by Lenore Wolfe
Justice didn’t find it so amusing.
Justice was never allowed in Dracon’s mind. He only received thoughts from Dracon if he deliberately put them there—so he knew that Dracon had wanted him to hear this teasing remark.
He turned the other way, knowing that this was significant, if only he could figure out how they could best use it.
He turned suddenly and left Dracon sitting on the wall alone with the guards. He knew that Dracon’s brow had shot up in question, but he didn’t turn around—and he didn’t answer him.
This war left no time for anything but war—survival. That was all they ever thought about. And what if they lost?
He wasn’t going to waste every precious minute in life—planning for war.
His stride was determined. He marched into her room without hesitation. He had a good idea she wouldn’t be there yet, so he called for the maids.
When Jes arrived, she found a candlelit, late-night repast sitting by the bed. There were flower petals on the bed and floor. They weren’t roses, like one would usually find in these situations, but this wasn’t the usual situation.
They were at the manor—a compound surrounded by guards.
She had never thought Justice could be so romantic. It touched her heart, and her eyes shimmered with tears.
He came to her, slowly undressing her, and they stole a couple of hours from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as they greedily devoured the few minutes they could capture—from an endlessly pervasive and determined war.
Later on, after midnight, Justice was back up and sitting at the bar in Second Chances. He was waiting for them to enter. He had been waiting for some time. The humans were in for a bit of a show, but at this point, it couldn’t be helped. Constantine’s men were pressing in on them—and they still needed to put Jes’s plan into motion.
They did not have time to delay.
Constantine could sit and keep them dangling for some period of time—or strike like a coiled snake when they least expected it.
They needed to have their men in place when he attacked.
Lucius, Micah, Caesar, and Roman accompanied Dracon into the tavern through the back door. As expected, every eye in the room was upon them. Justice almost got some amusement at the open stares they received.
He could hear the thoughts churning in the humans’ heads when he chose to—and he chose to do so now.
They on a never-ending repeat of the debate about whether they were really in the universe alone—and thinking that the rumors about this place were true.
Lucius and his men came to the booth where Justice was waiting for them and sat. Lucius looked around. Out of all of them, it was he who stood out the most. He refused to use glamour, preferring to use some stage makeup to darken his translucent skin and to wear contacts to change the startling, pale, white-blue of his eyes to a more—normal color.
But he never completely blended in.
How could he? Justice thought, when he wore his ancient, silver-white hair with the front pulled back in coiled ropes and tied at the back of his head, with the rest falling to nearly to his waist. He also wore three progressively larger silver hoops in each of his ears. And, on top of it all, he wore the violet tunic of their ancestors, which made him appear more ready for war than for a mere talk, since it was etched in silver threads and adorned with silver bangles.
Justice knew that Lucius, and the three that worked with him, Micah, Roman, Caesar and Roman, were part of an elite group that worked with the human government—within their military.
Justice knew this—because he was part of the Alliance. But this was not something that the humans knew about.
Sure—it was something some humans suspected. There were those, after all, who were suspicious that the government was keeping secrets about Alien interactions. But the fact that the human government actually worked with other races—well that was considered part of the human government’s idea of what was supposed to be top secret.
Justice looked around the tavern. No, Lucius didn’t use glamour. And he was giving the customers the show they were looking for—and from the looks of things, they weren’t missing a single moment of it.
Justice knew that Lucius was one of Mira’s lovers, since she shared her body with four of her past lives. Mira must have some kind of courage to have such a warrior for a mate. He knew she hadn’t remembered her past lives when she had first met Lucius again in this lifetime. And Justice knew that most people were intimidated by Lucius.
So that made her a pretty spunky woman.
But then again, she had two pretty spunky sisters, too. Jes was a woman that Justice had always been proud to know—the fact that she was his mate only made him more proud to call her his own.
And Dara—well Dara was a match for Dracon. Justice nearly grinned when he saw Dracon frown at him at this thought.
Justice unrolled the plans he had brought in a cardboard tube. He had removed these before the men had arrived and set them on the table. Lucius sat quietly while Justice carefully laid out the new part of their plan. He only watched as Justice carefully explained the journal. If he approved of this plan, nothing showed in his eyes. Justice would have been surprised if he had shown any expression, so he wasn’t surprised or put off by his lack of emotion. Caesar was much more emotive. He openly smiled.
Justice knew if he had the approval of this military man—then it just might work.
