by Sunny
“Which part?”
“That the necklace gave you some sort of vibe when it burned her fingers?”
“Yes, it told me you were in danger. It’s why I’m here now. How do you feel?”
“Fine—better than fine. I feel normal.”
“No agitation or reaction to my demon presence?”
“Oh, that.” Before, in the past, I had been quite stirred up by close contact with Halcyon.
I had been in the process of becoming Damanôen, demon living. Now, though, there was nothing. No rising bloodlust or red eyes or demon claws.
The relief of that nonreaction was almost as jarring as getting my memory back. Halcyon’s arms came around my waist as I sagged against him. And even with physical contact, there was still nothing.
“Oh my God, Halcyon, I’m totally fine. Even when you touch me.” I laughed, happy, exuberant. “It must be what you did to me to get me out of NetherHell, tearing Mona Louisa out of me, separating us.”
In the damned realm of the cursed dead, Mona Louisa had grown as strong as my own self, our shared body taking on the physical shape and facial features of whoever was dominant at the moment—talk about weird. It had taken multiple personality disorder to a whole different level.
She might have even permanently overpowered my own personality had we stayed longer in that realm. But we hadn’t. Our integrating souls had been physically separated, leaving a gaping wound that had been slowly killing us both. She had almost faded completely from existence when I had absorbed her back into me.
“She was greatly weakened when we merged back together again,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud. “Maybe that’s why I’m so calm and nonreactive to your presence now. The question is whether this calmness will last or whether she’ll grow strong again.” And turn me back into a living demon schizoid, who might attack anyone close to me.
“You seem to be fully integrated now,” Halcyon observed. “You said you were able to shift into her vulture form.”
“That’s right, I did.” A bright, optimistic thought—especially what it implied. That I might be stable, at status quo now, and wouldn’t start changing and evolving back again into that frightening living demon thing I had been becoming before.
The sound of people, the feel of them, told us that we were no longer alone. Turning, I saw a crowd of faces gathered at the doorway.
“You remember us now, milady?” Rosemary asked.
“Oh,” I gasped as I not just saw them but recognized them. Knew them. “I can’t believe I forgot you guys.”
It was Happy Reunion, Take 2. This time without any awkwardness or freaky meltdown to spoil things. I hugged Tersa, rumpled Jamie’s carrottop head, squeezed Rosemary’s ample waist, and exclaimed to a grinning Thaddeus, “My God, you’re as tall as I am now. When did you suddenly shoot up?”
“He’s been growing like a weed the last several months,” Chami said, grinning. “You just didn’t notice, seeing him every day.”
“Where’s Tomas?” I asked, naming one of my other guards.
“He’s over in Amber’s territory, helping run things while Amber was here,” Aquila informed me.
“Amber didn’t leave . . . he didn’t go back yet, did he?”
“No, I am still here,” Amber said, his voice coming from behind the others. Dontaine was beside him, I saw as the rest of them made room, allowing them to come to me.
They were still both striking men but no longer intimidating, no longer overwhelming. I saw them now through eyes filtered by love and shared experience. Amber, rugged giant that he was—indeed, one of the most physically imposing men I’d ever come upon—had been frighteningly vulnerable when I first met him, literally crawling in the dirt before his former Queen, begging for mercy she had not shown him. And Dontaine—beautiful, stunning Dontaine. I still remembered him with his throat torn, bloody and helpless while I washed the gore from his body and cared for him. They had earned my love, and even more important, I had earned theirs.
“Oh, Amber.” I flew into his big arms and careful embrace.
“How did you remember? When?” Amber asked in a deep rumble.
“After I woke up. I wandered into your room and Dontaine’s upstairs and had one of those flashbacks. I remembered Gryphon—he was the key. Everything came flooding back once I remembered Gryphon and how it all started.”
The loss of my first love was a gentle sorrow I shared in my glance with Amber, who had known him best of all those here. But it was a gentle loss because Gryphon was not truly gone, just existing in a different realm now as demon dead.
