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  Mona Lisa Darkening

  ( Monère - 4 )

  Sunny

  On the vernal equinox, Mona Lisa is taken against her will to NetherHell, the cursed realm of the damned. In this place, she will be torn from both within and without by desire, love, and ecstasy. And when her first love crosses the boundaries of the world to rescue her, she must choose her own destiny — before others choose it for her.

  Mona Lisa Darkening

  Monère, book 4

  Sunny

  To Annie Vanderbilt — wonderful friend, extraordinary author

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was the first day of spring. It was also the time to Bask, to draw down the silver rays of the moon and let its renewing light seep into us. Us being the Monère, the children of the moon — what I was, what my people. Creatures descended from another planet. We were blessed with supernatural speed, strength, and beauty. As a human-Monère Mixed Blood, the first ever to be a Monère Queen, I had the first two. Missed out on the last one, though. Oh well. Better to be fast and strong, in my opinion, than beautiful. And able to Bask, to draw down our home planet's renewing light and energy and share it with my people. Oh yes, that gift was perhaps the most crucial of all, and the one I was most thankful for. Because without that renewing light, we would live only a hundred years, a human's lifespan instead of the three hundred years our lunar birthright gifted us.

  If you asked my people, I think they'd take the ability to Bask over their Queen being a raving beauty any day. Or rather night. As a people descended from the moon, we were children of darkness. When the sun set, that was when our day began. Then again, maybe you shouldn't ask my people, because even though my looks were average — not hideous, but definitely not beauty queen material either — they treated me as if I were a raving beauty. The men, at least. The men who were my lovers.

  Under the moonlit shadows of the darkened night, I glanced at two of them there by my side. Amber, my rugged Warrior Lord, who loomed a head taller than other men. Whose great strength lay not just in the heavy muscles roping his massive body, but also in the love and devotion gleaming from his dark blue eyes. That — the pull of emotions in him — weakened me more than his obvious and splendid body strength, physically swayed me toward him before I caught myself. Not yet, I thought, but soon… soon.

  Beside him stood Dontaine, my master at arms, my other lover. Blond, fair of face and body, a sumptuous feast to the eyes. Whereas Amber looked like a harsh god of war, Dontaine was like a Greek statue — a Greek god. A living Adonis with sun-kissed hair, splendid green eyes, and a body any woman would want to worship with her hands, her tongue, her mouth… any part of her body. He, too, looked at me with love, though I don't know why. Out of all my lovers, he was the one I rejected the most. The one I used the most. Used literally for blood.

  It was an odd night, a special night — the vernal equinox. Aequus Nox, which meant equal night. When day and night were of equal length, and the sun crossed not only the Earth's equator, but the celestial equator as well. Even more special, it was one of the rare times when the full moon coincided with the first day of spring, the season of renewal. Perhaps that was what was causing this strange restlessness within me — a skittishness, a feeling of something not quite right. Spring fever likely.

  My people were gathered around me, and I recognized more of their faces now, recalled their names. Intricate, interweaving strings bound us all together, and I was slowly learning the many loops and circles. I'd worried over that, my lack of connection to my people, over four hundred of them. But like many things in life, names and familiarity with the people behind the names came slowly with time, and hopefully — thankfully — I would have plenty of that. Time.

  I had survived to see another full moon emerge in its brilliant round glory. Quite an achievement, tainted as I was with demon darkness. If the whims of fate had swung another way, I would have been dead by now, killed by Prince Halcyon, the ruler of the demon dead realm. Instead I was his lady, his mate — the High Lady of Hell.

  And where was my Demon Prince? Presiding over his people in that other distant realm, Hell, while I presided over mine here in the living realm. I was missing the festivities of Aequus Nox, one of the big demon holidays. At least that was how it sounded to me when Halcyon had explained it. Were it not the full moon, the time when we Basked, I would be down there with Halcyon, mixing and mingling and being introduced to his people. A daunting thought because his people had fangs and drank blood — my blood if they had the chance. But then, so did I. Have fangs and drink blood, that is.

