The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (23 page)

Jes nodded. “They’re very
powerful.”

Mira turned the page, and once more
they both sat there reading before she turned to the next page. At
last, Mira came to a page that pictured several, large, bat-like
creatures. They looked a cross between a bat and a human. They were
hanging upside down from large tree branches.

“
It is called a Bat Thing,” Mira
said, reading from the title.

Jes half laughed and then
shuddered. She stared at the drawings. They were exactly what she
had seen in her dream. “You would think our ancestors could have
come up with a
better name
for them,” she said, making a face.

Mira laughed at Jes’s shudder, and
then she, too, shuddered.

Jes giggled at the look of
repulsion on her sister’s face. “And you are the one who spent all
that time in the Land of the Fae,” she accused.

Mira grinned. “Nothing there
looked like this.” She looked back down at the drawings. “Anyway, I
imagine that they
couldn’t
rename them, although I agree, the name is trite
and doesn’t do them justice—
at all.
They would have had to stay true to the ancient
writings about them.”

They both stared at the
page.

“
Well, you’re right. As much as I
am used to supernatural beings—this
Bat
Thing
takes the cake,” Jes
said.

Mira gave a small laugh, but Jes
could tell she was just as creeped out as Jes. They both just sat
there staring at it. They couldn’t help it. It was like one of
those things on the movies, where you are overcome with the horror
of it, and you know you should look away, but some morbid curiosity
won’t allow it.

Finally, Mira started reading from
the Book of Shadows. “The Bat Thing is an ancient being,” she read.
“It will feed on the blood of any live creature, but it
particularly loves human blood.”

“
Now that sounds familiar,” Jes
commented.

Mira wrinkled her nose in
disdain.

Jes gave a short laugh. “You really
don’t like vampires do you?”

Mira shook her head.

“
What are you going to do when our
sister arrives? How are you going to handle the fact that she is
now—a vamp?”

Mira pressed her lips into a thin
line. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

“
What do you think makes you
dislike them so much?” she asked carefully.

“
Well, to start with, I wasn’t
raised knowing about all the supernatural beings around us,” she
said. “And then, I had a run-in recently with a particularly vile
one.”

Jes nodded. “Darthanian. I heard
about that.”

Mira nodded. “I’ve seen some
amazing things lately. Things that I didn’t even know existed just
a few short years ago.” She turned to Jes. “But you always knew all
these things existed. Why do you suppose they sent me with an aunt
who didn’t follow the Jaguar People, where I wouldn’t be taught our
ways?”

Jes shrugged. “Maybe they thought
if she was living as a human—nobody would suspect her.” She looked
away, thinking about that awful day in her dream. She couldn’t drag
her mind from it. She looked up to find Mira watching
her.

Mira was frowning at her. “You act
like you know something,” she accused. “I can feel it.”

Jes smiled. She told her about the
dream. She told her about the little girl, her, staring at her
older self, as though she were begging her to fix
everything.

Mira had silent tears running down
her face as Jes finished the story.

“
It all makes sense now. I can see
it all as clear as day, just as you describe it. And I hate the
vampires. I hate these bat-like beings. And I loved our nanny. She
was like a mother to me.”

Jes nodded. She was crying again
too. “To me, too.” She sniffed.

They sat there like that, crying,
for several long minutes.

After a moment, Jes asked Mira,
again, how she was going to deal with the fact that Dara was a
vamp. She asked because she knew she held the same fears that her
sister held.

She asked because she knew she
carried the same hate for the vamps that had killed their
nanny.

Their nanny had died that day—and
they had loved her as much as they loved their own mother—more so,
because she was there for them—she was there with them. They had
loved her as much as they would a mother. In many ways, she
was
their
mother.

And she had died that
day.

Now Dara, the sister they loved as
much, the sister who had been ripped away from them for all of
these years was, herself, a vamp.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Justice

Justice looked up at the
moon
from the manor wall. It was a full
moon tonight. The white globe illuminated the night, sending
shadows across the walls. He tipped his face up to the moon. He was
the son of the Dark Mother. He never felt more alive than on a
night like tonight.

The moon spread her silver fingers
across the ground in shadows and light. Nothing moved except the
slight breeze. Even so Justice sensed Dracon several seconds before
he actually appeared. He had brought someone with him. As Justice
watched them move through the night like shadows, coming closer, he
tried to figure out who was it was who accompanied Dracon, half
paying attention; however, his main attention was on his men, to
see how long it would take them to notice Dracon’s
approach.

Dracon frequently tested them this
way, and it didn’t take long for one of the guards to send up the
alarm.

Dracon appeared only a moment
later. He beamed at the guard, which was saying something. He only
rarely gave compliments. Still, he had to point out that he would
have had only that slight moment to prepare—before he would have
been engaged in battle.

And yet—it was a moment. And
sometimes that moment saved your life.

“
Who have you brought with you?”
Justice questioned. He had figured out that she was a woman, and
now he was trying to see her face. She wore a long, dark jacket,
the belt wide. The jacket wrapped tightly around her body. It came
to her thigh. The hood hid her face from view. He sensed that she
was a vamp. He could read nothing of her thoughts. So he was
pleasantly surprised when Dracon said her name.