I released my big giant and turned to my other lover. “Dontaine.” I didn’t make him come to me as I had done so often in the past. I walked to him, to where he stood in cautious wait.
I went to him, held him, exhaling softly against his chest. “Oh, Dontaine, I’m so sorry . . . so sorry I forgot you. You pack one heck of a second first impression.”
The stiff wariness I had taught him melted away and his arms came around to embrace me also. “As long as you’re not rejecting me,” Dontaine said against the top of my head.
“No,” I murmured.
He pressed a kiss to my crown and I pulled back to smile up at him, but I wasn’t done yet. There was one last important man in my life. One last lover I had yet to look upon with eyes filled with memories, to ask questions of.
I ended up driving. Such a simple, normal thing to do—drive a car. And for only a short distance. The Morells lived in a small house just down the road, within the vast property of the estate. Close enough, and more important, safe enough for the others to let me travel to by myself. After this latest scare, I had a feeling they were going to keep a really close eye on me, and I was going to happily let them. I had almost lost everything, not through another’s fault or treachery, but through betrayal of my own mind.
Dante came out of the house as I pulled into the driveway. The rest of the family was still inside, giving us token privacy. He had that grim look on his face once again. “I apologize for using compulsion on you—” he began.
“I remember,” I said, cutting across his words.
His body didn’t stiffen, but his focus sharpened on me, stiletto sharp. Then he blew out a breath, releasing the tension, his eyes growing unreadable. “Come walk with me,” he suggested quietly. He didn’t hold out his hand, nor did I take his. We walked, as he had requested.
Soft moonlight trickled down through the trees as we went deeper into the forest until we came to a wide clearing. Here was where we gathered every month, each full moon, to Bask. Here, also, was where my men came to train and practice each evening, just before dawn—the place where Dante had first revealed the twisted past between him and me, our cursed enmity, and stood there waiting to be killed.
“What do you remember?” Dante asked, as we stood with the thrum of old power faint and soft in the soil beneath our feet.
“Everything.” Every last wretched, painful thing. “Oh, Dante . . . our child. I lost our baby.”
Tears—both his and mine—bridged the distance as no words could have, and I found myself suddenly held by Dante, sobbing softly into his neck, feeling his shared grief in the wet drops that moistened my temple.
The loss was mingled with remembered guilt, and the double loss of Dante immediately after like a one-two blow. But it was old grief that twinged anew, not fresh grief. Eventually my tears lessened, subsiding into an occasional hiccup, the quick ebbing of it hastened by the man who held and comforted me now.
One loss irrevocable, the other not so. Or so I hoped.
I said now what I had wanted but had not the chance to say before. “I’m sorry, Dante.” And the added plea. “Don’t leave me again. Stay, please stay.”
He smoothed back my hair, searching my face. “Do you remember that time before, when I took your life and you cursed me?”
I took a deep, ragged breath. “Yes.”
“Then how can you want me to stay?”
“Our present life eclipses our past,” I said, gripping his arms. “We’re in the middle of our second chance, and second chances are rare and precious. I happen to be freshly reminded of that.” More gently, “Say you’ll stay.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. “Yes,” he said simply.
My heart leaped in joy. “Mona Sierra,” I said, pressing while I yet had the advantage, “you won’t go back to South America to punish her?”
Diamond blue eyes darkened. “I promised her my vengeance—”
“Which you will have,” I hastened to point out. “She’ll be fearful and uneasy for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for you to strike.” Waiting for you to slaughter her and all her people—which I didn’t say out loud. “That waiting, always being on edge . . . let that be vengeance enough,” I begged. “Please.”
A light shudder ran through him. He bowed his head. “As my lady wills . . .”
“Thank you.”
“. . . as long as she bothers us not.”
“Roberto, too.”
He swallowed tightly. “Agreed.”
“Agreed,” I said in soft echo.
