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  Mona Lisa Awakening

  ( Monère - 1 )

  Sunny

  A smoldering debut novel exploring the passion, hunger, and danger that can break loose in the moonlight.

  From the time she was a child, Mona Lisa knew she was different—but she never knew how different until a man of otherworldly beauty appeared during her night shift in the ER. Gryphon is hurting and hunted and he attracts her as no man ever has before. He is a Monère, one of the children of the moon—and what's more, so is she.

  Long exiled from the moon, the men of the Monère serve—and mate with—imperious Queens who can channel the rays of their far-off homeland. Gryphon believes that Mona Lisa is a Queen—perhaps the first of Mixed Blood ever known. But her introduction to the nighttime court of the Monère, simmering with intrigue, casual lust, and calculated cruelty, is far from smooth.

  Mona Lisa Awakening

  Monère, book 1

  Sunny

  To my extraordinary editor,

  Cindy Hwang.

  My superagent,

  Roberta Brown.

  And my gifted husband.

  Da,

  who inspired it all.

  Chapter One

  Sickness and death was in the air—women crying, men cursing, unwashed bodies. The stink of suffering and anguish. It was a dwelling I'd deliberately chosen and placed myself within. A dwelling of desperate need that lured me to its bosom with the stench of fear and pain.

  I was an ER nurse on the lonely island of Manhattan. Sickness called to me. Darkness and light lay within me. I'd always known it, sensed it… a dormant force that lay quiescent along with the latent ability to heal, untapped as yet—to my relief, to my despair. Waiting. Until then, sickness called to me and lured me with its invisible tendrils of aches and pain.

  Around me in the emergency room of St. Vincent's Hospital, in the heart of Greenwich Village, the hustle and bustle had already begun. In bed one, a young woman's face was covered with blood, lacerated from temple to chin—a dear price for a fragile whore to pay walking the dark alleys of the street. Strapped down in bed two was a disheveled man stinking of alcohol, thrashing in delirium and withdrawal. In bed three, a child screeched with pain, tugging the tender cords of my heart. It was a cry I could not ignore.

  I rushed over to bed three, to find Dr. Peter Thompson there. He was one of the good interns just starting his ER rotation, humble and grateful for help, unlike those jerk know-it-alls. Even better, he had a girlfriend and was faithful, not one of the grabbers.

  "Oh, good. You're here, Lisa," Peter said, flashing me a smile of relief. "You're great with kids. Can you help me with this?"

  "What have we here?" I asked.

  A young boy of about six with soft brown hair and lots of freckles was curled up into a tight ball, his thin arms holding his belly, tears wetting his face and shirt as he wailed with pain. His mother, a young brunette, gripped the stretcher rails with white knuckles and chewed her lower lip helplessly.

  "Kurt was fine until an hour ago when he said his stomach hurt," the mother said, sizing me up, uncertainty in her brown eyes.

  I knew that look. Why am I talking to you and not the doctor? it said.

  It was entirely my fault. I've always looked younger than my age of twenty-one. No complaint here, but this was the medical profession. Credentials on the wall and silver in your hair went a long way with patients. But one thing I've learned: Don't judge their judgment. Just do what you have to do.

  "Kurt," I said, stroking the child's damp forehead. "Is that your name, honey?"

  At my touch, Kurt opened his eyes. His big, brown, trusting eyes studied mine, unknowingly opening the window of his soul to me. Our souls bonded and he was mine. Calmness came over the boy's face and his crying stopped.

  "Now can you show me where it hurts, Kurt?"

  His eyes fixed on me with wonderment and curiosity, Kurt uncurled his arms and pointed to a spot above his belly button. "It hurts here," he said in a clear, high voice.

  I touched the spot.

  Kurt tensed, but didn't resist. "It hurts when you touch it," he said, tears spiking his long lashes.

  "I'll be very gentle," I promised, and placed the heart of my palm over his abdomen.

