Mona Lisa Craving

TWO

“I SMELL HIS scent on you,” were Halcyon’s words upon my return. I didn’t know how to answer him. Amber and Gryphon had shared me without jealousy. I’d have said that Monère men did not know the meaning of the word, but that was not true. The one person they had been jealous of had been Halcyon. The Demon Prince’s interest in me had driven them crazy with resentment and fear. I had no inkling of what Halcyon’s reaction might be to my sleeping with another man, even if it had been to save us both. Since I wanted to keep Dontaine alive, I said nothing.

Halcyon gave a little smile, and again that wave of sadness flowed over me, through me. “I will not harm him,” he said, and held out his hand to me.

I walked to him, took his hand without hesitation, felt the faintest brush of those sharp nails across my skin—lethal nails that could cut off a demon’s head with one deadly swipe—and didn’t flinch. Why should I? If I was to die, I knew he would make it as quick and as painless as possible. But before I died, I wanted to know one thing. “How is Gryphon?”

I know. Contradicting myself here, asking him about another lover. But Gryphon and Amber had come before Halcyon. He did not seem to resent them. Dontaine, on the other hand, had come after Halcyon. Therein might lie a very big difference.

“He is well, adjusting to his new existence.” There seemed to be more he wanted to say but didn’t. He led me instead farther into the forest, away from the cabin, and I went with him willingly. We walked for a time, no words, but a wealth of emotion, his emotion, flooded the silence until I could no longer bear it. “Don’t be sad, Halcyon.”

He led me to a toppled tree fallen long ago, and urged me to sit there on the trunk. “Hell-cat,” he whispered, his endearment for me, and again I felt that welling, immense sorrow. “I’m not going to kill you.”

His words were a surprise and a relief to me. “Then why are you grieving?”

“Grieving—how appropriately stated. Oh, Mona Lisa.” He closed his eyes for a moment as if it pained him to look at me. When his lashes lifted, he looked into me with more than just his eyes as he feathered the back of his fingers across the tip of my fangs in a whisper-light caress. “All that my sister said is true. You have become Damanôen.”

“It sounds pretty,” I said, for a condition that was not. But after the initial bloodlust that had come welling up with the bursting of my fangs, the hunger had faded. I felt it still, but only like a faint, nibbling urge. “If you’re not going to kill me then why are you so sad?” I asked.

“What you feel is what you called it—grief. I’m grieving for what we have lost.”

“What have we lost?”

“Time,” Halcyon said. “An afterlife of togetherness. You have such great mental strength, you would have existed for a long time in my realm.” After Monères died, those with enough psychic power transitioned to Hell and became demon dead, living there for as long as their mental energy sustained them. Some of them existed for hundreds of years, like Halcyon.

Something stirred in me, prickled my calm. “Have I lost my afterlife?”

Halcyon gazed at me sadly with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You are Damanôen, demon living now. You cannot become demon dead afterward.”

I’d been shortchanged already. As a Mixed Blood, I would have probably only lived a hundred years, a human’s lifespan instead of the three hundred years of life most Monère enjoyed if they were not killed before then. Now on top of that I’d lost the promise of afterlife. It was a devastating blow.

I drew in a deep breath and thought, At least I’m still breathing. A lifetime had been gained and lost; I was just back where I first started. So you didn’t really lose anything, I told myself.

Sure.

The ache in my heart said differently.

“Well, at least I’ve got eighty more years of life,” I said.

Another swelling ache of pain from Halcyon.

It made my heart beat faster. “Don’t I? Halcyon, you said you weren’t going to kill me.” Now that hundreds of demon years had been chopped off of my existence, the remaining few human decades were even more precious.

He closed his eyes and somehow drew down a light veil so that I was no longer bathed in his emotions. So that my own started to rise up instead.

“Not now,” he said. Two very innocuous words apart. Strung together like that, they became very foreboding. Very portentous.

