The First Male Read online

  Dear Reader:

  Lee Hayes is nothing short of amazing. In his prior books, he has mastered the art of storytelling through strong, suspenseful storylines and unforgettable characters. Now he has widened his prolific range and has stepped over into the supernatural arena with The First Male.

  The main character, Simon, is changing into “something” that he does not recognize. He is plagued by dreams of things unknown and his world will never be the same. Before he was even born, his destiny was predetermined. He was to be special, to be a leader, to potentially be a destroyer of worlds. That is a heavy load to carry but an exciting one as well. Hayes once again astounds readers by showing that he is a talent to be reckoned with. I am confident that you will enjoy The First Male as much as I did.

  As always, thanks for supporting the efforts of Strebor Books. We strive to bring you fresh, talented and ground-breaking authors that will help you escape reality when the daily stressors of life seem overwhelming. We appreciate the love and dedication of our readers. You can find all of our titles on the Internet at www.zanestore.com and you can find me on Facebook.com/AuthorZane.

  Blessings,

  Publisher

  Strebor Books International

  www.simonandschuster.com

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  Thank you to my friends, family and fans who have supported me on this incredible journey for the last ten years. Onward and upward!

  AND

  Special thanks to DeTerrius Woods and Ronda Brown, my advance readers. You rock!

  CHAPTER 1

  In the immutable black of night, something ungodly stirred; something unholy devoured the light.

  Deep in a swamp far from the mainland, angry winds hissed through the giant pine trees, covering the dense marsh with the unnerving sound of agitated serpents. Sharp pines needles, ripped violently from the trees, shot through the air like deadly daggers. Frequently, brilliant lightning flashes tore open the sky in a dazzling display of power; thunder shook the earth.

  Sheets of blinding rain crashed against the dilapidated shack, its rotting wood punished severely by the unnatural tempest. The ramshackle structure quaked and quivered and its roof viciously shook; but, it held its ground. The shack bent and buckled, but did not break.

  She would not let it succumb to the storm.

  Inside the house, a woman howled in pain. Her child was coming, even in the midst of such profane turmoil. The woman did not fully appreciate all that was taking place inside or outside the shack, but she knew something otherworldly was afoot and she was a focal point; this knowledge only exacerbated her pain. She knew—she had always known—that the child in her womb was special. At the very moment of conception she felt a jarring that rattled her body, sending a wave of nausea that almost toppled her. She knew in that moment, as sure as she knew her name was Rebecca Saint, that her child was conscious, aware. Now this very special child was coming and she felt as if she was being ripped apart. Her pain was excruciating. She screamed in agony, wishing she was in a hospital in Baton Rouge so that she wouldn’t have to endure such aching; she longed for an epidural. She focused on her acute pain and the life bursting brutally from her womb. She had never experienced childbirth before, but she knew there was nothing natural about what she was feeling. The pain she felt radiated in her bone marrow; it ignited every cell in her body. She felt as if her entire body was wrapped in flames, burning from the inside out.

  In her periphery, she could see the woman’s gnarled fingers pulling particles of colorful light out of thin air in highly choreographed movements. She thought pain had altered her perception of reality, but she continued watching the woman conjure waves of dancing, glittery light out of nothing at all. Each strand of light flashed brilliantly for a few seconds and then dissipated shortly after its appearance, only to be followed by more iridescent hues.

  “I . . . I . . . need . . . hospital. Who . . . are . . . you? What are you doing?” she managed to utter with breath broken by pain. She wanted to scream out, but she could not; she was lucky to speak at all.

  The woman paid her little attention. She continued her hurried ritual.

  The baby in her belly pounded as a voice echoed in her head.

  Push.

  The pregnant woman looked around the room, half-expecting to see a child huddled in a corner talking to her, but there was no child. She was going mad. The voice in her head was not hers.

  Push.

  The voice rang again and the woman shut her eyes tightly in an ill-conceived effort to blot out the sound. She tried to shake the voice out of her head, hoping that her pain would mute the sound. Pain she could understand. The voice clawed at her core.

  Push.

  The voice sounded low, like a cry somewhere in the dark, but it frightened her enough to momentarily forget her pain. She’d gladly endure the pain if it blocked the voice.

  Push.

  “Stop it!” she screamed in a clear, strong voice. She didn’t know her own strength.

  Push.

  The voice was now forceful, threatening. A force snatched her eyelids up and held them open so that she could see.

  She screamed again.

  “Are . . . y-y-ou doing this to . . . me?” she asked the woman in a quivering voice. The woman stopped and eyed her curiously, but she did not reply.

  Push. Push. Push.

  The command jangled inside her skull as tears streamed down her face.

  Push . . . Mother.

  The voice was now gentle.

  “Get out of my head!”

  The voice terrified her. It belonged to the child on the verge of being born. She pushed with all her might. She wanted this child out of her stomach as much as he desired freedom. She was not prepared for this. No childbirth should be like this. Who was this child? Had the whole world gone mad?