  The power within me stirred, coming to the fore from the depths within, taking over me entirely as if I was merely a vehicle through which it channeled itself into the world. When the boy opened the window of his soul, it was really the eye of my power that gazed through my lenses and reached out to the child. It came forward at the call of pain, not at the urging of my will—a cycle of energy that stirred from its root within me but could only be completed by the beckoning of another.

  My hand tingled with warmth as I sensed the radiation of heat rising from my core.

  Kurt's eyes widened. "Awesome. It doesn't hurt anymore, Mommy!"

  "I'm going to leave you to Dr. Peter. He's a very good doctor and he'll make sure your tummyache doesn't come back again." I winked at Kurt and he winked back.

  I made my way to the staff bathroom and locked myself inside, resting on the toilet lid. That power of mine was a curse and a blessing all in one. One would think that to be equipped with such a thing would double, if not triple, my own energy. But no, it always left me feeling drained and exhausted afterward. And I used it to merely diagnose ailment. The power to heal hadn't come to me yet. I wondered if it ever would.

  Minutes later, recovered, my composure regained, I shuffled back to the madhouse. Peter dropped down beside me as I made a pretense of charting down some notes. A fine tremor shook my hands. I set the pen down carefully.

  "Thanks, Lisa," Peter said as he took off his glasses and cleaned them with a coat corner. "I couldn't have examined that kid without you. The mother was useless." He peered sharply at me. "What's with that touch of yours? That moment? I sensed something. Are you one of those?"

  "Those what?" I gave him a look.

  "Those secret healers?" he whispered.

  "I wish. That moment that you sensed has a name."

  "What is it?"

  "It's called compassion, doctor."

  Peter laughed. "Right. Well, I'm going to order a CBC, Chem-20, urinalysis, and a quick strep. What do you think?"

  "Don't forget abdominal X ray, flat and upright." That would pick up the stuck quarter that was troubling little Kurt.

  "You know, you have incredible instincts. You picked up that appendicitis last week that I almost missed and there was that other thing you…"

  "That also has a name. Experience."

  He snorted. "Yeah, eleven long months of experience, you old hag, you."

  At this point, a grabber would have reached out his paw, going for one of the usual localities, but not this one. "You'd make a great doctor, I bet."

  "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

  "Do I sound like it? You should think about going to medical school. Really." He walked away, flagging the orders in the chart.

  He did have a nice butt, now that I was looking at it. Too bad there wasn't any desire in me to do more than appreciate the view.

  Medical school. Ha! Not for me, not in this life. Couldn't afford it. The two years of nursing school had been a miracle already, the full scholarship and living stipend a true blessing. It had brought to fruition my childhood dream, a calling almost, to be near the sick and infirmed, the pained, the suffering.

  The money also freed me from the confinement of my foster home, memories that I'd rather leave behind, buried and untouched. I still remember those first heady days of independence, free like a young bird just untangled from its nest, testing its wings, breathing fresh air. An exhale after a long, long inhale.

  My thoughts of the past were sudde
nly disturbed by a tangible force. A force ringing in the air, penetrating through the throngs crowding the wards, through the chatter, the shouts, the din. Dense in the space, filtering past the generic furnishings, the white partitioning curtains. Reaching for me like an invisible arrow seeking its targeted prey.

  I looked up into the path of that oncoming force and saw the air ripple like an invisible tidal wave rolling over all obstacles, big or small, pushing forward and burying me in its deluge.

  I stood, stunned and dazzled by the invasion, trembling as I was hit by the seeking force. It was as if I had been electrocuted, my whole body tingling. The fine hair all over my body stood on end. I shivered, feeling weakened and dizzy, and leaned on my desk.

  God! What the hell was that?

  The invisible grip suddenly softened and my body relaxed as if a burden had lifted from my chest. But before I could breathe once more, the force turned naughty. It explored me, touched me like a lover's invisible fingers, caressing me, stirring foreign urges and feelings within me that I had never felt before. My body softened, grew moist and heated. I shivered. Then I smelled him. Blood.

  My nostrils flared. I turned my head, tracking the scent, and saw him, the source. Bed Eight.

