The shadow of a huge red demon flared around Jean-Marc like a firestorm

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

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

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

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

“Alors,” Alain choked out, his hand covering his mouth. He looked as if he might be sick.

Fresh rage surged through Jean-Marc at his cousin’s stupidity and weakness. He raked his hands through the matted curls of his shoulder-length black hair, pulling it away from his left cheek, where it was plastered with blood. He took deep breaths, forcing himself to remain composed.

“Sex magic is the strongest magic we have,” he said at last. “She took me when I was mindless and soulless. It’s done something to her, too.” He bared his teeth at Alain. “How could you tell her to do that?”

“I…” Alain swallowed hard and licked his lips, his body language alone betraying the fact that he knew he was at fault. But Jean-Marc could read his emotions, too, and he stank of guilt. “I didn’t know…”

“Don’t lie to me!” Jean-Marc thundered. And a voice inside him whispered insidiously, Kill him.

He ignored it, balling his fists, weaving a spell around the ravages of his soul to keep the voice at bay. Oui, he wanted to kill Alain. He wanted to maim him, torture him, make him beg for death—

“Alain,” he said evenly, “don’t lie to me.”

Alain lowered his head in shame and nodded.

“You are not only my cousin, Jean-Marc, you are the leader of my family. How could I stand by and watch you suffer? You are my blood. I would have done anything to bring you back.”

“Including risking her,” Jean-Marc said.

“Oui,” Alain confessed, raising his head. “Including that.”

“Bâtard!” Jean-Marc bellowed. Hatred coursed through him like a live wire. He lost what little control he had achieved; he knew he was going to kill Alain here, now. And he was going to enjoy it.

His aura flared around his body like a nuclear detonation, and he hurled a fireball at Alain, who instantly held up his palms and created a protective barrier of shimmering blue. The fireball exploded against it, then disintegrated into sparks that winked out before they touched the ground.

“Jean-Marc, listen to me,” Alain said, moving with his hands and body, strengthening the curtain of indigo that hung in the air between him and his cousin. “We’ll get rid of the evil in your soul. We’ll make you well and whole. But for now, you must fight it.”

“I am trying,” Jean-Marc said through clenched teeth. Sweat beaded his brow. “Oh, gods, I can hardly bear this.”

“Bear it,” Alain begged him. “Écoutes, I’ve been on recon. It’s as the werewolves say. We’ve defeated the Malchances that were here in the bayou, but the Malchance troops inside the Flames’ headquarters are escaping. They’re on their way here, and the House of the Flames are pursuing them. The Flames may be loyal to Isabelle, but then again, since she is half Malchance, they may not be. And if not, there’s no telling what they’ll do to Isabelle if they capture her.”

And to us, Alain could have added, but he and Jean-Marc were soldiers. It went without saying that they stood in harm’s way.

Jean-Marc nodded. “Alors, Isabelle,” he began, then looked around. She was gone. “Putain de merde, where is she? Isabelle!”

Both men broke into a run. The noise in the bayou ratcheted up, as if sensing that something more had happened, something worse. Nutria screamed from the cypress trees; a gator rushed a floating body and dragged it underwater. Crashing through the undergrowth, werewolves howled.

We have dead, and we will kill our enemies! Stay out of the bayou unless you’re one of us!

Jean-Marc howled back, telling them to find Isabelle. Find her, subdue her and get her out of there by any means necessary.

Dizzy and nauseated, she fled as wolf howls chased after her. He had hypnotized her but she’d broken out of it; there was no telling what he’d planned to do to her next. He and that guy with the dreadlocks—Alain—it was like a horror movie, with men in armor slaughtered all around her, and that man raping her….

Tree branches whipped her face. She fell into the mud on her hands and knees, twisting her ankle, and the pain shot up into her hip socket. Grunting, she got back up, losing the robe she’d covered herself with. Now she was completely naked, lost in a swamp that shook and screamed like a living creature. She didn’t know who she was, or where she was, but she knew she had been violated, and she was still in terrible danger.

They called me Isabelle, she thought, but that’s wrong. That’s not my name. My name is…

She couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t she remember her own name? Trauma. From the rape. And whatever else had happened to her. Those two men…what had they been talking about? What had they done to her?

Run for your life. Get out of here, she told herself. You’re all alone, and you don’t know who you are. You’re all alone, and—

No.

She wasn’t alone. Someone had come here to save her.

Suddenly the face of the man she had almost fallen on top of blossomed in her mind. The man with the white-blond hair, so terribly wounded she hadn’t been certain he was alive. He had come here from somewhere else to help her. He wasn’t part of this. He was like her.

And when he smiled the world was brighter, and he made love to her as if she were a goddess.

And he calls me Izzy. That’s my name. Izzy. I’m in love with him. I have to go back for him.

She had to get him away from those rapists and murderers. And the others who were coming. For there were others, searching for her at this very moment. She knew that, too. And they wanted to destroy her.

“Isabelle!” It was the man who had raped her, the one called Jean-Marc. His voice sent a frozen flash fire down her spine, and she whimpered, panicking. He was coming after her.

“This is just a dream,” she whispered aloud. “Just a terrible dream. I’m going to wake up.”

But it was no dream. She was hurt, and cold. She felt the sharp prick of a twig beneath her insole as she staggered forward, searching the wild landscape for an escape route. The trees were dripping with cold water. It had rained. Why couldn’t she remember the rain?

“Isabelle!” Jean-Marc’s voice chased her. Wolf howls rattled her bones. They were raging, shrieking…and they were coming closer.

“Oh God, oh God,” she blurted, grabbing up wild riots of hair away from her face. Her teeth were chattering.

Get it together, she ordered herself. There are dead soldiers everywhere. Get a gun. Blow their heads off and save the blond man.

Izzy thrashed through a wall of vines and tree limbs, arms flailing, legs kicking, until she broke through. Then she skidded to a halt at the horrifying spectacle before her: spread-eagled on a large fallen tree trunk, his arms and legs dangling, a gagged man lay whining like a wounded dog with his eyes wide-open—eyes that were a milky-white, with no color in them, no sight. The tatters of a shredded windbreaker with NOPD—New Orleans Police Department—stitched over the breast fluttered in the night breeze. There was a thick gash across his chest and dried blood on the tree trunk.

She turned and retched. On the ground in front of the tree trunk, another man, this one unnaturally handsome, with short, tawny hair, lay limp in black leather battle armor with a patch on his biceps of a black Chalice decorated with black and red skulls. His eyes were closed. There were some singed books scattered beside him, and some knives, bells, pieces of crystal and what smelled like very foul incense.

And a gun.