  She inhaled and exhaled rapidly, as she was taught in Lamaze class, but the pain did not relent, nor did the voice of the child, or the scalding voice of the woman in the corner. Rebecca turned her head and looked directly at the woman. Sounds escaped from the woman’s lips, but they were indecipherable; spoken in a language unknown to her that struck her ears as foul. It was unlike any language she had ever heard. The clamor she made filled the room; she spoke feverishly.

  “Help me . . . please,” Rebecca pleaded. Her cries fell on deaf ears. She could feel her body shutting down; the proverbial white light was sure to claim her.

  “I am helping you, child. I am protecting you. I am protecting us from . . . him,” the woman finally said, as she nodded in the direction of the woman’s full belly.

  As Rebecca pleaded with the woman, the face of a child flashed in her head. The child’s face was gentle and loving, like a cherub. His marvelous beauty left a permanent imprint in her head; yet, her heart was filled with so much dread. Her heart beat furiously against the bones in her chest. She had seen the face of her child, even before he escaped from her womb
and before he had taken his first breath.

  Outside, the undead things bellowed in celebration; the sounds of their dark jubilation echoed as vitriolic laughter in the hissing wind. It would only be a matter of time. Although the witchy woman inside, Adelaide Thibodeaux—who had stolen Rebecca—was of great power, they knew she would not be able to last forever against their unrelenting force. Already she had expelled a great deal of power—traveling a great distance, shattering their cloak that surrounded Rebecca, and erecting her own magical barrier around the shack. Yet, they remained gleeful of her imminent demise. From the way the house rattled, they sensed her weakness as a shark smelled blood in the water. For victory, they only had to continue their assault.

  He was being born, bursting from his mother’s womb during the storm of the century—a storm his birth had invoked, as told by prophecy.

  Beneath a cold, blood moon, of the shortest day, He shall come forth, in flame; in storm.

  The shadows could feel his presence on this winter solstice; his young power intensified the storm; such unbridled power, even in the womb. His birth had been foretold for eons, but never had been made flesh; that is, until tonight. The heaven’s alignment made it possible.

  To topple the shack and claim the child was their ultimate goal. The ancient scrolls outlined the stakes:

  He who controls the child, shall control the world.

  The undead things chanted an unbroken chain of shadow speak, hissing aberrant sounds into the depths of the night, using their power to strengthen the gale.

  Amongst the shadows, he walked; part flesh, part bone; not alive, yet, not dead. He was something else. Something ancient. Something evil. His heavy feet pulverized the frozen earth; hardened stones crumbled like saltines beneath the heels of his ancient boots. Shadows at his feet moved like serpents coiling around his legs, hissing. Underneath his ragged black hood was a faceless, horrifying hollowness, except for a pair of yellow eyes. His voice was terrifying, spoken through lightning, thunder, and pounding rain. The fearsome wind flung his putrid scent across the land, polluting the night with the grimy stench of decaying flesh.

  Inside, Rebecca’s screams continued, shrill enough to shatter glass. Her blood-curdling yelps carried more force than the rabid wind. The shadows and undead things would one day worship her; they would exalt her and prepare a special place for her within the new kingdom, a kingdom her child would lead. In the days beyond the last days, she would sit to the left of her child and he on the right—a vulgar triumvirate. She was his mother, the Dark Mother, and she had been cloaked and protected by shadows since the moment she conceived. At the moment of the child’s conception, a fiendish delight erupted in the Shadowland, a wretched place that existed in the space between worlds. The Shadowman had rejoiced for the first time in more than three hundred years.

  The time had arrived. His rapture.

  Inside the house, Adelaide Thibodeaux, or Addie, as she was called by her clan, wielded the ancient power of her sister-clan for what she believed would be the last time, making her final stand against the shadows. The stakes could not have been higher; the fate of the world rested in her hands.

  Addie chanted. Her eyes rolled to the back of her skull. The long sleeves of her red flowing robe swayed back and forth. She commanded awesome power; force that belied her diminutive frame; power that they feared. She weaved a spell as strong as the night was black; a spell deeply rooted in the primordial blood magic of her sister-clan; a spell unlike any spell that had ever been cast before.

  As her heart raced and her palms sweated, Addie’s goal was clear: endure long enough for the child to draw its first breath; then, she could imbue it with all the goodness she knew and bind its powers; hopefully, forever, but she had no way of knowing if it would work. A binding spell of this magnitude had never before been attempted. To bind this child’s power was tantamount to binding the night itself.

  In spite of the grave uncertainty, in spite of her unsteady hands, in spite of the shadows pounding against the house, she pressed on. She had no other choice. If she failed, the child would most certainly become the abomination long prophesized. The ancient texts could not have been clearer: the first male born of the first born Thibodeaux male would be the destroyer of worlds. The warning sounded in her head from a place that was not a part of her. Destroyer of worlds. Her ancestors were speaking, warning her of the cost of failure. She had to complete the ritual or this child would one day plunge the world into abysmal darkness that would last until time ran out of time.

