The Gifted

With Seeing altered by magic and pain, Jean-Marc saw flashes of black fangs, smoking horns and an enormous six-fingered scarlet hand, tipped with talons as sharp as scimitars, reaching for him. The stench assaulted him; sulfur and carrion, rotten blood, evil. The thing was Le Devourer, Lilliane’s demon patron. His hand closed around Jean-Marc’s soul, and its talons sliced through the radiant mass.

Jean-Marc rocketed past sanity from the violation. He had no thoughts, no emotions. He ceased, because being was too horrible. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know what he was.

But one thing remained: a woman’s name, and he shouted it with the voice of the possessed:

“Isabelle!”

MILLS & BOON

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NANCY HOLDER

is a bestselling author of nearly eighty books and two hundred short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker awards from the Horror Writers Association and her books have been translated into two dozen languages. A former ballet dancer, she has lived all over the world, and currently resides in San Diego, California, with her daughter, Belle. She would love to hear from readers at www.nancyholder.com.

Son of the Shadows

Nancy Holder

Dear Reader,

One day last February, Belle, my eleven-year-old daughter, informed me that every time I kissed her, I had to pay her a quarter. The students at her elementary school could “send” chocolate Valentine roses for a dollar each to their friends, and she needed more cash. I knew she had a purse full of loot from her pet-sitting business, so I was very surprised to hear this.

It turned out that her very best friend, Haley, didn’t have enough money to buy roses for her friends. So Belle made a secret list of the people to whom Haley wanted to send roses, but couldn’t afford to. Belle’s plan was to buy the roses herself with her kissing money and send them in Haley’s name.

The most powerful magic of life is love. I am so proud that my very first Nocturne, Son of the Shadows, celebrates the essential truth that while love cannot conquer all, it can heal all. I believe this. Love can, and will, change the world. And love is priceless. It is the gift that Isabelle offers Jean-Marc. He has much to teach her so that she can survive in his world, but what she offers him can create a new world—their world.

I hope you enjoy this book half as much as I enjoyed paying my daughter oodles of quarters…for Haley’s roses.

With my warmest wishes,

Nancy

For Belle, the most beautiful rose in the garden

Jean-Marc

I am Jean-Marc de Devereaux, Guardian of the House of the Shadows. As the leader of my ancient family, it is my duty to protect my people. We are Gifted—magic users—and we are under siege.

Through the centuries, Gifted families, tribes and clans the world over have walked among the Ungifted, our term for normal human beings. Few of them have any idea that we use magic as naturally as they breathe. Nor that we have served as their first line of defense against the Supernaturals—vampires, werewolves and demons.

For the most part.

The House of the Shadows—La Maison des Ombres—was founded in France during the Middle Ages, one of three French noble Gifted families. The other two are the House of the Flames and the House of the Blood. The Flames are descended from the Bouvards, once proud warriors, now weakened and fearful. The Blood are the Malchances, skilled in the darkest of arts. The Bouvards fought beside Jehanne d’Arc—Joan of Arc—and she is their patroness. On May 23, 1430, a Malchance captured her and handed her over to her enemies. She was burned at the stake.

My House, the House of the Shadows, stayed out of the fighting, though we moved in the background, arranging alliances and shedding friends who were no longer useful. Yes, of course we killed our enemies, but rarely with swords. That has changed.

My House is adept at invading dreams and creating visions. We are master manipulators. Once we were the diplomats of the Gifted world. I myself was called to serve as the hated Regent of the Flames, when Isabelle, their heiress, could not be found and their current Gardienne hovered on the brink of death. Assassins targeted me. They are all dead.

Like the Flames and the Blood, we Shadows are slow-aging, quick-healing warriors. We are powerful fighters, ruthless in battle.

Which is a lucky thing. Because when I finally located Isabelle, I put her life—and my love for her—above my duty, and I started a war.