“What the hell do you mean? Not now. So you’re going to kill me later?” I felt that calmness, that resigned feeling of peace slipping rapidly away from me.

Fuck that, a voice inside of me shouted, I don’t want to die.

“Calm,” Halcyon murmured and I felt that rising heat within me smooth back down like turbulent waters soothed. “It will be easier if you remain calm.”

“What will be easier?”

“Controlling the new demon nature you have acquired.” His demon nature. It had been Halcyon’s blood Mona Louisa had ingested. “How well you can control it will determine how long you shall live.”

“What do you mean, Halcyon? I’m getting pretty tired of asking all these questions. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going to happen?”

Like a symphonic swelling, that sadness came wafting out from him again. “It is something that is better shown,” he said, and like that the grief shut off. Completely this time, like a limb suddenly chopped off. And in that absence, my demon bloodlust came rushing back into me like a thirty-foot wave held back for a time but no longer contained. It smashed down on me. Drowned me in want and throbbing need.

“Christ!” I gasped. My nails sank down several inches into the tree trunk I’d unconsciously gripped, my fingertips aching and throbbing just as my teeth had before my fangs had erupted. I didn’t know if it was because I had shoved them through hard wood, or if it was because my nails where changing into sharp dagger tips like Halcyon’s. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to see. So I kept them buried like an ostrich sticking its head in sand, and desperately fought that wild hunger, that bloodlust that was urging me to pounce on Halcyon and sink my fangs into him.

I would not be that stupid. Because if I was, forget eighty years, my life wouldn’t even last eighty seconds. No, no, NO! Do not jump him. But it was like trying to hang onto an oil-slicked ledge. My grip, my control, was starting to slip. I was hanging on only by my mental fingertips, slipping, slipping, starting to fall…

A majestic stag, its antlers spanning almost four feet across, emerged from a thicket of trees. A wild animal that did not behave like a wild animal, it came right up to me like a tame pet, his large, liquid eyes calm and tranquil, his body a contained fountain of blood that called wildly to me.

“Drink,” Halcyon said, and his voice, his command, broke the last strands of my tenuous control. I fell on the stag like a ravenous beast, which is what I had become. I plunged my fangs into the deer’s neck with no care, no finesse, with only greed and crazed need. And drank and drank and drank. Hot glorious blood gushed down my throat, that pulse of life beating into me, flowing hot and sweet and coppery good, taking the burning edge off, partly quenching the overwhelming need so that it no longer overwhelmed thought. So that I could think once again, become acutely aware of what I was doing. Become horrified by it.

I pulled my fangs out from the meaty flesh with a wet, sucking slurp, and fell with a cry away from the animal onto the ground, my hand covering my mouth. Now normal nails, I noted in one corner of my mind while I sucked in air, feeling my stomach, full of blood, churning with horror and distress.

Blood spurted out in tiny gushes from the stag’s neck, a gentle outflow. Halcyon put his mouth over the ragged bite wound—what I had done—and lapped up the blood until it no longer flowed.

“Our saliva can both thin blood and thicken it,” Halcyon said, drawing away. “When you are done feeding, simply picture the blood clotting, and it will stop.”

As if responding to a silent command, the big animal lumbered calmly away, disappearing into the forest.

“If you feed your hunger instead of fighting it, you will be able to control it better. It does not take much blood.” With a natural grace that was a part of him, Halcyon caught my hand and pulled me up from the ground to perch once more on the tree trunk. I sat there numbly with my body trembling, my fangs stained red with blood.

“Your control,” he said calmly, bluntly. “That will determine if you live or die.”

