The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (45 page)

Chapter
Fifty-One

Justice

Jes and Justice sat
together
on long sun loungers on the back
porch, under the awning where it provided a little shade, late in
the afternoon of the next day. Justice had learned that the
Alliance had managed to corner Jes’s father.

And that his parents were
finally coming home.

He had just relayed the message to
Jes, and then he started staring at something unseen in the back
yard. Jes sat there in the silence for several moments, left to
wonder why he wasn’t smiling—why he didn’t seem happy to hear
this.

This was welcomed news—wasn’t
it?

She didn’t intrude on Justice’s
thoughts. She just sat there and kept the silence he seemed to need
at the moment.

Maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe
he had mixed emotions about this news. Wouldn’t she?

Jes had long since stopped calling
the man she had known all of her life as her father, ‘father’. He
was not her father. And he had killed her mother… sister. Whatever…
She welcomed the opportunity to confront him. She had told Justice
this only yesterday.

After a long time, he reached over
and took her hand.

“
Are you okay?” she asked. She
squeezed his hand. “It’s been a long time since you saw your
parents.”

“
They were gone—years before they
actually disappeared,” he murmured—almost, it seemed, out of
habit.

“
You’ve said that before,” she
whispered gently. “But didn’t we figure out that it was because of
my father’s deception?” She squeezed his hand tighter. “Didn’t we
decide that it was him—putting pressure on them when they had been
trying to prepare you for fulfilling
the
prophecy…
that caused them to become
sidetracked from you all—perhaps in trying to deal with the
ramifications of this threat?”

He nodded, but he looked
unconvinced.

“
Do your sisters know
yet?”

He just shook his head in
answer.

She leaned back against the
lounger, and tilted her head to look at his face. “What is
bothering you?”

He shook his head—like he was
trying to clear his head. “I don’t know.” He pulled his hand away
and went back to looking out across the yard.

But he appeared to see nothing but
the past.

Finally, he, too, leaned his head
back against the lounger and turned his head so that he could see
Jes. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling there is so much more to
it—than meets the eye.”

She sat forward and turned to stare
at him. “So you don’t think we know everything?”

He shook his head. “Not by
half.”

Jes’s brows shot up. “What more
could there be? My father betrayed his best friend, your father,
sending your parents in a tailspin as they searched for a way to
prevent him from getting his hands on the vaccine, and causing the
Alliance to have to search for a way to make an antidote—which only
ended up causing them to make an even deadlier vaccine.” She threw
up her hands. “It’s an old story—really—when it comes to vaccines
and germ warfare—isn’t it?”

“
Yes,” Justice answered, “and one
that I’ve a feeling that has a lot more
story
to it.” He looked at her, his
face serious. “I think we’ve only just begun to start unraveling
this one.”

Jes had a hard time concentrating
on their circle work that night. She just couldn’t get the
conversation she’d had with Justice out of her head.

She understood that he was
distrustful of his parents. After all, he and his sisters had been
forced to start taking care of themselves long before both sets of
their parents had disappeared. But she had a feeling that Justice
was holding something back—or perhaps he didn’t know
how
to voice what was
bothering him. Perhaps he didn’t even know
exactly
what was bothering
him.

Well, that wasn’t true. He thought
that more existed to the story than what they had figured out. But
wasn’t the vaccine enough?

It had been enough for her
so-called
father
to plot the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy in an
alley.

Why didn’t Justice think that it
was enough to cause his parents to stop being parents? Didn’t they
have enough worry with trying to prepare their son for
the prophecy
—without
this added burden of their best friend’s betrayal?

Jes hated the idea that there
could actually be
more to this
story.
Her mother had been killed. There
had all ready been
too much.

On top of which, Jes had more than
this conversation with Justice on her mind.

She also was still plagued by what
Mia was
not
saying.

She hadn’t been able to shake the
feeling that something was going on with Mia, something she hadn’t
shared, since they had rescued her successfully—or so they had
thought—from Constantine.

Now, Jes wasn’t so sure they were
completely successful.

She couldn’t put her finger on it,
but something wasn’t right.

Mira and Dara had been giving her
hard looks for the past hour. Finally, Dara came around the table
and took the wooden spoon she’d been using out of her hand. “Okay,
out with it. We all know that you’re no good at hiding when
something is bothering you,” she prodded gently.

So Jes and her sisters sat down in
a circle facing each other, inside the magical circle they always
kept up now, and told her sisters about both situations. When she
was done, Mira got up and took the large crystal sphere and its
stand off of the table and set it in the center of where they sat.
When she was once again seated beside Jes, she took her hand from
one side, Dara took her hand from the other side, and then Mira and
Dara joined hands.

Mira called for their ancestors to
show them what Mia was hiding.

The crystal clouded over, and then
it cleared to show them what it was they sought—and what they saw
left the Sisters of Three sisters more worried than ever that Mia,
indeed, might be hiding something.

Chapter
Fifty-Two

Second Chances

Justice sat at the bar.
He picked up the drink that Conrad had poured for
him—and downed it with a single swallow. Conrad watched him for a
moment—then poured him another.