  He was sitting alone on the stretcher all the way across the room, his blue eyes gazing intently at me. His long hair, darker than midnight, fell in soft waves to brush his shoulders. He had skin the color of ivory, luminescent and pure like the full moon against the ink-black sky, and a face that had the power to make his maker weep with joy or jealousy. An angel fallen from the sky. No, I thought, looking into predatory eyes as dark and endless as the night. Not fallen… kicked out.

  The sight of him left me breathless. I watched as his nostrils flared, as he deliberately filled his lungs with air, and knew as surely as I had smelled his blood that he was taking in my scent, smelling my arousal. His lashes dipped down then fanned back up like the graceful sweep of a butterfly's wings. The power and heat that had come from his eyes intensified the caressing effects on me, penetrating through my outer self, pulling tautly at my core, calling up my own force to the fore in response. Our energies met and meshed. My nipples hardened to stone, my inner sheath quivered, and I wanted to go to him. Go to him and pull him to me.

  The air crackled with such vibrancy that I was sure others had to have seen. But the nurses were busy with their needles and notes, and the doctors were busily minding their patients.

  The pull between us tightened like a rope. Desperately I fought that pull the only way I knew, wave against wave, tide against tide. I intensified my force, marshaling up my last ounce, countering it. The air between us practically sparked. Still, it took every ounce of my control to just sit there and not go to him. Perspiration sheened my skin and my trembling grew harsher.

  I'd never felt anything like this before in my life. Was he like me? Was he one of my kind, whatever that may be? Or was he an enemy?

  One thing, though, I knew for certain. He was a bastard. My eyes narrowed in anger. How dare he try to use his powers on me.

  I stalked over to where he sat on the stretcher, his legs dangling over the side, and stopped inches away from him. "Stop it!" I snarled.

  His eyes widened. "It is not I who is doing it." His deep, melodic voice was as beautiful as the rest of him. Unfair.

  "Don't lie to me!" I hissed.

  "I would not dare."

  "Just… just stop it!"

  He gave a Gaelic shrug, a fluid ripple of shoulder and chest, a simple movement that was not simple at all, for it touched something inside me like a literal caress, causing me to shudder and drop down my gaze to take note of the bulge that had risen between his legs. His eyes closed and still I felt the pull, undiminished. Confused, I suddenly noticed the careful stiffness with which he held himself, the whiteness of his knuckles as he clenched the metal frame of the stretcher, the dampness of his brow. He seemed to be fighting the attraction as much as I.

  "You feel it, too," I said, frowning.

  "Yes." His blue eyes snapped open and speared mine with sudden intensity. "Where are your guards? I sense no one here other than you and I."

  "Guards?"

  He frowned. "Surely you are…" Carefully, slowly, he reached out one hand, stopping just short of touching me, and stroked above the bare skin of my forearm. His force, though invisible and without contact, was palpable just above skin. I felt his stroke as surely as if he had caressed me.

  "You feel like a Queen," he murmured.

  I stepped back, wondering if he was one of those madmen who frequently found their way to St. Vincent's dehydrated, famished, and highly delirious. And yet there was something very different about him.

  "What are you talking about?" I demanded sharply.

  A plump tech bustled up, a bright smile creasing her matronly face. It was Sally, the ward clerk who took the vital signs of all the new patients, helping lighten the nurses' loads. "My, my, aren't you the pretty boy," Sally murmured, glancing down at his data sheet. "David Michaels. Just what I needed to brighten my night."

  He smiled, a lethal combination of teeth and dimples.

  She smiled back. "I'll have his vitals for you in a sec, Lisa." In so saying, she reached out to take his pulse.

  It registered then—what should have registered immediately had I not been so stunned by his beauty and my body's reaction to him. His heartbeat. His very, very slow heartbeat. Not more than thirty beats per minute. Far below the normal human rate of sixty and above. My own heart sped up from its usual sluggish fifty, hitting the sixty mark when Sally frowned and looked up.

