Chapter Twenty Four

Maria

I spent that night talking to this double of the man I had loved and lost and the longer we spent together the more I felt I had to try saving him from the fate that awaited him but I would have to move very carefully or I risked not only his life but my own too. Nathan was furious when I left him behind for the daylight raid on a nearby village. We hadn't been here long, moving from place to place while the bounty hunters followed The Major's double before snatching him.

"Stay close to me at all times, I can't afford to lose you."

He nodded but I could see he was distracted by all the bustle around him and when we moved out I had to hold him back from joining the most eager members of the party.

Jay

I felt different, stronger, more confident, and I wanted a chance to try out this new improved body. Maria wanted me at her side but as soon as the raid started I managed to break away and chased a human between two cabins only to come face to face with four vampires, ones I didn't recognize and who seem to have been waiting in ambush for our party. Thinking slowed me down so I allowed my fighting instincts, human and vampire to take control and attacked. It seemed to come quite naturally to me, the holds, the best way to incapacitate. The next few minutes passed in a blur of venom and body parts but at the end of the encounter I was the only one still standing and at my feet and around were a variety of body parts all ripped from their owners or savagely bitten off. I roared my approval and it echoed through the silent streets. Then I heard the sound of running feet. Whirling round ready for more fighting I recognized the two figures who appeared as members of our party. They collected the pieces of the vanquished and checked the heads for identification talking hurriedly in Spanish.

Maria appeared then and she was furious, much more frightening than the vampires who attacked me earlier. She screamed invectives at me and then rained blows down on my head and body until I felt my own rage building. I was about to defend myself when she stopped, snapping at the others to go back. Once we were alone she looked at the five heads stacked ready for burning then back at me.

"You do realise if the others hadn't been here you would be a smoldering pile of ashes now? You could have been destroyed and got me into terrible trouble."

Something told me to hold my peace about the fact I'd killed them all without help.

"With who?"

Her face darkened again,

"You don't want or need to know that just understand this, don't ever defy me again Jasper or I will kill you myself. Still at least you can fight which is a start. You have some new scars too that also is a good thing."

"Why? What are you supposed to do with me? I know you aren't in charge here and I guess you are supposed to be training me for something….scars, fight training, God your job is to make me into an exact copy of The Major isn't it? But why?"

"You ask too many questions Jasper, it would be best if you kept your mouth shut and just did as you were told. Safer for all of us."

I followed her back to the compound bombarding her with questions but she refused to speak again. She was supposed to make a new Major from me but I had to tell her, I may be able to protect myself but I wasn't a master tactician or fighter like the real one. I wasn't sure what the significance of the scars was, presumably he had a number, noticeable ones so any I received were a bonus. I was keen to read his journal again, maybe it would give me some idea what was expected of me but in my cabin I noticed it had gone and thinking Maria had probably taken it I went to ask her for it back.

As I approached her cabin I heard voices, she was talking to someone on the phone but with vampire hearing I could make out both sides of the conversation.

"What is going on? You had a simple enough task and now I hear you put his life in danger."

"He has some of The Majors idiosyncrasies, he doesn't always obey orders but he fought and won today. Did your spy tell you that also?"

"We cannot afford to lose him, make sure you keep him alive and get on with training him. How does he look?"

"Just like the real one with one exception."

"Which is?"

"He isn't so badly scarred but unless you had seen The Major close up you wouldn't be aware how many scars he has."

"Then it's a good job they don't know him by sight only from a distance and by reputation."

"He'll do it you have my word."

"He'd better or you don't get your payment Maria."

Her caller rang off quite suddenly and I continued up the steps to her door knocking and swinging it open before she could speak.

Her eyes flashed dangerously and she hissed,

"In future wait to be invited in Jasper."

"Did my predecessor?"

"He was different and don't be fooled into thinking you are him…...you aren't. What do you want?"

"His journal, it's missing from my room."

She opened a drawer and took out the journal but she didn't hand it over immediately.

"What are you hoping to find in there?"

"Answers."

"To what?"

"Why I'm here."

She handed over the book with a disparaging laugh,

"Feel free Jasper, you won't find any answers in there, he didn't have any."

I didn't answer, instead I took the journal and went back to my cabin ignoring Nathan's taunts as I did so, he wasn't worth my trouble, he had no answers for me.

Maria

I had a problem, a dilemma, I didn't want to train Jasper only to see him killed and that is what would happen eventually because he could never fill The Major's shoes, that wasn't possible, he didn't have the introduction to our world that I had given The Major when I was desperately trying to make my mark in Mexico and gain territory. I felt for Jasper, I wasn't in love with him but I felt a strange kind of duty to keep him from the destiny I was supposed to be training him for. I wasn't even sure I wanted control of the Southern covens any longer, everything had changed and what I wanted most of all now was peace, inner peace, and my own territory I could hold without the incessant fighting. The trouble was I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that without handing him over when requested.

Jay

I lay on the bed and opened the journal reading carefully from one page to the next. The first time I had skimmed through missing much but now I took in every word and started to understand why Bella had wanted to defend him. The first years of the journal he had gloried in his kills, in the murder of innocents but I could understand the newborn rage that raced through his body, I felt it myself but deeply hidden and controlled in a way he never could. I knew what was happening to me, he had no idea, I lived in a time of peace, he was born and raised in a much more violent age and came to Maria straight from war. He was like a wild animal caged and trained to perform for a reward. How this monster of the early entries was able to drag himself into the man I read at the end I had no idea but he was twice the man I would ever be.