On the Prowl

by Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance

  I felt myself being drawn into warm arms, and knew without words whose they were. After a few more minutes, the haze lifted, and I could see again. All around us, light danced on the sides of the warehouse, ripples of it making endless kaleidoscopic patterns on the formerly blank walls. It looked like the reflection of water, only about twenty times as bright. I scrunched up my eyes, almost blinded, and behind me, someone started to laugh.

  "I looked up your name," Heidar gasped out. "I was going to gift you with a new one, but I don't think I will now."

  "What?" I turned to try to see him better, and the kaleidoscope shifted with me, splashing new, wildly shifting patterns everywhere. Tanet slunk over, still in dragon form, and put a paw over his eyes in protest. I finally realized that, for whatever crazy reason, the source of the light was me.

  "It means 'shining one,'" Heidar said, tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks. "Who's glowing now?"

  Conclusion

  WE finally figured it out. It seems that, when I tried to steal the mage's power, I accidentally also took the rune's. It was July 3, so I managed to get rid of it that evening by putting on an early fireworks display as far out in the woods as we could get. I almost died of heatstroke before then, muffled in ten layers of clothing, which still didn't do much to hide the searchlight the rune had turned me into. I'll never be able to complain about Heidar glowing again.

  Nonetheless, I was glad to have the rune gone. No matter who had finally ended up with it, it would have been nothing but trouble. Heidar plans to tell his dad that it was a fake, which is what most Fey seem to have believed from the start. I don't know what Tanet will say. He left shortly after our little adventure, having had his opinion of the dangers of the human world strongly reinforced. I don't think I'll be getting a brotherly visit anytime soon.

  Heidar and I talked it over and decided to stay in the human world for awhile. My motivation is pretty simple: from what I understand, my twin is far more likely to manifest in Faerie than here. And although Heidar keeps telling me that I will come to love my other half, I'd just as soon avoid another journey of self-discovery right now. At least until she loses some of her baby fat.

  Heidar's reasons for staying are less straightforward. He says he doesn't want me back in Faerie until he can take some precautions against the Svarestri. They don't know as much about the human world as other Fey, so he thinks we'll have an advantage, should any show up here. But I think he's really trying to work up the nerve to tell his father that he's going to have a daughter-in-law who occasionally goes scaly.

  I'm still eating tofu, even though my twin is heartily sick of it. At least that's what I've been blaming all these new cravings on. I haven't resorted to grocery shopping at the pet store yet, but steak is starting to sound really good. Rare steak, with pickles.

  And maybe some hot sauce.

  Mona Lisa Betwining

  Sunny

  Chapter 1

  THE moon was full and round in the sky, a perfect circle of illumination. It called to us, rose some restlessness within us. Sap rising is what they called it in trees. In humans, they called it spring fever. In the Monere—the children of the moon—it was simply the time for Basking, a time to call down the moon's rays and bathe yourself in the renewing light. Only Queens could call it down and share it with others. That was what I happened to be, a Monere Queen, albeit not the usual kind. Not only Monere blood flowed within my veins, although that predominated, three-quarters of it. The last remaining quarter, however, was human blood. I was what they called a Mixed Blood, the first one ever to be a Queen.

  So much had changed in such a short while. Not long ago, I had been alone in a sea of humans, an ER nurse on the lonely island of Manhattan, crowded with people, only not mine. Now here I was in Louisiana, ruler of this territory, ruler of these people—more than four hundred Full Blood Monere constituents. Surrounded by my people. And yet still alone.

  Moonlight silvered the room, large and empty. Gryphon's room, my Warrior Lord. The first man I had loved, the first lover I had lost. He was dead now, although not completely gone. He'd had enough psychic power to make the transition to demon dead. But he existed now in another realm, far from my immediate reach.

