Mona Lisa Craving

THREE

I AWOKE TO bright daylight with a wolf’s painful howl still echoing in my ear. An animal’s call normally wouldn’t wake me from a sound slumber. We were surrounded by a vast acreage of woods and swampland, after all. But it hadn’t been an anonymous cry I had heard. It had been Wiley’s, the Mixed Blood boy no older than fourteen or fifteen who had grown up wild in the swamp. His howl had vibrated with rage and fear, its sound like that of a wild animal caught in a trap.

I threw on jeans and T-shirt, secured my daggers, one silver, the other not, and crept down the long-winding staircase, avoiding all the creaky spots until I reached the front door. The others slept on undisturbed, and I did not call them because the sunlight that fell softly upon my skin would burn theirs. An hour under its rays would redden their skin. Four hours under it, and they would die. But not I. My one-quarter mixed human heritage ensured that while I had all the Monère’s strengths, I had none of their weaknesses. Besides, with the sun high in the sky, I had nothing to fear. The most dangerous threats to me—another Monère or demon dead—were all tucked away in darkness, caught up in their dreams. I wondered for a moment if demons dreamed. Wondered if I hadn’t dreamed, myself, imagining that cry. Then it came again. The long, mournful howl of a wolf in distress. Wiley.

I ran east, from where the sound drifted, and covered the distance quickly in loping bounds and unchecked speed. I found him by his heartbeat, pounding rapidly, half-hidden behind a fallen tree trunk, his wrists and ankles bound by ropes. He grew tense when he saw me, and twisted wildly, making muffled sounds under the gag tied over his mouth.

“Shhh, Wiley. It’s okay, it’s just me,” I said, trying to calm him, but he only struggled harder. I frowned as I approached him, and wondered if human hunters had done this? If so, why? The Mixed Blood boy was dressed in clothes I had bought for him, wearing at least the trappings of civilization. He was not half-naked or as obviously wild as he had been when we had first found him. His hair had even been trimmed. By Tersa, no doubt. Why, then, would someone have tied him up like this? And how had a human managed it even? For that matter, why had mere ropes held him? He was more than human strong, young though he was. Then part of the puzzle became clear when he twisted and I caught sight of the silver handcuffs half-hidden beneath the thick rope. Silver weakened the Monère. Made them only human strong.

Not humans. Other Monère, I realized too late.

Something struck me on the back of the head.

Pain. Splinters of white. Then nothing as darkness swallowed me.

WHEN I AWOKE, it was to a raging storm. Not just the one in my head, where I had been struck a painful blow, but a real one. A blinding bolt of lightning split the sky, followed almost immediately by a booming crash of thunder. It was almost as if the heavenly gods were having a temper tantrum, a scary one. Fat raindrops pelted the metal roof of the car I was in, and thick sheets of rain hurled itself against the windows. The noise from that was almost as nauseating as the deafening thunder had been.

I was laid out on the backseat of a car, with metal restraints biting into my wrists. Ropes tied my feet together. Fucking great discoveries, along with the headache. I didn’t know how much time had elapsed, or if the handcuffs were silver or dark demon metal. The first I could break. Maybe even the second now. If I was bound with the latter, I would find out soon enough.

Two men—two Monère—were in the front seats. I knew this not by how they dressed, because oddly enough they were dressed like humans—less formal. They risked daylight casually, also like humans. From the back they looked like two ordinary men. But I felt their presence, their power, with that unique sensing we had of like to like. The driver was the stronger of the two, with his dark hair cut short and layered in a contemporary fashion. The one beside him emanated less power, felt younger, actually, in a way I couldn’t explain, although both looked like big men from the back.

Wiley. What had they done with him? With that thought, and a simple flexing of my wrists, I broke free of the handcuffs—only silver, I saw. The ropes around my ankles snapped like threads, and I was reaching for the driver with mayhem and maybe murder on my mind, depending on the answers I beat out of him, when the other man turned and looked at me.

He was a boy, or rather a young man around my age, in his early twenties. A beautiful one at that, with a long and lean face cut with high cheekbones, framed dramatically by a curtain of dark, longish hair. He looked model pretty, like he should have been gracing the cover of a fashion magazine or maybe flirting with giggling girls in college. Not kidnapping a woman.

