one knew for certain how it
would affect the entire vampire nation.

But they were well aware of what
the outcome would be if they didn’t use it.

And so they worked out a plan for
how they would use it—if the time were to come that they had no
choice.

But none of them were happy about
it.

None of them, that is, except for
Dracon.

Chapter
Forty-One

Power of Three

The sisters sat around a small,
round table
at Mia’s home in Chicago. They
wouldn’t leave the room much at all, now, until everything else was
in place. They had cast a circle and were keeping tabs on the
progress through Justice’s updates. The humans had been integrating
themselves onto the street for the past week. A couple more showed
up on the streets every single day.

A couple of weeks went by. Many of
the vampire hunters had integrated themselves as normal patrons of
the streets. They became workers, street hustlers, and beggars.
They moved into apartments, like the hundreds of others that were
moving in and out of apartments in the area every day.

Jared had amassed more than five
hundred vampire hunters over the months. They would never be able
to integrate them all, but they did place many of them on the
streets. The rest of them were holed up in nearby apartments. They
had good intelligence on the parts of the city that Constantine
planned to hit, but Chicago was a big city. They wouldn’t know for
sure that they had everything right until the armies themselves
actually showed.

The humans were now their eyes and
ears. Dracon, Justice, and the others didn’t do too much. At least,
not more than Constantine would be expecting them to do.

Reports had begun to flow in about
Constantine’s runners doing the same thing, coming farther into the
city and scouting. If something didn’t happen soon, they were going
to become wise to the humans. But it was much easier to hide a
bunch of humans than a bunch of hungry vamps that were constantly
sniffing at human blood and disappearing during the day.

And Constantine was having
difficulty keeping control of all his new, fledgling
vamps.

The fledgling vamps may have been
very powerful, especially when they were feeding off of fresh
blood—but, as usual, they were undisciplined—and undisciplined
vamps could be separated.

They were eager to prove
themselves—making it easier to thin them out.

Roman stayed close to the sisters
and ready at all times, while the sisters slept and ate, now, in
the same room. It would remain this way until Constantine’s army
made its move.

The humans began to go about their
day as if they belonged there. Chicago was a great place for all
the different people that had, by now, become part of the Windy
City.

Justice and his men had moved into
the houses surrounding his sister’s homes. They took up their
vigilant lifestyle just as they had before. No one paid them much
attention. A couple of neighbors asked if the sisters had enjoyed
their vacations, but it wasn’t long before they were back to their
old routines.

The waiting, however, was tedious.
While everyone else was able to take up their usual routines, Jes
and her sisters were still stuck waiting. They kept up their
various rituals, and they kept a permanent circle going. It would
remain up until this business with Constantine was finally
finished.

Constantine seemed in no rush to
engage them. He appeared simply to wait them out. It was as if he
knew that this would be the best way to get to them—to make them
antsy to get it over with—to make them careless.

The sisters knew he was trying to
make them all careless—and they weren’t about to let him get to
them so easily. So they warned the men to let everyone know that
Constantine was not likely going to engage them any time soon—and
that he would be waiting to attack at the very moment they dropped
their guard.

Then the sisters settled in and
took precautions to ensure they didn’t fall victim to Constantine’s
ruse. They dared not drop their guard for a single moment, and time
was on Constantine’s side. It was making it difficult to sleep
well. And sleep deprivation and the constant vigilance were wearing
them thin.

The hardest part of the waiting was
not being able to ever relax—when at any minute they could receive
the alarm that Constantine was on the move.

Justice grabbed Jes, laughing and
holding her with one arm—and drenched her with the garden hose with
the other. She shrieked as she grabbed for the hose and tried to
turn it on him.

It was the dead of summer in
Chicago, and very hot, with the humidity making the already
miserable summer even worse. Jes had spotted Justice when he tried
to sneak up to see her. By now, she had become very adept at hiding
her thoughts from him. So it was with great glee that she was able
to completely drench him with a large glass of water.

Two more weeks had gone by while
waiting for Constantine—and nothing. Constantine was a shrewd
warrior, but the sisters had learned how to weather the wait by
now. They had learned that laughter was the key to all of it. Thus,
they now took turns taking breaks—but making sure they only went
out during the day, since it was at least certain that the
fledgling vamps would need the cover of darkness to make their
attack.