Oh. I even understood the reasoning. The Monère. We were a people that lived in secret among the humans. Anything that threatened that hidden coexistence, say a wild Mixed Blood boy raiding and killing a human farmer’s domestic livestock…he would be eliminated in a blink. Anything that stood out, that called attention to us like that would not be tolerated or allowed to live. The equivalent of that, in the demon dead’s case, would be my fangs. That would draw a lot of attention. Because, quite simply, the Monère did not have fangs in our human form. Only the demon dead did. Which boded ill for me because I still had them. Fangs. As in long, sharp, pointy canine teeth protruding from my mouth. They would cause quite a stir among the Monère if they were seen. It would make them wonder how I’d acquired that demon trait…and whether I had other traits of theirs, like their greater strength, which I did. Both explanations—Mortal Draining (me—my fault) and drinking a demon’s blood (Mona Louisa’s fault)—would get me killed. The first one by the Monère Queens, because if they knew what I could do, I’d be too dangerous for them to tolerate…or risk having my ability spread to others. The second would get me just as dead by the demons, who had already wiped out an entire Queen’s force to keep their secret quiet.

The problem was, now that my fangs were out I didn’t know how to make them go away. And Dontaine—Christ! — he’d already seen them, striking a bolt of fear through me like lightning. Don’t think of him. Don’t think of him. Because if I could sense Halcyon’s emotions, he could probably sense mine. I hoped and prayed that he couldn’t read my thoughts, though. That he did not know that Dontaine had already seen my fangs. Shit! I had thought of it again.

“I can’t read your thoughts,” Halcyon said, which of course made me believe quite the opposite. “Your face, the way you stiffened. It’s easy enough for me to read from your expression that you just thought of something you did not wish me to know…and that you feared that I might.”

Okay, I could buy that explanation. Horace the steward and Bernard Fruge, Dontaine’s father, had read me like that once.

Halcyon paused. A human might have sighed, but he was demon dead, he did not need to breathe. And they rarely did so unless it was to speak or to scent our fear or arousal. “When you felt my sadness,” he said, “I was calming your demon. I can help you that way if I choose, because it is my blood residing in you.”

“You linked us together.”

Halcyon nodded.

“Are we linked now?”

“No. I have withdrawn my aid. You stand by just your control alone, and it is not bad.”

But is it good enough to let me live? was the million-dollar question. Apparently so. He hadn’t sliced off my head yet. It seemed for the moment that I was good. But I wanted to know beyond the moment. “How do you…” I gestured to my fangs. “How do you make them go away?”

“In time, you will be able to make them appear at will or suppress their emergence if you wish. For now, they will subside when I leave you. It is my demon presence that pulls forth your own.”

“And my nails. Will they become like yours? Or my eyes…will they glow red?” Like Halcyon’s did with rage—flickering fiery red as if the very flames of Hell were ignited in him.

“I do not know. What you are now, what you will become, no one can predict. What you did…no one has done that before.”

His words left a leaden feeling in my stomach. As if I had swallowed down a bar of steel, and it weighed me down like a dropped anchor.

I’d been an oddity before—the first Mixed Blood Monère Queen. Now I was even odder yet with not just human blood mixed in with the Monère, but with demon spirit added in, too. Totally bizarre. And from what he was saying, I might become even more so…if I managed to live that long. Great. Just freaking great.

“Your father called what I did Mortal Draining. I got the impression that others had that ability in the past, that I’m not the first one to do this thing.”

“No. But that you were able to become Damanôen that way…” Halcyon shrugged. “No one else has ever done so.”

“What…they usually just drank down demon blood, right?”

“That is correct.”

“And you killed them all. That’s what your sister, Lucinda, said. I believe her exact phrasing was: My kind hunted and killed things like you long ago. Real inspiring words, you know.”

“You are being sarcastic, very like yourself. That is a good sign.” He spoke totally without humor. In utmost seriousness.

“Answer the question, Halcyon.” And because he was the ruler of Hell—even if I was not going there, dammit! — I tacked on at the end, “Please.”

“You are asking why we killed off all others like you in the past, but are letting you live?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”

“Most Monère who became that way did so through blood rape as Mona Louisa did with me.” Blood rape. It seemed to be an actual phrase used by demons, not something I’d just thought up in my head. “Those demons would of course tend to kill those who had violated them so, if they were able. Other Damanôen were killed either because they could not control themselves—they went rampaging mad—”

I must have gone sheet-white, because Halcyon hastened to add, “But you have not shown that tendency.”