Soft brown eyes stared at me, startled, arresting my forward lunge. Something about those eyes, or maybe the young power I felt emanating from him…Whatever it was, something about the innocence I saw there checked my murderous intent.

“Dad, she’s awake.”

Now “Dad” I would have gladly pounded on. He would have been an equal match for me. But not the boy. I opened the door and jumped from the car. Because of the blinding sheets of rain, the vehicle had slowed enough to make the maneuver less dangerous than it might have been at a higher speed. I landed on my feet running, drenched in an instant. There was just flat land and the highway cutting through it, no other cars ahead or behind. The sun had just set, with only a few rays of lingering light, stealing my biggest advantages from me—daylight and human witnesses.

True night would fall soon, making it much more likely for them to pursue me. Like a bad thought, I heard the car screech to a stop and the doors open. Yup, they were coming after me. But then I fully expected they would. My capture during the daytime had to have been carefully planned—keeping to the shade until they snatched me, and then suffering the bite of the sun, which they had to have felt discomfort from, even through the tinted windows of the car.

I ran all-out into the nearby woods, the silver handcuffs still hanging from my wrists. I’d only broken the chain between them. I tore the separate pieces of metal off me and flung them away. A quick glance down my side told me they had taken my daggers. No weapons. But that was okay. My strength was weapon enough.

They closed the distance between us, moving faster than I was because they tapped into their animal selves—used it to fuel their strength while still in their upright forms, to enhance their senses, increase their speed. I could have done something similar had I not worried that attempting it would bring that tiny demon piece in me out to the fore. It shouldn’t, but the boy’s face…His soft doe eyes flashed in my memory’s eye and I knew I couldn’t take the chance. I didn’t know the parameters or triggers of what I held inside of me well enough to risk it. So I ran unaided. And they inevitably caught up to me as I hit what had probably once been a mild trickling river, but was now a frothing mass of seething water that had almost overswelled its banks. It was more than twenty feet across, something I could have probably jumped. Probably. But I was loathe to do so. The current was strong, and my swimming skills lousy. I turned, ran parallel down along the bank, looking for a narrower point to jump across.

The father tackled me. I rammed an elbow back into his face and kicked free, springing to my feet, which brought me face-to-face with the boy. Maybe it was the pretty face or the innocence I’d glimpsed in those eyes even though they were no longer that soft, melting brown but a sharp piercing gray now, the eyes of his beast. For whatever silly reason, I hesitated to strike him. Fool, I. Because I saw then what I hadn’t seen before in the car—a black gun holstered at his side, a dagger strapped to his waist, bracelet-bands circling his wrists, protecting his forearms, what warriors of old might have worn centuries ago. He was someone trained in the art of combat, and I should have taken him out, because that very modern gun he wore tipped the advantage over to their side. But he didn’t reach for the gun or jump me as he could have. We froze there for a second, in arm’s reach of each other.

“Don’t run,” he said with his hands splayed harmlessly out in front of him. “We won’t hurt you.”

It was his words that broke the spell. He lied. They’d already hurt me. They’d knocked me unconscious, and the blow had not been light. They’d snatched me from my home. Taken me from my people.

I turned and kicked his father—he’d been gathering himself up off the ground—and knocked him back down. I saw surprise flash in the big guy’s eyes.

What? Had he thought the elbow I’d rammed into him had been an accident, that the daggers I’d worn had been only a pretty fashion statement? Had he thought I’d just stand there and let them recapture me like a silly, helpless female?

I darted past him, running upstream. Less than a dozen feet away, a hand caught my arm, and I knew it was the boy who gripped me. Doe eyes or not, I had to get out of there. Big daddy was not far behind him. I turned, struck out at him, and just met air. I struck again, but it was like shadow boxing. A slight shift, a subtle turn of his body, and he slipped out of reach. Each time I turned to flee, his hand grasped me again. Son of a bitch. I had to get in closer to him. Close enough to hit him, make him go down, shake him off me so I could escape. I spun back around into him, and my arm, which he had a solid grip on, unexpectedly twisted back and captured his in turn.