Justice downed that one
too.

“
Feel anything yet?” Conrad half
joked.

Justice shook his head. “Just
blessed numbness.”

Conrad’s brow shot up. “That’s
understandable. After all, they found your parents. It must be a
lot to comprehend that you will see them again—
soon
,” he emphasized this and seemed
to watch Justice’s eyes closely, “like—within the hour.”

Justice pointed at his shot glass,
and Conrad poured him yet another.

Conrad poured. He capped the
bottle. “Shouldn’t you be heading towards the manor?” He held up
his hand to ward off the glare that Justice was now leveling at
him. “Okay. Okay. I’m minding my own business.”

He uncapped the bottle.

Three hours later, Justice made his
way through the kitchen area of the house, trying to get the drop
on this first meeting with his parents—after all this
time.

But when he reached the living
area—nothing could have prepared him for being told that he
would
not be meeting his parents after
all.

Lucius himself brought this news to
him when he arrived back at the manor, half socked away by the
scotch that Conrad had plied him with.

He blinked at Lucius, only half
surprised. The other half had somehow
known
this would happen.

Perhaps that had been the
real
reason he had put
off coming back here.

His sisters came forward then,
hugging their brother, tears in their eyes. The four of them simply
stood like that, holding each other.

Lucius waited quietly. When they
were ready, he said. “Jes’s father is still at large.” He had to
stop as Justice’s sisters murmured their outrage at this news. When
they had quieted, he went on, “As you know, they thought that they
had him, but he gave them the slip.” He appeared to hesitate, and
then said. “Your parents talked about the ramifications of this, at
length, with the Alliance. And it has been decided that until they
find him, your parents simply cannot risk coming home.”

Justice nodded, and Lucius gave him
a slight bow, in respect, and left the four of them with their
grief.

They had been waiting for so
long—and now, their reunion had been delayed.

Justice thought that it might not
be the last time.

He and his sisters sat down on a
long divan, their arms around each other, each quiet, lost in their
own thoughts.

And their
disappointment.

Maybe someday… but each of them was
beginning to believe that, in this anyway, someday—might not ever
come.

When the sun was breaking the
skyline and sending out fingers of light across the Earth, marking
the beginning of a brand-new day—and the promise of what it might
bring—Justice stumbled into the bedroom he shared with Jes, when
either of them were actually there.

He found Jes there, curled up in a
wide, stuffed chair, waiting for him.

She came forward, without saying a
word, and silently slipped her arms around his waist, laying her
head on his chest.

He slipped his arms around her, and
they just stood that way for several long moments.

And then, they simply lay down on
the bed and held each other, Justice pulling Jes into him, neither
of them saying a word, until they both fell asleep.

That night Jared sat on the wall of
the compound and watched the lights go out in their room. They had
come back to the compound deliberately. They had wanted Constantine
to think that they were relaxing their vigilance. But Jared felt
they were taking it a bit far!

Going to bed
!

Jared had come up here on the wall
because he had some thinking to do. He had a problem. Well,
actually, he had two problems. The first was Mia.

He was in love with Mia. They had
run into each other one day, and they had been spending more and
more time together—up until she became Constantine’s
prisoner.

Now, she wouldn’t let him near
her!

He was going to face down with
Justice, because he had to find out what was wrong with Mia. He
knew it was serious—whatever it was—because he knew she felt the
same way about him that he felt about her.

That meant one thing—he was going
to get
killed by
Justice
—because he wasn’t taking
no
for an answer. He
wanted Mia for his wife.

But he also had a bigger problem.
Something was going on with him. He didn’t understand what was
happening to him. He had been feeling very strange recently, and he
had hoped to talk to Jes about it.

But he’d never found his
chance.

He stared out into the darkness. It
wasn’t like them to hole themselves up like this at night. Why were
they doing it? Didn’t they realize the threat wasn’t
over?

The Sisters of Three should have
gone to the ritual room. Why were they deviating from
that?

He spotted Dracon coming down the
wall and moved to present some kind of defense—only a split second
before Dracon was at his throat.

“
Very good for a human, but I
didn’t come here to test you! What is going on with you
human
?”
Dracon hissed.

“
I don’t know,” Jared mumbled.
He’d said it so quietly, and so completely without fear—that Dracon
let him go.

“
Then
try
to explain it,” Dracon
snarled.

Jared turned to stare out into the
night. “I’ve been feeling… strange.”

Dracon sniffed. “You don’t smell
right—for a human—either.”

Jared turned to stare at him, now,
trying to figure out if the vamp had just cracked a joke.
Apparently, he was quite serious.

“
Okay,” Jared said. “I’ll bite. I
smell, different—how?”

“
Are you sure it’s wise to have
this discussion with a vamp?”

Jared swallowed at that, and he
knew that the vamp had sensed that his heart had kicked up a notch,
but damn it, he couldn’t help it. The man who didn’t hear that
threat was a fool.

And everyone here knew how
Dracon felt about humans.

“
Yes,” he said finally, “I am sure
I want to have this conversation. How do I smell
different?”