“It’s early yet,” I whispered.

“It manifests fairly quickly,” Halcyon said, his voice once again that soothing, gentle tone. Its brief effect on me was totally ruined by his next words. “Others like you were eliminated simply because they were able to sense us.”

I swallowed. “A living demon detector, able to sense your presence. I can see how other demons would not like that. So, they were hunted down and killed off because of that.”

“Yes,” Halcyon said softly. “There were never many Damanôen, and the few that existed were often quickly killed. Knowledge of them, that they once existed, has been lost.”

“More like carefully contained, I’d say.”

Halcyon nodded, acknowledging this. “Lost, contained—however you put it, the fact remains that it has become a secret knowledge among the demons, erased from Monère awareness.”

“And you and your father would like to keep it that way.”

“Yes. Both my father and I would like to keep it that way.”

Circling us back to that crucial question: Of whether or not I had good enough control to keep that secret hidden. Not just the drinking demon blood thing, but that Monère could become like demons while yet living. Fangs popping out tended to give that away.

I didn’t know how to ask this. Couldn’t bring myself to ask him straight out: Will you kill me if I draw too much attention to myself?

I said instead, “Halcyon, what will we do?”

His answer surprised me. “There are two ways we can handle this. We can try and hide it. Or we can try the opposite—not trying to hide it. Diverting them instead from the real reason for your demon-like change.”

“If I have a choice in this, I’m all for not trying to hide it. I think I would fail in the endeavor to hide it,” I said honestly. Fail and die. And now that I knew I would not be enjoying a long afterlife, I sure as heck did not want to depart this life anytime sooner than I had to. “What do you propose?”

“That I claim you publicly as my mate ten days from now at the next Council meeting. Others will presume that any changes, any strangeness you manifest, even those of becoming more demonic…they will assume that it comes from our union.”

Diversion. Creating smoke elsewhere to hide the true cause. “I think that’s a brilliant idea, Halcyon.”

Turmoil flashed in his eyes.

“What is it? What’s wrong, Halcyon?”

His voice, when he spoke, was pitched low. “I do not want it just to be false diversion. I want it to be true. I want you to be my mate in truth.”

“Oh.” One little word to express everything that I suddenly understood. He loved me. Wanted our union to be not just official but real, and feared that it would not be so. That I would agree to it simply to save my life.

Where I once would have hesitated, here I did not. Because I’d come to learn that life could be fleeting. That love was precious where you found it, something to be cherished. Something to grab ahold of with both hands and one’s entire heart. “Yes, Halcyon. I will be your mate. In truth, in love, with everything that I am…even the demon part of me that is you.”

He looked into my eyes, deep into me, and laughed joyously. I was suddenly in his arms, and that remaining thirst for blood that throbbed in me still, became channeled into hunger of another kind. One that involved flesh, yes. But not to eat it. Well, at least not literally.

I felt the tide of need shift within me and welcomed it with delight. With eager hands that roamed and sought and found smooth skin, muscled flesh. With trembling heart that wanted, wanted, wanted him. His love, his laughter. That look in his eyes as he caressed me gently with the back of his knuckles.

“Mona Lisa.”

“Yes, love me.”

“I do.”

“Show me,” I said, my fingers flying, unbuttoning his clothes, unzipping mine. He stood there docilely, letting me undress him, watching as I shed my own clothes. But his eyes…his eyes were anything but docile or tame. They burned with need, with sexual heat, with heart’s desire.

Naked, we came together. And that first touch of flesh to flesh shuddered a cry from me, a sigh from him. He laid me upon the ground, came down on top of me, and I opened my heart and body to him.

“You are mine,” he said, his chocolate brown eyes burning down into mine, watching me, connecting us that way. Watching me as he pushed slowly into me and connected us that way, too. He entered me, slid luxuriously in, and we both groaned. My eyes fluttered shut.