My touch seemed to shock him still. As if the feel of my body flush against his scattered all his thoughts, rendered useless all his training. I kneed him in the groin, saw the pain flash in his eyes. Saw him go down, and turned to run. And found myself still shackled to him by that hand firmly grasping my forearm. That hand that would not let go of me.

We tussled on the ground along the bank, fighting each other one-handed, our other hands locking us together. We were both handicapped, and not just by the loss of one arm. We fought each other, but not with the real intent of hurting each other.

Let me tell you: You can’t fight that way or you will lose. Sure enough, I suddenly felt the ground crumble beneath me, and found myself tumbling down over the edge of the bank. The lower half of my body splashed into the swift-moving water. The only thing that kept me tethered was the forearm grasp we had on each other.

“Give me your other hand. I’ll pull you back up,” he said, reaching his free hand out to me. I almost took the offered hand. It was the sight of his father coming up the bank beside him that made me change my mind and reminded me once more: Enemies. They’re your enemies.

I let go of him, and with a powerful levered twist, broke free of his grasp. Had he latched onto me with both hands, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. But it was only a one-handed grip, his other hand stretched out to me. In a one-handed hold, you always have a weak link—the thumb. A hard, concentrated twist there at that point, and it gave as I knew it would. With nothing tethering me anymore, I fell into the raging water.

The cold shocked a gasp out of me. I had a moment to see the boy jump into the water after me, no hesitation. A moment to worry about him, wonder if he could swim. Wonder if he would float, loaded down as he was with weapons and clothes and those heavy metal armbands. And then the water took me, pulled me under. Washed all thoughts away as I sank down into the icy cold depths.

It was deep, deeper than my feet could touch. And it kept me sucked down for an interminably long time, sweeping me along in its powerful current. I bobbed up, broke the surface, and gasped in air. Tried to doggy paddle—my version of swimming—in an attempt to keep my head above water. It would have been adequate in a placid swimming pool. Not so in fast-moving white-water rapids. I bashed up against a rock and went down again. Hit another rock underwater with stunning force. I hung there dazed, suspended deep in the water for a few slow-ticking minutes, letting the current take me where it willed, until the need for air tickled my throat. I felt my feet scrape against bottom and pushed up, broke the surface, took in sweet air.

“Here, my lady!”

I turned and saw the boy cutting through the water toward me with strong, powerful strokes. This time I was willing to be rescued by him. Would have waited for him had I been able to, but he was too distant, over twenty terribly long feet away, and I was too weak a swimmer to stay afloat for that long. The current pulled me down under again, but this time I fought it. When I surfaced again, he was closer, his eyes that sharp, fierce gray.

“Hold on,” he cried.

I tried to. Kicking to stay afloat, I reached for him. Before he could grasp me, our course shifted. We rounded a bend—God, how swiftly we traveled—and I smashed up against another big boulder and went down. I felt the pain reverberate throughout my entire body, felt all the breath whoosh out of me, and tried to grab onto the damn rock. But the slippery, mossy surface was impossible to hold on to, and the current sped me away in an underwater tumble. Dazed and disoriented, I released my last few bubbles of air, watched which direction they floated, and followed them up, kicking and moving my arms sluggishly until I broke the surface.

I sucked in air, blinked wildly to clear my vision, and felt a hand grab ahold of one of my flailing arms. “Gotcha!”

Sweeter words, I’d never heard.

An arm came around the front of me, pulling me back against a hip, floating me up in the water in a lifeguard’s grip. “Just hang on,” he said.

I took him at his word. My hands clamped down on that arm, holding him securely to me. It uncomfortably pressed the thick metal wristbands he wore into the tender flesh below my breast, but comfort didn’t matter so much as keeping us together. If he lost me again, I would drown.

I felt his body surge forward as he scissor-kicked, moving us slowly through the water while the current tried to tear me away—how strong it was. I was like a deadweight, something he struggled to pull along.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“Can you kick?”

I didn’t answer him, just proceeded to do so. And it helped, gave added momentum to his one-handed strokes. He moved us across the frothy water at an angle diagonal to the current. Our progress was sluggish compared to how fast we were being swept downriver, but inch by inch, we cut across the stream. Miles passed by before we finally reach the river’s edge.

