The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) (30 page)

Constantine had sent word about
where to meet him, true. But he’d deliberately brought them out to
an area that they would likely be unfamiliar with, and he had only
given them two hours to get there: he obviously didn’t want them to
have any time to make any plans—or even scout the area he now had
them walking into. And that smelled of a setup.

Constantine was a master when it
came to war. He was well known for his tricks, for doing anything
to keep his enemy off balance.

He sought to keep Justice and
Dracon off balance now, by bringing them out into the middle of
nowhere. They hadn’t expected him to do so. He usually liked more
public displays. They had half expected him to use humans in his
plan, so that they would have to expend more of their energy and
time trying to protect the unsuspecting pawns.

But instead he had brought them out
here, where there wouldn’t be any witnesses as to what occurred.
Likely he had planned it just that way, so they would spend most of
their time trying to figure out where he had laid the
trap.

And it would have
worked.

But Justice and Dracon, Conrad, and
the others had been planning for any contingencies Constantine
might throw at them. It wouldn’t be that easy for him to trick
them, provided they all played their parts. He would have to work
harder than that for this treat.

Justice wore the violet war tunic
of his people. It was etched in silver trim, and was a shade of icy
violet that was nearly gray. He wore an ancient cape over it all.
It, too, was a light-violet shade that took on an almost gray hue.
The cape had been worn by his people for hundreds—perhaps even
thousands—of years, whenever they were meeting to have important
peace talks, or performing serious rituals where several races were
involved.

In this case, he was wearing it to
have a parlay with a serious enemy—one who could potentially be a
great threat to all of the races involved.

Justice also wore a
sword.

The Sisters of Three were busily
working their spells, and Justice’s own sisters were also fanned
out across the forest floor—using the Fae’s
cloak of invisibility
, which they
had all been practicing ever since Mia had first learned it. They
were keeping track of him by telepathy. He didn’t hear their
footsteps nor could he sense where exactly they were.

He would have been disappointed if
he could.

He knew where they were only by
their constant telepathic updates. It worked a bit like the sonar
the whales used, and they had perfected this communication long ago
to keep others from being able to hear what they reserved only for
one another to hear.

Between them and Dracon, it was as
if he was receiving a grid off a computer. He knew exactly where
all the players were.

Mia was keeping a constant litany
of cheer going in his head. He knew his little sister, and knew it
was her way of fighting back the shadows. His sisters were all
highly skilled in fighting, but everyone knew who they faced here
this night. He heard Jasmine tell her to tone it down, and he heard
Ophelia second that.

Then Mia told them that they could
just bring her a flashlight then, so she could see a
bloomin’ thing,
before
she tripped and let everyone in on where she was, to which Ophelia
told her to use her good cheer to light the way and Jasmine stifled
a laugh.

It made him grin.

Micah and the guards were primarily
set up around the sisters, off at a distance, where they were
safe—but not too far from where they were needed. They had formed a
large Triquetra of Jaguar, Fae, and vampire soldiers, set up all
around them. Micah had insisted upon it. Micah had shape-shifted
into his Jaguar form to better guard the sisters. So had a number
of the Jaguar guards. Some of the more predatory Fae had also
shifted into their own individual, ancient forms.

Jes and her sisters had not taken
their predatory form. They were needed here as the Sisters of
Three. It made it harder for them to fight, without the strength,
power and agility of their predatory forms—but it made it easier
for them to provide magickal strength as the Sisters of
Three—
the Jaguar Witches.

The sisters were chanting under
their breath. Justice could hear this
in
his head
too.

What he could see of their
adversaries were the shadows that were bouncing from tree to tree.
Except for the fact that they moved unnaturally, you would have
never guessed that they were anything other than normal
shadows.

But Justice’s keen vision didn’t
miss the way they moved.

Nor had he miss the unnatural
pattern by
which
they moved. However, they did no more than follow him. He
could only hope they couldn’t make out his sisters—carefully
blending with the forest—and he told them to keep their eyes
peeled—for the forest, itself, had eyes this night.

He heard Ophelia second that just
before Mia picked up on the shadows herself, and whispered
telepathically, “Mercy me.”

This time he heard Jasmine exclaim
that she had never known they could whisper
anything
telepathically,
but she had no sooner said that when he heard her
whisper the same thing herself, and he knew that all three of his
sisters had spotted the unnatural movements of the
shadows.

He didn’t blame them. The shadowy
forms made the hair on his own arms stand up on end a bit. And then
he heard Ophelia whisper
,
telepathically
, wondering what they would
do if the shadowy forms were to actually attack.

He heard Mia whisper, “How do you
fight a shadow?”

To which he heard Dracon break in
with a growl, “You don’t. Shadows can do
no more
than be shadows—they are
only Constantine’s spies.”

And then he heard Dara break in
with her own thought. “Then how do we
kick
their ass
?”

For the second time, Justice’s
smile flashed in the dark.

It was now so dark that only the
moon lit their path. It added a silvery opulence to Constantine’s
well-set stage.

He had set his stage perfectly and
the setting he had chosen was now brought to the pinnacle of
performance by the withering eeriness in the movements of the
shadows—drifting from tree to tree.

After a time, Justice came to the
shack at the end of the mile-long drive, just as described: an
abandoned, dilapidated, old building—leaning over itself and about
ready to fall down. He couldn’t imagine why Constantine had chosen
this place to hold a meeting—or why he would have lured them into
coming way out here in the first place.