“No. Look at me, Hell-cat. Let me see you. Let me know you. Let me inside of you. Yes,” he whispered as he stroked within me, his face, his body, his eyes a breath above mine, giving us an intimacy that was as deep and poignant as how he felt moving within me. “You hold me so tight, so warmly. My home,” he said, and with another wet slide, pushed back into me. “You are my home.”

Gentle, so gentle he was. And then his eyes slid down, fell upon the side of my neck. Then, and only then, did I become aware that his strokes in and out of me…they were timed to the flux and flow of my heart. As my blood pumped within me, so did he time his movements within me. My pulse quickened at that realization. At the knowledge of where he looked, what he desired. As it did so, his own rhythm accelerated.

Pleasure had weakened me, making me yielding, lax. Making me a soft, receptive sheath for his piercing flesh—a deep penetrating blade that plunged in and pulled out. Now with that one look, that caressing touch upon my neck, everything tightened in a dark and dangerous, convulsive thrill. Halcyon groaned at my tighter clutch, his rhythm thrown off for one faltering second at that gripping pleasure. That inner tightness and awareness. “Ah…sweet Hades.”

He pulled out, plunged back into me, his movements sharper, a touch more forceful. Less harmonious. More invading.

Blood. I became so aware of it beating within me. Coursing in me as he moved within me. No longer a soft pulsing flow, but one gaining speed and momentum, beginning to pound. Another dark thrill chased through me, tightened me. Blood. I suddenly desired it between us. And so did he.

“Drink,” I said. And tilted back my head, offering him my neck.

“Hell-cat.” Just those two words spoken in a rough, velvet rasp. His head lowered as he accepted what I offered, as he took what we both needed. His soft lips pressed over my beating pulse. The tips of his sharp fangs pressed against my skin, caressed it. I shivered. Groaned. My hands buried themselves in the thickness of his hair, held him to me there. One stroke, two—sharp fangs gliding over soft skin. And then he pierced me. And with that first taste of my blood, the dynamics of our lovemaking changed. As my red life flowed into him, what was soft and sweet became darker, more dangerous.

He growled, his body hardening as every muscle tensed. Then he unleashed himself, a sudden, hard pounding force, ramming himself into me, and I cried out in ecstasy.

“More,” I demanded, “more!” And he gave me more. He drove into me as he drank me down, as if the speed with which he pumped himself increased the speed with which my blood pumped into him. Maybe it did. All I know is that I wound tighter and tighter as he pistoned himself in and out of me with almost frenzied fury while he gulped me down, propelling me upward until I shattered into a million pieces of light. A million pieces of rapture.

I saw him above me, his skin dark gold like a gilded angel, as he called forth my inner light—the moon’s rays that dwelt in all her children. The night filled with the light that glowed from my skin, that burst from me as I burst apart, convulsing, shattering in climactic bliss. And above me, I felt not light but power swell from him. A burst of energy as he seized above me and pulsed within me, splashing his liquid heat into me, a small return for the fluid he had taken from me. He threw back his head and roared his release, his fangs crimson bright with my blood. And I felt the exchange equal. Was more than happy with it as he collapsed on top of me and let me bear his full weight, a pleasure all to itself, to feel a man sprawled on top of you like that with every muscle lax, all desire sated, every need fulfilled.

When my light faded back into me and darkness covered us once more, Halcyon turned his head and licked my wound closed so that it no longer bled. Easing out of me, he rolled to the side, pulling me with him to snuggle against him, his eyes warm upon my face. “Hell-cat,” he said softly.

“You didn’t use any of your mental powers.”

“I wanted our first real time together to be just you and me. No mental enhancement, no question of compulsion. Just me, my body, pleasing you.”

I ran my hands over that body, enjoying the feel of it—that smooth skin, those light muscles. The strong shoulders, powerful arms.

I realized that my fangs were gone. Just normal teeth once more.