I felt his body twist, reach up for something, and we came to a jarring halt. The force of the water suddenly increased twentyfold, pulling my body past him, trying to tear me from his grasp. But he didn’t let go, and neither did I, even when I was swept beneath the water. I held onto that arm, felt the water rushing over me, heard the frothy force of it beating above me in that odd quiet-loudness that comes when you’re completely submerged.

I was no longer sandwiched between his hip and arm. Just held by his hand that gripped my shirt, nothing more substantial than that. It was really my hold now on his arm that kept us anchored together. If I let go, my T-shirt would likely rip and I would be pulled back into the rapids once more.

I didn’t let go. Not even when time passed and I still remained underwater, unable to breathe. His arm strained and trembled. Slowly, with hard and painful exertion, he hauled me out of the water. I took in an explosive breath as soon as my mouth broke the surface, gulped in both air and water, and started to cough.

“Grab the branch!” he yelled.

I blinked the water from my eyes, still coughing water from my lungs, and saw his lined, strained face, his arms bulging with the effort of hanging onto me, a wet and heavy deadweight still caught in the river’s powerful grip. He was hanging onto the trunk of a fallen tree half-toppled into the river, his white fingers buried into the thick bark. A thick branch jutted out a foot in front of me. I reached out and grabbed it.

“Both hands,” he shouted, “use both hands. Pull yourself up!”

I was loath to release him, to give up that security. What if the branch broke?

“Quickly,” he gritted, teeth clenched. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

I saw the truth in his eyes, in his trembling arms. I let go of him and grabbed the branch with both hands. It held.

I pulled myself halfway out of the water. But getting the rest of me out was like pulling myself out of quicksand. The swift current tugged insistently at me like a jealous lover, reluctant to give me up.

One great, heaving, yanking assist from the boy, and one leg lifted free of the water. I swung it over the tree trunk, and pulled the rest of my body slowly, painfully up. Once out of the water’s sucking grasp, I moved quickly. Scooting down the trunk, I started the process of hauling my rescuer out. Freed of his burden—me—he made a much quicker and more graceful job of heaving himself up and out.

I crawled backward until we were on solid ground, and then simply let myself fall off the trunk onto the wonderful still earth, feeling like one giant black-and-blue, aching bruise, which was probably the case.

I felt him lower down beside me and gave myself a moment to rest. A moment before I decided what to do next to my rescuer: thank him or kick him in the balls again. He might have just saved my life, but he’d been the reason for its peril in the first place. I hadn’t forgotten that.

The tingling sense of others—other Monère—stole across my senses and forestalled my decision. I staggered to my feet, and saw the boy rise to his also, silver dagger in hand. His holster was empty, the gun apparently lost. Which sucked, really, because we were outnumbered. I counted ten men closing in on us. Ten rogues, if I were not mistaken, Monère warriors cast out by their Queens, often banding together as bandits. Four of them had swords, the rest were just armed with daggers.

It was not just the worn clothes and hodgepodge assembly of their weapons that made me think of them as rogues. Nor the older feel of their strength, their power. It was the furtiveness of their movements, the meanness in their eyes, the disillusioned hardness in them, and the hungry, gleaming avarice that filled them when they spotted me, felt me. Queen.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

“No,” the boy said. “Yours?”

“Nope.”

“Stay behind me.”

“Next to you would be better. Even up the odds a little more,” I said, coming to stand beside him, making it five to two instead of ten to one. More even odds, as I said.

Stubborn boy that he was, he stepped protectively forward, putting himself between me and the men.

“Milady, you seem to be lost,” said a gray-haired warrior. He seemed to be not only the oldest but the most powerful among them. Their leader, I presumed.

I wanted to say, Not lost, so much as kidnapped, but didn’t do anything so foolish. In cases like this, a lie usually served much better than the truth. Or in this case, a half-lie. “I fell into the river and was separated from the rest of my men. They should be along shortly.”

“Good thing we sensed you then.” The man smiled, and it made my flesh crawl. “We will protect you until your men come.” Substitute snatch and keep instead of protect, and you would have their real intent. His words were helpful and benign, but his actions were not. They surrounded us in a semicircle, the river at our back, leaving us no place to run.

“Stay back,” the boy warned them.

