Mona Lisa Craving

ONE

THE CRESCENT MOON gleamed bright in the star-studded sky, a beacon of light in the darkness. Not chasing it away. No, darkness was fine. Darkness was our domain, the time when we roamed and played and hunted. We slept the days and roamed the evening twilight. And when the sun fell over the edge of the Earth, that was when we rose. The lunar rays didn’t chase darkness away, so much as crown it. Make it glisten and glow with shadows and light.

We weren’t vampires. We were something older, much older than those legends. We were what begat those first whispers that eventually wound their way into folklore: The Monère, children of the moon, a people who had fled their dying planet over four million years ago. Supernatural creatures faster, stronger, more beautiful than mere humans.

I was the exception to that. The beauty part, that is. I was the pigeon among all the peacocks. Plain, with straight dark hair and shadow-danced eyes. The exotic almond tilt of my eyes was my only attractive feature. At five feet eight, I stood as tall as the shortest of my men, and was built more like a long-distance runner—lean, pared down like an athlete, with a light, modest bosom. I hadn’t inherited my mother’s lushness, which was fine by me. It was a body I was comfortable with. And my simple looks…well, the plainness was not so surprising. Not in a Mixed Blood, which is what I am. A quarter of me is human, the other three-quarters of me is Monère, a people I’d only just come to know existed. And the reason for that? My mother, Mona Sera, a Full Blood Monère Queen, had tossed my mongrel self away at birth, like garbage. I’d been raised among the humans. Grew up thinking of myself as such until puberty hit and the moon’s gifts of greater strength and sharper senses, far more acute than any human’s could ever be, made it clear that I was more.

I was more than even what I had first suspected. I was a Monère Queen, the newest one crowned. The first Mixed Blood Queen to ever exist in their long and bloody history. Unfortunately, I was doing more than my share of adding to the bloodiness of that history. I’d just returned from High Queen’s Court, called before the Council to explain my role in Mona Louisa’s death, the Queen who’d ruled here before me in Louisiana.

Mona Louisa of Louisiana. Had a ring to it now that I rolled the words together, didn’t it? No longer. She was dead. Not by my hand, though I’d done my best to kill her after she’d torn my lover’s heart out from his chest and killed him. When Gryphon died, I had wanted to die, too. But not before ensuring that Mona Louisa departed this Earth first. After I’d seen that goal accomplished, I’d been grief-maddened and had submersed myself in my Bengal tiger form—something I’d suppressed, ran from all my life, that dark, dangerous beast chained inside me. In my grief-storm of pain and loss, I’d finally embraced that animal part of me. Lost myself wholly, mindlessly, in my other self, roaming the forests for a fortnight until my human and animal minds had merged, come one into the other, and I found myself once more aware of who and what I am—a part-human Monère Queen who had abandoned her people for half a month.

One of my people ran beside me now. An enormous wolf with a beautiful, lush pelt of silver-gray, and autumn brown eyes that gleamed as if a light shone within him. And it did. Lunar light. He was not a true wolf but a Full Blood Monère warrior shifted into his animal form. He romped with me now in joy of the night, and I ran with him in celebration of our time, of our strength, of our being, lithe and light in my human form, springing ahead of him, veering sharply aside so that he leaped in front. I followed then, chasing after him. We danced like that for a time, like children playing, or in our case, like living creatures who still had life, who should celebrate that life while it yet remained in them.

Life and death were fickle, sometimes bleeding one into the other. Gryphon, my first love, had died but he’d made the transition to demon dead. He resided now in another realm. In Hell. I would see him again one day. Mona Louisa, the bitch Queen I’d tried so hard to kill and had failed to, was also dead but not entirely gone. She’d drank demon blood and had become more than Monère…and I had sucked her light and essence into me. That part of her, that demon-tainted part, resided in me now.

I ran in human form because, now that it was triggered, that demon essence within me partially blocked my tiger self, preventing it from coming out fully. I wondered if the opposite were true, if my animal self prevented the full manifestation of that demon sliver that lurked within me like a dark, insidious shadow.

Others thought I ran the night in my animal form with my master at arms by my side to keep me safe. But I’d really come here, away from the others’ keen ears, to speak to him privately.

