Son of the Shadows. Nancy Holder

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