A gesture from the leader and his men sprang. They rushed the boy, all powerful warriors, experienced fighters. But he held them, unbelievably. Kept them from me.

The boy fought unlike any other warrior I’d ever seen. He fought as if he were moving in a lethal flowing dance, dipping and spinning to unheard music. He dropped to the ground and whirled with his dagger in a slashing sweep, making it look beautiful as he sliced across the lower legs of the five men engaging him to his left. Then he rolled to meet the men converging from the right, dancing with them in a wicked ballet of blades. The men slashed and thrust with brute force and chilling savagery while he dodged with grace and serenity, moving with a superior ease none of the other rogues had—that none of my men even possessed. They thrust, he parried, blocking and striking unexpectedly with his wide wrist guards, using them as both weapons and defense, whatever opportunity afforded him. Even the two rogues with long swords he danced with. He fought them off, and turned back to meet the other group.

It was an exquisite display of skill, of valiant heart, but numbers and weapons do count and usually prevail. The odds were overwhelmingly against him. He had injured some of the men, but had not taken any out. And the five he’d pushed back pressed back in immediately as soon as he turned his attention away. They circled behind him, waiting for their moment to strike.

I stepped away from the boy’s protection and engaged their interest, smiling, opening my arms to them, my message plain: You want me, come get me.

With eager, lustful gleams in their eyes they did.

“No!” the boy shouted, somehow aware of my actions even as he fought. “Come back, my lady.”

I could not obey him. Could not stand there and do nothing as they cut him down, which they eventually would. My palms throbbed, my power awakening as I called upon it. In a hot, flowing rush, it came at my beckoning, a living force pulled from the center of me, spilling down my arms, into my hands, into my Goddess’s Tears—the moles that were the size and color of large pearls embedded deep in my palms.

A second powerful throb, like a living pulse of power, and a sword flew from a surprised bandit’s hand into my right hand. Another pulsing pull, and I stripped a silver dagger from another rogue, drawing it into my left hand. The two unarmed men fell back, startled, and let the three others come at me.

I rushed forward to meet the trio, putting more distance between me and the boy, giving me swinging room for the sword, which I used with far less grace than my young protector but much more ruthlessly. I’d been captured before by a band of outlaw rogues. I would not willingly be taken captive again; I knew what my fate would be under their hands. While they fought to take me alive, I was under no such restriction.

I met the sword-bearing warrior first. Our blades met in a harsh metallic clash, and I saw surprise in his eyes at my strength, more than he had expected. Knocking his sword aside with my own, I plunged the dagger deep into his belly, angled upward. A hard swipe left and he collapsed on the ground, his great vessels severed. Not a killing blow, but one that took him out of commission until he healed.

His two armed companions roared and came at me with daggers in hand. I slashed out with the sword. They leaped back, then pounced, springing at me as the sword passed them by. I let the flow of it spin me completely around, and buried the dagger gripped in my other hand into the side of a very surprised rogue. I felt it break through a rib, puncture his lung. But these were seasoned warriors. Injured as he was, he still swiped at me with his dagger. I leaped away, bloody blade in hand, and found two others coming at me, one with a sword he must have snatched from the other fallen rogue.

A new man entered the fray. Big Daddy had finally caught up. He was an older, bearded version of his son, with the same warrior bracelets around his wrists, armed with a dagger and a similar gun-in-holster setup. Of course, he just used the dagger, not the gun. Gee, why carry it at all?

He stepped between us, and with a few simple blows and elegant dagger thrusts, he took the two men down cleanly and easily. The remaining bandit, unarmed, turned and ran.

“Glad you could join us,” I said. “I imagine your son could use your help.”

“Stay here.” He turned to go.

“Here.” I tossed him my sword. He caught it, and without a hitch in stride, entered the fray.

I did as he said, I stayed there. Not because he’d told me to, but to watch the two of them for a moment. In battle, they were breathtaking to behold, moving as a unit, complementing one another. It was fighting as I’d never seen before, like poetry in motion. And the way the father wielded the sword…it made what I’d done with it as merely hacking away—all I knew to do. In his hands, though, the sword sang. A lethal song, but a mesmerizing one, whirring through the air in the hands of a master.