We sealed the deal with a kiss.
TWENTY
AMBER LEFT THE next day, returning to his territory; Halcyon departed the day after to his realm, both leaving with the promise to return soon. Things settled once more into routine, with a few changes. Dante and Quentin joined my daily fencing lessons with Edmond, under Nolan’s tutelage. Needless to say, the Morell twins were in the advanced class; Edmond and I were, if not quite novices, then more along the lines of being orange belts to their black belt status. Most of the time, we worked in our evenly matched original pairings, but occasionally Nolan had us change partners, allowing Edmond and me to test ourselves against more superior opponents.
When the hour of sword practice was complete, Edmond left, and I continued on for yet another hour to work on new, additional skills—practicing the weird stuff, as I dubbed it. The extra hour had been suggested by Dante and agreed upon by Nolan. The first part was using the Goddess’s Tear in my left hand to generate a blocking shield of energy. When we first tried this, of course, no one stood in front of me or my power-generating mole. Good thing, too. I knocked over a few trees and blasted the heck out of some bushes before I finally got the knack for calling up energy in a more controlled and modest quantity—a light tugging, not a ferocious pull. And not tossing out the energy but continuing to hold it steady a few inches away from my palm in a light, invisible thrum shaped into a small oval shield the size of my hand.
The last part of the session, I worked on what was the far easier stuff for me, pure blasting power.
When I let loose and just threw out power, I was able to send a spreading wave of energy that stretched to a twenty-foot radius that could travel a distance of fifty-two feet, measured by the violent rattling of trees and bushes.
Close-up work with projectile energy was even more notable. The first time I tried it, I blasted a head-sized hole through a heavy tree trunk, which was both frightening and impressive, since that hadn’t been my intent.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Quentin said, whistling as the exploded wood chips dropped in pieces to the ground.
It had to have brought back dark memories for Dante, but he only asked, “Did you mean to do that?”
I shook my head. “No, I thought it would just knock over the tree.”
“We’ll have to work on control,” was Dante’s judicious comment.
Nolan nodded solemn agreement. “Yes. We want to make sure you’re doing that on purpose and not by accident.”
“Definitely,” I said faintly, blanching at the idea of taking a life by clumsy accident rather than by sure intent.
By the time Halcyon returned on the fourth day, rested and regenerated from his stay in Hell, I had enough control to maintain a left-handed shield widened out to the size of a basketball. It was no doubt an odd sight to see me blocking Dante’s wooden sword with no visible barrier other than my upheld hand.
“Very nice trick,” Halcyon observed, watching from the side.
“Oh yeah?” I said, quite pleased. “See that pine tree over by the left edge of the lawn, about forty paces away? Keep an eye on the lowest branch.” Aiming my right hand, I emitted a stream of energy I had managed to narrow down to a plate-sized diameter. The energy beam hit its target, sending four pinecones flying from the lowest branch.
“Not bad range and control for—how many days of practice?” Halcyon asked.
“Four.”
“Hmm,” he mused, glancing at the pine tree. “It’s been a while since I practiced . . . but you see that single pinecone above the cluster you just hit?”
“Uh huh.”
He sent out a flick of mental energy and dropped the single cone—without even swaying the branch.
“Oooooh.” I grinned with delight at the competitive challenge. “Neat trick, yourself.”
Pitting myself against Halcyon over the following weeks, I honed my skills to an even finer degree, narrowing my beam down to a two-inch diameter, pushing myself until I was able to almost, but not quite, match Halcyon’s pinpoint accuracy. Control was the issue with me—not power but rather harnessing that power, learning the breadth and range of it. And, as was often the case when pitting yourself against someone better, I improved, developing a finer degree of control—certainly more than I would have had I been practicing alone. Even Amber joined in the fun on the days he came to visit, alternately cheering for me, other times for Halcyon, the big twerp, which I would punish him for later in a sweaty, wrestling romp in bed, tickling him without mercy.
