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