  He captured her gaze with his eyes and I then felt the gentle flow of his power. Shit. He really hadn't been using it before now. What then was this peculiar, strong attraction between us?

  Sally's frown lines smoothed away like unrippled water. "A pulse of sixty and a blood pressure of one hundred and twenty over seventy." She jotted down the numbers on his sheet, not seeming to notice the blood pressure cuff that lay unused beside her. She hadn't touched it.

  I swallowed. "Thank you, Sally."

  "No problem. He's all yours." She winked and bustled off to the next patient.

  After Sally left, I turned to David Michaels, or whatever his name really was, with a stern look on my face. "You took control of her mind just now, didn't you? She didn't even measure your blood pressure."

  He leaned back on his pillow, his eyes closed, looking even paler than before, if that was possible, and laughed feebly. "Goddess, I can't believe that so simple a task exhausted me…"

  "What are you?" I whispered and pulled the privacy curtains tight around us.

  His dark lashes fluttered up. "Never mind who I am, who are you?" he asked, shifting forward. The movement caused him to wince and his hand moved to cover his belly.

  "You're injured." With only a slight tremor, I lifted his shirt. It was an inch-long gash. One drop of red blood gleamed like scarlet against the pearl white of his skin, alluring, irresistible. At the sight of his blood, something clicked open in me that I hadn't known existed. As if in a dream, I watched my finger dip down and scoop up that templing crimson pearl onto my fingertip. Watched him shudder as I touched him. Watched him shudder again as I licked the blood off my fingertip and tasted him.

  It was sweet, so sweet, though tainted by an odd metallic tang.

  What was he, this creature before me? And what had injured him?

  Gently, I covered his wound with my palm. The center of my hand tingled and strummed. My senses seeped deep down below his skin, revealing to me clearly the torn passage through his tissues.

  "You were stabbed. With a stiletto. And I sense something more. There is a… poison within you."

  "Poison." One corner of his lush mouth lifted in bitter wryness. "An accurate labeling. A blade dipped in liquid silver. Now that the liquid poison is within me, it will spread slowly. Already it weakens me greatly."

  "Who stabbed you?"

  "My Queen, Mon
a Sera."

  "Of course, your Queen," I said, wondering once again if he was mad. "Is she visiting from a foreign country? And why did she stab you?"

  "I was leaving her," he said simply, "and this was her parting gift. Usually a wound like this would heal within several hours, but she punished me by using a silver blade."

  "Why is silver bad?"

  "Because the inherent quality of silver runs afoul with our bodies, causing us to then heal like humans. Slowly."

  Like humans.

  "Sure. So you're not human."

  He flashed me a curious look. "Of course not."

  "Then what are you?"

  "Do you truly not know?"

  "Why should I know?"

  "Because you are as I am."

  I swallowed. "Which is…"

  "Monère. The children of the moon."

  "Of course," I soothed. "Children of the moon." This guy was a total wacko.

  "I am not mad, as you think." Frowning, he looked deep into me, probing with the dagger of his power so that I sensed again that arcing heat from before.

  "Ah, that explains it," he breathed, wonder in his eyes. "You are a Mixed Blood."

  "Mixed Blood?"

  "Yes. A small part of you is human."

  "A small part?"

  "A quarter, I believe."

  "I'm totally human as far as I'm concerned—a head, four limbs, two eyes…" I said, backing away.

  "No." He reached his hand out to me. "Don't go. There is even more. You are a Queen."

  "A Queen! That's a bunch of crock. I'm not even a Beauty Queen in Queens. I'm just a nurse."

  "No, you don't understand. You have aphidy, the unique halo of fragrance inherent only in a Queen. All Monère men are drawn to you because of this."

  "Talk about natural chemistry. And here I thought it was my dripping charm and striking beauty that attracted men to me," I said sarcastically.

  "All things you may doubt, but you must believe you are in danger now. I am being hunted by Mona Sera's men. They are tracking me by my blood scent. And if they find me, they will find you. Are you protected?"