Deep in the midst of the forest, we came upon a small clearing. Nestled there was a small hut. The west cottage, it was called. I’d never been here before and looked upon the charming little structure with pleasure. It was a tiny thing with yellow siding, a green sloping roof, and matching green trim. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped within. It was a simply furnished but comfortable abode, used as a hunter’s cabin. A place where Monère warriors shifted back into their upright forms. A place to clean up and wash off the blood after hunting in their animal selves. There were several other cabins like this spread out among our vast acreage.

Nails scraped the wooden floor as the wolf entered the cabin and crossed over to me. A natural wolf, canis lupus, stood thirty inches tall at the shoulders and weighed 150 pounds. Canis Monère, on the other hand, was much bigger. Or at least the one before me was. His weight was closer to 250 pounds. And his shoulders topped a natural wolf’s height by more than half a foot. No wonder the timber wolf that I’d encountered at High Court, a wolf that had looked upon me as food, had backed away beneath Dontaine’s growling threat.

A shimmer of light, a pulse of power, and Dontaine stood before me naked and unadorned, breathtakingly handsome with hair as blindingly bright as sunshine, and eyes a lush and deep verdant green in his human form. He was tall, and what I would have called of average build. But average was not a word you used with Dontaine. With broad shoulders, arms roped with sinewy strength, a chest sculpted with rippling muscles that flowed like flesh-silk beneath his pale, flawless skin, he was more heavily muscled than Gryphon, my beautiful, dark, departed angel, and much less massive than my towering Amber, my Warrior Lord, my other love.

Dontaine’s hand reached out and I felt that electric, jolting dance upon my skin, a sensation that came from him alone. He touched me. And his touch was not like that of a guard but of a new lover—my new lover.

“Mona Lisa.” He whispered my name and title both. The emotions that crossed my face when I looked at him, truly looked at him and saw him—not just the surface beauty but the generous, valiant heart that lay beneath it—made his eyes swirl a deeper green.

He was achingly handsome with bold and noble features, like a blond sun god. And like most men blessed with fair face and exquisite form, he had the confidence, the touch of arrogance that usually came with the looks. And he wasn’t just beautiful but powerful, even for a Full Blood Monère warrior. He had been Mona Louisa’s favorite, before she had tried to kill me, her territory forfeited to me as punishment. She’d tried to regain it, and one of the means she had used was the tall, sumptuously handsome man who stood before me now, looking at me with soft wonder in his eyes. He’d been left behind to spy and betray me, but he hadn’t. He’d saved me instead. Not just once, but again at High Court when I had been questioned there for Mona Louisa’s death.

I’d taken him not just into my body but into my heart. In the midst of sadness and loss, I’d found love again, unexpectedly. It was because I loved Dontaine that I needed to talk to him now. So that he did not continue to look at me that way—with love and happiness.

It had only been one day since we’d returned from my testimony at High Queen’s Council. And we’d spent most of it reassuring my people here that I would not be blamed or punished for Mona Louisa’s death, that everything was okay. But that was a lie. While things may be okay Council-wise—or as much as it could be after a stir like that—I wasn’t okay. And only Dontaine knew the truth of this.

I stepped back from my lover’s touch. Dropped my eyes from his compelling male beauty, from the tempting loveliness of his form, from the raw and tender heart he offered up to me with those expressive green eyes. I took a hard step back from it all and said, “We need to talk, Dontaine.”

A beat of silence. When he spoke, it was with quiet tension thrumming in his voice. “That never bodes well.”

I guess that was a rule that held true not only for humans but for the Monère also.

“I will dress,” he said quietly, and I retreated to a corner chair as he opened the armoire and began to pull on clothes. I would have stared out the window had there been one, but there was none in this simple cabin. I passed the time instead with an intricate study of the wood-planked floor.

I felt his presence as he neared and sat by my feet. There were no other chairs. I would have felt better had he stood instead of seating himself on the floor below me, a gesture that placed him lower than I, made him even more vulnerable to me.

My eyes lifted from my perusal of the floor, met his, and flicked away. I couldn’t say what I had to say to him while looking into those unshielded eyes.

“Dontaine.” Just his name for a moment, so lovely upon my lips. Then came the blow. “We cannot be lovers.”

He didn’t say anything, so I rushed to fill in the pregnant silence. “I care for you. You know that.” It was a truth that he’d seen in my eyes. “But you also know that there is something very, very wrong with me. You’ve asked no questions.”