It was a wicked black revolver. The grip was ivory, etched with the image of a short-haired young girl in medieval armor, her helmet under her arm. Izzy felt a tug in her mind. The eyes of the girl caught her gaze, held her, and her chest tightened with inexplicable emotion—despair, and loss. Tears welled, but she shook them away. She had to stay focused if she wanted to live…and to save the blond man.

This is my gun, she knew suddenly. It’s called a Medusa.

“Isabelle!” Jean-Marc called, closer still. The other man—Alain—joined him. She heard them crashing through the forest, hunting her. Jean-Marc thundered at Alain in French, and she realized that she could understand him. He was threatening to kill him, kill Alain, and send his soul to hell.

He’s insane, she thought, crouching down behind the tree trunk. She cracked open the gun, and saw that the cylinder was empty.

Ammo. I need ammo.

Laying the gun in her lap, she rooted around, lifting up the books, then gingerly raising the right arm of the dead man. Yes. It was almost as if he had been trying to hide the olive-green box of 9 mm cartridges, but it was hers now. She didn’t know how she knew the caliber of the ammo, or that it would work in the Medusa. Right now, she didn’t care. Moving rapidly, as if she had done it all her life, she loaded six cartridges into the empty chambers with surprisingly steady hands. Then she slipped the cylinder back into the frame with a click and rose to a high crouch, staring into the darkness for the first sign of the madman.

A hand clamped on her shoulder. Without even thinking about it, she windmilled around, breaking contact and fired. The report echoed like a whip crack through the swamp.

Her attacker was a dark-skinned woman with platinum hair; she threw back her head and howled like a wolf as the force of the bullet flung her backward, then slammed her against what appeared to be an enormous conga drum painted with black and red symbols. She landed in a pile of ashes, eyes wide-open, mouth working as blood streamed down her chest. Then she began to whimper and pant like a wounded animal as her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Oh God,” Izzy whispered, nearly dropping the gun.

For a moment she stood transfixed, unable to process what she had just done. Clutching the revolver, she ran to the woman’s side and stared down at her. The woman’s breathing was fluttery and labored. Her face was shiny with perspiration and her dark skin was turning a deep shade of gray. As Izzy looked down on her in the moonlight, she began to jerk as if she were having a seizure.

Whether friend or foe, she needed help. But Izzy debated, worried that her victim might still be able to hypnotize her the way Jean-Marc had done, or hurl a ball of fire.

Cloaked by the forest, howling and shouting made her ears throb and she bolted, grappling with another tangled web of slick vines and twisting tree branches.

The wounded woman’s whimpering grew louder, like a plea for help, panic at being abandoned. Izzy’s heart caught and sank to her feet. She couldn’t let this woman die. No matter the cost to her, the danger…

They’re coming. They’ll take care of her.

But they weren’t here yet, and the woman might not have that much time. She was bleeding badly.

“Damn it,” Izzy whispered, turning around.

She looked at her. The woman was gurgling and gasping. Blood pooled beneath her in the ashes, and her eyelids flickered. Her lips pressed together; dark bubbles foamed at the corners of her mouth.

I can’t stay. I have to get back to the man, Izzy thought. I have to save him from those evil men.

But this woman needed her now.

Moaning a feeble protest, she dashed back to the woman’s side and dropped down to her knees. She saw the bullet hole above her heart and knew that the exit wound would be much worse—how she knew, she had no idea—but she had to stop the blood flow. She clasped her hands one over the other and pressed them over the wound. Hot blood pumped between her fingertips, the force of it startling her. Rising on her knees, she clamped down harder.

The forest rustled and shook, as if something enormous was on its way. She crouched over the woman, naked and terrified, and she began to lose it, shaking, panting.

Stay with it, she ordered herself. You’re her only hope.

But I have to get to the man.

She began to spin out of control, confronted with two equally high priorities. He was lying so still…his body can go for four to seven minutes without oxygen, and then he’s dead…

“I have to go,” she said aloud.

The woman groaned and half opened her eyes. They looked strange, unworldly, with dark irises that swallowed her pupils. Still, there was light in them, and Izzy studied the pain and fear in her gasping, grimacing expression.

I put that pain there. I shot her.

The woman’s mouth moved. “Andre,” she whispered faintly, as her eyes rolled back in her head.

The world tilted and shifted as Izzy swallowed hard. For the time being, her decision was made.

“All right, then. I won’t leave you,” Izzy promised.

Chapter 2

The gunshot and the howls startled Jean-Marc out of the murderous tirade directed at his cousin. He shifted his direction toward the sound, realizing that Isabelle had found a gun, and that she had shot one of the pack. Her victim was in bigger trouble if it was her Medusa, a versatile weapon whose barrel could hold multiple calibers of ammunition—ammo that carried not only a physical payload, but magical spells that could kill demons and stop hearts.

“Vite, Alain!”

He crashed through the underbrush, the faces of his werewolf friends racing through his mind. Leaping over a tree root, he launched his perception into the air and looked down on the bayou, searching for her, then Seeing her head bent over a prone figure. He couldn’t tell who it was; but he—or she—wore no armor. A werewolf most likely, then.

Non, non. He was sickened, enraged…and filled with horror. He had sworn to protect the werewolves of New Orleans. No one ever had, despite the centuries-old pledge of the House of the Flames “to stand between le loup-garou and le Diable Himself.” Like so much else, the Bouvards had failed to honor their word, but, when Jean-Marc arrived to serve as Regent, he had immediately put the Cajun werewolves under his personal protection.

“Alain! Damn you, hurry up!”

As he loped through the dense live oaks and cypresses, sloshing over loamy bayou earth, he prepared a fireball and clenched it in his fist like a grenade, knowing that he would never use it directly against Isabelle herself. But he might have to slow her down if she tried to shoot him with the Medusa. And if a battle-maddened, grief-stricken werewolf came after her, he knew what his choice must be there, too, although he was as close to the Cajun pack as if they were his blood family.

But she…she was his life.

And then he pushed himself into Isabelle’s mind and Saw her surroundings as she saw them. He knew where she was lurking—behind the makeshift sacrificial altar where an unsouled New Orleans police officer writhed in agony at this very moment. There was someone on the ground, lying in a pool of blood, and she was trying to staunch the wound—Ah non, it’s Caresse!

Fury roared inside him like a demon. Caresse was the mate of Andre, the alpha werewolf, and this crazed bitch had shot her. She deserved to have her neck wrung.

Do it, said the voice inside his head. Kill her.

Calme-toi, he told himself as he clenched and unclenched his fists. The blackness is on you. Calme-toi.