“It certainly pleased me,” I purred, whispering a kiss against his lips now that it was safe. Now that there was no bloodlust. “You please me. Your mind, your body. Separate or together.” He kissed me back, pressed warm lips to mine.

A sound suddenly intruded, pulling him back from me, rolling him away. He moved so quickly, they both did, that I didn’t realize at first what was happening, just saw dark hair against light hair, and caught the quick flash of a blade. I heard Halcyon growl, heard the other man curse, and realized that it was my master of arms, Dontaine, my other lover, awake and enraged, his green eyes flashing with murderous intent.

I screamed, “Dontaine, no! Halcyon, stop! Both of you!”

They grappled together, grunting, growling, fighting. An entangled mass rolling on the ground, heeding me not.

“Stop it!” I screamed.

Dontaine was suddenly flung away. He sailed through the air for a dozen feet before hitting a tree with a hard thunk, branches snapping and breaking beneath his weight as he dropped to the ground. He jumped to his feet and rushed Halcyon again like a crazed bull, his shirt slashed, blood staining it.

I’d worried about Halcyon’s jealousy and his anger. I hadn’t thought of Dontaine’s. He went after the Demon Prince, armed with just a silver dagger and mindless rage.

Halcyon stood poised like a matador as the bigger warrior charged him. His slender body was tense, almost eager, his eyes hard and gleaming, with a cruel little smile on his face. His lethal nails were curved and ready at his side, Dontaine’s blood adorning the tips like red fingernail polish.

He held no malice toward me. That was what I had told Gryphon about Halcyon the first time I had met him. I hadn’t feared the Demon Prince, then. That was not true now. Malice emanated from Halcyon in thick, palpable waves as he watched and waited for Dontaine with that eager gleam in his eyes.

“That’s it, warrior,” he crooned. “Come to me.”

I didn’t let him. I tackled Dontaine, gasping as we hit the ground hard. Dontaine twisted, protecting me as we rolled. A nice sentiment, a natural instinct, but not what I wanted. What I wanted right now was obedience from him. I ended on top of Dontaine.

“Mona Lisa, are you all right?” He sounded concerned. He sounded sane, intelligent, reasonable. Not at all like a suicidal idiot.

I snarled and grabbed him by the shirtfront. “I command you as your Queen to stop! Right now. No fighting!”

He yielded, in his eyes, in his body beneath mine. But not in words. I slowly peeled myself off of him and rose to my feet. “Say it, Dontaine.” My voice was hard, flat, and brittle. As brittle as how I felt.

“No fighting,” he said and rose to his feet. His body trembled as he looked over my head, behind me. Not in fear, but in anger. In rage.

Carefully, I stepped back to the side, positioning myself so I could see them both. And understood immediately what had set Dontaine’s anger ablaze once more. Halcyon’s nakedness. That golden skin was uncut and dry…all but his shaft that glistened with wetness, coated by my juice where he had sheathed himself inside of me.

“Halcyon, could you dress, please?” I asked. Walking back to where my own clothes law strewn on the ground, I pulled them on quickly. Dontaine stood where I’d left him, like a dog straining against an invisible leash, held back only because of that restraint. No less savage because of it.

I went back to him. Touched him soothingly. “You knew Halcyon was my lover. I told you that, and you took the news calmly. Why did you attack him now?”

“Because he infected you! You must stay away from him lest he infect you even more.”

Fear spiked through me as Dontaine’s words betrayed to Halcyon the very thing I had tried to keep hidden from him. God, how tired I was of being afraid.

One of my new abilities was a falcon’s clarity of vision, Gryphon’s gift to me. To see clear down to one’s soul. I turned Dontaine’s face down to me, looked into his eyes, and saw the real truth in him. “Dontaine. It is not just fear for me that made you try to kill the High Prince.”

Fine tremors shook Dontaine. Heated his eyes with a tangle of emotions. “True. I want to kill the Demon Prince because you turned from me as a lover, yet you continue to accept him.”