  His scent still lingered along the pillow, on the clothes that hung yet in his closet. But it was faint, so faint now. Almost completely lost in the month I'd been gone when I had lost myself in my other shape, my tiger form, roaming the forest to escape my grief. Had I been purely human, I . would not have smelled that last barely there musky fragrance that had been my love. It made me grateful then, in a sad way, for my far acuter Monere senses. But soon, acuter senses notwithstanding, that last whiff of him would be completely gone. He'd been beautiful, like a dark angel, a wicked cherub fallen from the sky, tumbled to earth. White, luminous skin, hair dark as midnight, eyes blue as a summer sky. Would his face soon blur in my memory's eye? Would that fade from me also with time, lost along with the hope of a living remembrance of him?

  My hand spread across my stomach, my empty womb. I'd just finished my monthly flow, my red blood spilling down the toilet along with my hopes and dreams of a child from him. But it had been a faint hope, at best. The Monere are not a fertile people, and children are few and far among us.

  "Milady."

  I whirled to face the man standing in the doorway. Whereas Gryphon had been dark, this man was light, with hair as bright as sunshine, his eyes jade green instead of blue, his shoulders broader, his body more heavily muscled than Gryphon's lean, graceful physique. Whereas Gryphon had been beautiful, this man's features were too masculine, too bold for delicate beauty. He was handsome, strikingly so.

  Like a Greek god of old. And he was more than just a pretty face. He was my new master of arms.

  "Dontaine."

  "Milady. It is almost time for Basking."

  "Yes, I know. I feel the moon's call. Is it almost midnight?"

  He nodded, his eyes falling to where my hand unconsciously rested low over my belly.

  Face flushing, I dropped my hand away, embarrassed to be caught drifting like a ghost in my lover's empty room, mourning my empty womb.

  I moved toward the door but he did not step away, allow me to pass. I stopped a mere foot away and looked askance at him. He seemed to be struggling for words. "Did you wish to say something to me, Dontaine?"

  "Milady, I know you do not desire my touch, nor particularly my gift." He stopped abruptly, laughed harshly. "Speak truth… you abhor my gift." His gift was the rare ability to arrest his change halfway between man and wolf, his other shape. They called it a Half Form. I'd called it monstrous.

  "Dontaine, what I said…" I spread my hands open helplessly. "It was said in the heat of emotions—"

  "And after my touch made you lose control," he said deliberately, like one intentionally prodding a sore spot. His power affected me oddly when he was in his Half Form. If I touched him when he was in his half-shifted shape, it called forth my own beast—something that used to terrify me because my beast took me over completely then, but not any more. He'd been careful not to physically touch me since that first accidental triggering of my beast.

  I reached out my hand, laid it over his forearm. To prove to both of us that, See, it won't hurt us. Only it backfired. I'd forgotten that his power, his normal power, affected me differently, too. It was like shocking little jolts of electricity danced upon my skin for a moment. Pleasurable in an odd kind of way, but with a hint of sharper, edgier pain if it continued longer. Dontaine didn't exactly flinch at the contact and the reaction, but his jaw tightened, and his face became granite hard. Gently, he stepped back, pulled away from my touch, stopping that odd dancing sensation across our skin. "I know you said that you would never sleep with me. Ever."

  I flinched, hearing my words repeated back to me, verbatim. Words that had clearly been seared into his memory. And it hadn't even really been his fault. At the time, Gryphon, my lover, had been trying to throw me into Dontaine's bed
so that I might acquire his rare Half Form ability. Another oddity of mine. When Monere men mated with a Queen, they usually gained some of her power, and if lucky, some of her gifts. It worked that way with me, too, but went the other way as well. I tended to gain some of the men's power and gifts, as well. I was like a sexual vampire sucking up gifts instead of blood.

  "Forgive me," Dontaine said, seeing the expression on my face. "I did not wish to bring up painful memories for you, though I obviously did so in my clumsy attempt at explanation. What I am trying to say is that I come from a line that has proven fertile. Not just my sister and I. My mother Margaret had two brothers, and her father had a sibling as well. If you desire a child…" He stopped speaking and looked at me, his eyes pained by my rejection in the past, yet generous enough to offer this when he'd seen my need.