“There has been no time. No opportunity.”

“There is now. Do you have any questions for me?”

A strained silence. Then he asked not what I would have asked after all that confused madness that had occurred two nights ago, but what was most important to him. “Why can we not be lovers?”

His hands, long-fingered and elegant, an aristocrat’s hands, were folded neatly around his bended knees as he sat there on the wooden floor. I focused on those hands, remembered how they had felt on me, in me, caressing me, and looked blindly away.

“You and I know that it was not my beast’s hunger that almost overwhelmed me at High Court.” Though that was what we’d told everyone else. Even Tomas, my other guard who’d been there that night, believed it to be true. “It was bloodlust, Dontaine. Demon bloodlust.”

“It is because of Halcyon, the Demon Prince. When you accompanied him.” Dontaine’s words, more of a statement than a real question, referred to the time when I had returned with Halcyon to Hell. When my Demon Prince had been so severely injured because of me…always because of me, it seemed…that he could not make the trip safely home by himself. Hell was a dangerous place, even for its ruler.

I closed my eyes, picking my answer carefully, tiptoeing among all the lies to pick a truth that I could tell him. “Not in the way you think. I wasn’t infected then. But you’re right, it does involve Halcyon.” It certainly involved his blood, which Mona Louisa had taken from him against his will, breaking one of their greatest taboos—drinking a demon’s blood. She’d blood-raped Halcyon. And I, in turn, had light-raped her. Now both of their essences dwelled within me. And all of this had to remain a secret. Unknown.

Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, Halcyon’s father, had killed a score of Monère warriors and their Queen—Mona Louisa, the demon blood violator—to keep this secret: that drinking their blood can multiply a Monère’s power, endowing them with demon dead strength. I did not want the next blood bath to be that of my men.

“It involves Mona Louisa, too,” I said, and told Dontaine nothing he did not already know. He’d seen my brown eyes turn blue, turn into Mona Louisa’s eyes. “How, I cannot say. Only that it was the reason why the High Lord of Hell killed her.”

“But he spared you. Does he know that you have some of their essence in you?”

A good question. The High Lord had seen me drain Mona Louisa of her light, her energy. He had spared me, believing that keeping my Monère secret—my extremely rare, extremely dangerous gift of Mortal Draining, that light-drinking thing I had done—would ensure the keeping of his demon secret. But the real reason he had spared me was because his son, Halcyon, had named me as his mate. Because after six hundred years alone, he had found love.

Still…that was before Blaec knew that his demon secret dwelled as a living presence within me. That it had infected me. That it evidenced within me everything they tried to keep hidden from the Monères. Would he still have spared me had he known this? I would know soon enough. Lucinda, Halcyon’s sister, had been at High Court, and her presence there had brought out the demon taint in me. There’d been no hiding it from her. She knew what existed within me—what was changing me—and would have reported that to the High Lord and to Halcyon. Death resided within me, most likely lay before me.

“Lucinda will have told them by now,” I said. “If the High Lord, or if Halcyon…if they come to kill me, you are not to try to stop them or seek revenge.”

Dontaine froze into a stillness that unnerved me.

“They will be within their rights, Dontaine. Do you understand?”

He shook his head, his voice sounding harsh and strained. “No. I do not understand.”

“It was something that I did. Something I brought upon myself. I’m sorry to lay this burden on you, but if anything happens to me, you are the only one who knows. The only one who can testify before the Council that I hold Halcyon and the High Lord blameless.”

“For executing you,” he said. “If two of our Queens are killed by demon hand, even if it is by the High Lord himself again, it will not sit well with the High Queens Council.”

“What will they do? Go to war with them?” My laugh was short and bitter. “They would be slaughtered. As would you, all of you here. Everyone I love and hold dear.” I closed the distance between us, gripped his hand tight. Felt his electric touch dance with shocking little jolts upon my skin. The sensation was sharper, more painful than normal, betraying his leaking distress. “Dontaine, promise me that you will not lift your hand against them if they come for me.”

A hard, painful jolt shot from his hand to mine, making me gasp. He drew his hand away so that we no longer touched. “Are you asking me, or ordering me?”