“He is safe,” I whispered, a part of me crying at the pain I saw in those eyes. “He cannot be affected by what is in me. I do not fear for him as I do for you.”

“And he cannot get you pregnant as I can,” Dontaine said bitterly. Another harsh truth that I could not deny. Halcyon was demon dead. He could not bring forth life. Dontaine, on the other hand, was descended from a potent fertile line, rare among the Monère, and usually prized because of it. But not so with me. His potency, in my eyes, was a huge detriment. I could not risk becoming pregnant, infected as I was with demon darkness.

All of Dontaine’s strengths were detriments with me. First, the unusual Half Change state that he was capable of achieving, arresting his change halfway into his wolf form so he became that terrible, horrendous embodiment of human legend—werewolf. A gift usually prized for its rareness. I had shied from its ugliness—the part-man, part-animal hybrid. Monstrous, I’d called it. Not an ability I wanted to gain for myself. I could gain others’ gifts by having sex with them, and I could pass my gifts along to them in turn. That was how I had acquired Gryphon’s keenness of vision, and some of Amber’s great strength. In exchange, they had obtained from me the ability to withstand sunlight, to not burn beneath its hot rays.

Sex and Basking—a Queen’s ability to call down the renewing rays of the moon and share it with her people. That was what the Monère society was based upon. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that. Maybe it was just based on power: Warriors gaining it by Basking and having sex with Queens; Queens gaining it by sleeping with her men—a great many, varied number of them. One big fuck-fest of power and pleasure.

I’d rejected Dontaine once. And again a second time after he’d offered what he saw as the most valuable part of himself—his potency, his ability to give me a baby—when he’d found me grieving at the knowledge that there would be no living remembrance of Gryphon, that I wasn’t pregnant with his child as I had hoped. I’d hurt not only Dontaine’s heart, but even more unforgivably, I’d pricked his male pride. I saw it all there in his eyes, and didn’t know what to do about it. He was too angry to heed his words. Had in fact spilled out in a heated rush the very knowledge I’d knocked him unconscious to keep hidden—that he was aware of my demon infection, as he called it.

I shouldn’t have pulled my punch, worrying about my strength when I’d knocked him out. I should have hit him harder, kept him out of it longer. Maybe knock some more sense into him. He could scarce have any less of it.

I turned away from him to plead with Halcyon instead. “Don’t kill him.”

Menace still emanated from the Demon Prince. His words, though, were calm. “If he restrains himself, I will not. Mostly because you will need him.”

His words drew Dontaine’s attention as nothing else could have. “What do you mean?” Dontaine demanded roughly.

“Your Queen will need a source of blood near her at all times. Even when she learns to call wild creatures to her, fresh animal blood will not be so easy to keep at hand. She will need someone to drink from should her bloodlust stir. A little drink of blood to sate the hunger, and she gains much control over it. Would you be willing to let her feed from you?”

“Halcyon—”

My Demon Prince turned to look at me. “Hell-cat, what you have cannot be passed to him in that way. You cannot ‘infect’ him, as you fear.”

And what the Demon Prince offered to Dontaine was clearly a balm to the warrior’s wounded pride—to be needed by his Queen.

“She can have anything of me that she desires,” Dontaine said. And like that, his aggression began to fade. He sheathed his dagger…while I wanted to plunge it into him, so pissed off was I by how badly I’d bungled things with my new lover…and how easily Halcyon had fixed them. But he was the ruler of Hell, after all. Soothing one Monère warrior’s wounded pride had to be a piece of cake compared to handling a realm full of dangerous, bloodthirsty demons.

It was my first lesson in rulership. And I accepted it, bitter though it tasted in my mouth. “Thank you, Dontaine.”

My eyes flashed gratitude to Halcyon, or at least tried to, for restraining himself. For not slaughtering Dontaine. For handling the situation without bloodshed.

“I will leave you now,” Halcyon said. The barest brush of those sharp nails—a sweet and dangerous caress across my cheek—and he started to walk away.