It rages to this day.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Prologue

The Castle of the House of the Blood

Haiti

Down deep in the dungeons of Castle Malchance, Jean-Marc de Devereaux’s soul thrashed inside the Chalice of the Blood. Although the golden, pulsing mass had been ripped from his living body, he could still see, hear, smell and feel everything around him. The pain was unbelievable. Half-mad with agony, he had to think through it, find a way to escape and get back to New Orleans. To Isabelle. By the Patron, what was happening to her?

Isabelle—who called herself Izzy—grew up in Brooklyn, unaware of her Gifted heritage, dreaming only of entering the Police Academy and perhaps marrying Pat, her boyfriend. Jean-Marc had been ordered by the Grand Covenate, the governing body of the Gifted, to track her down. She wanted no part of his world, and he understood why.

I brought her into this, he thought, cursing himself. But I had to. Her enemies would have killed her. Who knew she had a twin, bent on her destruction?

Jean-Marc’s captor, Isabelle’s twin Lilliane, danced in the dungeon torchlight. Wearing elaborate robes of black satin embroidered with red skulls, a black crown with silver skulls riding a black veil that covered her face, she laughed low in her throat like the madwoman she was and gazed down hungrily into the Chalice.

“Ah, mon beau, if we could have taken your magnificent body as well as your ferocious soul, I would give you such pleasure before I feed you to Le Devourer,” she murmured, as she ran her tongue around the rim of the Chalice, her eyes heavy with lust. He could feel her heat, smell her desire.

“I have never slept with a Gifted male as powerful as you. Think of the child we could make, you and I. I am half Blood and half Flames, like my accursed sister. And you are Shadows. Our child would be a baby born of all three Houses—the Flames, the Blood and the Shadows. A child of Shadows born, destined to rule over thousands of Gifted.”

She sighed with pleasure and threw back her head. “Such a dream,” she whispered. Then her smile faded, and her features hardened. “Unfortunately you will never father children. In fact, your soul won’t last another quarter hour. I have promised it to Le Devourer, and he always gets what he wants.”

Not this time. Not this soul, Jean-Marc vowed.

It was difficult to stay lucid when he was in so much pain. He would sell this soul of his to have fists to fight with, a mouth to utter magical incantations and kill Lilliane on the spot.

He had seen soulless living men. He had listened to them shriek and jabber, drowning in physical pain and spiritual anguish. They begged for their souls, would promise anything, everything, if only it would stop, it would stop, it would stop.

Total oblivion was their best hope. An end to the agony. But he could not go into that good night.

I can’t leave Isabelle to face the nightmare alone.

Mon Roi Gris, he prayed to his own demon patron. Écoutez-moi. Hear me. He strained for a sign that the Grey King was with him, but there was none. He was completely alone.

So be it.

“Alors, it’s time,” Lilliane whispered.

She plucked up the Chalice with one hand and lifted her skirts with the other, tripping barefoot up the dungeon stairs and pushing open the ornately carved ebony door. Her honor guard snapped to attention—dark, handsome Gifted men in full battle armor and helmets with their visors up. Uzis were slung against their chests, and they wore thick belts equipped with clips of ammo and grenades. Jean-Marc knew their magical arsenals of spells and fireballs were far more destructive than their Ungifted submachine guns and Magnum .357s. But when one was guarding one’s queen, one took no chances.

Half a dozen torch-bearing bokor priests and priestesses joined the procession, regaled in their voodoo finery—billowing black robes sewn with mirrors, animal heads and chicken claws; headdresses of crow feathers, crocodile skulls and human bones.

The tallest, a man, stepped forward, his face hidden by a grotesquely carved wooden mask with a pointed nose, almond eyes and a rictus smile decorated with human teeth. Around his neck he wore a gris-gris of chicken feet. The priestess beside him held out a simple painted black gourd, and a noxious odor wafted from it. He dipped his fingers and flicked them at Lilliane, who curtsied.

“Merci,” she said humbly, though she was convulsing with silent laughter.

The company moved swiftly down a foul-smelling corridor. Then they burst out into the moonlight, and the thirteen hundred members of the Malchance family—the House of the Blood—raised their voices in salutation.

“Lilliane!” they thundered. They could barely move, crammed as they were into the courtyard of the ancient medieval castle that was the family seat. The Knights Templar had abandoned it in 1301, after their leader had been burned at the stake for sorcery.

