Sunny: Mona Lisa Eclipsing

Nolan had built up more immunity to sunlight than most Monères, having raised his children among humans. He was one of the few warriors, in fact, who had a light tan. But still, no need to tempt fate; I kept the shade firmly drawn. We’d be getting plenty of hot sun on the Island of the Swallows—what Cozumel translated to in the Mayan language. I wondered for a moment how Chami was faring and where in the hell he was keeping himself. There was little free space in the main cabin; just because he was invisible didn’t mean people couldn’t bump into him. But no incident occurred, making me wonder if he had stowed away in the baggage compartment. No danger from the sun there. The chilling temperature might even be refreshing to a Monère; if the lack of oxygen was uncomfortable to a Full Blood, it certainly wasn’t fatal. Only sun or silver poisoning, cutting off the head, or ripping out the heart killed a Monère. That hardiness, of course, didn’t apply to me, being a mongrel Mixed Blood. But hey, I had some great compensation. Silver didn’t weaken or poison me, and I could walk in the sun without being toasted into a gooey, overdone, dying mess.

After a stopover and change of plane, we landed and stepped out onto Cozumel’s runway at four thirty in the afternoon. The sunlight was bright and fierce. I hadn’t thought of that when I had okayed Aquila’s coastline-hugging flight. Had Aquila taken sunlight into consideration when he had quoted that “a-little-over-twenty-four-hours” time estimate? Was he still flying during the day? Did his feathers protect him to some degree?

Crap, I wish I had thought to ask him all this before. I turned to Nolan and asked him instead, “How are you doing? Is the sun bothering you?”

“Nothing intolerable,” was his answer. But I noticed he walked quickly off the hot tarmac into the more welcoming shade of the island-style terminal.

I felt Chami’s presence as soon as our luggage came into sight on the conveyor belt. Most Monère had a definitive presence you could feel when in close enough range. Chami, however, had the rare ability to mute his energy so that you didn’t feel or sense him, allowing him to get within deadly striking distance of another Monère before they were aware of the danger. The perfect assassin. That Chami hadn’t bothered to mask his presence meant he either felt no reason to or was too weak to waste energy doing so. I squelched the alarm that flared at that thought, reminding myself that all my guys were big boys. Powerful ones, too. They could take care of themselves.

Only when our luggage was safely claimed and we had passed through customs, which was no more than a quick stamp in our passports, did I speak to air beside me. “I was wondering where you were, Chami. Have a nice flight with our luggage?”

“Nothing that I would recommend,” Chami said, dropping his camouflage to become just another guy walking out of a nearby men’s restroom. He joined us with a boyish smirk, looking all of twenty-five, tall and wiry thin with adorable curly brown hair. “Lousy seating and no service, but it got the job done. You wouldn’t believe how roughly they handle our luggage, though. Not that we have anything useful in them.” Flying commercial meant no weapons, nothing that would draw attention to us. I felt almost naked going without a blade.

After picking up a rental car, we drove downtown and stopped at a dive shop to buy some knives—a weapon of sorts, albeit of a fishy kind. Still, a sharp blade was a sharp blade, even though it wasn’t silver. I immediately felt better with it strapped to my waist. Nolan and Chami picked up sun-blocking T-shirts and wide-brimmed sun hats, the type that draped down in back, protecting the neck as well as shading the face. With sunglasses in place, smeared with SPF 100-plus sunscreen, they were good to go. Or as good to go as they could be in this hot weather.

We checked into a hotel, unloaded our stuff, and I called the local tour company.

“Adventures Naturale,” a girl answered with a musical island accent.

“I was interested in booking your jungle horseback-riding tour,” I told her.

“For when, please?”

“Today.”

“Sorry, ma’am, too late. We’re completely booked. How’bout two days from now?”

“We’re not staying that long,” I said, frowning. “What about tomorrow?”

“Nothing. We’ve been real busy since all the news coverage. You another reporter?” She sounded hopeful.

The no I was about to say impulsively changed to, “Yes, I’m with the”—I cast wildly around for a name and said the first one that popped into my mind—“ National Enquirer . Can I ask you some questions, Miss . . . ?”

“Francisca Montalbo,” she supplied eagerly, and spelled out her name for me. Getting detailed information from her was very easy after that.

Armed with a detailed map of the island and the rough location of where Dante had been spotted, we drove six miles south to El Cedral, touted as the oldest town in Cozumel. It turned out to be a little village with lots of stuff to sell to tourists. The Mayan ruins it was famed for was an old, disappointing rock and concrete building the size of an outhouse that we couldn’t go into, but since we weren’t really tourists, that didn’t bum us out.

Ours wasn’t the only car parked along the road. I counted three jeeps and four other rental cars, but only saw two tourists browsing the little street-side shops. The other occupants of the vehicles seemed to have disappeared into the jungle down the horseback path, intent perhaps on finding a saber-toothed tiger.

With the sun glaring down on us, we set out on foot. Once out of sight, we stretched our legs and senses, loping quickly down the trail. It was a jungle but the foliage was only just above our heads; it did nothing to shelter us from the direct rays of the brilliant sun. Less than a mile out we came to an abrupt halt, or rather Nolan did. Since he was in the lead, Chami and I stopped as well. “Do you sense that?” Nolan said, gazing ahead.

“Sense what?” I asked, wiping my brow. I was hot and sweaty, but the other two were panting already, their body’s mechanism for expelling heat. Their skin beneath the white paste of their sunscreen, I noticed, had deepened to a bright pink.

“There’s another Monère here, several miles north ahead of us. And it’s not Dante.”

“He has humans with him,” Chami added, sniffing the air. “Armed with guns.”

“We have to go back,” Nolan said, turning around.

“No,” I said, blocking his path.

“It’s not safe for you,” Chami murmured behind me.

Typical males, ganging up. So close . . . no way was I turning back.

“You said you sensed only one Monère.”

“With other men who are armed with guns,” Nolan answered. “We only have knives.”

“Then we’ll avoid him. Do you think he’s sensed us?”

“Likely not,” Nolan replied after a brief moment, confirming what I’d suspected, that Nolan’s and Chami’s senses were keener than most, likely something that increased with age and power. Theirs were certainly much better than my own ability. I couldn’t sense the other Monère yet, which meant that he probably hadn’t sensed us either. Goody.

“Plus, it’s only an hour until sunset. They’ll probably head back soon, before it gets dark.” I pulled out the map to study. “Instead of turning back, it makes better sense for us to cut east for several miles, then continue north, parallel to them, just out of their range.”

Doing so, however, turned out to be much harder than I’d expected. With no trail, we had to pick our way slowly and carefully through the thick brush so as not to make too big a racket and give ourselves away. Nor was hacking out a path acceptable for the same reason: too much noise.