He knew she might shoot him. He could stop her with a burst of magical energy, but the first time he had done such a thing, he had stopped her heart.

He eased into her line of sight, muscles tensed for battle, fireball in his fist.

“Stop! Stop right there!” she ordered, grabbing her Medusa and rising just enough to rest her elbows on the trunk so she could take aim. Moonlight dappled her face as she stared him down. Her chest was heaving. She was naked, covered with blood and mud, and her hands were shaking.

“Mes amis!” Jean-Marc called, hoping to get through to any werewolf who was coming after her. “Je suis Jean-Marc! Je suis là!” My friends, I am Jean-Marc. I am here. He howled in the werewolves’ language, warning them, preparing him.

Then Andre, the wolf pack’s alpha, staggered into the clearing in his human form. He took one look at Isabelle, and Caresse bleeding beside her, and rushed toward them.

“Caresse, ma femme,” Andre said. “Ah, non. Non, non.” He took a step forward. Another, each one a lurch of traumatized outrage. “Who did this, ma petite?”

Isabelle gestured at him with her gun.

“Stop right there,” she ordered. “Both of you. And raise your hands.”

“Andre,” Jean-Marc warned, eyeing the Medusa, “keep back.”

“Jolie, what are you doing?” Andre gasped at Isabelle. “What happened?”

“Back,” she said, aiming at him. To Jean-Marc, “Get rid of that ball of fire. If you do anything, make one move, I’ll shoot him.”

“Jean-Marc, what is wrong with her? Is she bewitched?” Andre demanded. “Isabelle, it’s us.”

“I am. I’m what’s wrong with her,” Jean-Marc said dully. He was sorry he had taught her how to defend herself so well. He lifted his hands above his head. The fireball floated for a second or two, then extinguished. He heard the poor, gibbering police officer on the altar and sent out a spell to quiet the man. He could do nothing more to give him peace. If the man died without his soul, he would thrash throughout eternity in mindless anguish.

That would have been my fate, he reminded himself, if Alain and Isabelle had not intervened.

Non, a voice whispered inside his head. Your eternity would have been glorious. An unending existence of pleasure. They stopped it. They robbed you.

He shut out the insinuating whispers and focused on Isabelle. By his patron the Grey King, despite everything, she was uncannily beautiful, possessing a light that had long ago abandoned Lilliane, if it had ever been there in the first place. He had no idea why his calming spell on her had lost its potency, allowing her to run from him. Perhaps it was because she was half Bouvard and half Malchance, an unknown quantity to him.

“And now?” he asked her. “They are coming, Isabelle.”

Her chest rose and fell. Her nostrils flared. He honed in on her, intent, trying to See inside her.

I need to get to him, Isabelle thought.

Jean-Marc knew she wasn’t sending out her thoughts. Maybe she had forgotten that he could read her mind if she neglected to cloak it. But he received a clear image of Pat Kittrell’s face and absorbed Isabelle’s intense fear for his life. So something of her past had resurfaced. Perhaps that was a sign that the shock was wearing off. He tried to push Pat’s image more firmly into her mind, cloud her actions with an overwhelming urgency to get to him. He would manipulate her without compunction if it served his ends—to keep her alive and save Caresse.

“Let us tend to her,” Jean-Marc said. “Then I swear I’ll find Pat for you.” He sensed her confusion and sent out more images into her mind—Pat, struggling for breath, calling her name, Izzy. “Pat. Your lover. The man you need to save.”

She wavered. He felt her anguish, her bewilderment, as if they were physical entities tearing at his skin, his hair, and he knew that while the connection between them had weakened, it was not gone. He concentrated, trying to strengthen it with magical energy, make her trust him, make her listen.

“He doesn’t call me Isabelle,” she said tightly. “You do.” She was quiet a moment. “He calls me Izzy.”

So she had some memory, then.

“Put the gun down, Izzy,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. He glanced back down at Caresse, whose face was turning blue. His heart skipped a beat. The Shadows weren’t healers and never had been, but even he could see that Caresse had little time left. “She needs—”

His words were cut off as the world exploded.

Izzy screamed.

The mud to her left geysered upward in a plume; the bayou water to her right shot straight up as if from a broken fire hydrant. The ground beneath her feet shook so violently that she dropped to her knees. Instinctively she flattened against the mud, shouting, “Incoming! Incoming! Duck and cover!” As soon as she was stable, she made a tripod with her elbows and shot off another round with her Medusa.

Its report was soundless, but she’d hit a target: something in the darkness bellowed with pain. As if in reply, scarlet pinwheels of light blossomed above drooping cypress treetops, obliterating the moon. White and red flares peppered the landscape like dueling fireworks. She shot off more rounds, having no idea what was coming yet sure that they meant to kill her.

They who? What’s happening?

Something sizzled along the length of her body, breaking her concentration. She looked down as a catsuit and body armor appeared fully formed on her body. She yelled and batted at it, but it was on to stay, and after a couple of seconds she realized it wasn’t hurting her in any way and was preferable to being naked. It was identical to Jean-Marc’s except that on the bicep of the clinging second-skin, there was some kind of patch depicting a trio of white flames that looked very familiar.

I belong here, she thought, jerking as a layer of deep indigo light completely surrounded her. Oh, my God, is that my aura?

“Protect yourself!” Jean-Marc leaped in front of her, his back to her as he spread his legs wide and shot off rounds from an Uzi he hadn’t had before. He followed them with one of the balls of fire he could make with his hands. “Make a shield now!”

She had no idea what he was talking about, and no time to wonder about it, as an incoming blur of white light slammed into the field of blue. Panic turned her blood to ice as she caught her breath, ducked her head and pulled the trigger—realizing too late that Jean-Marc stood directly in her line of fire.

“Arête!” he yelled at her, as he dove for the mud. Landing on his belly, he rolled onto his left elbow, his face contorted in a combination of terror and fury. A ball of fire erupted from his right hand, engulfing the space between them. Heat slapped her icy face and she reflexively looped her finger around the trigger as he lobbed a second fireball. A tiny object pierced the center of the fiery globe and exploded—it was her 9 mm cartridge—and he chanted in a language she didn’t understand, speaking rapidly and firmly as he pointed his fingers at her.

Invisible hands grabbed her and propelled her into the air. Five feet above his prone body, she hovered in smoke for a few heartbeats, and then she plummeted, landing beside him in the mud. Shifting patterns of blue and black undulated in her field of vision as he flung his arm around her and pressed her to the ground.

“Don’t shoot at me!”

She smelled oranges, roses, hot metal, oil and something else—blood and death. He moved his fingers in a circle and the gun shot out of her grasp. She lunged for it as he grabbed it out of the air.