They worked on that plan for quite a while. Justice deliberately waited for all the drunken humans to empty out of the tavern, as they finally lost all interest in continuing to wait for a show from Lucius, before he quietly told them the rest.
It was Lucius who felt he might know a way to locate Justice’s father. Lucius had some insight into where they might have wanted to take the vaccine to do further work on it. They talked this over for some time, trying to decide the best course of action for finding the place.
Lucius also asked to read the journal for clues—stating that Justice’s father may have had his mother put some clues in there that would be easily misunderstood or overlooked.
Justice agreed and told him he would provide it to him as soon as possible.
They spent more than an hour after that exploring the complications of such powerful vaccines. None of them liked the idea of using a vaccine against Constantine—or his men. The outcome was unpredictable. No one knew for certain how it would affect the entire vampire nation.
But they were well aware of what the outcome would be if they didn’t use it.
And so they worked out a plan for how they would use it—if the time were to come that they had no choice.
But none of them were happy about it.
None of them, that is, except for Dracon.
Chapter Forty-One
Power of Three
The sisters sat around a small, round table at Mia’s home in Chicago. They wouldn’t leave the room much at all, now, until everything else was in place. They had cast a circle and were keeping tabs on the progress through Justice’s updates. The humans had been integrating themselves onto the street for the past week. A couple more showed up on the streets every single day.
A couple of weeks went by. Many of the vampire hunters had integrated themselves as normal patrons of the streets. They became workers, street hustlers, and beggars. They moved into apartments, like the hundreds of others that were moving in and out of apartments in the area every day.
Jared had amassed more than five hundred vampire hunters over the months. They would never be able to integrate them all, but they did place many of them on the streets. The rest of them were holed up in nearby apartments. They had good intelligence on the parts of the city that Constantine planned to hit, but Chicago was a big city. They wouldn’t know for sure that they had everything right until the armies themselves actually showed.
The humans were now their eyes and ears. Dracon, Justice, and the others didn’t do too much. At least, not more than Constantine would be
expecting them to do.
Reports had begun to flow in about Constantine’s runners doing the same thing, coming farther into the city and scouting. If something didn’t happen soon, they were going to become wise to the humans. But it was much easier to hide a bunch of humans than a bunch of hungry vamps that were constantly sniffing at human blood and disappearing during the day.
And Constantine was having difficulty keeping control of all his new, fledgling vamps.
The fledgling vamps may have been very powerful, especially when they were feeding off of fresh blood—but, as usual, they were undisciplined—and undisciplined vamps could be separated.
They were eager to prove themselves—making it easier to thin them out.
Roman stayed close to the sisters and ready at all times, while the sisters slept and ate, now, in the same room. It would remain this way until Constantine’s army made its move.
The humans began to go about their day as if they belonged there. Chicago was a great place for all the different people that had, by now, become part of the Windy City.
Justice and his men had moved into the houses surrounding his sister’s homes. They took up their vigilant lifestyle just as they had before. No one paid them much attention. A couple of neighbors asked if the sisters had enjoyed their vacations, but it wasn’t long before they were back to their old routines.
The waiting, however, was tedious. While everyone else was able to take up their usual routines, Jes and her sisters were still stuck waiting. They kept up their various rituals, and they kept a permanent circle going. It would remain up until this business with Constantine was finally finished.
Constantine seemed in no rush to engage them. He appeared simply to wait them out. It was as if he knew that this would be the best way to get to them—to make them antsy to get it over with—to make them careless.
The sisters knew he was trying to make them all careless—and they weren’t about to let him get to them so easily. So they warned the men to let everyone know that Constantine was not likely going to engage them any time soon—and that he would be waiting to attack at the very moment they dropped their guard.
Then the sisters settled in and took precautions to ensure they didn’t fall victim to Constantine’s ruse. They dared not drop their guard for a single moment, and time was on Constantine’s side. It was making it difficult to sleep well. And sleep deprivation and the constant vigilance were wearing them thin.
The hardest part of the waiting was not being able to ever relax—when at any minute they could receive the alarm that Constantine was on the move.
Justice grabbed Jes, laughing and holding her with one arm—and drenched her with the garden hose with the other. She shrieked as she grabbed for the hose and tried to turn it on him.
It was the dead of summer in Chicago, and very hot, with the humidity making the already miserable summer even worse. Jes had spotted Justice when he tried to sneak up to see her. By now, she had become very adept at hiding her thoughts from him. So it was with great glee that she was able to completely drench him with a large glass of water.
