The Shadow Children (The Demon-Born Trilogy Book 1)

by L. C. Hibbett

  Sam stiffened behind Gabriel’s back. “Bullshit. You didn’t know it was us.”

  Gabriel gestured at a remote control on his desk. “Please press play, Jasmine.” He stretched her name out, almost purring, and Jasmine blushed.

  She pressed the play button and a sleek, flat-screen television on the wall burst into life, paused on a CCTV image of our little group in the queue at the door. Gabriel raised his eyebrows, and a smile played at his mouth. “Jasmine, I must tell you that I miss your spectacles. They’re quite charming.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and in a shimmer he disappeared from Sam’s grip, reappearing by the door. “Now, children, what the fuck do you want?”

  Sam lunged at him, and Gabriel flicked his wrist sending Sam spinning into a heap in the corner. He was on his feet in an instant, but Gabriel held his hand up. “Wait, boy. We have a few moments, at best, before Fergus arrives back, and he will sniff your friends out like a bloodhound, make no mistake.” He fixed me with a stare. “Last chance, Grace, what do you want.”

  Sam rocked on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. Daniel to Gabriel’s Goliath. I held out my hand to stop Sam from pouncing, and faced Gabriel. I tried to focus on my rage, battling against the quiver in my chest. “Where are they?”

  Gabriel drew his eyebrows together.

  “Don’t make that face, Gabriel! We know you’re working with Eve. We have her trapped, and I will harm you both, if I have to. Just tell me where Catherine, Dawn, and Cain are. Did you put them through that portal? Did you feed them to the Spirit Demons?” My lips trembled. I crushed them together and steeled myself for his response.

  Gabriel raised both of his hands in the air, palms out, and stepped closer. “Grace, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I lashed out with the force inside my core, creating wall of air between us. “Stop it, Gabriel. Where did you put them? Open that portal. Let me go after them.”

  Gabriel didn’t move. “Grace, I swear to you on the people of my realm, I haven’t touched them.” His expression darkened. “Fergus. I can interrogate him if we must, but it’s difficult, the balance here is precarious at best.”

  He stared at the floor, muttering to himself. Suddenly his head jerked upwards. “Eve? What have you done with her?”

  Sam’s glare hardened. “Nothing that she didn’t deserve for betraying her family. Grace owes her no mercy after the way she sent her to you to be fed to the Spirit Demons.”

  Gabriel reared up in a fury, and I pulled Jasmine against me, wishing that Sam wasn’t on the other side of the room. “You foolish children, half truths and lies, you have built a manifesto on smoke and ashes. Eve didn’t send you to me as a punishment. She was seeking my help, letting me know where she was and that she was in danger.” He flicked his glare over my face. “If you hadn’t offended Fergus then her plan would have been perfect. She couldn’t have known how tainted my world had become. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Ten years,” I said.

  Gabriel tipped his head at me in acknowledgment. “Yes. Ten years. Since I brought her that broken child.” His stare burned into my skull. “She would never harm that girl, or you. I tried to help you escape.”

  “You pushed me through that portal into hell, Gabriel.”

  He flapped his hand in my direction. “Semantics. You were never in any real danger. I knew you had the magic to escape, nothing like the nudge of fear for one’s life to spark the fire.”

  Sam growled, and Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Enough dramatics. I have an ally who dwells in the desert. He was ready to rescue Grace before the Spirits had finished their work.” He looked at me with interest. “Although my friend reported that he had no need to intervene. You disappeared into thin air. Despite the barrier.”

  He shook his head. “No portals have been opened onto that pocket today. Aza was there only an hour ago. Wherever your missing kin are, it’s not there.”

  My head was spinning. I sank down into the antique chair and pressed my hands against my temples. “Stop. You’re confusing me. It’s Eve. She betrayed us. She sent me here, to feed me to the Spirits, and now she has done the same with the others. It’s her. She admitted it. She said that she couldn’t tell me because I would hate her.”