In the Devereaux way of Seeing, Jean-Marc’s perspective shifted. Though he knew he hadn’t left the Chalice, he looked down on the island as if he were flying. He Saw lines of zombies roped together beside the stone stairs that led to the voodoo altar. Voodoo drums pounded all over the island; loa—voodoo gods—slithered in their snake shapes through the plantation cane rustling in the night wind; and Ungifted danced around enormous bonfires blazing along the beaches. The island of Haiti had seen much death, but the death of the soul of a Gifted Guardian was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Fly! Leave! Jean-Marc commanded himself. His soul batted the sides of the Chalice like a caged falcon. Then all his senses tumbled from the sky, confined to the Chalice, as Lilliane raised it, saluting her family. Their cries thundered and echoed over the courtyard.

“Lilliane! Lilliane!” The night shuddered with her name. A miasma of black magic saturated the air.

“Here we go, Jean-Marc,” she whispered, dancing up the stairs with the chief bokor at her side.

With a flourish, she reached into the chalice and plucked up Jean-Marc’s soul, giving it a shake that ignited every point of pain to blistering intensity.

“Devereaux is ours!” Her voice rang out. “We will feed him to Le Devourer and he will suffer eternally!”

“Oui!” the people cheered. “Vive, Le Devourer! Vive, Lilliane!”

The crowd surged forward, shrieking; the voodoo drums pounded. Overcome, clumps of people broke into gyrations, collapsing and writhing on the ground. Madness and evil infected the House of the Blood. They had pledged their loyalty to the Forces of Darkness, and sooner or later, that choice would destroy them. Of that, Jean-Marc had no doubt.

Lilliane and her chief priest approached the altar. Silver hands, crosses, X’s, and silver eyes decorated the altar. Black mambo serpents and cockerels hissed in their cages on top of the shrine, upon which burned crimson candles.

A dead raven lay bleeding on the altar. Lilliane’s ceremonial dagger, her athame, protruded dead center from its chest. She yanked the athame out of the raven’s body. Blood dripped onto the stone.

In the courtyard below, the raised voices of the House of the Blood shook the stones of the temple and the ground beneath their feet shifted and tottered.

“Devereaux, là-bas! Fils des Ombres, là-bas!” Down with Devereaux, Son of the Shadows! Their enemy must suffer horribly, terribly. No compassion. No quarter.

“Adieu,” Lilliane whispered to Jean-Marc.

Then she turned the athame tip down and stabbed Jean-Marc’s soul with savage violence. The pain catapulted him out of the world and beyond the universe—the pain of soul mutilation was indescribable. She gave him no chance for recovery; her people pushed forward with their arms raised toward her, shrieking, weeping with hatred, urging her on.

“This is for my dead husband, murdered by this man and his woman!” she screamed. “By Isabelle, my own twin sister! I will do this to her next!”

“Isabelle là-bas!” the people chanted. “Jean-Marc là-bas!”

Then the shadow of a huge red demon flared around Jean-Marc like a firestorm. With Seeing altered by magic and pain, he saw flashes of black fangs, smoking horns and an enormous, six-fingered scarlet hand tipped with talons as sharp as scimitars reaching for him. The stench assaulted him: sulfur and carrion, rotten blood, evil. The thing was Le Devourer, Lilliane’s patron. His hand closed around Jean-Marc’s soul, and its talons slashed through the radiant mass.

Jean-Marc rocketed past sanity from the violation. He had no thoughts, no emotions. He ceased, because being was too horrible. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know that he was.

But one thing remained: a woman’s name, and he shouted it with the voice of the possessed:

“Isabelle!”

Chapter 1

The Bayou, New Orleans

Isabelle.

—Exquisite warmth grasped him as he thrust into silken moistness. Gentle and yielding, creamy and sweet, the rhythm surged through him; pleasure rode him, pleasure; arching for it, grasping and gasping. Oranges and roses filled his nostrils. He was dizzy with the scent and drunk on the honey taste of femininity, sweet and delectable—

—ma vie, ma coeur, ma femme—

—as it all came roaring back through him—lust and desire, wanton appetite and greed—for more, to have it all, to take what he wanted for as long as he wanted even if it killed her—

Die giving to me! I will have you until you are nothing!

