Sunny - Mona Lisa Craving

The man laid down the sword, away from me, I noticed, and crouched down so that we were more of an equal height. It was his injured son, however, who answered me.

“My lady, please. My brother, he needs a Lady of Light. I beg of you, please save him before it’s too late.”

WE WERE BACKonce more in the car, but I was sitting up, free. No silver handcuffs. I’d have felt better if I had been restrained but, nope. I was here of my own free will. By my own stupid volition. We were crossing out of my Louisiana territory into the bordering state of Texas, and I was sitting there doing nothing about it.

The rogues, it seemed, resided along the fringe of my territory. And they were not the only rogues who plagued me. Father and son were rogues as well, something that came as almost a shock to me. I hadn’t thought of them as such. They were dressed better and seemed, I don’t know, somehow honorable…even though they’d knocked me unconscious and taken me from my people. Which went to say just how screwed up my judgment was… continued to be. Maybe I could blame it on being hit in the head. It just knocked the sense right out of me, you know?

I don’t think that was going to go over too well with my guys when I got back home. If I got back home. I was trusting the word of two rogues—that they would return me safely back after my look-see, even if I decided not to help Dante, the reason for this all. How stupid was that? Very stupid, because I believed them. That was why I was here, playing the nice, sedate passenger.

We would be there in twenty-five minutes, they had said, and were accurate almost down to the minute. The little hand of the clock had just ticked up to eight when we turned into the driveway of a neat little home just off of County Road 257, fifteen minutes past the WELCOME TO TEXAS sign. It was a rural setting, looking totally normal and feeling that way, too, if you were just a human, which I was not.

A wave of power, of need, coming from the house punched me like a blow to the stomach, so strong and fierce it was. I gasped, sitting there in the car, more than a little shaken. “Christ, what the hell is that?”

Quentin, the boy, turned around in his seat, said with sorrow in his eyes, “That’s Dante, my brother.”

Holy crap. “How old is your brother, exactly?”

“We’re twins. He’s twenty, same as me.”

“Twins, huh?” And a whole year younger than me. How thrilling.

“We’re not identical.”

“No kidding,” I said. “You feel nothing alike.”

“No, we don’t,” Quentin said sadly. “He’s older than me by six minutes, which is why I was spared his fate.”

Lunara asseros , Nolan, the father, had called it, or lunar craving. Also known as Moon Madness, so named because those who had it were often driven mad by their unfulfilled need for lunar light. It was why I was here, and what I was supposed to cure, a rare affliction that could strike down a warrior. Not all. Usually just the strongest or the first born. Rare because it occurred only if a Monère warrior never Basked, never was exposed to the moon’s essential light pouring into them. Rare because almost every Monère Basked at least once in their lifetime. Unless you were born rogues, as these two boys had been, and had never known a Queen’s light.

What happens to those afflicted? I had asked.

If they do not receive the light that their Monère body craves in time…that their thinking mind needs to survive…then they burn out, go mad. Become nothing more than a ravening beast that must be put down and destroyed or he will go on to kill others.

I’d asked how long Dante had been ill.

Thirty-six hours now , had been the answer. That was a long time.

A brown-haired woman with warm brown eyes, standing half a head shorter than I, rushed out of the back door and hurried to the car. Her hair was coiled in a simple bun, and a gold ring adorned her left hand.

“Thank the Goddess,” she said fervently. “You brought a Queen.”

“My mother, Hannah Morell,” Quentin said, introducing us. “Mother, this is Mona Lisa. She’s come to help Dante.”

I didn’t quibble over his choice of words. Didn’t say that they’d kidnapped me. I stepped out of the car and I saw the surprise register in Hannah’s eyes when she saw that I was not restrained.

“And you’ve come of your own volition.” She sank down to her knees, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, gracious lady, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Please, get up.” I gestured awkwardly for her to rise, flustered at having her kneeling like that. “And I only promised to take a look at him,” I clarified.

“Quentin is hurt, Mother. A sword ran him through,” Nolan said as he opened the passenger door and gently lifted Quentin into his arms. “He needs your healing touch.”

I glanced back at the small woman rising to her feet. “You’re a healer?”

“Yes, milady.”

I turned with exasperation to father and son. “If you dunderheads had told me that in the first place instead of knocking me out, I’d have come with you voluntarily. God, I’d do just about anything to get a healer for my people.”

“Save my son,” Hannah said passionately, “and I will serve you.”

“You will be our healer?”

“Yes. My word, by the holy Goddess of Light.”

“Okay, good, good,” I said, immensely cheered and vastly more motivated now…until another powerful wave of that vibrant want, that stunning need, hit me, stealing my breath away. I swayed for a moment, then caught my breath and balance and followed Nolan and Quentin into the house.

It felt odd entering their home. Odd because the real reason I was being brought here was to have sex with their son. That’s right, sex. Not Basking, because we drew down the moon’s rays only during a full moon—that was several weeks away, and from what I’d felt, I didn’t think the boy could wait that long. But Basking wasn’t the only way Queens gave off light. Sex—pleasure—also made us glow.

Nolan laid Quentin down on a sofa in the family room next to the kitchen. Leaving him in Hannah’s care, he led me down the hall to his other son. “He’s in the study,” he told me.

I followed him, trepidation fluttering inside me like wild butterflies. I don’t know what I expected to see when he opened the door and cautiously entered. Maybe someone looking like Quentin, only more drawn and haggard, sitting in a chair, shaking with need. I should have known better. I should have known from the feel of his power that he would be nothing like what I expected. That he would be nothing at all like his brother.

My first thought was that this was not a boy. I would have called him a man, like I was a woman and not a girl despite my years, had he been a rational being. But he was not. There was nothing rational in those eyes. And what odd eyes he had, a blue so pale they were almost translucent. They were eyes that I had never seen before, but felt somehow as if I had. Those eyes sent a chill racing through me, as if a ghost had just tripped and fallen on my grave.

He was shackled at both wrists by a three-foot length of silver chain attached to the wall, allowing him to stand and move about. And he was doing that, straining against the taut length when I stepped in, his body quivering, his pale eyes fixed upon me with unthinking hunger. Making me thankful for the chains that restrained him, otherwise he would have been on me like a famished beast.

He had his mother’s brown hair, but lighter in color, honey brown. That was the only soft thing about him. His hair was an even longer length than his brother’s, pulled back in a ponytail that may have once been neat, but was far from that now. Hanks of hair, freed from the hair tie, hung about his face. Unkempt stubble shadowed his chin, and an earring, if you could call it that, punctured—not pierced, but punctured—his left ear. I’d never seen a Monère with an earring before. Probably because our bodies healed so quickly. But this man-boy creature had one. Not the neat, needle-thin hole you normally saw, but a much bigger one. A crude, hand-hammered gold bar almost pencil thick was punched through the earlobe. Much more primitive, like what you’d see among native tribes in Africa maybe. And that was pretty much a good word to describe him—primitive. Primal. Dangerous.