  Gabriel kneeled down at my feet and peeled my hands from my face. “Grace, you need to listen very carefully. Eve sent you to me because she needed help, and she was afraid to come herself. Mary Magdalene. It’s code. A phrase her mother used. Dry humor about how others in the Angelic community perceived her for raising her child without her husband.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “You caught me off guard, I wasn’t sure if somebody was playing me. Using Clara’s words against me. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve been trying to trace Eve since you vanished, but I kept hitting brick walls until this afternoon when an ally finally managed to pass my message to the master of your cell. I know Eve would never betray the other girls, she gave up everything for you, do you understand? Nobody has ever made a greater sacrifice.”

  Gabriel twisted his neck to address Jasmine and Sam. “If there is darkness in your cell, I promise you that Eve is not the source.”

  My head was pounding. “It makes no sense. Why would I hate her? If she wasn’t the one calling the Spirit-Demons then why was she apologizing? What was she afraid to tell me?”

  Gabriel rested his elbows on my knees. “She thinks you might hate her because she hates herself. Eve made a trade when she left London, Grace, protecting you, Catherine, and the baby. She saved your lives, but she sacrificed her chance to save somebody else. Broke a deal with the Devil.”

  I tilted my head, struggling to comprehend.

  Gabriel exhaled. “She chose you, Grace, she chose to save you, and she gave up the chance to be reunited with her own child.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  There was no oxygen in the room. Every breath I took burned my lips and roiled in my lungs. I shook my head, tearing at Gabriel’s shirt with fingers.

  He stroked my hair as he spoke. “I’m sorry Grace, it’s not my story to tell. I don’t even know it all, but I did know Eve’s mother. We met in France when she was studying at the Opera de Paris. That’s where Eve gets her wonderful dance talent, from Clara.”

  Gabriel patted my knee and walked across the room, picking up a small briefcase and opening it on the desk. “She was something else. Fifteen hundred years in this realm and I have never met another person like her. Smart, strong. Noble. I had to travel to America for a year, and she returned to the Royal Ballet in London. When I came back she was already married. An Angel, good stock. All of his family had been killed during the blitz when he was an infant. He had been presumed dead, but there he was, back from the ashes thirty years later. A fully grown man.”

  Gabriel’s face twisted into a wry smile. “A tortured soul. That’s what Clara called him. She was always drawn to broken things. Thought she could heal anything with love. Peculiar fellow. I didn’t like him from the start. I once hid his cane at the opera. But that was sour grapes on my part.”

  He smiled down at the case. A sad, empty smile. “I had no idea what he was. What he would do to her. I left London and went to Sydney. She followed me two years later, on a ship. Turned up on my doorstep with this tiny little baby in her arms. Showed me the mark. Told me what sort of creature he really was.”

  Gabriel slammed the case shut and the entire desk trembled. “I hunted him down, every continent, every city, every one horse town. But he had vanished. As the years passed stories started creeping out. Other marked children with ethereal powers. And Eve was powerful. From the earliest days. It was magnificent to watch her grow. We sheltered her, tried to protect her from the world. There was no risk we didn’t take to keep her safe. But life is rarely kind.”

  He pressed his thumb into the socket of his eyes. “I was away when Clara and her parents died. Working. Demon affairs, Demon politics, Guardian business. This godforsaken world
. Eve couldn’t forgive me. Thought I could have saved her mother. That if I had been in the car with them I could have transported her to safety. How could I disagree? I had failed them both. Eve pushed me out of her life.”

  “I tried, every hour, then every day, then every week until there was nothing left between us. I hadn’t seen her in almost three years when she finally sought me out.”

  Gabriel glanced in Jasmine’s direction with eyes full of pain. “I must sound like a monster, but a few years is a drop in the ocean of immortality. I hadn’t forgotten her. Clara and Eve were always in my heart.”

  He sat down on the desk. “It was like history repeating itself, Eve turning up on my doorstep with a tiny bundle in her arms.”

  He found my eyes and nodded. “You, Grace. Tiny, little thing. Huge dark eyes and the fiercest cry. When she showed me the mark, I just assumed you were hers. I was ecstatic. A new generation to love, Clara reborn. And then she told me. She wasn’t your mother, but your keeper. A blood trade.”

