The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (3 page)

It only took a phone call for her
to find out that the tavern had been around for more than three
decades. She winced again. Something about the name was familiar,
and the thought was causing her head to hurt and her stomach to
twist up in knots.

Jes didn’t like that feeling. She
knew that it usually bode ill for her. She had forgotten much of
her youth—like blank pages in her memory—because she had repressed
some kind of trauma. She’d gone to years of therapy trying to sort
it all out, but nothing would bring back the memories.

But every time something like this
haunted her, it would put her down for a week. She sat up straight,
resolutely. Not this time. She didn’t have time for such
nonsense.

She reached the tavern and went
inside the dimly lit interior. It was too early in the day for more
than a couple customers. A bartender stood polishing the beautiful,
wooden bar top. She looked away, glancing around the interior when
her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The rest of the tavern was much
like the bar top, built out of beautiful, inlaid wood, with
delicate carvings painstakingly engraved onto it. These were not
machine made. They appeared much too old for that. And none of them
were the same.

By the time she had completed her
appraisal, and her gaze had returned to the barkeep, he was staring
back at her. Her head hurt again, but this time it was more of a
pounding, and she could swear she’d seen recognition in his
eyes—before the shutters went down.

She approached him slowly. Nothing
about him made her feel she was in any danger: so then, why did she
want to run?

She laid the paper on the bar top,
with the ad now highlighted for him to see. He picked it up,
glanced at it, then tossed it back at her. It hit the well-polished
surface and slid toward her, coming to a stop right in front of
her. She looked down at it, then back up to find him glaring at
her. Now, what could she have possibly done?

His gaze narrowed on her. “What of
it?”

She frowned at him. “Who posts
it?”

He picked up a glass and a
pristine, white towel and began polishing the glass. “Who wants to
know?”

She fished in her pocket and
produced her badge.

He didn’t even glance at it, just
kept polishing. “
Why
do you want to know?”

He was beginning to irritate her.
“Just answer the question.”

He did look up this time, but only
flashed a grin at her before his face went immediately back to a
stoic mask. “No.” And he set down that glass, adjusted it perfectly
into line with the next one, and then picked up the next and began
polishing it.

She was really starting to hate
this guy. She glanced around. There were some pictures hanging
behind the cash register, and one of them made the hair on the nape
of her neck stand on end.

He glanced up to find her staring
at one of the pictures, and now he actually smiled. “Well, now. It
looks as if you found your answers,” and he set that glass
perfectly in line with the others, “or, at least, one of them,” he
finished in low tones. He glanced back up. “Question is, what will
you be
moved
to
do now?”

She again felt sick—sweaty and
nauseated all together at once—and frowned at him. What an odd
thing to say. The room started to spin around her. She felt like
she’d been drugged, but she hadn’t ingested anything in more than
two hours. She had to get out of here.

“
I’ll be back,” she growled at him
with all the strength she could find within herself. She was
surprised to hear her voice come out in a snarl.

She had to get out of
here!

She’d turned and was heading for
the door when her keen hearing picked up what he’d muttered, and
she turned back to stare at him.

He only stood there, quietly
polishing another glass.

Outside, she sat in her car taking
in slow, easy breaths, trying to calm the uneven tempo of her
heart. It took her several minutes to calm down enough to
drive.

She couldn’t believe what he’d
called her! He couldn’t possibly know!
How
could he know
?

He’d called her a Jaguar
Witch
!

Back at the office, she unlocked
her desk and took out a box she had stashed toward the back. This
was her hidden life. This was the reason for everything, the
purpose for which she’d worked so hard—all of these years. She took
out the box of pictures she’d gathered over the years—all the
evidence she had gathered during her searches—and dumped them all
onto her desk. With shaky hands she sifted through them, looking
for a specific one. When she found it, she picked it up, staring at
it.

Her father and her mother had their
arms around each other. They were standing next to another
couple—the same couple as were shown in the picture in the
tavern.

The other couple who had
disappeared on the same day her own parents had
disappeared.

Her father’s
best friend
—and
his wife.

Her whole body was now trembling,
shaking so hard she had to sit down. She set the picture down on
her desk before someone in the office noticed that she was shaking
like a leaf blowing in the wind. She stared at the
picture.

And asked herself: why had she
always kept these pictures—pictures of her parents, pictures
of
his
parents—with all the others?

But she knew why.

Because that was the day the loving
boy she had known—had become a killer.

She pushed the rest of the pictures
around on her desk, looking for one in particular. When she found
it, she stared at it. It was getting worn around the edges from her
handling it so much over the years.

She stared down at the photo of
the youth who had escaped being torn to shreds.
What had made him do this
? She had
asked herself this same question hundreds of times over the years.
Staring down at his picture, she ran a finger across the
photo.

Jes hadn’t been fooled, like so
many others. It had never occurred to any of them that he was the
monster who had killed those gang members. Why would it? He was a
fourteen-year-old kid. How could he have possibly torn a bunch of
gang members limb from limb?

This photo was her only tie to
him.

