Mona Lisa Craving m-3 Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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.

&nb
sp; “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 contr
ol 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?”