by Lenore Wolfe
His mouth rounded in amazement. It was obvious he hadn’t expected this—not at all. Of all the stories he’d ever heard, this one had obviously had been chalked up to pure fiction.
“Were your people… genetically modified?”
Jes shook her head. “Well, like the Crow People—a little of both. We have some who came from a different planet. We are—were—one of the races of the Starborne. My ancestors were from… ummm… a long way from here—and a long way from most of the other Starborne. But…” she didn’t like to think of this—much less speak of this. “There were some who were also genetically modified, yes.” She held up her hand to ward off more questions. She wasn’t comfortable with this conversation. She had never been put in such a position—of having to talk about this, about any of this—before. “It was a long time ago…,” she finished lamely.
She waited for him to ask about the others, but he seemed disinclined to have any more shocks for the night. She didn’t blame him. It wasn’t every day you learned that your entire world was built upon an illusion.
An illusion that could change in the blink of an eye—and take away the world you thought you knew with it.
Chapter Five
The Killer
Jes woke with a start. She could feel Justice, as clearly as if he were standing in the room. The bonds between them were stronger than ever. He was in Chicago. That must why she could feel him like this. It unnerved her. She had been dealing with her connection with him for her entire life, but it still unnerved her. It was so strong, now—she felt as if she could hear his heartbeat. Why could she feel him so keenly? She could sense others too, but she had never sensed anyone as strongly she sensed Justice now.
The power between them was stronger, now, than ever before.
How would she ever be clear of him? How could she ever break herself free from him, when the closer she was too him—the more power he had over her?
She glanced at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m. She wondered what he was doing up at 3:00 a.m. She felt like… her gaze flew to the shadows of the room. He was sitting there in the shadows.
Goosebumps traveled up her arms. She opened her mouth. She wanted to scream, but fear paralyzed her.
Fear—and something else.
No. She quickly realized—it wasn’t fear that paralyzed her at all. She was actually happy to see him.
Her breath lodged in her throat.
He didn’t move. Every sense in her body was heightened—electrified to his every breath. But he didn’t move. She was heady with emotion. She was heady with unnamed desire. She couldn’t fathom why she should feel this way—for a killer.
That thought gave her back some of her control—control she needed over her mind—and over her body.
That’s it, Jes, she told herself. Just keep reminding yourself of who he really is. He fooled you once—he will never do so again.
After a moment, her heart slowed just a tad. “What are you doing here, murderer?” she asked in a voice much more steady than she felt. She knew that he could feel her, and smell her blood, just as keenly as she could smell his.
She could feel his heartbeat.
Just as surely as she could feel her own.
She could smell everyone’s blood. It had been that way since she had come into her power. She wasn’t at all surprised that the smell of blood could drive a blood-thirsty killer—crazy for the feast.
Her heart picked up another notch.
“Relax,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t come here to scare you to death.”
“No,” she snarled, “more likely to eat me to death!”
He laughed. “It’s a thought.”
Another round of goosebumps traveled up her arm. But this time they had nothing to do with fear, she realized with a new round of alarm. No. What she felt was pure—desire. And she couldn’t seem to keep those feelings at bay.
She sat up in panic.
“Talk to yourself, Jes!” she commanded in a whisper. “Talk some logic into your stupid head!”
How on earth could she feel desire for a monster? He was a killer! He was pure animal—murderer! She could never feel desire for such a beast.
There—yeah—that was it—that was working.
He stepped forward, as if he could read her mind. Oh Goddess, he couldn’t read her mind, could he? She had spent the last fifteen years hating this man for what he did, even if it was to gangbangers. That was not what the Jaguar People were about. They were here to help the humans—not help make them extinct. He was a killer. He might think he was doing justice….
She laughed out loud. Did he really think he was doing justice?
She felt him scowl.
In the next instant he pounced on her. He covered her lips in a brutal kiss before she could even think to scream. She clawed at him, hit him, but to no avail, and then she lost all sense of what was happening. The next thing she realized—she was kissing him back.
She was kissing—a killer!
She was kissing Justice—oh Goddess, how she had missed him. She was kissing Justice.
And Justice was a killer.
She started to struggle, but before she could put two thoughts together, he was up—and gone.
Jes had worked herself into a fever pitch by the time the sun rose the next morning. First, she paced, going over every possible, logical explanation of why she had reacted to him the way she had.
When that didn’t work—she told herself that they had been very close. That she had missed his sisters—yeah—that was it. Mia had been her best friend. They were the family she didn’t have.
She turned around and paced the other direction, not paying attention to where she was going in her frantic state. She quickly reached a wall and was forced to turn around once more.
Well, and she’d had a family—but she’d been an only child, and her grandparents were quiet, subdued people, who always had their own life, their own things to do.
She had missed Justice’s sisters—she had felt abandoned when they all disappeared.