After all, this was not where one
would find humans.

He came around to the side of the
decrepit shack, where he found a doorway, though no actual door
hung in it. The door itself had obviously been broken off the
hinges and discarded, probably a long time ago. Nor was there glass
left in any of the windows, for that matter. The place looked as
though it had been abandoned for decades, except for some more
unnatural elements that might be haunting the place.

Justice made his way up to the
doorway. The dark of the yawning doorway spilled out into the
moonlight. Inside the dark seemed to stretch out forever—like a
black hole reaching out, casting its cloak of shadows from the
depths of its own bowels, and beckoning to where Justice now stood,
inviting him to join the darkness.

He knew he would stand out when he
entered—lit up like the flame of a torch by the light of the
moon—and an easy target for anyone who might be waiting for him
inside.

He drew his sword, casting back the
folds of his mantle so his movements would be unimpeded—and stepped
inside.

Chapter
Thirty-Three

Killer

Justice knew he wasn’t
alone
as soon as he entered the old shack.
He moved across the dirt-packed floor on silent feet. He moved
through the darkness like the shadows, yet he did not try to hide.
The night fractured beneath the moon, splintering the shadows,
spilling shards of pale light to act as a witness for this night.
It wouldn’t be disappointed.

Every living being in the woods was
silent; the world was holding its breath—waiting.

Justice had felt the forest
crawling with more and more vamps the closer he’d come to the
shack, could feel their movements even now as surely as if he were
watching them converge on the cabin. Like the sinister, shapeless
beings slipping between the trees, the vamps were casting ominous
shadows of their own.

His sisters had spotted several of
these vamps. They had reported that the ones they had spotted were
fledglings and were so intent on their purpose—which appeared to be
the cabin, since they were all heading in that same direction—they
weren’t even bothering to look for anything else that may have been
around them.

These powerful, yet undisciplined,
fledgling vamps slipped through the woods on silent feet, not
feeling the sisters’ presence in their haste. Justice realized that
this could be in their favor—or that it could work against
them—depending upon what they were in such a hurry to feed
upon.

He had a bad feeling that he, and
those with him, was likely their promised feast.

The guards who watched over the
Sisters of Three would have a fight on their hands if these new
vamps were to lose the scent of the trail they were on—and were to
instead pick up theirs—the scent of a much larger feast, and with a
much greater power. If these fledgling vamps were to pick up their
scent, they would bring about a battle of greater proportions than
what they had planned on fighting this night.

Right now, the Sisters of Three
were keeping all of those hiding in the forest cloaked.

Justice hoped they were able to
maintain that cloak, because Justice had now picked up the scent,
too—the scent of fledglings, slick with the smell of frenzied
anticipation—anticipation of a kill. And fledglings meant they had
been feeding on fresh human blood, not just animal blood, since
fledglings were newly turned vamps. Human blood always made them
more powerful than animal blood—for it was the lifeblood that they
had used to cross from the Fae world—back into the Land of the
Living Souls. Animal blood would work, but it would never make them
as powerful.

But fledgling vamps were infinitely
more powerful.

Vamps who fed and turned humans had
not listened to the ancient code—the one the Ancients had put in
place—to stop those who would control the humans. They fed on
humans as they willed. And they had been busy making hundreds of
these fledglings.

None of this bode well for
them.

Fledglings would be tough to kill,
since killing is what fed their bloodlust. The worse the battle,
the more frenzied—and dangerous—they would become.

Constantine’s man had asked for a
parlay—which meant Constantine was claiming that he intended to
honor the code: a code which stated that no one coming into—or
going out of—these proceedings would be harmed.

But nothing said that this old
vamp actually
would
honor the old code. These rogue vamps didn’t respond well to
the ancients who had written the code. After all, the old ones were
the ancients who had not been created by others, but had learned to
walk between the veil of the spirit world and human world. Some of
these vamps felt that these ancients had nothing to do with them,
so why should they follow the old law?

When Justice had entered the shack,
he had not hesitated, but simply gone through the door. Hesitating
wouldn’t put off the inevitable. Either they would come out of this
alive—or they wouldn’t. It wouldn’t change the outcome.

Justice, therefore, refused to
hesitate.

He came face to face with
Constantine the instant he stepped through the door and into the
dark shadows that lurked inside.

As Justice’s catlike vision
adjusted quickly to the shadows, he picked up the old vamp, who sat
on a high-backed chair that looked carved of beautiful, cherry wood
and etched in gold. Its legs were carvings of some kind sort of
bat-like creature wrapped around a beautiful, naked, human-looking
woman. These same carvings covered the arms of the chair, where
Constantine’s own arms now rested. And it was upholstered with
blood-red material.

Constantine, himself, wore a fancy,
very old-looking, southern-style, billowing, white, dress shirt.
His long, white hair was unbound and spilled down his chest and
over his shoulders. His pants were dark and tucked into his high,
dark-leather boots. It seemed that Constantine was partial to the
lost styles of the Old South.

His skin was luminous, white to the
point it almost looked painted—and his eyes were dark as
midnight.

Other than the chair, not another
piece of furniture sat in the room. The shack itself was made out
of rough-hewn lumber, and was no insulation in the walls. In fact,
Justice could see moonlight spilling in through the cracks between
the boards comprising the wall.