The sisters made sure they each got
their own private time, while deliberately engaging in antics that
brought with them lots of laughter, so that they would always be
fresh for the long, tedious nights. In this way, they were becoming
stronger—not weaker.

Constantine’s plan to break their
will would not work on them.

And through Justice and Dracon they
were making sure that the vampire hunters were ready for
war.

The best news was that Lucius had
been right, and they had located the place where they were likely
to find the vaccines. It was still unlikely that they would be
ready in time, but at least they now had their plan in place for
derailing Constantine long enough to buy them some time.

They just needed to make sure that
this would buy them that time.

Justice and Jes rolled over on the
grass. They were both completely drenched, but it felt wonderful
beneath the hot summer sun. Justice rolled up and kissed Jes
gently, and she felt a whole different kind of heat steal its way
through her body. She curled her toes in anticipation.

He got up and held a hand out to
her, and they both snuck through the house toward their bedroom,
giggling like naughty schoolchildren as they tip-toed through the
house.

When they were lying naked and
panting some time later, their wet clothes strewn all over the
hardwood floor, Jes took Justice’s hand in hers and leaned up on
her elbow to look into his eyes. “I love you,” she
whispered.

He reached up and tucked a
still-damp lock of hair behind her ear. “I love you, too,” he said
and pulled her in for a gentle kiss. It was much, much later before
Jes made it back to the circle.

Justice, Dracon and several of the
other men scouted the city. It was some time after midnight. The
streets were quiet except for the occasional car searching for
parking, humans walking their dog, or couple coming home from a
club or night out on the town.

Nothing indicated that Constantine
intended to hit the city, except for an occasional rumor—and the
fact that he had shown up here demanding to talk to Justice. He
obviously intended to make it as tedious for them as was possible,
and thereby hoped to cause them to make mistakes.

That was one thing they were as
equally determined not to do.

Dracon knew that Constantine had
lost all concept of time, and told Justice as much. When he didn’t
have to face death—he didn’t have anything to tick down
to.

He paid no attention to
time.

But that also meant that he was in
no hurry. He would do whatever it took to ensure his
victory.

They would need to be just as
diligent to make sure he didn’t succeed.

They tried to keep the human
vampire hunters on the streets—and tried just as hard
not
to keep too many Fae
or vamps of their own on the streets. They wanted Constantine to
think they were watching for him. He would expect no less. But they
also wanted him to think they had seriously underestimated his
numbers.

The human vampire hunters allowed
them to do this.

Even if Constantine caught on that
they had humans in their ranks, he would see it as a sign of
weakness. He would not take it seriously.

And that would be their saving
grace.

The humans watched from the
streets. Enough Fae and vamps watched from the streets as well to
make Constantine think that they were taking him
seriously.

The rest waited and watched from
apartments and nearby buildings.

But as time dragged on, days
gradually turning to weeks, everyone became more and more agitated.
Justice feared that this was exactly what Constantine
wanted.

He wanted them to get fed up. He
wanted them to drop their guard.

Justice walked the streets late at
night on the eleventh day of waiting. If nothing happened tonight,
he intended to see Jes in the morning. They all knew one thing for
certain: the attack would come at night. Jes and her sisters had
taken to going out during the day, but also were doing most of
their sleeping during the hours of bright sunshine.

Many of the humans, and even the
armies, were becoming accustomed to the same rhythm. They needed
their energies to remain at their highest level during the time
when Constantine was the most apt to attack.

Justice had come to enjoy his
late-night walks on the dark Chicago streets. The people of this
city had much to do at night, as there were many choices of
activities here. He watched as carloads of young people walked the
streets, preferring to take the Chicago ‘L’ rather than search for
a place to park.

They laughed and joked around as
they passed him, unaware of their danger, unaware that everything
could change for them in the blink of an eye—if he and his
compatriots were not successful in stopping Constantine.

He thought about Jes. He could hear
them chanting when he quieted his mind. Jes and her sisters were
spending most of the hours of darkness in trance—watching for
signs, watching for anything that would indicate danger.

When he listened carefully, he
could hear her voice amongst the others. The sound was sweet to
him, like music. It was what kept him going when he was so fed up
with Constantine that he wanted to just go after him.

Such a move would be suicidal. He
wouldn’t get anywhere near Constantine before being
killed.

Justice wasn’t one for folly. He
believed in skillful planning and quiet determination. He would
move his chess pieces around the board until he had ensured his
victory.

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.