That must be why she had reacted to Justice in such a manner. That had to be why! Why else would she have missed him so much?
By the time the sun broke the sky, she was busy poring over every one of the writings her grandparents had handed down to her. She couldn’t remember the first three years or so of her life—and then her parents had disappeared when she’d been a teen. She knew something had happened when she was very young—and wondered if it had anything to do with why they had disappeared later on—but something always threatened her whenever she got too close to remembering the first time period—a period of time that was missing from her memory bank—when she had been very small.
When she had been eighteen or so, she had tried to approach her grandparents about it. But they wouldn’t talk about it—which had only made her more suspicious.
Something about this didn’t set well with Jes. But she couldn’t get either of them to talk about it—and boy, had she tried—so she couldn’t begin to unravel it. She had kept trying to get answers until her grandmother had finally become upset with her. Then, she had begun to look around more quietly, and not so openly—or vocally.
She wouldn’t rest until she knew.
And she wouldn’t rest until she had figured out why she had kissed that monster back last night. What could she have possibly been thinking?
She was dragging her finger down one of the ancient, hand-written books—a book written much like a Book of Shadows—when goosebumps swept up and over her arms and back.
Her hand flew to cover her mouth, and she wildly shook her head back and forth, as if she could make it all go away. But it wasn’t going away.
And you couldn’t unlearn a thing once you know it.
A member of the Jaguar People could mate with a human, but only at a price. What that price was, she wasn’t sure. But if one found their true mate, they would be able to sense them from miles away. They could also smell their mate’s
blood more keenly than that of any human, which was saying a lot, she thought. And they could read each other: hear one another’s every thought.
But she hadn’t been able to hear his thoughts last night.
She’d only heard silence. She sat up straight. “He kept his thoughts blank!” she nearly yelled out loud. And yet he had read her every thought!
Her face went up in mortified flames.
It was then she realized what she had been thinking.
Justice was her mate, whether she liked it or not!
Jes had never yelled at her grandparents in her life—and she wasn’t about to start now. But she wanted answers, and she was determined to get some.
She stared at them. They were both sitting there looking—mutinous. Yes, mutinous was a good word for it. She had told them what had happened. They had looked at each other as if they’d swallowed something bad, looking green, and—mutinous.
“Out with it!” she demanded. Her grandfather shook his head at her grandmother. “Poppie!” she nearly yelled. “Spill it.”
Her grandmother’s shoulders hunched down, like a great weight pressed down upon them. She couldn’t imagine what it was they were keeping from her, but whatever it was—it didn’t look good!
Finally, it was her grandfather who spoke. “Jes,” he nearly whispered. “I cannot—we cannot tell you what we do not know; there is much we can only guess at… but…”
She shivered. “What is it, Poppie?”
“Your papa.” He took a deep breath, as if it were too difficult to go on. “He disappeared, when you were…”
“Fourteen years old,” she finished for him.
“At the same time,” he stopped and took a deep breath, “as Justice’s parents disappeared from him.”
She took a deep breath. “What does that have to do with us?”
Her grandmother folded her hands in her lap, looking down at them. “Justice’s father,” and then she looked up at her granddaughter, “was your father’s best friend.”
Jes frowned. “Okay, I know that. I grew up with them… I still don’t understand….” She shook her head in denial. “I don’t see what this has to do with me…”
Her grandmother frowned at her. It wasn’t like her to deny what she was hearing.
“Jes, dear,” she said. “They were together for a reason. That reason has something to do with why they had to disappear together.” She shook her head in mute appeal. “But we don’t know why. We don’t know what happened to cause them to go into hiding. We can speculate. But we really do not have the foggiest notion why.”
“I figured that out. And,” Jes stopped. She sniffed. Her head throbbed. She put her hand up and rubbed her forehead. She didn’t like where this was heading. She didn’t like it at all. She finally looked at her grandmother. “Why can I sense him like this? Why have I always been able to—sense him like this?” There. She had asked the question. But she didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Why, for the same reason I can sense your grandfather, dear. Didn’t your mother explain this to you?”
She shook her head—her mind screaming at her. “No, she didn’t.” She looked at her grandmother with pleading eyes. “If she knew why Justice and I had this—strong bond—then why didn’t she?”
Her grandmother looked back at her—her eyes full of worry. “I can’t imagine, child.”
Jes didn’t want to examine the full implications of what her grandparents were trying to say to her. This is was what she’d been afraid of. She shook her head, again, in mute denial at the implications. She didn’t understand what had made the boy she loved—change so much. How could she be connected to him in the way that she was connected to Justice? The passion she had felt for Justice last night, well, it had floored her. She couldn’t think her way out of a wet paper bag today. She’d never felt like that with anyone. Not ever. What was she going to do? How could she ever go back to her what she had known? It was as if her life had never truly existed—until now.