“Give that back!” she bellowed, lunging at him, slithering and sliding in the mud as she scrambled over his body and grabbed at the gun. He wrapped his free hand around her forearm, pushed himself to a standing position and dragged her toward the closest tangle of bayou undergrowth. When the catsuit and armor had appeared, so had boots; inside them, her stockinged feet were cut and bleeding. He turned to her, rage spinning in his dark, hooded eyes. His white teeth were clenched and he looked horrifically feral, more like an animal than a man. His chest began to heave, his hand to tighten around her arm. Painfully.

“Ow,” she blurted, her knees buckling.

Glaring at her like a madman, he held her upright and shook her hard. Her head snapped back and forth; blindly she batted at him, then began to kick at his shins, slipping and sliding over wet leaves and wetter earth as he kept her gun out of reach. His hard features blazed with fury and he shook her again, hard.

“You shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have let you.” He was growling the words at her. “I could just…by the Grey King…je suis fou…” He bared his teeth and cold, hard fear smacked against each vertebra in her spine like a steel mallet on ice cubes.

He’s inhuman, she thought. Werewolf. Monster.

“Jean-Marc, calme-toi,” said a voice behind them—the dark-skinned man with the dreadlocks, Alain, had appeared and was sprawled on the ground beside the woman she had shot. The other man, Andre, had fallen down beside him. “Find your center. Pull yourself out of the blackness. I need help here. Caresse is dying.”

Jean-Marc whipped around, whirling her behind him like a rag doll as Andre erupted into an eardrum-shattering barrage of howls. His face began to lengthen; his eyes, to glow golden and fierce. His backbone popped through his skin as glossy, silvery-black fur sprouted in tufts along his face, his chest, his abdomen, his thighs. His fingernails stretched into claws.

Weaving and transforming, he lurched toward Jean-Marc and her. Where a man had stood, a hunched, demonic creature covered with glossy black fur roared at her and clacked the air with its elongating jaw.

Jean-Marc remained in front of her as deep indigo surrounded her. She looked through it, as if it were a veil draped in front of her face; then wisps of black drifted across her field of vision, like tattered lace or lazing smoke. Her ears buzzed; her skin burned and tingled as if she had fallen into a snowbank. Acid flooded her mouth. Rigid with fear, she stiffened and stumbled backward.

Hide, stay away, a voice whispered urgently.

She knew she mustn’t let the blackness touch her. And yet something from deep within her urged her forward, tempted her to reach out her hand to it, let it taste of her, caress her…

It will feel wonderful, said a different voice, with velvety softness overlaid with lush desire. There is nothing in this world that compares with it…let it have you….

The tendril of black hovered at eye level between her and Jean-Marc’s back; it turned itself toward her, revealing itself: it was an ebony serpent with glittering, jet-black eyes that blinked at her as it pulled back on itself, eyes gleaming, as if to strike—

Yessssss, you are ssssomewhere near, Isssssssssabelle…

She caught her breath and leaped backward, half falling out of the indigo as energy sizzled over her shoulders and the back of her head like steam. She had moved out of the bubble. The black snake struck, smacking against the blue barrier, and vanished with a hiss.

Blinking her eyes rapidly, she watched as Jean-Marc pointed the Medusa straight into the air, telegraphing that he had it, but was not going to immediately use it. Ten feet away, the creature that had been Andre wagged its enormous head back and forth, as if in refusal. It took another lurching step forward. Its growl vibrated through Izzy’s boots.

“Andre, c’est moi,” Jean-Marc said in French. Then he himself growled, the implied threat laid over a warning. The werewolf answered, deep and angry, lowering its head as it stared at the woman lying in blood on the ground.

“Jean-Marc is trying to remind him that you didn’t mean to hurt her,” Alain translated. “And that she needs healing magic now, or she will die.”

So she’s not dead, Izzy thought with relief.

“I didn’t mean to shoot her,” she told him. “I know her, don’t I? I know all of you.” She ticked her head toward the werewolf, although she was too frightened to look directly at it. “I know him.”

“Andre has risked his life to save yours more than once,” Alain replied. “He promised to watch out for you, always. My cousin is reminding him of that now.”

“I don’t remember,” she whispered, her mouth as dry as dust. Who would want to remember any of this?

Jean-Marc kept speaking to the werewolf, even, calm, firm. Alain moved his hands over the bleeding woman, never taking his eyes off the scene as it played out before him.

“Jean-Marc, I am at a loss. We need Bouvard magic.” Alain shifted his dark eyes to Izzy. “Can you not help?”

“Non, she cannot, thanks to you,” Jean-Marc replied bitterly. “Maybe I can.”

He lowered the revolver to his side as he strode past the towering werewolf, which watched every move and kept growling, hunkering down slightly as if it were about to pounce. Jean-Marc ignored it, although Izzy had no idea how he could.

“Andre, I am attending to your mate,” Jean-Marc said in English. Then he repeated the words in French. Next, he growled. The werewolf growled back, but it remained taut, its eyes darting around, its huge teeth glistening.

Jean-Marc moved his fingers and a bandage appeared—simply appeared—out of nowhere. He placed it against the wound and turned to Andre.

“Et voilà,” he said. Then he looked up at Izzy. “I’ll make another shield for you. Stay inside this time.” He began to move his fingers again.

She shook her head as she gestured at the still-glowing layer of light, blue and ethereal. “There’s something in it. Something bad.”

“The Devourer’s taint.” He sighed heavily. Beside him, Alain steadfastly looked down, pressing his hand over the bandage. Blue light emanated from his palm. “The good news is that the 9 mm rounds must not be magical,” Jean-Marc said. “Caresse’s heart was not stopped.”

A second explosion nearly shook Izzy off her feet. A third followed immediately after. She reached out and grabbed onto a tangle of vines, remembering then that she had hit someone with her second bullet. She darted into the thick tangle to find a man dressed in a black catsuit like hers, with black Bouvard body armor and their trio of flames insignia on the breast. He was lying on his back with his eyes open.

“Jean-Marc,” she called.

He came to her side immediately, looked where she pointed and aimed his Uzi at the man. Kicking at him with his boot, he grunted, then kicked him hard. She flinched. The man did not.

“Dead.” Jean-Marc was pleased.

She fell against the tree with a sob.

“Stay calm.” His voice held no warmth. “This is a crisis situation. There are going to be casualties.”

“This man. Caresse,” she rasped.

“Caresse was a mistake. She frightened you. I think this man was trying to shoot you. The Bouvards are fanning out from their headquarters,” he continued without pausing to indicate that he had moved to a new topic. With a jerk of his head, he looked over his shoulder. “Find a Femme Blanche if you can. That’s Caresse’s best hope.”