  "Dontaine—"

  "Please, before you rebuff me yet again, let me explain that what you feel will only grow stronger with time."

  My eyes widened upon hearing this. "What do you mean?"

  "Your yearning for a child. It comes to all Monere women of child-bearing age. An inbred instinct, a need that will grow even stronger with each passing year."

  "Oh. I'd thought it simply part of my grief for. Gryphon, not an in-built species propagation thing. Though I shouldn't be so surprised by it." Lots of other in-built goodies to ensure that our people spread wide and proliferated. It had worked, up to a point.

  "I can give you a child," he said.

  I looked at him, this extraordinarily proud and handsome man, humbling himself to offer me this tempting gift. But I could not take it. And he saw that answer on my face even before I spoke.

  "Thank you," I said, my voice soft, husky. "It is a most generous offer, but—"

  "But you still have another lover, Lord Amber."

  "And Halcyon," I whispered.

  "Ah, the Demon Prince, too." He was quiet for a moment, obviously searching his memory for when Halcyon and I could have come together. "When you helped him return to his realm," he finally said.

  Actually, it had been right after we'd rescued him from Queen Louisa, the former ruler of this land. She'd been a little pissed at having to give up her territory to me. But I didn't bother to correct Dontaine's assumption. No need to get into the details of when and how it had happened. Just that it had.

  "I understand, my Queen." He smiled ruefully. "You are young, the need for a child is not yet that strong, and your bed is not as empty as I thought." The light smile he'd forced upon his face dropped away. "But my offer will stand open to you…"

  Indefinitely. For as long as I must wait, were the words he did not say. And that scared me. That offer, that yearning for me. I didn't want it or desire it. Too many men had been willing to wait for me—first Amber, then my Demon Prince—and still I did not know why. Why they desired me, a woman common in looks, less than average in build, and of mixed mongrel blood. Life was too short to have to wait for such a tenuous possibility, even among the long-lived Monere, whose lives could stretch three centuries long. But just because you could live that long, didn't mean you did. Look at Gryphon.

  "Don't wait for me," I told Dontaine, looking up into that handsome patrician face. "You can have any woman you want. Go to them. Be with them instead."

  His eyes lowered and he bowed and stepped back, face impassive, body held stiffly with sudden tension. As if I'd struck him a literal blow. "As my Queen commands," he said, his voice as blank as his face, both carefully wiped clean of all expression.

  He turned to leave, and I had a horrible feeling that something was amiss. I almost let him leave. But my instincts were crying out that something was wrong, that his reaction was too strong just to be from my rebuff alone.

  "Dontaine, wait please," I said, reluctantly prolonging the agony for both of us. "You said 'As my Queen commands.' You meant that as a formality, right?"

  "I am not certain what you are asking, milady."

  I struggled for the proper words. "You used that as a polite phrase, like the English would say, 'Long live the king.' Not as an actual command, right?"

  "You mean," Dontaine said carefully, "that it wasn't? A command, that is?" He looked up, his green eyes lovely and unsure, an odd look to see in that usual arrogant face.

  "Good God, no! Did you think it was?"

  "Yes," he said to my shock.

  "Oh," I said faintly. "Well, good thing I stopped you then. What… uh, exactly did you think I was telling you to do?"

  "To go sleep with our unmarried women. Impregnate them."

  Some of it was starting to make horrible sense to me. "Because you told me that you come from a fertile line."

  He nodded.

  "And you thought I'd use that information to increase our population." And the wealth of my territory. It wasn't just monetary income that counted as prosperity here. It was also in the number of women, usually far outnumbered by males. And in the rare female offspring, of which his line had proven capable of generating.

  "You thought I was putting you out to stud," I said with shocked dismay, and had a sudden horrible thought. "Is that what your old Queen, Mona Louisa, did to you?"

  "No. She wanted me for herself, even though no child came from our union." He smiled grimly. "Then it became a forked prong for her. She dared not put me out to stud then, as you called it, though it would have profited her to do so. If I proved fertile with other women, it would only prove her barrenness. But with you… you do not desire me in your bed. It would have made sense to use me elsewhere."