  Fear tightened Addie’s heart and squeezed her lungs. Even if she could complete the ritual in time, there was no guarantee it would take; the child’s soul, ordained by fate, already belonged to the shadows, but it was believed—through no real evidence except the intuition of a powerful elder Seer-sister long since dead—that the power of the sister-clan could cleanse the shadows from his soul and bind his powers forever. It would take the collective force of the entire sister-clan, past and present and maybe even future, to complete such a feat. How long could such a spell last? Addie wondered. A day? A week? A year? Ten years? Was forever even possible? No one could be sure. Either way, Addie didn’t expect to be around to bear witness to the aftermath. After tonight, after such an outpouring of power, she suspected that she’d ascend to The Higher Plain with her sisters.

  A powerful lightning bolt struck the shack, setting the roof ablaze. The fire caused by his lightning could not be extinguished, even from the pounding rain. For the first time, the smell of smoke seeped into the house through Addie’s defenses. Her barrier was falling. The ground beneath her very feet swelled and shook, as if a chain of perfectly timed mini-earthquakes exploded in rapid succession. She stumbled into a small table that slid across the room, but she managed to regain her balance.

  The pounding against the shack was unyielding.

  Addie called on her ancestors again, seeking their strength. She needed her power to combine with their strength.

  “In this darkened hour, I invoke your ancient power. In this darkened hour, I invoke your ancient power,” she repeated in a rapid-fire whisper that filled the room.

  Then, she heard their voices. Her ancestors; the sister-clan. She heard many, many voices speaking in unison, in a tongue foreign to anyone outside her clan; an ancient language known only to them. Their voices sounded like blessings raining down. The ancients—members of her sister-clan who had long ago departed—spoke to her in hasty whispers.

  Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power . . .

  Wind blew through the house, violently scattering loose papers about the room. The papers fluttered across the room as if carried by a tornado. Within the spinning air, a dim light grew brighter and brighter until the entire room was bathed in a yellow glow. The light was warm and comforting, in spite of the dire circumstances. Addie saw the ethereal and disembodied faces of her ancestors. She saw Aunt Sarah. She saw Ambrosia. She smiled when she saw Doshia. And Whitney. And Lucretia. And Alala. And Amaka. And Irena. And Sethunya; and many others. Most of the churning faces she had only seen in the ancient texts of the clan, but they were connected through blood and magic, which stretched back farther than time. Addie would need their power if the spell had any chance of succeeding. Their faces swirled swiftly about the room as they chanted.

  Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power. Imbue the child. Bind his power.

  Rebecca screeched. The force of thunder collided into the house, shaking it to its core. Addie’s power flickered, and then she heard the rejoicing of the Shadowman; his laughter shook the sky. With the use of the strength of her ancestors, Addie had sight beyond sight so that she could see what was unseen. Her gaze focused on the Shadowman outside of the shack, and she saw him in his wretched form. She watched as he rotated his hands counterclockwise and raised them suddenly to the sky, pulling down a bev
y of fierce lightning bolts that struck the roof of the house in powerful succession, leaving pulsing and bleeding cracks in the structure. Fire burned into the roof, in spite of the heavy rain.

  He had succeeded in cracking her barrier in multiple places.

  Addie’s ancestors’ faces faded.

  In her mind’s eye, she watched the shadows merge together and glide forward carefully, to exploit the weakness. They did not know what to expect from Addie, but they knew better than to underestimate her magic. She had more than proven her power to them. She was a Priestess Supreme.

  Once the smoke reached the decrepit front porch, the shadows stopped. The undead things fanned out and created an unbroken circle around the house, preventing escape; they were ready to pounce when the order was given.

  Addie focused and sealed the cracks in the roof. She kneeled over the woman and commanded her to push.

  Adelaide, why do you resist? You cannot prevent that which is meant to be.

  The voice—his voice—filled the room and covered Rebecca’s screams. His voice was gentle, almost comforting. The smell of fresh flowers descended, as if from a field, and Addie felt a peculiar sense of peace trying to overtake her. She imagined herself in the comfort of her mother’s arms as a child. She felt warm and protected; she had always longed for that sense of security, but peace was not part of her destiny. She was a born protector, and she fulfilled her duty with honor. And she knew it wasn’t peace that was trying to take her; it was surrender. She would have fallen for this trick of the enemy had it not been for the burning in her heart.

  We will raise him as a king of kings. How could you deny him that? He is your blood.

  Addie could not engage him in conversation. She had to concentrate. Sweat poured down her face and her hands violently shook.

  You cannot win.

  Addie steeled her disposition and connected with her ancestors. She felt their spirit, their ancient power. She chanted and channeled them as Rebecca continued to howl. Her frantic shrieks filled the airy space. Addie felt unprecedented power surge and swell within her blood. She tried to hold it back, to control it, as a dam would hold back raging water. Her power ignited the atmosphere, swirling about the room like a contained hurricane; visible sparks ignited indiscriminately around the room, like fireworks.