He was speaking to the werewolf, which had begun to change back into the man, Andre. His muzzle shortened and the fur covering his body began to recede—as if sliding back inside his skin—before her eyes.

She said to him, “I’m so sorry.”

The wolf growled low in its throat. She saw Andre’s eyes glistening in the mats of silvery-black fur.

“Stay in wolf form,” Jean-Marc cut in. “You’ll move faster.”

The werewolf threw back its head and howled to the moon. It paced back and forth, like a gliding shadow, then its muzzle stretched out again and the spark of humanity in its eyes faded. With a heaving grunt, it dropped to its forepaws and flashed into the brush.

Jean-Marc lingered beside her. Blood and moonlight tinted the tight curls cascading to his shoulders, his large, deep-set eyes drawing in light, returning nothing but steely resolve. She smelled sweat and leather on him, a not unpleasant combination, and studied him, trying to remember the past she shared with him.

Behind him, Alain lifted his palms and blue light swirled in the centers, as if he were holding two flat glowing discs. Flashes of azure glazed the high planes of his cheeks and wide mouth with a purplish glow.

“Jean-Marc, I need you,” Alain insisted. “I need help. Please pray with me.”

Pray?

He said to her, “Don’t move. Don’t run.”

“Can I help?” she asked.

“Not with this,” he replied, his voice emotionless. He held his body taut as he strode to his cousin’s side. He lowered his head, his hair streaming crazily over his shoulders. Alain did the same, and both moved their lips as she looked on. She wondered if they were praying to God.

She wiped her forehead with bloody fingertips and leaned against a tree trunk, watching them. She was acutely aware that a man lay dead behind her—a man she had killed. Her stomach lurched, and she bent over, sickened, with an attack of dry heaves. How long had it been since she’d had anything to eat or drink? She had no idea.

Why can’t I remember anything?

There was a rustle in the trees to her right, and she reached automatically for the gun—which was not there. Andre the silvery-black werewolf parted the underbrush, its eyes gleaming with moonlight as it stared at her for a moment, then chuffed at someone behind it.

A young, frightened woman dressed all in white appeared. She had gathered up the hem of a long, white satin robe in her hands, and her head was covered by a white veil. When she saw Izzy, her eyes filled with joy. She curtsied and lowered her head.

“Ma Gardienne,” she said in a voice filled with awe. “I’m so glad to see that you’re alive.”

“Thank you,” Izzy said, then, “Merci.”

“We took back the mansion,” the woman continued, with a flash of pride “But the Malchances have scattered into the bayou. It’s not safe here, madame.”

“Viens-ici,” Jean-Marc called to the woman.

She raised her brows questioningly at Izzy. “With your permission?”

“Wait,” Izzy said, and the woman froze. What am I to her? she wondered. Some kind of leader, or queen?

She turned to Jean-Marc. “You promised to take me to Pat.”

He narrowed his eyes. She could almost feel his hatred—directed at her, or at Pat?—and she took a deep breath and raised her chin.

“I won’t give this woman permission to help unless you come with me now,” she said.

The werewolf growled menacingly as the woman in the veil stared in astonishment at Izzy.

“Madame, I must help her. I can feel her life force ebbing,” she reported. “She is dying.”

The werewolf slunk toward Izzy. As it came closer, the hair on the back of her neck prickled. Her heart thumped wildly. Biting her cheek, she forced herself to remain silent. She had thrown down her gauntlet, and it was the only weapon she had.

“There will be plenty of dying. This is the world of the Gifted. All we do is die. Or kill,” Jean-Marc said angrily, rising and stomping past the werewolf. He patted the creature, then he whirled around and hurled a fireball directly at Izzy. She felt an electric shock run through her as she fell backward, landing hard on the soggy ground.

Just as unexpectedly, Jean-Marc straddled her, hands held over her face, glowing and white.

“Wh-what?” she managed.

“Good. You’re breathing. Attend to her,” he said to the woman in white, pointing at Caresse. “I’ll fulfill the request of your beloved Gardienne. Vite!”

“Let go of me!” Izzy yelled, struggling, as he grabbed both her wrists in one of his.

“Tais-toi,” he said. He scowled at the woman. “Do as I say! I am Jean-Marc de Devereaux, of the House of the Shadows!”

The woman looked questioningly at Izzy. “Gardienne?”

“Yes,” Izzy managed. “Help her.”

The veiled woman dashed over to Caresse. The werewolf followed, rising up on its hind legs, beginning the transformation back into Andre the man. Taking no notice, Jean-Marc hoisted her to her feet, his hand around her wrists so tight she could almost hear the bones in her wrist snap.

“Now, we’ll do it my way,” he said.

Chapter 3

Jean-Marc dragged Izzy through the bayou. She could barely keep up; when she stumbled over a tree root, he simply dragged her along behind him.

“Stop! Let me go!” she protested, scratching at the back of his hand with her fingernails as they splashed shin-deep in stinking black water. Smells roiled around her like living things—decay, blood, death—and she worked to plant her feet, fighting his momentum. But she kept sliding in the ooze, and he didn’t even seem to notice she was trying to fight him.

Then several figures darted from behind a cluster of trees hanging low over the water. They were seven, all men, wearing body armor emblazoned with the by-now familiar trio of flames on their breastplates. Their faces were smudged with smoke and blood, as if they were wearing masks, and the one in the middle looked familiar. Dark hair, dark eyes, very straight nose.

“Gardienne,” he said breathless, ducking his head. “Grâce à Jehanne, you are alive. We heard all that howling…”

She stared mutely as the other soldiers also lowered their heads. Submachine guns dangled around their necks. Behind them, to the left, to the right, projectiles impacted and gouged the earth. Water sloshed; herons burst out of the cypress trees and animals shrieked in panic.

“Michel,” Jean-Marc said. “La situation?”

The man—Michel—raised his head. “The Malchances panicked when they heard that Luc de Malchance was killed. We took the offensive and won back the mansion. They’re retreating and we are on them. They’re coming this way. But word has spread—a rumor only, I hope…” He took a deep breath, his dark eyes searching the woman’s. “Did Madame raise a demon?”

Her mouth dropped open. Had she heard him right?

Jean-Marc stepped in front of her. “There’s time for that later. We need to get her out of here.” He raised his hand and showed the other man—Michel—the Medusa. “The werewolves are with me. The bayou is ours. Your people can be my hostages or my allies.”

The men with Michel glanced at each other and put their hands to their Uzis, then looked at their leader for orders. He swiped the air, signaling them to back down.