  “The man who had masqueraded as her lover was as wicked as her father, a conjurer, a thief. A Spirit-Eater. They found her, alone and vulnerable, and they exploited her innocence. They must have been watching her all along. Waiting for their chance. Waiting for me to vanish from her life.”

  Gabriel paused for a minute, staring at his hands. “The monster pretended to be her friend. Her lover. Forcing her to repeat the same fate as her mother. He stole her joy and her child. Told her it was too weak to survive, but he and his brothers could mind the baby, nurture it, and when the time was right they would make the exchange. You for her child.”

  The tears poured over my cheeks like torrents of rain. Jasmine shook her head. “I don’t understand, Eve is so fierce, how could she let anyone take her baby? Why didn’t she fight them? She’s so powerful. I’ve never met a woman as intimidating.”

  “The woman you know isn’t the same girl that stood on my doorstep eighteen years ago, Jasmine. She was young and utterly alone in the world. These Brothers are terrible men. Cruel. Demeaning. She was a shell when she came to me with Grace. She truly believed these men were saving her baby and that she just needed to mind Grace and they would pour the same love into her little girl, and return her healthy and well.”

  Gabriel stared down at the briefcase on his lap. “It sounds insane, doesn’t it? I think she had lost her mind a little, in those early days. He had broken, that man and his Brothers. I felt as if I had been sucked into a vortex. There was no stone I left unturned, searching for Eve’s child. Searching for your birth mother. I found more children like you everywhere I went. Abandoned in the Silent Homes. Deposited in families as a trade for their own children. Tiny Demon-Marked babes. Hidden from the world. Imprisoned and tortured. I made allies, we rescued some of them, but I couldn’t get to the source. Until now. We’re so close.”

  “What about Catherine?” My voice was rough, grief ripping at my tongue.

  “A Guardian brought her to me. A good man. He feared for his own family, but he couldn’t watch another child born into that life. He said the men who hunted your kind wanted the baby badly, a second generation Demon-Born. There was nowhere else I could bring her. Nobody else with the skill or the fortitude to heal this fragile shell of a child, with child. To shelter her. But if she took her it meant that Eve would have to run, to give up the pretense of life as your Keeper. Severe the ties with the monster who had masqueraded as her lover and fathered her child. She never saw him after the day he brought you to her for safe keeping, but sometimes she would get a card through the door. Telling her it was almost time to be reunited with the infant they had stolen from her breast.”

  “When she saw Catherine I think she finally accepted the truth. There was no good in these people. These Spirit-Eaters. Whoever they were. It smashed the façade. She couldn’t hand you back to them, Grace. She cleaned the wounds on Catherine’s body, and I thought the agony would rip Eve’s heart clear out of her chest. There was no choice. She loved you. She could never return you to those heathens. So she ran. Took you girls and ran, over and over. Following a path I cleared for her. Every step taking her further away from her own precious baby.”

  Gabriel clasped his hands together tightly. “I wanted to go with you, to protect Eve, protect her family, but she refused. She wanted me to find the monsters who had her baby. I had allies watch over you. They delivered messages to Eve for me, any information I could find that might help, history books, ancient books from the Spirit War detailing how to fight those dark creatures. I laid a honey trap here, with the London Demons, spreading the word that we were willing to hunt your kind. They took the bait but have not yet revealed themselves. They are powerful, they have a hand in every corner of society. We have found Demon-Born stashed in Human orphanages, Silent Homes, Angelic families. We’re so close to finding them. Eve’s sacrifice might finally be coming to an end.”

  I took a deep breath. “Did she regret it? Her sacrifice?”

  “Every day.” My heart shriveled inside my chest. “And yet never. Grace, it’s an impossible thing the world has asked of her. The child of your womb or the child of your heart. Nobody should ever have to choose.”

  He pressed his palm down on the desk. “I believe whoever has taken Catherine, and her daughter, has nothing to do with Eve. I feared the worst when she sent you to me. They have found you, Grace. Somehow. The hunt is closing in. The Spirit-Eaters have sent their final calling card.”

  Something sparked inside my brain, and in an instant, I knew who it was. I reached out for Jasmine in horror, but her eyes were fixed on the television screen. Her mouth hung open as she watched five men in plain black clothing slip into the club. She turned around to meet Gabriel’s stare.