Two more weeks had gone by while waiting for Constantine—and nothing. Constantine was a shrewd warrior, but the sisters had learned how to weather the wait by now. They had learned that laughter was the key to all of it. Thus, they now took turns taking breaks—but making sure they only went out during the day, since it was at least certain that the fledgling vamps would need the cover of darkness to make their attack.
The sisters made sure they each got their own private time, while deliberately engaging in antics that brought with them lots of laughter, so that they would always be fresh for the long, tedious nights. In this way, they were becoming stronger—not weaker.
Constantine’s plan to break their will would not work on them.
And through Justice and Dracon they were making sure that the vampire hunters were ready for war.
The best news was that Lucius had been right, and they had located the place where they were likely to find the vaccines. It was still unlikely that they would be ready in time, but at least they now had their plan in place for derailing Constantine long enough to buy them some time.
They just needed to make sure that this would buy them that time.
Justice and Jes rolled over on the grass. They were both completely drenched, but it felt wonderful beneath the hot summer sun. Justice rolled up and kissed Jes gently, and she felt a whole different kind of heat steal its way through her body. She curled her toes in anticipation.
He got up and held a hand out to her, and they both snuck through the house toward their bedroom, giggling like naughty schoolchildren as they tip-toed through the house.
When they were lying naked and panting some time later, their wet clothes strewn all over the hardwood floor, Jes took Justice’s hand in hers and leaned up on her elbow to look into his eyes. “I love you,” she whispered.
He reached up and tucked a still-damp lock of hair behind her ear. “I love you, too,” he said and pulled her in for a gentle kiss. It was much, much later before Jes made it back to the circle.
Justice, Dracon and several of the other men scouted the city. It was some time after midnight. The streets were quiet except for the occasional car searching for parking, humans walking their dog, or couple coming home from a club or night out on the town.
Nothing indicated that Constantine intended to hit the city, except for an occasional rumor—and the fact that he had shown up here demanding to talk to Justice. He obviously intended to make it as tedious for them as was possible, and thereby hoped to cause them to make mistakes.
That was one thing they were as equally determined not to do.
Dracon knew that Constantine had lost all concept of time, and told Justice as much. When he didn’t have to face death—he didn’t have anything to tick down to.
He paid no attention to time.
But that also meant that he was in no hurry. He would do whatever it took to ensure his victory.
They would need to be just as diligent to make sure he didn’t succeed.
They tried to keep the human vampire hunters on the streets—and tried just as hard not to keep too many Fae or vamps of their own on the streets. They wanted Constantine to think they were watching for him. He would expect no less. But they also wanted him to think they had seriously underestimated his numbers.
The human vampire hunters allowed them to do this.
Even if Constantine caught on that they had humans in their ranks, he would see it as a sign of weakness. He would not take it seriously.
And that would be their saving grace.
The humans watched from the streets. Enough Fae and vamps watched from the streets as well to make Constantine think that they were taking him seriously.
The rest waited and watched from apartments and nearby buildings.
But as time dragged on, days gradually turning to weeks, everyone became more and more agitated. Justice feared that this was exactly what Constantine wanted.
He wanted them to get fed up. He wanted them to drop their guard.
Justice walked the streets late at night on the eleventh day of waiting. If nothing happened tonight, he intended to see Jes in the morning. They all knew one thing for certain: the attack would come at night. Jes and her sisters had taken to going out during the day, but also were doing most of their sleeping during the hours of bright sunshine.
Many of the humans, and even the armies, were becoming accustomed to the same rhythm. They needed their energies to remain at their highest level during the time when Constantine was the most apt to attack.
Justice had come to enjoy his late-night walks on the dark Chicago streets. The people of this city had much to do at night, as there were many choices of activities here. He watched as carloads of young people walked the streets, preferring to take the Chicago ‘L’ rather than search for a place to park.
They laughed and joked around as they passed him, unaware of t
heir danger, unaware that everything could change for them in the blink of an eye—if he and his compatriots were not successful in stopping Constantine.
He thought about Jes. He could hear them chanting when he quieted his mind. Jes and her sisters were spending most of the hours of darkness in trance—watching for signs, watching for anything that would indicate danger.
When he listened carefully, he could hear her voice amongst the others. The sound was sweet to him, like music. It was what kept him going when he was so fed up with Constantine that he wanted to just go after him.
Such a move would be suicidal. He wouldn’t get anywhere near Constantine before being killed.
Justice wasn’t one for folly. He believed in skillful planning and quiet determination. He would move his chess pieces around the board until he had ensured his victory.