“No, I met you in Texas near the border of your Louisiana territory.”
“Louisiana? What, I own property there?”
“Yes. Quite substantial property.”
“I do?” This was getting more and more bizarre. “Where did I get the money to buy property? First you tell me I know how to shoot a gun. Now you tell me that I’m apparently quite wealthy, too. Are you sure you haven’t mistaken me for someone else?”
Or maybe the answer was even simpler than that. Maybe he was crazy. Out of his mind.
“You’re a Queen. A Monère Queen.”
I was getting an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Monère?” I tested the word carefully. “Is that one of those small countries somewhere in Europe?”
“Nope.” He looked at me as if I were the unhinged one. “It’s not a country. It’s a race of people descended from the moon.”
With blurring speed, I snatched his automatic weapon away from him. Pointing the gun at him, the gun he had assured me I knew how to handle, I backed carefully away. “I’m sorry but I don’t know you, and the only memory I have of you is chained up in this wild, crazed state.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“In a word—yes.”
“You saved me from that. From going crazy.”
“How?”
“By sharing the moon’s light with me.”
His words halted my retreat as I recalled that other memory fragment I’d had. Of moonlight filling me up with indescribable energy, and, more recently, of my skin glowing, illuminated, along with Roberto’s.
“How much do you remember of me like that, in that wild state?” he asked.
“Just that you were shackled . . .”
“. . . with fleece-lined cuffs around the wrists and ankles.”
“Yes,” I whispered. Licking my lips, I asked, “How did I share the moon’s light with you?”
“By having sex with me,” he said plainly, pale eyes locked with mine. “Your skin filled with light and you shared it with me.”
The gun dropped limply to my side.
A part of my brain still screamed denial of everything he told me. Another part of my brain told me he was telling the god-awful, appalling truth. “So we’re . . .”
“Lovers.”
It was hard looking at a complete stranger who’d just announced that he had been intimate with me.
“My skin didn’t glow before when I had sex,” I said, grabbing onto something concrete, something that I knew for certain.
“Did you feel pleasure?”
“No.”
“Then your partners were human.”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that I’m not human.”
“But you are. You’re a Mixed Blood—one-fourth human, three-quarters Monère. The first Mixed Blood Queen in Monère history.”
There he went throwing that queen stuff at me, but I stayed on track, sticking to one thing at a time. “My skin glowed just from kissing Roberto, even though we didn’t have sex.”
Dante’s hands, I couldn’t help noticing, curled into fists. “We glow only with pleasure, and only at the touch of another with Monère blood.”
“I didn’t know Roberto was a bad guy when he kissed me,” I offered lamely, driven, for some reason, to explain that to him.
“Do you believe me now?”
“Yeah I guess . . . though I still have a lot of questions.”
“They’ll have to wait. Can you get the knife from the car? It’s on the front dash.”
“Why?”
“To dig the bullets out of my back.”
“I thought you were kidding.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I’m a nurse, not a doctor,” I felt compelled to point out.
“I know. Don’t shoot me,” he warned, going to the passenger seat. I watched carefully as he retrieved the knife. Gesturing me over, he handed the blade to me, hilt first, then, unbuttoning and removing his shirt, he presented me with his bare back, hands braced against the side of the car.
I cast an appalled glance at him, which he didn’t see. “I don’t have anything to sterilize the knife with.”
“I’m a Full Blood Monère. We don’t get infections. If you don’t cut it out now, the wound will heal over and make it even harder to get the bullets out.”
It had been less than an hour since he had been shot, but the wounds were already starting to knit together at the edges.
“Mona Lisa, you have to do it now. We don’t have much time.”
“Why? You think Roberto will still come after us after the way you threatened him?”
“He’s a wealthy and powerful, arrogant drug lord who grew up faster and stronger than anybody else. This is probably the first time he’s ever been humbled, so, yes, I think he’ll come after us. You should have let me kill him.”
“You know, you’re pretty bloodthirsty for a twenty-year-old.” More than a little ticked off at him and the situation, I stomped around the car and rummaged inside. Nothing but a box of tissues, but at least we had that.
“Okay, brace yourself.” I felt him tense as I laid my hand over the first bullet hole and let my senses sink down into the wound. When I had ascertained the depth of injury, I moved to the second hole. “The bullets are in pretty deep,” I muttered. “Here goes.”
I prodded gently with the sharp tip of the knife and cursed when the wider part of the blade started cutting into his flesh as I inserted it deeper. “Goddammit, the knife is too wide.”
“Don’t stop,” he said through clenched jaw as the knife clinked up against the bullet.
“It’s hurting you and you’re bleeding. A lot!” Enough to completely soak the wad of tissues I had pressed to his back.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as the silver stuck inside me—burns and acts like poison. Weakens me. Just get the damn things out. I’ll heal up.”
I was unable to get any leverage and finally had to remove the knife and make a new incision along the outer edge of the wound, cutting deep down into muscle before I came to the end of the bullet. Deep enough that I started worrying about puncturing his lung. Deliberately cutting into him was one of the most horrible things I’d ever had to do. Then came the awkward maneuvering with the blade.
He endured the torture in silence while my hands shook. Tears ran in a silent stream down my face. Stupid tears, I thought, wiping my face against my shoulder. He was the one hurting, not me. “It’s out,” I said hoarsely after what seemed like eternity.
“Get the other one out.”
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
He turned impatiently. Stilled at the sight of my tears. “Don’t cry,” he said, looking unexpectedly bewildered. “It feels much better with the silver out.”
“Oh yeah? You didn’t see the mess I made of your back,” I said, damning the tears. A sob jerked out of me and then I was crying, really crying, no longer silent.
How oddly natural it felt for him to draw me against him, press my tear-drenched face against his bare chest.
“This is so screwed up,” I muttered against his hard shoulder. “You should be the one crying, after what I just put you through.”
“I know this must be confusing . . . overwhelming to you. You’ve been so brave.” He stroked my hair with a tenderness that made the tears flow even more. “I just need that last bullet out, and then I can start healing and be strong for you.”
“God! You don’t ask for much, do you?” I snorted and pushed away from him. Scrubbing my face dry, I took a deep, cleansing breath. “Please tell me there’s something else we can try to get that last bullet out of you.”
He hesitated.
“There is, isn’t there?” I said, pouncing. “Tell me.”
“You have an affinity for metal,” he finally said.
“I do?”
“You can draw metal objects to you with these.” Taking my hands, he stroked the moles embedded in my palms.
I blinked down at my hands. “How?”
His lips twisted wryly. “I don’t know. That’s why I hesitated to bring it up, but I’ve seen you do it. Watched you pull two swords out of their sheaths from a distance of over ten meters away and fly them into your hands.”
It seemed fantastical, what he was saying, almost unbelievable were it not for the fact that I had seen other fantastical, unbelievable things happen tonight.