  He gripped the suitcase and bolted for the door. Sam dragged me after him, reaching for his blade. I craned my neck to search Jasmine’s face as she sprinted past us. She mouthed a single, heart-stopping word. “Guardians.”

  The club was even more packed than when we had left it. The air was moist with the scent of sweat and alcohol. Gabriel cut through the crowd like a shark and vaulted over the main bar. Jasmine was first to reach Megan and Elijah. I watched their faces tighten as they scanned the room.

  We caught sight of two black figures moving along the bar from either end, headed directly towards Jasmine, Elijah, and Megan. Sam crushed my fingers inside his and lurched forward, glaring at Jasmine to grab her attention. Megan spotted them first, and she froze, eyeing the twenty-foot drop into heaving dance floor. Suddenly the music stopped, and the air was full of water. The wailing of a siren filled the room.

  A flash appeared behind Elijah, Megan, and Jasmine and they were gone. Vanished into the thick air. Lucas skidded to a halt in front of myself and Sam, Brandon two steps behind him. The bottom fell out of my stomach. Sam pulled Lucas against his chest. “Get rid of him, Luc. If the Guardians see him with you—”

  Brandon threw an arm over my shoulder. “Grace, Samuel! Isn’t this insane? I don’t see you for weeks, and I step off the plane an hour ago and you’re here. You must have flown out before me. Lucas said it was a total last minute thing, what the hell? Athletes are like rock stars these days.”

  My body had turned to stone. Three black figures were closing in on us from different directions. Cool fingers pressed against the nape of my neck and the dance floor vanished, replaced by a damp stairwell beside a worn wooden door. Leadenhall Market, the Dungeon Path gate. Gabriel removed his hand from my neck and stepped back beside a dazed Megan and Elijah.

  Lucas beat his fists against the door. “Send me back.” He turned on Gabriel. “You Demon scum, let me go back and protect him. The Guardians will take him.”

  “Brandon doesn’t even know what we are, Lucas. They won’t bother with him once they sense he’s Human, right?”

  My words incensed him further, and he lunged at Sam, trying to pull the blade from his hand. “Give it to me, Sam. Just let me use the blade. I need to pay the blood tithe t
o get back in there.”

  Sam grabbed Lucas by the shoulders and held him steady. He gave Gabriel a pleading look. “Brandon’s a nice guy, Gabriel. He has no idea what any of this is about. You know what the Guardians will do with him.”

  Gabriel smashed his palm against the rough brick. “Children. You know not what you are asking of me.”

  Jasmine touched his sleeve with her fingertips. Gabriel let out a groan and vanished, reappearing seconds later with a dazed Brandon. His face was swollen and bloody. He backed away slowly, stumbling on the bottom step of the stairs.

  Gabriel turned to us, one eye on the screen of his mobile phone. “What do you propose I do with him? The Guardians had already taken him, I had no choice but to bring him with me. He has been Demon touched, there is no undoing it. The veil will fall away from his eyes. I can block him, but it will involve replacing all of his memories and giving him a different life.”

  Brandon sprang forward. “The fuck. You’re not messing with my memories, man. Whatever shady crap you guys are involved in, nobody is touching my mind.”

  Gabriel nodded, tapping something on his phone. “Your decision.” He fixed Lucas and Sam with a glare. “Then he goes with you. Henceforth the Human is your responsibility, and what you took from him you shall repay threefold.”

  Gabriel held the phone up to his ear. “Aza. Back gate. Portal.” He paused, listening to her shrill response, and closed his eyes. “I understand, Aza. As you must.”

  The door behind us swung open, and Aza stepped into the dull light of the stairwell. Brandon’s eyes widened. She was even more breathtaking that I had remembered, braided hair coiled around her head, her chocolate skin inked with golden tattoos.

  Gabriel tipped his head in greeting, and she pursed her lips, eyes bright with unshed tears. Her fingers traced over the bricks, playing a silent tune, and a swirling portal appeared where the wall had once stood. Brandon squinted and tugged at his eyelids.