  I was a human-Monère Mixed Blood Queen with demon dead essence residing in my living being. Quite a tongue twister and mind bender. The poetic term for my condition was Damanten, demon living. A rare state of being because most of my kind had been slaughtered as soon as they were made, usually by the demons whom those very unwise Monères had blood raped because, alas, that was what sparked our living dead state. Why would they do that, you might ask — drink a demon's blood? Because it gained them a demon's strength, which was even greater than a Full Blood Monère's. But, shhh, don't tell anyone that, it's a secret. A secret that demons would kill — and have killed — to protect.

  The downside, and there's always one, was the physical manifestations that occurred along with that stolen power. It was pretty hard to hide what you had done — what you had become — when you started sprouting fangs. Now don't get me wrong. Fangs are no stranger to the Monère. Lots of us had them. But only in our animal-shifted forms. Not in our human forms. Of course, my fang flashing happened only when the niggling presence of another demon triggered the demon essence in me. Then wham! It was like turning into the Incredible Hulk. Only instead of growing green and muscle-bound and horrendously ugly, my teeth morphed into fangs, my nails sharpened into dagger points, and I had the uncontrollable urge to suck down blood, any which way, any damn how. Pretty hard to keep hidden a powerful urge that almost takes you completely over until you've satisfied that hunger with a sip or two of blood. By the time you've gained back your control, the gig's pretty much up.

  Halcyon had come up with an even better idea. Don't try to hide it. Simply make them think it had occurred for another reason, hence my official recognition as Halcyon's mate. When I finally manifested my demon traits in front of Monère witnesses (those that tattled, which was bound to occur someday soon), they would think that I was becoming what I was becoming because I'd been contaminated by my demon lover through sex. Sex, after all, was how Monère usually shared and acquired gifts and power. And since such a relationship had never occurred before — a demon taking a Monère mate — all would blame it on that. And perhaps on the fact that I'd been down to Hell a time or two.

  The real cause of this all, though, was the former Queen of this Louisiana territory, Mona Louisa. She'd swallowed down Halcyon's blood, and I in turn had sucked her light and demon-tainted essence into me. That was another secret, what I could do, Mortal Draining. It made me feel guilty that the blame would be placed on the wrong person, on Halcyon instead of me and that former bitch Queen that no longer existed, except sometimes in me. Mona Louisa was dead but not entirely gone. I felt her occasionally in my dreams.

  As a vulture in her other form, she'd been able to fly, and sometimes I dreamed of soaring through the sky, of smelling death and rotting, decaying flesh down below, carrion. Even more odd, outside of dreams, in my waking state, in my demon awakening state, my eyes changed from my normal brown to a cool crystal blue — Mona Louisa's eyes. A creepy thing, that.

  I shrugged away my morbid thoughts and concentrated on the here and now: the full moon riding like a giant beacon of light above us, and my people waiting expectantly for me to draw down its l
ife-extending rays. There was no real science to it. I just opened myself — best way to describe it. Every child of the moon felt that distinct pull when the moon came into its full and ripe roundness. It was like an invisible, tugging rope reaching down to try to open up a door inside of you. I simply stopped resisting and let whatever was being pulled inside of me flip open and become just a conduit… a conduit of lunar light. It shone down on me now like a spotlight, filled me up, filled me to bursting, then overflowed out from me.

  Little butterflies of light flittered down from the heavens, swooped into me and spilled out like a cresting tide, washing over my people, darting into them, bowing their backs, lighting them up like flickering candles set aflame. We shone brilliantly for a long spun-out moment in time until that lunar light was swallowed and absorbed into us. Until we no longer glowed and skin became simply skin once more, not incandescent light, incandescent energy.

  The last two times I'd done this, the only two times I'd done this, that was it. Over. Finis. Not so this time. This time was different. This time something hazed my vision. Something hazed the moon, actually, because that was what I was looking at.