I searched his eyes, those green tumultuous depths. “You are my master at arms. With command comes great responsibility. You hold our people’s safety in your hands. Would you see your mother, your sister, killed for no purpose? Would you throw away their lives—your life—so easily? I ask it of you but if I must, I will order it. Must I, Dontaine? Must I demand it of you?”

His eyes dropped away from mine. “Mona Lisa…What you ask of me…”

I went into his arms then because I loved him. Because I was hurting him, and I did not want to. I went into his arms because the torment I glimpsed in his beautiful eyes just plain broke my heart.

Contact with him lanced me for a sharp, electric second before he brought his forceful presence back under control.

“Please, Dontaine. I love you. I want to keep you safe. All of you—Jamie, Tersa, Rosemary, Thaddeus, Chami, Tomas, Aquila, and Amber. You are my family. The most important beings to me in this world. Please, help me keep you all safe. I could not bear it if I lost someone else I loved.”

His hands cupped my face, lifted it up to his so that I saw his brilliant, gleaming eyes, the chiseled lines of his face fierce and raw with emotion. Perhaps he would have kissed me then. Perhaps I would have let him. A foolish thing to do when it was infinitely safer to push him away. Safer for him.

I don’t know if I would have given in to that momentary folly. I don’t know what would have happened afterward. All I suddenly knew was that my gums were burning as if fire had set them aflame. That my teeth were aching. That I had a sudden thirsting urge for blood, to feel it sliding hot and sweet down my throat.

This was what had happened to me at High Court—the promise of fangs. That promise suddenly became reality. My teeth elongated and pushed upward and outward through my gums like small mountains erupting. I gasped because it hurt like hell. Then gasped again when I felt a sharp sting and looked down to see blood welling from the hand I’d drawn up to my mouth and pricked. I’d accidentally cut myself on the sharpness of my own teeth…on my fangs.

“Dear Goddess,” Dontaine whispered. Cold fear skimmed the surface of those two words.

I pushed away from him and stumbled out the door. Away. I had to get away from him. I fled outside into the cool night, and in the breeze that glided over my skin, I felt him—the demon presence outside that had brought forth the demon presence within me. And not just any demon, but one I knew intimately. “Halcyon.”

He came to me out of the darkness, my elegant Demon Prince. I sensed him as I’d never sensed him before, like a heartbeat. Only his heart did not beat, he did not breathe. He—like the other demons—was dead, demon dead, and we were not supposed to be able to sense them this strongly. That was what made them so dangerous—that they could approach us almost undetected. That and their far greater strength, both mental and physical.

The last time I’d seen Halcyon, he’d been weak and bloodied, his chest ripped to shreds by a whip. He was not weak now. Others would have looked upon him and seen an average man in looks, height, and build. He was only a bare head-tilt taller than I, slender and trim, with dark hair, dark eyes, just like me. He had a quiet presence rather than a shouting one. A reserved air. An air of loneliness. An apartness from others that had pulled me to him since the very first time I became aware of him in a sun-dappled meadow.

A Monère warrior who did not know the Demon Prince would have seen him and dismissed him in strength and power. Never would have guessed that before him stood the ruler of Hell, someone far stronger than our greatest Warrior Lord.

I’d never feared Halcyon as others did—his great strength, those lethal nails. He’d been kind to me from the very first, and not just kind but a friend…and then a lover in a dream or a vision—you might call it a dream reality. Whatever it had been, the feelings between us had certainly been real.

Even when I’d seen Halcyon shift into his alternate demon form—huge, monstrous, ugly—and kill another demon in battle over me, even then I had not really feared him. But now I did. Because I didn’t just feel Halcyon’s presence, I felt his emotions. He ached with sadness. Almost overwhelming grief.

The cabin door opened. Dontaine stepped out, a silver dagger gleaming with naked threat in his hand, and I felt Halcyon’s grieving sadness flash into anger.

“Dontaine, leave us,” I said, my voice carefully calm.

My master of arms, my lover, did not obey me. Instead he came to stand beside me. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, too.” With a blow that took Dontaine unaware, I struck him, careful with my strength because I was more than just Monère strong now. I caught his unconscious body as it went lax, and carried him inside to the cabin, laid him gently down on the bed.

One last secret touch of that sun-bright hair. Then I straightened and stepped out to meet my fate.