“Our Gardienne is here,” Michel argued, looking straight at Izzy. Her stomach flipped. “She can speak for us.”

“Non,” Jean-Marc replied. “She cannot. She has sustained magical injuries and she is healing herself. I was her Regent, and I served your family well. Deal with me in that capacity.”

Michel raised a brow. “Madame, you are incapacitated?”

She caught a nuance in his use of the word “incapacitated,” and guessed that Jean-Marc’s authority rested on her answer. She didn’t know if she wanted him to speak for her. For this magical House of the Flames, of which she was the leader, so it seemed.

She didn’t like him. She didn’t trust him. But he was the devil she knew.

“I’d like Jean-Marc to speak for me,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers that she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

Michel glowered at her. “I knew it. Half Malchance, conspiring to take over our family, and you’re probably allied with the House of the Shadows for battle strength. What did our dear Regent promise, that he would marry you? More half-breeds destroying centuries of tradition?”

“Take care, Michel de Bouvard,” Jean-Marc said, raising the Medusa and pointing it directly at Michel. “You are speaking treason. And you know I dealt harshly with traitors, when I wore the signet ring.”

His men stirred. The two farthest away grabbed their Uzis and aimed them at Jean-Marc. Another projectile shrieked through the sky and lit a canopy of trees across the water on fire. Michel ducked. Jean-Marc didn’t move at all. There was a second, closer. A third, closer still. In the firelight, Michel exhaled heavily and straightened.

“Where is the ring now?” Michel demanded, looking from him to Izzy.

“It is safe,” Jean-Marc replied, his arm never wavering. The contours of his catsuit highlighted corded muscles. He looked strong enough to keep the heavy weapon in place all night.

“No one saw this coming,” Michel said, sounding more lost than angry. “Our new Gardienne—our queen—the child of our deadliest enemies.” He studied her, as if the answers to his questions were written on her face. “Did you know what you were?” he asked in an agonized voice. “We welcomed you as our protector. Well, some of us did. I did. But then I saw the proof of your tainted blood. And this talk of raising a demon…”

She remembered nothing like that. She didn’t even know the name Malchance. She had no idea what a Gardienne was. The only things that were familiar were the logo of the triple flames, Michel’s face and Pat. And those only felt like ghosts of memories, and not memories themselves.

“She did not know what she was. You know that she didn’t,” Jean-Marc said. “Of all the Bouvards, you knew her best. She came here in ignorance. And she’s suffered for it. You are witnessing the results as we speak.”

Michel took a breath. “But—”

“You know she didn’t want to come. She didn’t even know that she was Gifted.”

“A ruse,” said one of Michel’s men—a tall man, his hand hovering beside a Glock in a holster.

How do I know the makes of their weapons?

“I’m surprised you were able to take back the mansion from the Malchances,” Jean-Marc continued, changing the subject again.

“What are you suggesting?” Michel snapped.

“You’re so weak,” Jean-Marc observed, “and the Malchances created that dampening field to make your magic ineffectual. They walked right in and took over. I can’t imagine how you turned the tables so easily.”

Michel bristled. “You don’t know everything about us, Devereaux.”

Jean-Marc raised a brow. “I know more than most,” Jean-Marc countered. The arm holding the Medusa was as steady as if it were made of marble. A muscle jumped in his cheek. His eyes blazed as he narrowed them, contempt and hatred dripping off him like poison.

“I know that your House is weak. Your magic is fragmented and unreliable.” Jean-Marc cocked his head, his eyes mere slits. “Have you perhaps allied yourselves with the Malchances? Did you make a deal—the House of the Flames could still stand, if you hunted down Isabelle de Bouvard and handed her over?”

She could feel the wrath surging through him, feel it, like icy heat. It stung her, physically. One of Michel’s soldiers—tall, thin—spat into the mud. He seemed unaware that Jean-Marc was about to explode like a live grenade.

“That would be a bargain your House would make.” Michel sneered. “The House of the Shadows, loyal to no one, waiting to see which way the battle goes so they can loot the bodies—”

Another mortar splashed into the bayou, shattering into a thousand purple flares that streaked straight at them in a collective cloud. This time, Michel and his soldiers whirled around and shot off their weapons, issuing streams of white light that crashed into the purple glow. The sky filled with a mushroom of white and purple, then lavender.

“Hostie!” one of them shouted as they shot again, and the light did not change.

Then Jean-Marc joined in, raising his hand toward the moon and lobbing off a huge mass of fire about the size of a basketball. An answering volley landed much closer, shaking the tree branches and wafting their collars of Spanish moss. Michel swore in French.

“Allons! Vite!” he shouted, ordering their retreat.

Without missing a beat, Jean-Marc bent down and scooped her into his arms, his empty left hand curling around her shoulder, his right hand, filled with her gun, positioned under her knees.

“Hey, put me down!” she protested as he bolted for the shadows, sloshing through the loamy earth toward the fetid bayou deep. She felt his muscular chest through her armor, the strength of his hands gripping her under her arms and knees—and the cold heat of his fury sizzling into her flesh.

He raped me, she thought, remembering those first few moments when she woke up and felt his hard length slipping from her body. Or did he? As he carried her out of the battle, her body reacted to his touch with sharp, undeniable hunger—despite their dire situation and her amnesia, despite everything. It was all she could do to keep her face averted as his hot breath panted against her cheek.

Michel caught up with him. He was free of burdens. He could shoot Jean-Marc and her in an instant.

“They’re coming,” Jean-Marc said. “They’ll take her if they find her. If you’re with us, tell me now.”

“And yet,” Michel replied sarcastically, holding his Uzi barrel with his left hand as he trotted beside Jean-Marc, “the bayou is yours.”

Before she realized what she was doing, she took a deep breath, held it as if she were preparing to recite lines someone else had written and spoke. “Fair warning—if you’ve turned against me, you’re in enemy territory, and you’re dead.” It was bravado, all for show, but it had its desired effect: the other man—Michel—gave his head a shake.

“Mais non. We are here precisely because we are loyal.”

Jean-Marc gazed down at her, blood smeared on his cheek, eyes glimmering with private amusement.

“Well done, Izzy from Brooklyn,” he said under his breath.

Whatever reply she might have made was lost as a hail of red light streaked toward them, screaming like Roman candles on the Fourth of July. Two of Michel’s men raised their Uzis and fired at it while Michel spread open his hands. White balls of fire rocketed from his palms against the cannonade.