He heard Isabelle sobbing and felt her weight against him as she collapsed, and then was silent.

Jean-Marc de Devereaux, Guardian of the House of the Shadows, was back.

Not all of me, he thought, flooding with awareness as his eyelids flickered. Deep in the center of his soul, a huge chunk was missing, seized by Le Devourer. He felt it as keenly as if someone had cut out his heart. But the space was not empty. Darkness—evil—had flooded in to take its place. He had been changed, tainted, and he knew what Isabelle had tried to do, for him.

“Ah, non,” he moaned in a ragged voice, as he gathered up the unconscious woman. She had fainted, her head hanging back over his arm, revealing her long, white neck. She looked exactly like her sister, Lilliane, except that her face was mottled and bruised, and her lips were swollen and bloody. Her riots of black curls were tipped in blood—his blood—black beneath the bone-white bayou moon.

“Why?” he whispered hoarsely against her temple as he cradled her. For he knew that she had magically halted his soul’s total destruction over a thousand miles away, in Haiti. But at a terrible price.

His hands balled into fists and for a sweeping moment, he could hardly contain his anger. It was so overwhelming that he barely stopped himself from throwing Isabelle on the ground and choking her with his bare hands. She was not the one he hated with every fiber of his damaged soul, but the darkness was on him. He could barely control it.

Isabelle’s eyelashes fluttered like hummingbirds against the gray circles above her cheekbones. She exhaled and turned her head. Her limpid brown eyes flecked with gold stared into his, and it calmed his fury just enough. He grabbed her hand and held it against his heart.

“How could you do that?” he growled, and, once more, his anger nearly got the best of him. He fought not to grab her shoulders and shake her until her teeth broke. “What were you thinking?”

Her lips moved soundlessly. Her eyes flashed opened and she blinked hard, staring at him in the gauzy moonlight. He tried to read her thoughts and couldn’t.

With a shaking hand, she reached for something on the ground—it was a white satin robe embroidered with the entwined symbols of their Houses: three flames for hers and a dove for his. As she pulled the robe around her shoulders, she gingerly slid off his body. His penis slipped from inside her moist core of heat and droplets of his own seed dribbled onto his thigh.

Then she looked from his face to the black bayou around them, to the carnage and the blood. Not far from her, a man dressed in a black catsuit and body armor lay facedown in the mud, the back of his head covered by the fallen limb of a cypress tree. He was Malchance, the enemy. His submachine gun lay inches away from his limp hand. Another Malchance lay sprawled on his back, the deep gouge in his abdomen serving as evidence of a werewolf attack.

More Malchance casualties lay splayed around them, coated with mud and gore. A few floated facedown in the murky swamp water, not yet eaten by the gators. He wondered why they didn’t sink beneath the weight of their armor, and his warrior’s mind took note: maybe the Malchances had developed some kind of super-lightweight armor. He’d have to look into that later.

Hidden by cypress trees strangled with vines and moss, werewolves howled with grief and fury over their severe losses. Jean-Marc spoke their language, and he knew they were preparing for the second wave of the attack.

Cringing, Isabelle stared down at her own nakedness and back up to his face. Fear rolled off her in waves, and he reflexively wove a calming spell. The scents of oranges and roses billowed in the space between them. He created a sphere of light as well, and it floated above his palm as he approached her.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, although that was a terrible lie. He had never lied to her before, ever. “Bon, écoutes, listen, we have to get out of here as fast as we can. They’re coming after you. We need to move now.”

She swallowed hard and took a ragged, deep breath.

“What are you talking about? Who are you?” she asked him.

“Comment?” he asked incredulously.

She looked even more frightened. Her hands shook as she clutched the robe around herself, glancing downward toward her thighs, then pushing to her feet and stumbling backward in the mud, away from him.

“Did you just…you raped me…who the hell are you?”