He was a muscular youth, but not
even the strongest kid, at that young age, could have done what he
did—at least, not in his human form—so they’d had no reason to
suspect him. After all, he’d received hundreds of stitches that
day. Those gang members had nearly beaten him to death.

Even with his particular knowledge,
her father hadn’t seemed to suspect the boy.

But she had.

She looked into the eyes of the boy
she had known.

She had memorized every inch of
that boy: a boy she’d once been so infatuated with. But no
longer...

Now she just wanted to bring him
in—to make him pay for what he had done that day.

How did he
change
?

The Jaguar People weren’t supposed
to tap into their power at that age—for this very reason. A power
like this one couldn’t be risked on the folly of passionate youth.
Jes—herself—had only reached her majority at the age of twenty-one.
So how had he managed to transform at the tender age of fourteen?
What could possibly have happened to him to cause him to tap into
his power? Could that horrible beating have done it? She doubted
it. Not the beating alone, anyway.

She shook her head. For the
umpteenth time in so many years, she wished she’d been old enough
to follow up on the leads of his first murder scene.

She chewed on her lip.

She doubted she would find anyone
who still knew him, or even if anyone
could
remember who
he
was. Nobody knew. She
wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the gang had hunted him
down.

Now that was a thought.

She got up and went to the
computer. For the rest of the evening, she sorted through the
remaining known members of that particular gang, those left over
from during that time frame.

It was late into the night when she
found what she was looking for—the name and the address of an
ex-gang member who should know if his gang had sought out a youth
for killing the very dangerous leaders of their gang.

She was knocking on his door before
it was even 8:00 a.m.

And he didn’t look too happy about
it when he finally opened the door.

She introduced herself and walked
into his house. If he was surprised that she had done so, it didn’t
show on his face—she was impressed.

“
Felix Cantrell,” she said. It
wasn’t a question. Even after all these years, she could easily
recognize him from the photo, which she now held up for him to
inspect.

His lip curled. “I don’t bang no
more.”

“
I didn’t ask,” she said. “And I
don’t care one way or the other.” She put the photo away in her
folder. “No.” She dug out another photo. “The only one I’m
interested in,” she held up the photo, “is this one.”

His nose flared. But that was the
only indication he gave of having recognized the youth in the
picture. “Beat it lady, I don’t have time for this.” He turned
away. He turned back, curious in spite of himself. “What do you
want with him, anyway?”

She shrugged. “I just want to find
out how he escaped—alive.”

He smiled—an ugly smile that was
more of a snarl. “
We
… wondered that too.” He looked like a ghost had crawled down
his back. He looked up and glared hard at her. It would have been
enough to get most people moving—out of his way—and out of his
place, but she kept her gaze steady as she met his.

Finally he looked away. “He took
his sisters, who he was always trying to protect, and beat it.” He
looked back down at her. “Believe me, lady, if he’d stuck around,
we would have had some answers.”

She raised a brow at this news. She
knew the answer, but just to take any denial, she might have left,
out of the picture, she decided to ask anyway, “Got a
name?”

His grin was mean, but she didn’t
flinch. “Justice.”

She nearly smiled. “Now, isn’t that
something?”

“
Isn’t it
though
.”

She held up her hand before he
could say another word, then dug out her card. She set it on the
table, knowing he wouldn’t take if she held it out to him. “If you
think of anything else…,” she turned her back and went to the door,
before turning back. When she did, the look on his face was
priceless. He just couldn’t believe her nerve.

“
Yeah, lady,
I’ll be sure to give you a ring
.”

She nearly smiled at the double
entendre. She turned and went out the door.

It was nearly noon by the time she
showered and crawled into her own bed.

Justice.

She whispered his name, obsessed
by the feelings he had stirred up in her—ignited in her—even after
all of these years. The only thought she had when she went to sleep
at night was about
Justice.
And it was he whom she thought about when she
woke.

The last couple of weeks, the
intense feeling he created within her had become a lot stronger.
She didn’t know why.

She only knew that she couldn’t
shake the feeling that things were about to change.

She could still see his
face
. She hadn’t seen him since a few
weeks before that fateful day—and yet she could still see his face.
Not as it would have been then.

No. She was seeing it as would be
now.

She was back up less than two hours
later, using the computer to age his face. She was knocking on
doors early the next morning in the neighborhood from which Justice
had managed to drag himself to the nearby hospital.

And by the time the sun went down
that day, she’d found out his sisters were back.

C
hapter Two

Justice

J
ustice
pulled himself out of bed,
showered, and
got dressed. He pulled his shirt down over the scars that covered
his ribs, running his fingers over their jagged edges. Their jagged
edges, the skin broken… like the slices of his life. The scars left
behind to remind him—always remind him of that day: remind him of
what he had become—a killer.

He groaned and did what he did
every time these kinds of thoughts began to take him over—every
time they threatened to cripple him. He tried to push the thoughts
away, like he’d tried to do every time they played themselves out
in his head—like a bad movie—forcing him to watch—forcing him to
stay conscious and watch everything that had happened, always in
slow motion—never letting up—never giving him any peace.