Then incoming white light joined the fusillade of crimson and Jean-Marc swore under his breath, dashing beneath a thick canopy of trees just as they burst into flame. Blazing branches dropped like stones, hissing into the mud. She smelled charred leaves and saw sparks. A barrier of deep indigo flared around him and he zigzagged beyond that tree to another one, but the entire tree exploded in a shower of fiery wood chunks. They bounced off the shield of blue as he ran on.

Werewolves howled. Submachine guns pulsed one-two-three, one-two-three.

I really hope, she thought, clinging to him, that I live long enough to find out what’s going on…and who I am.

“Damn them,” Jean-Marc grunted, as he raced through the bayou. His first priority was to protect Isabelle, but that kept him from the battle—and his help was sorely needed. He carried her through the burning forest, seeking escape routes, weaving magical spells to shield them both. He knew she had seen menace in his aura—the blackness that had invaded his soul—and so he guarded against enclosing her within its protective influence. He kept it thin against his own body like a coating of wax, flinching when the streaks of evil ran over him like a strangely pleasurable cut.

Then a bone-searing burst of magic pierced his aura and ripped through his armor, imbedding itself in his shoulder as if someone had sliced him open and pushed in a charcoal briquette. The pain sent him stumbling; it took him back to the place where Lillianne had taken his soul. The blackness rose up inside him—the fury of the indignity; the danger—her fault, she has ruined my life, I’ll kill her now—and he forced himself to ignore it and run on.

“You’re hurt,” she said, his blood spattering her forehead and cheeks.

Just drop her in the mud, a voice whispered. Be done with her.

He faltered. He knew he was badly wounded. He needed help.

“Heal me. You’re the Daughter of the Flames. You have that power.”

Her lush mouth worked as if he had told her the most unbelievable lie in the world. Then her lids flickered shut, her lashes brushing her cheeks. She grew still. He felt worse. After a few more seconds, she opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how…I…I don’t remember….”

“Find your center. Try to focus. We have time.” He was lying to her again. “Allow yourself a moment, and it will come back to you.”

He pushed one leg forward but it wouldn’t bear his weight; his ankle gave way and he almost dropped her. The pain began shooting through his veins. He knew what was happening. He knew how long it would take. It would reach his heart in less than three minutes, and stop it from beating. He would drown in his own blood.

What would happen to her then?

“Isabelle, écoutes,” he said, and he could hear his words slurring. “You have the power. Somewhere. Find it. Now.”

She paled and shook her head, parted her lips to speak as a wall of flame erupted about forty meters ahead of them, cutting off that route. He glanced left, right; the world was blurring to blackness. Waves of cold, dark shame crashed over him, sucking his energy down to a black place; he was failing her, with his weakness and his slowness—I should have dodged that bullet—he was inept; he was a liar; he could no more protect her than that half-dead cowboy detective of hers.

Yet pride and anger kept him telling her that he was sorry, and a horrible, engulfing sorrow smothered his shame. He was going to die and all that could have been would never be.

By the Patron of my life, but I loved you. You were not for me—I would make your life so difficult if I took you as my woman. But I wanted to. I never told you that. I wanted to save you from what would happen next. From what I would bring to your bed…

And that speck of love filtered through the hard, flinted evil in the middle of his soul, and gave him a bit of peace as he continued to die. He rallied his strength, gazing down at her as she clung fearfully to him, his once-proud warrior queen reduced to confusion and terror…. He forced himself to keep moving, arrowing to the right, where he saw no flames, no smoke, no barrage of enemy magic. Moonlight filtered through the trees, promising a clearing.

Jean-Marc threw back his head and howled to the wolf pack. Come to me. Come now. His voice was packed with the urgency of one dying. I need help.

“Let me down,” she insisted, pushing on his hands. “You shouldn’t be carrying me.”

As his mind began to shut down, he couldn’t speak with words anymore. He didn’t know how to tell her that his hands were spasming and he couldn’t let go.

He lumbered past two live oaks, pushing through the streamers of Spanish moss swathed between their trunks as if the tree on the right were choking the life out of the tree on the left. Their leafy canopies shook as if with their own death throes. He pushed past them, staggering, and groaned aloud as silvery moonlight highlighted Isabelle’s dark cascades of curls.

“Jean-Marc!” she insisted, scrabbling out of his embrace, grabbing his arm to keep him upright as he contracted from the pain. He felt his protesting heartbeat, and he wove a spell of strength around himself as best he could.

My patron, the Grey King, I call on you, he thought. Save me, and I will be a faithful son. I will do whatever you ask. At least, keep me alive until I get her out of here.

He felt something move inside his being, a presence, a force, and he knew it was the Grey King. All faithful Devereauxes revered their patron, who was himself a demon. Those with strong Gifts, like Jean-Marc and Alain, were able to call on him directly. Hours before, the Grey King had appeared in the bayou and destroyed the demon Izzy had called—a fierce, fanged female creature with glowing, almond-shaped eyes and necklaces of skulls around her neck.

There will be a price, the Grey King informed Jean-Marc. A high one.

I will pay it gladly, Jean-Marc replied, if it keeps her safe.

Then it is done.

The presence receded, and Jean-Marc felt a solitary moment of fear. His patron was just, but he could also be merciless. Sometimes he moved in ways Jean-Marc couldn’t understand.

Yet, in the clearing, he saw a miracle: the werewolves’ crazy, black Cajun van. The passenger panel was slid back, revealing the garish interior studded with voodoo jujus of silver and brass, the strings of chicken’s feet and glittering mirrors and ankhs. And more wonderful, the Femme Blanche Andre had brought to heal Caresse poked her head out of the van. She took one look at Jean-Marc and hopped out, racing toward him. Another Femme Blanche peered out at them but remained inside the vehicle. So they had two. Magnifique.

I thank you, my patron, he thought, even though, of course, the patroness of the House of the Flames was Joan of Arc, and these women were her acolytes. He might have more properly thanked her, but he didn’t. He was certain that his patron had brought the van to him.

The window on the driver’s side rolled down, revealing Andre, now dressed in a plaid shirt. He threw open the door and leaped out, racing toward Isabelle and Jean-Marc, reaching out his arms.

“You’ve been hit. Denise, vite!” he bellowed.

“I’m coming,” said the Femme Blanche, unable to keep pace with the burly Cajun werewolf. “Sir, give the Gardienne to Andre.”

“We’ve got three Femmes Blanches now. They saved Caresse,” Andre said, jerking his head toward the Femme Blanche named Denise. “They can spare some time for you. Lucienne! Sara! Come now! Ils sont Jean-Marc de Devereaux et la Gardienne!”

“Bon,” Jean-Marc said, relieved to his soul that Caresse was better. Then his legs gave way as the ground rushed up.

