Nancy Holder - Son of the Shadows

“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.”