Sunny - Mona Lisa Eclipsing

“You have caused my men much trouble,” she said in lightly accented English. Her voice, like her eyes, was hard and authoritative. It was a bit disorienting. Like hearing a soldier’s voice coming out of a pretty doll’s mouth. Did she command all these hundred-odd poorly clad people surrounding us? Most of them were men, less than a handful were women, and even fewer, children. She seemed way overdressed standing next to her people in the long black gown she wore.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Wasn’t my intention. We weren’t trying to bother them. Quite the opposite.”

She assessed me coolly. “They said you broke our silver nets as easily as ripping through paper.”

“I’ll be happy to repay you their cost,” I offered.

She sneered. Not the answer she was looking for apparently. “And yet you are held by them now.”

Because you drugged me! I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut. No need to give the enemy any more knowledge or advantage than they already held. But it seemed they had already figured out the reason for my weakness.

“Our venom affects you oddly,” she said in chill observation.

“Venom?”

“Viper venom.” She gave me a most unpleasant smile. “It kills humans but acts only as a brief sedative to those of our kind. It affected you more than him.” By him , I assume she meant Dante. Had he been knocked out by it also?

“You have the faint smell of human in your blood, and yet you feel as powerful as a Full Blood Monère.”

I didn’t respond. She hadn’t asked a question, after all.

Her voice suddenly dropped down into an ugly snarl. “What are you doing here, another Queen in my territory?”

Her territory? Had that leisurely drift down the river brought us closer to danger instead of taking us farther away from it? And here was that Queen stuff again. If it was confusing to me before, it was even more so now with a thick head and dulled wits. I bypassed it and stuck with what I knew. “We were running away from your men. They were the ones who drove us here; it was not our intent to trespass. We will be happy to depart as soon as you release us.”

Her cold smile told me it would not be that easy. “Of even more interest, what are you doing in his company, this Queen killer?”

Huh? “What Queen killer?”

“Him!” Her finger speared at Dante.

“Dante? He’s not a Queen killer.” Was he?

“Dante . . . is that what he calls himself now?” An alarming mixture of hatred and vicious satisfaction glittered her obsidian dark eyes. “He is the most legendary Queen killer in our history. And not just merely for the death of my mother.”

I swallowed sickly. Oh, crap.

“She deserved killing,” Dante said clearly, heard by all. “I spared your life, an innocent child, but that seems to have been a mistake.”

A child , I thought in confusion? How old had Dante been when he had killed her mother? Five? Had he lied to me about his age, or was this angry Queen younger than she looked?

She whirled to face him like a rabid badger. Small and mean—something that could tear your limbs off. “So you admit it,” she growled.

“Yes. I am who you seek.”

Triumph and an almost sick ecstasy filled her face, as though she had just gotten the confession she had expected to take hours to beat out of him. She sucked in a harsh breath in delight. “Queen killer. I have waited a lifetime to meet you again.”

“I dispensed justice. Evil deed for evil deed. Your mother was one of the most vicious I have ever met in my long existence,” Dante said with a calmness I sure wasn’t feeling. “Is what I did any less foul than you do, murdering other Queens?”

“It is not forbidden for a Queen to slay another Queen who challenges her.”

“Whereas if a male does the same, it breaks our most sacred law.” Dante’s lips tautened with cynicism. “You have twisted our law into gross turpitude, Mona Sierra. If I am guilty, you are guilty ten times more so. Even from far away, I have heard of your slaughter of other Queens.”

A kind of panic was fast clearing my mind. My body, on the other hand, still felt weak, my muscles unable to obey the urgent command I sent to break free of these bonds.

“This Queen with me is different from the others,” Dante said.

“Yes, she tried to help you.” Mona Sierra made it sound like the most heinous crime ever committed.

“This Queen is the one who started my legend.” He addressed his next words to me. “Show them your palms.”

With my hands tied above my head, all it took to do so was uncurling my hands. I opened my palms, wondering all the while what Dante was up to. Nothing to see there but my moles. They were unusual, yes, but not so unsightly as to cause the vastly startled reaction that ran like bolts of lightning among those gathered. More than a few choked out a name. Mona Lyra .

Mona Sierra strode over to me, stopping a foot away to stare intently at my hands. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Lisa Hamilton,” I answered, wetting my lips.

“She is Mona Lyra reincarnated,” Dante said, his voice ringing out.

Mona Sierra whirled like a scalded cat. “Then why was she helping you? If she is Mona Lyra, why would she help the one who killed her?”

It was more than confusing now. It was becoming surreal. And I had absolutely no idea what was going on, or what Dante was trying to accomplish with this fantastic claim of his.

“She does not know or remember,” he said.

“That may explain her actions, but not yours. Why would you try to help the one who killed your father and laid this curse upon you? No,” she said, shaking her head, “you lie.”

“You see with your own eyes the Goddess’s Tears embedded in the heart of her palms. The mark of favor from our Mother Moon never seen in any other.”

The feeling of unease was palpable now among the crowd. I could even see it subtly affecting Mona Sierra. She shook it off. “Pah! Nothing but lies. She is tainted with human blood.”

She made that sound akin to a butt-ugly mongrel dog.

“This Queen is not one you should toy with,” Dante said with calm reason. “Let her go. You have me—I’m the one you seek.”

Things became clearer then why he was making all these outrageous claims. He was trying to free me. A variation on the old take-me-but-let-her-go ploy.

“You bargain with nothing in your possession,” Mona Sierra spat back at him. “Nothing but false claims to try to trick us.”

“If you do not believe the mark of favor everyone sees plainly embedded in her palms, then believe this. The woman before you is the High Prince of Hell’s chosen mate. Kill her and you will bring down Hell’s wrath upon you.”

“Another lie. You grow desperate trying to save your little Queen.”

“She wears his necklace,” Dante stated.

Mona Sierra faced me again, eyes narrowed into slits. “That should be easy enough to disprove,” she sneered, reaching down my collar to lift out my necklace.

There was a flash of blinding light and the sharp smell of burning flesh. Mona Sierra’s scream shrilled the air. I blinked, momentarily blinded by the light. When I was able to see again, I saw the other Queen fallen in front of me, clutching her hand. Black burn marks were visible on her seared fingertips. Six hunters ran to her, pulling her away from me, eyeing me warily as if I had been the one responsible for hurting their Queen.

Not me. I didn’t do that , I wanted to babble but was not stupid enough to do so. If they wanted to account me powers I didn’t possess, far be it for me to correct their false assumptions. I wondered, though, how Dante had pulled off that impressive bit of magic. If he could do that, why the hell didn’t he free himself?