“So soon?” Disappointment coated my voice as I followed after him. “You just got here,” I said almost plaintively.

He stopped, turned around. “Hell-cat,” he murmured, and I felt the mental brush of his power, invisible lips pressing against mine in a brief, phantom kiss. “I am being prudent. I expended a lot of energy. It would be wiser for me to go now and recover. I will tarry longer next time, I promise.”

I could not argue with him for being careful. The last time he had come here had ended disastrously for the both of us. “How will you get back to the portal?” I asked. The nearest one that I knew of was in New Orleans, almost an hour’s drive away.

“The same way I got here. By car.”

“You took a taxi?” I asked.

“Yes, and he waits for me patiently by the roadside where I had him stop when I first sensed you.”

“You bespelled him,” I said. “In which case, the cab will still likely be there. But this is my land, Halcyon.” Or would it now be our land, I wondered, when we were mated? I pushed the thought away for later examination, and concentrated on the important matter here and now. “The last time you came here, you left gravely injured. We will see you safely to the car.”

“I would enjoy your company,” Halcyon said with a smile, and held out his hand to me. I took it, my hand slipping naturally into his, and walked companionably beside him. The barest hesitation, and then Dontaine joined us, too. And if it was a little awkward for a moment—holding hands with my demon lover, my Monère lover walking beside me—it was but a momentary discomfort that quickly passed. Light or dark, skin dusted gold or alabaster white, we were still, all of us, children of the moon. And she beamed her benevolent rays down upon us as we moved through the woods with soundless ease. The direction was easy to find. Just cast your senses wide and listen for the human heartbeat. There, to the north edge of the woods.

“You do not seem to resent me,” Dontaine said, and though he hadn’t addressed his comment specifically, it was clear to whom he was speaking. For a moment, our moonlit harmony faltered.

“You are of the light, I am from the dark,” Halcyon answered. His words flowed smooth and gentle, restoring the rhythm, continuing the harmony. “You dwell among the living, I among the dead. I cannot often be here. We both love the same woman, and are loved by her. She is not one who opens her heart lightly, or to those undeserving. And I am not so petty as to demand that she love only me. We are of different worlds. That she opens her heart to include me is already a gift beyond measure. No, I do not resent you. I am grateful to you. It eases me to know that you shall look after her during the times I cannot. That you will be with her in the times I cannot be. You treasure her as I do and will guard her well, keep her alive for us all.”

Though he was dead, and that organ of life, his heart, dead within him also, love flowed from Halcyon in abundance, in wise generosity, in a river of plentitude.

“My lord,” Dontaine said, bowing his head down in a deep gesture of respect. “You have my promise. I shall guard her with my life.”

Halcyon smiled and stopped at the treeline where the forest ended and a wild-grassed meadow began. The cab was parked along the roadside twenty yards distant. He raised my hand, pressed a kiss there.

“Mea ena,” Halcyon murmured tenderly. “Stay safe for me.” Then he was gone, striding across the meadow. We watched until the cab drove away. An odd sight to see—the ruler of Hell being driven away in a taxi.

“He called you his wife.”

My heart tumbled a bit at the word Dontaine used—wife. I substituted it for something I was much more comfortable with. “I agreed to be his mate. To have it publicly acknowledged at High Court this next session.”

“And me?” Dontaine asked.

Halcyon had given his blessing and his assurance that I could not pass the demon darkness inside me to Dontaine through sex.

Dontaine had given his word that he would protect me with his life, with his blood, whatever I desired of him. So generous were the men that I loved. How could I be any less so?

I took his hand—so different it was from the one I had just held, with nails blunt and short, skin pale, palm callused—a warrior’s hand. Yet they both felt right in mine. With our fingers clasped together, I turned toward home with lightness in my heart and a smile on my face.

“Dontaine, do you happen to know what a condom is?”

He shook his head.

“Let me tell you about them.”