Surprisingly, the dad left the sword-wielding bandit leader engaged with his son instead of taking him on as he could have. Dad fought the two dagger-armed rogues and the other swordsman, although fought implied an even match. It wasn’t. He took two of them down as easily as drawing in breath—and just as quick—leaving a last trembling rogue holding a shaking sword to face him.

The son held his own more easily now, facing just two bandits instead of five. But held was the proper term. They were evenly matched. The boy kept his opponents away from him, agilely dancing away from their blows, but he did not cut any of them down.

I began a backward retreat. The boy was fine now. I could leave and should, before the battle was over and it was too late to slip away. I’d fought beside the boy, given the father my sword, but that didn’t make them my friends. Just my temporary allies until the threat of the bandits was neutralized.

As before, the boy seemed aware of my movements, even faced away from me as he was and engaged in battle. “Don’t,” he said, turning his head slightly to look at me.

One bare moment of inattention, and the bandit leader’s sword slipped past the boy’s guard and ran him through.

I cried out—not the boy, he was silent—and leaped for them, moving fast. But not as fast as the father. The big man threw his dagger, burying the blade in his opponent’s throat, taking him out. Then he turned, and with one powerful downstroke, cut off the leader’s arm—the arm holding the sword that had run his son through. With fast-flowing economy, the downstroke turned into a side slash, slicing open the last remaining bandit in a ruby splash of blood. Three simple moves and the battle was over.

He stepped in front of his fallen son, sword in hand, but did nothing more. Just watched as the wounded bandits dragged themselves away.

The bandit leader cautiously stooped down and retrieved his severed limb and weapon. “Don’t come back here again,” he snarled, retreating. His men, those that were able to stand, threw their fallen comrades over their shoulders and followed him.

I ran to the boy’s side, dropped down beside him, muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“I know,” the boy said, his voice strained with pain. “I let him past my guard.”

“Not you,” I snapped. “Me. For coming back to you.” His hand was pressed over the wound in front. I laid my hand over the back exit wound, which was spilling out blood like a dam with a high-pressured leak. The moment my palm came in contact with blood and flesh, that deep cycle of energy within me came up and out, called forth by the pain of another, easing it as my mole tingled and warmed, searching out the depths of his injury. Miraculously, it had punctured cleanly through, missing his intestines and other vital organs. Lucky son of a bitch. Of course, he’d probably have been able to heal those wounds as well. He was a Full Blood Monère, after all. What the hell was I doing?

“You took the pain away. Are you a healer?” the boy asked. My face softened when I looked down into his. Young, so young, even though he was taller than I by a good five inches.

“Not really.” Not in the usual way. I could heal, yes, but through sex. And that wasn’t called for here. Injured though the boy was, he would heal without my intervention. But I was trained as a nurse; there were other commonsense things you could do, like decrease the loss of blood.

“Give me part of your shirt or something to staunch the blood with,” I snapped at the father, who was gazing down at me with curious attention. Without a word, he ripped off a shirt sleeve and handed it to me. I folded it into a compress and gently pressed it against the rear exit wound. He tore off his other sleeve, and I used it for the entry wound.

“Why didn’t you use your damn gun?” I demanded.

“They had no guns. It would not have been an equal fight,” the big man said.

“It wasn’t an equal fight once you got here,” I snapped back.

I sacrificed my own two sleeves, tore them into strips, and bound them into one long piece, tying it around his waist to hold the two compresses in place.

Sitting back, I glared up at the big man. He still held the sword I’d given him. “Two questions,” I said, my tone a rock-hard contrast to the softness with which I’d spoken to his son. “What did you do with the Mixed Blood boy you had tied up near my home?” With Wiley. The wild fear and anger on his face when I last saw him flashed again in my mind’s eye.

“I knocked him out then uncuffed him.”

So Wiley should be fine. Just angry and frightened after he awakened, but essentially unharmed.

“What is your second question?” he asked.

Oh, that was an easy and obvious one. And you could say my tone was more than a touch hostile. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

The man laid down the sword, away from me, I noticed, and crouched down so that we were more of an equal height. It was his injured son, however, who answered me.

“My lady, please. My brother, he needs a Lady of Light. I beg of you, please save him before it’s too late.”