He had changed everything.
And she knew she couldn’t go back.
She didn’t know how she’d ever gone this long without him—when being near him had upended her entire world—again. How had she managed when she’d only been a very young woman—coming into the first throes of her womanhood? How had she managed to live without him—without her parents? And then without her friends that had been more like her sisters, all at the same time?
Jes wasn’t one for living in denial. It was the cowardly way out, to pretend things didn’t exist—just because you didn’t like the answers—.
But she wanted to deny this. She wanted to deny this so badly. How could she ever go back to her life? Yet, she could never go forward with Justice either—he was a cold-blooded, murdering killer.
Her eyes pleaded with her grandmother to take back what she had revealed to her. Her grandmother looked at her with sympathy. She could see that her granddaughter struggled with the implications of what she’d just learned. But she couldn’t take it back.
Justice was Jes’s mate.
And nothing could change that.
Chapter Six
Power of Three
Jes watched her grandmother cross the room to set down the tray of lemonade. She had wanted to leave. The information she’d already learned churned inside of her, spinning like a blender, mixing everything together—until she couldn’t tell the difference between one thing and another—until nothing at all made sense.
She didn’t know what else her grandmother had in store for her. But she knew she wasn’t going to like it. She knew she was already very frustrated, and she knew she didn’t want to hear any more.
But Jes was certain that her grandmother wasn’t done with her yet, and she wasn’t leaving until she had learned everything.
She was right. Her grandmother did have yet another shock in store for her.
Her grandmother took her time pouring Jes a glass of lemonade. She seemed to contemplate what it was she wanted to say to her. She sat down in the comfortable chair across from Jes, her gaze intent.
“What is it, Nanna?” Jes asked, beginning to become alarmed.
“Granddaughter,” her grandmother shook her head slightly, “I know you have received more than your share of surprises these past few years. But I need to ask you something….” She folded her hands in front of her. Her skin was unwrinkled, her hair still a glossy brown. She was one of the Jaguar People. She would likely live to a very old age. She was a very beautiful woman, Jes thought.
Her lack of aging was likely one of the reasons Jes had persisted in calling her Nanna, though the Jaguar People didn’t usually do so, just to remind herself that she was actually a grandmother. Jes had spent too many years around humans—to not be slightly confused by her grandparents’ lack of aging.
“Jes,” her grandmother said again. “I need to ask you about your powers…?”
Jes frowned at her. “I don’t understand, Nanna. You were at my Ceremony when I took on my power….” She stopped because her grandmother was shaking her head.
“I’m not talking about your Jaguar form, child. I’m talking about you—as one of the Jaguar Witches.”
Jes stared at her. “How did you know about that?”
Her grandmother laughed. “Only a witch can beget a witch,” she said to Jes, as if that explained it all. “How do you think I know?”
Jes stared at her grandmother in shock. There is just no end to the surprises today, she thought. But she didn’t want to think about this at all. She pushed away these unpleasant thoughts. “Why do you bring it up, Nanna?”
Her grandmother shook her head at Jes’s obvious attempt to deflect her question. “What have you noticed, child?” she asked.
She didn’t want to think about this, damn it! Why didn’t her grandmother pick up the hint and leave it alone? She had always gone to great lengths to push thoughts like these far out of her reach—out of her conscious thoughts. She didn’t want to
answer the question—but neither did she wish to disrespect her grandmother.
She shook her head, placing the fingers of her right hand to her temple. Her head hurt. “I don’t know,” she said, trying for a nonchalant tone to her voice. “I guess I was about sixteen when I noticed the first thing.”
Her grandmother wasn’t making it easy for her. “What thing was that, dear?”
“I don’t remember much,” Jes said, trying to rein in her irritation. “I just remember getting angry with some kids and… and the next thing I knew—everything went flying. The other kids didn’t know what to make of it, any more than I. We weren’t outside—and no one had opened the door. Nobody knew what to think—so they didn’t connect it to me. And since they didn’t connect it to me—or anyone else—they had no answer for what had occurred.” She was rambling now. But her head hurt—and it was getting worse. “They didn’t want to think about something they couldn’t explain. It scared them. So it became one of those things that no one likes to talk about.”
“Okay, so after that day, what was the next thing that happened? How old were you then?”
Jes stared hard at her grandmother. “Why are you doing this?”
Her grandmother gave her a level look—but her tone was gentle. “Just humor me, child.”
Jes gave a great sigh of exasperation. “I don’t know—I guess it was about six or nine months later. This time I blew out the lightbulbs. I was home one day—and I was irritated with the computer. I was just glad I didn’t blow it up.”
“And how do you keep from blowing out lightbulbs—or computers—now? Or keeping things from—going flying?”
Jes folded her arms over her middle in a defensive gesture. “I neutralize the forward thrust of my emotions.”