In defensive maneuvers, I was eventually able to stretch the size of my shield out to a radius large enough to cover my entire body, good at deflecting swords and daggers and even bullets, sort of. The first time we tried it, the bullet punched right through my shield. It took six more tries before I finally found the right level of energy to produce. Even then, Nolan always aimed to the side, never directly at me, no matter how I urged him to do otherwise, assuring him I had it now. He chose prudence, and I couldn’t really blame him. It would be bad form to shoot your Queen, even if it was her own idiotic fault.
On his fourth visit, when Halcyon left, I went with him back to his realm.
Hell was different, viewed with its powerful ruler strolling by your side. Needless to say, you didn’t feel as threatened, even when your heart was the only living thing beating down there, calling out like a dinner bell to all occupants.
It took only one of Halcyon’s powerful mental flicks, sending a wolf—Hell’s nasty version of one, at least—tumbling away from us, to warn off other carnivores . . . and down here everything was a carnivore. Even their bunny rabbits had fangs sharp enough to bite your fingers off with.
“I wonder if I can do that now,” I said.
Halcyon lifted a brow. “By all means. The next one is yours.”
The next one didn’t come until ten minutes later, a flying serpent that was strangely beautiful, like a large dragonfly, its iridescent red and brown scales gleaming under Hell’s hot midday moon. It zoomed straight for us, hissing, venomous fangs on full display.
I lifted my left hand, shot out a careful pulse of power, and whoops . . . missed!
“Um . . .” Halcyon issued tentatively.
“I got it,” I muttered. Taking quick aim again, I loosed a second pulse from my palm. This one connected with its target just in time, dropping the serpent less than ten feet away from us to writhe in a ropey mass on the ground, lightly stunned, looking more like a regular snake with its delicate wings folded onto its back.
“If I may,” Halcyon said, politely offering his services as the serpent hissed at us and spread its wings.
“By all means,” I replied easily, much more agreeable now after having proved my marksmanship on, if not the first, then at least, the second shot.
With a
light mental flick, Halcyon sent the coiled serpent tumbling away from us.
“I should come down here more often to practice on moving targets,” I said.
“Your visits would be more than welcome,” Halcyon said with a smile, “and for more than just target practice.”
“By the way, it was nice of you to shield me in the portal, but not necessary.”
He looked at me quizzically. “I did not shield you.”
“You didn’t? But it didn’t hurt, at all.” Normally, transporting myself through the portal involved severe and biting pain, as if tiny blades were crudely hacking away bits of my flesh. “Why is that? What’s changed?”
Because something in me obviously had.
“If I were to guess, I’d say that your body has altered since reabsorbing Mona Louisa’s essence back into you, incorporating enough demon essence to make traveling the portal painless. And yet, curiously, you have been stable since then, with no other ill effects. Have you had any flaring of demon bloodlust?”
“No, none,” I said, considering what he had said. “So you’re saying the physical nature of my body has changed. Maybe the change occurred when you tore her out of me. Or when I was pulled down to NetherHell.”
“Or when her separated spirit, substantially weakened, reintegrated back with yours,” Halcyon said. Like a bandage slapped on just in the nick of time. Both of us had been trickling out vital energy like invisible blood, everything going out and nothing coming back in. “You said the touch of the gargoyle lord kept Mona Louisa from fading completely away,” Halcyon said thoughtfully.
“A gargoyle,” I said, continuing Halcyon’s line of thought, “who has the ability to turn anything it touches into stone, one of the most solid and stable substances.” And Gordane, the Gargoyle Lord, had been pumping heavy doses of his solidifying power into Mona Louisa there toward the end to keep her from fading completely away. “Do you think that’s why I’ve been free of demon symptoms?” Symptoms that had been growing progressively and distressingly worse until Halcyon had feared having to kill me if I lost control completely and began slaughtering people and drinking their blood. I had come perilously close to that edge before being yanked down to NetherHell, and all that had followed afterward.