  Like a veil being thrown across its bright surface, a shimmering darkness swept across the moon like spilling ink, blocking out the light like an eclipse, only faster, much faster. It occurred in the blink of an eye, so fast that I almost doubted what I was seeing. Would have doubted it had I not felt it as well — a weight like a descending hand reaching down to cover me. Not that gentle tugging sensation but something much more heavy and forceful.

  My people cried out in alarm and I could do nothing to stop it or respond to them as a black power slammed into me, closed like a gripping hand about me… and swallowed me down into a dark and fathomless void.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I didn't lose consciousness, although that might have been kinder. Nope, I had to stay awake and aware throughout the entire experience of… well, I guess, dying. Because what else do you call it when your heart suddenly shudders into echoing silence and no longer beats?

  The stillness of sound, the absence of it, was more noticeable to me because I was trapped somewhere inside my own body. I saw, I experienced sensations — the blistering heat, the gray reddening of predawn light — but they came to me filtered, through a thick and muffled layer, as if someone else was using my eyes and in control of my body and I was just along for an unwilling ride.

  My taken-over body was lying on the ground. The very hard, very hot scorching ground. Get up! I screamed. But whoever was in charge now ignored me and just reveled for a moment in simply being back. Her thoughts. Her words.

  Whoever she was, she was in no hurry to move in case it was all just a dream. I called it more of a nightmare.

  She gazed up at the sky, all she allowed me to take inventory of. But it was worthy of note, actually. It was a scarlet, fractured sky, like it had been broken apart and put back together. And the impression wasn't just from the uneven layers of red firmament that transitioned one piece into another abruptly, but the twin suns themselves, shaped like the Chinese yin and yang symbols. As if a giant hand had plucked down a single sun, torn it apart, and cast the broken pieces back into the sky.

  The light was abruptly blocked as a man, a mean-looking stranger, stood over us. No one I recognized. I just knew that he wasn't one of my people. The orange prison garb he wore was a really big hint.

  Prison garb? I heard that other me wonder. She hadn't recognized the attire.

  So he's human, flashed her thought within me, and the momentary alarm that had flared up over that rough and menacing face subsided beneath her smug superiority. Humans were inferior in strength and speed, she thought.

  It was that familiar sneer in her voice that rang a bell in me. That made me think: Mona Louisa?

  Of course. Who else did you think it was? came the contemptuous answer. Sounding exactly like that blond bitch of a Monère Queen whose essence and light I had sucked down into me.

  But you're dead, I thought. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed her after I had done my unsuccessful best.

  And now so are you. Her answer, and the rich, malicious satisfaction she oozed in imparting that news, froze me for a second. It had been my first thought, that I was dead, but still I had hoped for another answer. Hearing the words, feeling her absolute belief, totally flipped me out. I panicked completely. Started thrashing and trying to claw my way out of the thick void that surrounded me. My goal was up, toward the shimmering surface so seemingly far above, glimmering with faint, sparkling light. If I could just reach that surface, I knew that I would somehow be back in control.

  Don't count on it, mongrel bitch, thought Mona Louisa smugly. You're weaker than I am now.

  Which totally exasperated me. That's what got you killed before — underestimating people. Pay attention to what's happening around you! I told her.

  Her attention snapped back on the strange human man as he crouched over her, his shaggy hair greasy and unkempt. "Now aren't you a purty thing," he purred. "I ain't had me a real woman for years, penned up the way I was like an animal. Another man just ain't the same thing as a woman, you know." His eyes, sweeping over me… her… us… glittered hard with lust.

  Mona Louisa tried to move then, to sit up. But he stopped her easily with a hand on the shoulder. "No need gettin' up. I want you on your back the first time." His lips curled back in a cruel and eager smile as Mona Louisa raised a hand to push him… and couldn't. She — we — moved slowly, sluggishly. Even more alarmingly, his strength was greater than hers.

