Mona Lisa Craving Read online

  “Lucinda will have told them by now,” I said. “If the High Lord, or if Halcyon…if they come to kill me, you are not to try to stop them or seek revenge.”

  Dontaine froze into a stillness that unnerved me.

  “They will be within their rights, Dontaine. Do you understand?”

  He shook his head, his voice sounding harsh and strained. “No. I do not understand.”

  “It was something that I did. Something I brought upon myself. I’m sorry to lay this burden on you, but if anything happens to me, you are the only one who knows. The only one who can testify before the Council that I hold Halcyon and the High Lord blameless.”

  “For executing you,” he said. “If two of our Queens are killed by demon hand, even if it is by the High Lord himself again, it will not sit well with the High Queens Council.”

  “What will they do? Go to war with them?” My laugh was short and bitter. “They would be slaughtered. As would you, all of you here. Everyone I love and hold dear.” I closed the distance between us, gripped his hand tight. Felt his electric touch dance with shocking little jolts upon my skin. The sensation was sharper, more painful than normal, betraying his leaking distress. “Dontaine, promise me that you will not lift your hand against them if they come for me.”

  A hard, painful jolt shot from his hand to mine, making me gasp. He drew his hand away so that we no longer touched. “Are you asking me, or ordering me?”

  I searched his eyes, those green tumultuous depths. “You are my master at arms. With command comes great responsibility. You hold our people’s safety in your hands. Would you see your mother, your sister, killed for no purpose? Would you throw away their lives—your life—so easily? I ask it of you but if I must, I will order it. Must I, Dontaine? Must I demand it of you?”

  His eyes dropped away from mine. “Mona Lisa…What you ask of me…”

  I went into his arms then because I loved him. Because I was hurting him, and I did not want to. I went into his arms because the torment I glimpsed in his beautiful eyes just plain broke my heart.

  Contact with him lanced me for a sharp, electric second before he brought his forceful presence back under control.

  “Please, Dontaine. I love you. I want to keep you safe. All of you—Jamie, Tersa, Rosemary, Thaddeus, Chami, Tomas, Aquila, and Amber. You are my family. The most important beings to me in this world. Please, help me keep you all safe. I could not bear it if I lost someone else I loved.”

  His hands cupped my face, lifted it up to his so that I saw his brilliant, gleaming eyes, the chiseled lines of his face fierce and raw with emotion. Perhaps he would have kissed me then. Perhaps I would have let him. A foolish thing to do when it was infinitely safer to push him away. Safer for him.

  I don’t know if I would have given in to that momentary folly. I don’t know what would have happened afterward. All I suddenly knew was that my gums were burning as if fire had set them aflame. That my teeth were aching. That I had a sudden thirsting urge for blood, to feel it sliding hot and sweet down my throat.

  This was what had happened to me at High Court—the promise of fangs. That promise suddenly became reality. My teeth elongated and pushed upward and outward through my gums like small mountains erupting. I gasped because it hurt like hell. Then gasped again when I felt a sharp sting and looked down to see blood welling from the hand I’d drawn up to my mouth and pricked. I’d accidentally cut myself on the sharpness of my own teeth…on my fangs.

  “Dear Goddess,” Dontaine whispered. Cold fear skimmed the surface of those two words.

  I pushed away from him and stumbled out the door. Away. I had to get away from him. I fled outside into the cool night, and in the breeze that glided over my skin, I felt him—the demon presence outside that had brought forth the demon presence within me. And not just any demon, but one I knew intimately. “Halcyon.”

  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.

  “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 ou
t 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.”