“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?
“What did you do?” Mona Sierra hissed from behind the wall of her men.
I didn’t have a clue and didn’t know what to tell her. It was Dante who answered. “It was the necklace you touched. It reacts against those who intend harm against her.”
She rapped out a command in Spanish, and a hunter with the red mark on his forehead advanced with knife drawn.
“Uh, Dante . . .” I said uneasily.
“Be still,” Mona Sierra snapped, pushing her men aside. “We only wish to see your necklace.”
I swallowed as the hunter carefully inserted the tip of his knife down my shirtfront and drew out the necklace with his naked blade. “The chain is silver,” he murmured in heavily accented English. It was odd hearing words come out of his mouth. Like hearing a wolfhound unexpectedly talk.
Another murmur of unease rippled through the crowd.
“She has many differences—a special Queen,” Dante said loudly. “Even if you cannot read the script, you can see the likeness of the Demon Prince clearly on the necklace”—I startled over that pronouncement—“declaring his protection over her. Beware, lest you make yourself an enemy you cannot afford.”
Mona Sierra drew near enough to peer at the necklace, as did the other hunters surrounding her. Even I craned my neck down to catch a glimpse. Demon Prince? Was that whose likeness was carved on the cameo? Was there even such a person, or was Dante making it all up?
“Prince Halcyon felt that touch, Mona Sierra,” Dante said, “when you grabbed the necklace just now. He will know that someone with ill intent came in contact with his beloved, and may even now be on his way here.”
He was spooking them with a bogeyman and it was apparently working. Two young children in the crowd started crying and were quickly shushed by their mothers.
“You are trying too hard to convince me to let her go,” Mona Sierra said warily.
“How about this?” Dante offered. “If you release her and allow her to go on her way, you have my word that I will not seek reprisal upon you or your people when I am reborn again. Otherwise you have my promise of vengeance.”
More mad claims atop other mad claims, of reincarnation and curses, Hell and Demon Princes, and now rebirth. Rebirth after they killed him, I presumed. And yet, no one was laughing. I didn’t know whether just Dante was mad or all of them.
The knife eased away and the necklace dropped down, clearly visible to everyone. They eyed it with fascinated revulsion, as if it were a viper about to strike them.
“Enough,” Mona Sierra proclaimed. “I will not allow you to distract us with your baseless, futile claims. Shave off his beard,” she said, gesturing to Dante. “I wish to see his face and remember what it looks like.”
Her words broke the still silence, and people moved once again, murmuring among themselves as Mona Sierra and her men left.
A woman came to tend to Dante. First the beard and mustache was trimmed with scissors, then the stubble was shaved off with a disposable razor—odd signs of civilized living dispersed among the, if not quite squalor, then clearly not wealthy, living conditions here. She fussed with his hair, braiding it back in the fashion the men here wore their hair, and then stepped away.
My breath puffed out in surprise at the first clear sight of Dante’s face. He was indeed twenty years old, a young man’s face atop a grown man’s body.
I thought he had looked wild before with all that hair covering him, but now, clean shaven and unadorned, he was even more dangerous looking. He wasn’t handsome so much as striking, with a proud nose, a clean, chiseled jawline, and those queer eyes . . . so old and cold. Silver-blue. As distinctive as his saber-toothed tiger form would be. Looking into those eyes, you could almost believe that he had lived many lifetimes, dying and being reborn again and again.