It would be a relief to die—he hurt so badly—but he heard Isabelle cry out, “Take care of him. Then have someone come with me. I’m going back for…for…him!”

Jean-Marc’s mind was fragmenting; the kaleidoscope bits shattered and reformed into the face of Pat Kittrell. Leave him there, he thought, jealous rage mingling with battle-hardened common sense. I won’t risk your life for his.

“Her lover,” Jean-Marc gasped. “You know, that man from New York. The detective. Also, there are Bouvards loyal to her. Michel is with us. They should be found.”

With Isabelle in his arms, Andre turned to the Femme Blanche. “Goddamn it, fix him!” he shouted. “Alain!” He looked past Jean-Marc. “We gotta find la jolie’s boyfriend.”

“The Bouvard special ops are circling back to get some vehicles,” Alain reported. His voice dropped as he came around, staring in horror at Jean-Marc. “Mon cousin, what has happened?”

Then the two cousins spoke telepathically, which was a blessing, because Jean-Mark could no longer make his mouth work.

Je regret. I couldn’t stop myself from attacking you. I have been poisoned. I’m going to die with filth in my soul. I’ll go to a place where I can harm no one…

With a gasp, Alain slung his arm under Jean-Marc’s and half carried him toward the van.

Non, he protested. You will not die, Jean-Marc. You cannot die, and especially not in this condition.

The Femme Blanche named Denise approached and dropped her veil over her face. She raised her hand, glowing with white healing energy, and placed it directly over Jean-Marc’s wound. Fire as from a white-hot poker blazed from her palm into the ravaged sinews of his bicep, searing down to the bone; he hissed and doubled over. His cousin lowered him to the ground as Denise knelt, steadfastly poured healing magic into his body.

“Let it happen, let it be,” she murmured aloud to him in French. He knew it took her supreme effort to speak while she was working and he dipped his head, the closest he could come to a nod.

The second Femme Blanche from the van joined them, placing her palm over her sister’s. Then a third. Jean-Marc detected no change in his death throes. Perhaps he was too far gone, even for Bouvard healing magic.

“You have to find him.” Isabelle’s voice carried over the pain and a fresh round of mortar fire. “I won’t leave without him.”

His drowning heart sank; he was dying, but her thoughts were of Pat. Jean-Marc tried to tell himself that she probably didn’t realize how little time he had left. Magical wounds often appeared less severe than they actually were.

Or perhaps because her memory was gone and her Gift was dormant—her magical power can’t be gone; that is impossible—she no longer felt the incredible electricity between them. As his body began to quit, he could feel her, sense her, practically taste her. He almost managed a chuckle as his shaft hardened in response to her. I’m a dog, he thought wryly.

I’m a man.

A shrill whistling thrummed through his bones—incoming!—and he signaled to Andre to get Isabelle to the van. He was nearly blind now, as death came, but he could see her arms and legs flailing as Andre carried her around to the other side of the van. Then he lost sight of her as the Femmes Blanches intensified their magic and Alain chanted in the Old Language beneath his breath, praying to the patron of the House of the Shadows, the Grey King, to care for his devoted son.

He almost blacked out; nearly came to. Shadows wove around him as Alain eased him into the panel van. It was bulging to capacity—battle gear, wafting white robes, sweat, blood, dirt. And the sharp musk of werewolves, changed back to human, but with their natures wrapped around them like invisible pelts.

As soon as Andre gunned the engine and the vehicle roared into motion, a magical burst slammed into the ground where it had sat, rocking the chassis back and forth on its wheels. Two seconds later, and it would have landed squarely on top of the van.

Jean-Marc concentrated on Alain’s voice as his cousin magically willed him to live. He heard Andre arguing with someone over the roar of the battle and the engine. It was Isabelle, who was screaming at him to get Pat.

“It’s too dangerous, chérie,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“If it was someone you loved…” she retorted, obviously not thinking clearly. Because it had been Caresse, and she herself had not only shot her, but refused to help her in favor of Pat. Jean-Marc inhaled the scent of werewolf musk and Caresse’s spicy perfume, knowing she was nearby in the van. He tried to lift his head to find her, see how she was doing. He tried to send out healing thoughts, but that was not his Gift.

“Shh, don’t move,” Alain insisted. And then in thought, Are you in much pain? Alain ticked a worried glance at the veiled Femmes Blanches seated on the floor beside Jean-Marc. They had all lowered their veils to keep out distractions as they worked on him. The palm of the one closest was pressed against his shoulder, cauterizing his wound, or so it seemed to Jean-Marc. If anything, the pain intensified. But he had been trained from birth to be the master of his behavior, and so he forbade himself to writhe or cry out. What she did, she did to heal him.

Without answering, Jean-Marc slid his gaze down his body, finding the second Femme Blanche at his side and the third crouched at his feet, knees pressed against her chest beneath her dress. The three women were holding hands, transferring healing energy like a conduit through themselves to him.

“Caresse,” he whispered. “New Orleans PD. Unsouled.”

“She is stable. We have him. It is your turn,” Alain said.

The van bounded and bounced along, all the shiny metal objects shimmying and shaking. The Femme Blanche held on tight to his shoulder, grinding her fingertips painfully into torn muscles as if for purchase; he doubted she realized what she was doing.

A thunderous roar like a sonic boom jerked him out of his languor. The vehicle rocked hard to the right, sending everyone sliding, including Alain, the Femme Blanches and him. Next it ground to a halt and the panel door slid back. The noise outside was deafening.

He tried to sit up. With a fierce expletive, Alain held him down; then he saw a flash of facial features as three uniformed Bouvard special ops carried Pat Kittrell between them. Pat’s head was thrown back, his mouth was slack, the flesh of his silhouetted face gray and mottled. He looked as if he had been dead for a week.

They handed him in, other figures scrambling to help. The panel slammed shut. In the front seat, Isabelle called out to him. Jean-Marc dimly heard the sounds of movement and arguing: she was trying to climb over her seat to Pat.

Pat was laid down beside Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc turned his head and studied the brave man who had flown blind into this hell storm for love of his woman. Jean-Marc willed him to live.

Non, Alain told him telepathically. Stop exerting yourself. And then, Sleep.

I have to protect her, Jean-Marc replied. And he is part of her. It was so much easier to communicate without speaking. I have to…not sleep…I have to keep him from dying….

You have to not die yourself, Alain retorted. Or I’ll have risked your wrath for nothing.

I’ll take my wrath to the grave, Jean-Marc promised him, and use it to haunt you forever. I will never forgive you for what you did.

Alain grunted. And yet, I would do it again. Such is the nature of my loyalty, and my love for you, cousin. You would do the same, would you not? For Isabelle?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.