“
Dara, this is Justice. He will
soon be your brother-in-law.”

Justice frowned at this
disclosure.

“
How did you become so good at
shielding your thoughts so quickly?” Justice questioned.

“
I am a Jaguar Witch,” she stated
as if that explained everything.

Justice gave a slight bow in
recognition. “Your sisters have been waiting for you. They will be
most happy that you have arrived.”

She returned the bow and went to
the manor, disappearing inside.

“
She is—something,” Justice
mentioned.

“
Hmmm,” was all that Dracon
said.

But Justice noticed that Dracon had
not taken his eyes off of her the entire time it had taken her to
cross the compound and enter the manor.

How interesting.

Of course, Mira would not be happy
to learn that her newly found sister held the attention of a most
dangerous vampire.

Even if her sister was—herself—a
vampire.

The two sisters were still just
sitting there silently, tears running down their faces, when Dara
walked in. They looked up and, in that moment, both of them came
flying off the sofa and into their older sister’s arms. This time
there were three sisters crying.

They stood that way for a long
time. Dara cupped first one sister’s face with both hands,
searching her face, then the other. She ran her fingers through
their hair. She laughed through her tears.

“
I can’t believe I’m home,” she
whispered. “It just feels so wonderful to finally be
home.”

They all laughed and hugged
again.

And if either Mira or Jes
remembered that Dara was now a vampire, they pushed it aside. They
were just too happy they were reunited, and sad because one of them
was now gone.

The sisters talked until well into
the night. They talked about the years that had separated them, and
what they had each gone through. They talked about how Jes had been
able to grow up with her heritage around her, and how Mira had not.
They talked about how Dara had soon been a runaway from the family
she had been sent to live with, and how she had ended up in foster
care, hiding her powers. They talked about every experience—except
the one that had made Dara a vampire.

No one wanted to talk about
that—not even Dara.

They were remembering the vampires
who had taken their nanny and set all their lives
adrift.

Very early in the morning they went
to sleep, and when they woke—Dara was gone. She didn’t reappear
until after dark the next night. When she walked in Mira and Jes
ran to hug her. Then, they settled down to work. Jes and Mira soon
learned that their big sister knew an impressive amount about spell
work. They were pleasantly surprised and set about learning
everything they could from her.

The first thing she taught them was
that the way they set up their spell could make or break it. So
even though they were using a powerful, ancient spell, if they set
it up incorrectly, in making it their own, they could significantly
impact the spell.

She taught them to state what it
was that was happening or going wrong first, then to state the
outcome they would like to see.

They set up candles at the four
corners and one for spirit. Then, they said the spell they were
practicing together. The spell set the room alight, and had there
been anything hiding in the shadows, and especially if it had been
of the clan of the Bat Thing, they would have been set on
fire.

“
Wow!” Jes exclaimed. “You
wouldn’t want to use that kind of power any ol’ way.”

“
Which is why you should never
just dabble in witchcraft,” Dara lectured, like the true older
sister she was.

Jes made a face at her, which set
the three sisters to laughing.

On the third night, when it was
closer to dawn then night, Dara prepared to leave them once
more.

Jes watched her for a moment, then
finally burst out, “Are you always going to go back to Dracon every
day, or will there come a day when you will stay?”

Dara gave her a gentle look,
reserved in patience for the baby sister. “I will always go back to
Dracon.”

Jes didn’t like that answer, and
neither did Mira.

Dara looked from one sister to the
other. “Are we going to have our first sisterly fight,
already?”

Jes looked at Mira, and Mira looked
at Jes. They both shook their heads, looking back at their older
sister.

“
It must be a much more difficult
transition for you—than it is for us,” Jes admitted.

Mira nodded her
agreement.

“
Not as much as you think,” Dara
confessed in a quiet tone.

A tone that should have warned her
two sisters that they were not going to like what was coming
next.

“
It put me back with
Dracon.”

“
What!” Mira exclaimed.

Jes was too stunned to utter a
word.

Dara gave them both a measured
look. “I loved Dracon, even as a child. Coming back to him—well, he
has been much taken with me too.”

“
She even talks like him,” Mira
exclaimed to Jes.

Jes gave a nervous giggle. She
didn’t know what to think. She was too stunned to say anything now.
She had quickly realized that she might say something that she
would regret.

Mira had no such
restraint.

“
Are you crazy
?” she asked. “He’s not only one of the oldest and most
powerful vamps—but he’s dangerous—just to be around!”

Dara actually laughed. “Okay,
sister. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mira made a face at her.

“
Oh,” she said before Dara made
her way out the door. “Amar said to give you a message. We’re doing
the ceremony—for the Sisters of Three—as soon as
possible.”

Dara nodded. “I’ll be ready.” And
with that, she went out and shut the door behind her.

Justice was watching when Dara left
the manor that night. He noticed that Dracon melted out of the
shadows to meet her. He had been waiting for her the entire time
she was in the manor visiting her sisters. He had waited at first
on the wall with Justice, but had then said he was taking
off.

But Justice had noticed that he had
only gone to the woods to wait.

And so he had watched.