Then she screamed as she nearly fell on top of Pat Kittrell, her NYPD detective lover. Pat had tracked her down in a misguided attempt to help; for his trouble he had been severely beaten, and he lay near death.

“Calme-toi. I’ll explain. You’ve had a terrible shock,” Jean-Marc said as she stepped around Pat, backing away. He was surprised at her seeming indifference to his grievous condition; she loved Pat.

Almost as much as she loved him.

He walked toward her, aware that his nudity was upsetting her. The darkness in his soul reveled in lust and his body began to respond. Pulling himself back down, he snapped his fingers and dark blue Devereaux body armor appeared over a catsuit. She gaped at him as if she’d never seen magic in her life. He started to pick up Kittrell’s Uzi, then realized how that would look to her, so he left it in the mud, and sent more calming energy in her direction, although he felt anything but calm himself.

“You’ve had a shock, Isabelle,” he repeated. “You need to collect yourself. We need to plan.”

“Jean-Marc!”

It was his dusky-hued cousin, Alain, who broke from the tangles of trees and ferns. Alain’s white teeth seemed to float in the ebony shadows. “You did it, Isabelle! Ma belle! You are magnificent!” Overjoyed, he flung his arms around Isabelle and kissed her cheek, his dreadlocks flying. She went rigid, her eyes enormous, her mouth an O of utter shock.

“Get away from me!” She angled a karate-style knife-hand strike at Alain’s windpipe. Alain’s magical aura of deep indigo flared, protecting him as he darted out of her range. She pursued, lunging at him, slipping and sliding in the mud, glancing around as if she were searching for a weapon.

“Touch me again and I’ll kill you.” It was an empty threat, but Alain was clearly no less stunned. He looked from her to Jean-Marc and back again with palms held up in front of him.

“You’re confused. It must be the toll of the spell,” he said slowly. “It’s me, Alain, remember me? You’ve done a wonderful thing. You brought him back. Merci, merci bien, Gardienne.”

Waves of tranquilizing magic flowed from Alain’s palms in Isabelle’s direction, and the scent of oranges and roses intensified. Jean-Marc watched her fight it. First she remained stiff, giving her head a shake, then she swayed, enchanted, as her lids grew heavy and her lips parted. Allowing himself to be affected by Alain’s spell—he needed soothing; he was a mess—Jean-Marc’s aura became visible as well—deep, vibrant blue…until streaks in the color shifted and darkened—a blacker shadow, a pall of pure evil.

Alain stared at him in horror, lowering his hands, forgetting what he was doing. “My cousin…” he whispered.

“You see it.” Jean-Marc held out his hands. The blackness played over his aura, smearing the vibrant Devereaux blue.

“Ah, non. What went wrong?” Alain asked in an agonized voice. “We moved fast to recapture your soul.”

Idiot! the darkness inside him growled at Alain. Have you no imagination, no idea what your bungling has done to me?

“Lilliane moved faster, to sacrifice it to her patron,” Jean-Marc replied, ignoring the damning voice inside his head. “He’s called Le Devourer, and he is an eater of souls. He tore out part of it, and the void filled with his essence. Demonic evil.”

“That cannot be,” Alain protested, his voice hollow with disbelief. “Such things…they don’t happen.”

“It has happened,” Jean-Marc replied, as the horrible presence throbbed and pulsed inside his being. He had been mutilated, violated…by Isabelle’s own sister.

“Isabelle is half Malchance,” Alain said slowly. Perhaps he heard the echo of her name in Jean-Marc’s thoughts. “Could it be possible she gave you part of her soul?”

“The Malchances walk with darkness, it is true,” Jean-Marc answered. “But this is beyond even them.”

Jean-Marc studied Isabelle, whose head bobbed toward her chest, starting at the crown of her head, to her cheeks slashed with blood like war paint, to the cleavage of her breasts and her delicate hands. He moved his hands in a spell of his own, willing her aura to reveal itself. But there was nothing. He tried again. He couldn’t believe it. She had no aura. There was no such thing as a Gifted person who didn’t have an aura.