  "Like putting out a stallion, or using a prize bull to service all the available female stock." I shook my head at the thought. "It's not as easy as that, surely. Handsome though you are, some women would have affections, desires elsewhere. Not every woman would have wanted or accepted you."

  "It would not have mattered," he said simply. "If I had been ordered to service them, none of us would have had any choice in the matter."

  "That's barbaric," I said, aghast.

  "In the human value system you were raised up in, perhaps. But our women are brought up expecting no say in their choice of mates."

  "You're kidding," I said. "Who decides then, their fathers?"

  "No, our Queens. Access to a woman is usually granted as a reward to our Queen's most loyal men or for special feats of service, though some men are given bedding privileges if they come from a fertile line."

  "God," I whispered. "And I thought it was just the men who had it bad here." Warriors who grew too powerful were usually killed by their Queens. "That's horrible," I said, "to have no say in whom you marry."

  "I made no mention of marriage, milady. Very few are granted that privilege. Most unions decided by the Queen are temporary, lasting only several full moons. Only couples paired for breeding purposes are usually granted several seasons together to try and bear a child. Or, if one came from a proven richly fertile line, such as I, he would be designated to a group of women to lie with during that time, not just one."

  I was appalled. "Is… is that what everyone is expecting me to do, to tell which men to go to which woman's bed?"

  "Yes."

  "Jesus Christ."

  His eyes fixed upon me intently. "Do you not mean to follow that tradition?"

  "Hell, no."

  "Then what will you do?"

  "Let them choose among themselves whom they would like to"—I flapped my hand—"sleep with, marry, whatever. As long as both parties desire it," I tacked on hastily. Best to make things crystal clear among these archaic people. "No raping allowed."

  "A very liberal concept, milady," Dontaine murmured, his face and eyes inscrutable so that I did not know if he approved of the idea or not. But it didn't really matter if he did. That was what I was going to do.

  "Please let everyone know this. That it is my wish for them to seek out their own lovers, spouses, their own happiness. God, I'd hate to be responsible for that."

  "Freedom of choice, and happiness." He murmur
ed it like it was something foreign to him. "A very human idea."

  I gave a short laugh. "Well, no surprise there. I'm partly human." And I was clinging to my human ways quite fiercely.

  "That applies to you, too," I said more quietly. "That's what I meant before. Go find a woman you like and be with her. But only if you wish to. It's the same thing I told my guards before we came here." And their surprise then should have given me a clue. I was still learning the ropes of being a Queen, of being Monere. And still finding some of those ropes hard and rough to grasp.

  "As my Queen commands." He bowed and stepped back, allowing me to finally pass through the door. In the hallway, I unfurled my senses a little, and listened and heard nothing in the house, only a humming of slow heartbeats in the distance, out in the forest.

  "They're all waiting for us," I said with surprise as I quickly wound my way down the spiral staircase, my long black skirt billowing up around me so that I no doubt looked like a balloon about to take off. Or a bloated black widow spider that had just sucked all the blood out of the poor male she'd mated with, I thought darkly. Black was what Queens were expected to wear, and for tonight, I humored them by wearing a long black formal gown and leaving my dark hair flowing loose down past my shoulders, though jeans, sneakers, and ponytail were more my usual style.

  "Careful, milady. No need for haste, we are not late." Mild humor laced Dontaine's voice. "And even if we were, the ceremony cannot start without you."

  True enough, but still I. walked quickly out into the night, Dontaine beside me, a tall guarding shadow. The wind blew cool and soothing across my restless skin, and the night welcomed us with dark embrace, folding us into its silent shadows as we stepped into the forest. The swish of my sweeping hem across the plants and foliage of the forest ground were the only sounds that marked our passage. Aha, I thought dryly, another reason why they wanted their women in long skirts, so they would be easier to keep track of… or chase down. A shiver prickled my skin at the phantom image of unwilling women fleeing, being pursued by warriors awarded rights to their bodies by their Queen.