  He nodded knowingly. "Took me a little while to gain back my strength. Should be a while for you, too. 'Nuff time for me to have my fill of you," he said, and began to open his pants.

  "No!" she cried.

  No! I screamed inside also, her fear spiraling and echoing through our body. Without her strength, she didn't know what to do, how to stop him from raping her.

  "Yes, sirree. Plenty of time to slake some of my thirst on your sweet body. Go ahead," he urged, "fight me. I like it that way better." Flipping up her long dress, he yanked her underwear off with a happy grunt and crawled on top of her. Using his weight to keep her pinned down, he roughly spread her legs open. "The others ran off. And the two other guys here are like you, still weak. No one's gonna stop me. Hell, if I'd known this was what waited for me, I'd a gone willingly to the electric chair years ago."

  Both Mona Louisa and I gagged as we felt his hard male organ push against us, probing for entrance as we lay there, exposed, our lower body naked, completely vulnerable to him.

  I know how to fight, I screamed. Let me out!

  With an abruptness that took me by surprise, she yielded to my demand and I felt myself propelled up that vast syrupy distance to the shimmering surface. With a gasp, I surfaced and found myself once more in control of my body. My hands that had been futilely trying to push him off me abruptly stopped pushing and went instead for his eyes. It was a clumsy attempt, with my limbs moving slow as molasses, but my nails scraped across his face and one nail managed to poke his sensitive eye. He rolled off me with an angry yelp of pain. Then just stared at me in confusion and the beginning of fear.

  "What the fuck? Your hair, eyes… your entire face and body… how the fuck did you change it like that?"

  "I can do many things," I said, anger — rage — emanating from me. "Did you think Hell was going to be so easy?" My body shook as I forced myself to stand. Stand and not fall over as I spat my next words at him. "Unending pain awaits you for the crimes you have committed in life and would have continued in this afterlife. You will not find pleasure here, only pain. An eternity of suffering."

  Terror filled his eyes, and ugly guilt twisted his face. Without a word, he turned and ran from me as if the demons of Hell chased after him. If only that were true. Two particular demons I would have welcomed gladly at the moment.

  "Is that true? Are we dead? Are we… damned?"

  I turned and saw a
man lying a dozen yards away on the ground, turned toward me on his side. He wore a business suit and tie. A human, somewhere in his fifties or sixties. A second guy, young like me in his early twenties, Hispanic, with jet-black hair slicked back in a ponytail, lay a short distance behind him. He had made further progress, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. The sleeveless T-shirt he wore revealed muscular, tattooed arms. Everything about him screamed gang member.

  Two men from diverse backgrounds, about as far apart on the social and economic scale as possible, and both looking to me for answers. But I had none to give them.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Last thing I knew, I was in a car accident. A head-on collision," said the guy in the suit. "I think I died."

  "I was shot three times in the chest," Mr. Tattoo said. He pushed up his shirt, rang a hand over his smooth brown chest. No blood, no bullet holes.

  My knees wanted to buckle but I stiffened them. Stayed standing by sheer dint of will.

  Can't afford to appear weak, Mona Louisa thought inside me. I agreed with her.

  "What about you?" asked the older man.

  "A black light came down from the moon and brought me here."

  "We told you the truth," the young guy said, scowling.

  "So did I," I returned evenly. Then I said flatly, "I don't have a pulse or a heartbeat."

  Both men took a moment to assess themselves.

  "Nothing here." Tattoo guy.

  "Me, either," said Mr. Corporate Type. "Are we in Hell?"

  Tattoo guy looked around at the bleak landscape, his disdain not quite masking the fear underneath. "Sure don't look like heaven, does it?"

  I was as confused as they were. Maybe even more so, and even more shaken up inside. Am I dead? Really dead? If so, then why am I here? As a Damanten, a living demon, I was not supposed to have an afterlife. And humans rarely had enough psychic energy to transition to Hell. And yet here I was with three humans, two of them having obviously lived and died violently. And none of them seemed terribly upset or surprised to find themselves dead. To find themselves here.