“The better to run in if we need to,” I quipped, lacing them on.
Aquila looked quite pale after hearing us recount our adventures, and remained sharply alert when I returned our borrowed clothes back to the clothesline. The twenty dollars from the tourist looked like it was going to be a permanent donation, however. There was no sign of him.
The whop-whop-whop of a helicopter headed us back to the waterfront to await its arrival, drawing a crowd of curious onlookers as it landed like a giant metal gnat on the rippling green lawn.
“Quentin’s here,” Dante said. Even though he spoke in a normal tone of voice, I was still able to hear him over the noisy whirling of the helicopter blades.
“Who’s Quentin?”
“My twin brother.” With a broad smile, the first time I had ever seen Dante smile so openly, he stepped forward to greet his sibling. The young man who jumped out of the landed craft was seriously good-looking, I noted, with a face like a male model. They embraced with a quick, hard hug.
The wattage in the young man’s grin rivaled the brilliance of the sun. “Milady. Aquila,” Quentin said, greeting us easily. “Let’s get on board.”
Dante’s father and another man I didn’t recognize were seated in back. I climbed in and took the seat next to the stranger while Dante slung himself into the last seat beside me. Quentin and Aquila sat in front next to the pilot.
As soon as we were all buckled in, we lifted back into the air.
“I know you’re Dante’s father,” I said to the large man sitting on the end, deliberately leaving the headset off so the pilot couldn’t hear us. “But I don’t remember your name.”
“I’m Nolan, milady. Nolan Morell.”
“Where’s the other guy? The one who could turn invisible?”
“Chami’s waiting for us back in Mexico,” Nolan said. “The helicopter could only fit six besides the pilot.”
I glanced at the man next to me who had been watching us silently. He had dark hair and eyes and his skin was deeply tanned like the Mexican natives here. His dark coloring was offset by the white silk shirt and the tan leather gloves he wore, lending a quiet, subdued elegance to his otherwise average appearance.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a loud voice, thinking him human like our pilot, as I peered more closely at his face. “You seem oddly familiar. Do I know you?”
It seemed as if all breath suspended inside the craft for a moment.
“My name is Halcyon,” came the quiet reply, as if the man knew he didn’t have to raise his voice above the noisy thrumming to be heard by me.
Halcyon . . . I had heard that name recently. Then it came to me—when and where, and why he had seemed familiar. “This Halcyon?” I asked, lifting out the necklace I wore around my neck with the cameo that bore the face of the man sitting next to me. The face I had seen briefly in flashback.
“Yes.”
His confirmation threw my world spinning topsy-turvy once more.
I wanted to make him clarify exactly what he was confirming—that he was what Dante had called him, a demon. But I couldn’t, not with Dante’s other words echoing in my ears.
The woman before you is the High Prince of Hell’s chosen mate.
“The woman” being me.
I swallowed with a mouth that was suddenly dry as I turned to Dante and asked, “This is the Halcyon you were talking about?”
Dante nodded. “Yes.”
“I thought you were making all that stuff up to try and scare Mona Sierra.”
“No,” Dante said, all his joy over seeing his brother draining away into familiar grimness. “I made nothing up. Everything I said was true.”
SEVENTEEN
I SAT THERE in shock, surrounded by my lover, and what—a demon?
What exactly did chosen mate entail? And that was just the first wave of confusion. More came as I remembered everything else Dante had said . . . everything he had been called.
Queen killer.
I had ignored Dante’s words during our capture, putting it down to the most outrageous and creative bit of lying I’d ever heard.
Everything I said is true.
I remembered his other wild, incredible claim: that I was this supposed Mona Lyra reincarnated. And that he had been the one to kill Mona Lyra.
Queen killer . . .
And that I—Mona Lyra—had taken his father’s life and cursed Dante with my dying breath.
It was a tale crazier than the most bizarre Greek tragedy. Unbelievable.
Everything I said is true . . .
“Do you wish me to leave?” Dante asked, snapping me out of the long silence I had fallen into.
Why did you leave me? I had asked him. And his answer: Because you desired that I go.
“If I say yes, what will you do?” I asked. “Jump out of the helicopter into the sea?”
“Yes, if you wish.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dante.” My slight smile seemed to surprise him. “I’m not giving you up after all the trouble I just went to. The only way I’ll let you leave is if you want to. Do you?” I asked quietly.
“No.”
“Good, because I’m not sure I could give you up even then.” I wrapped my hand around his and felt his broad fingers close around my slimmer ones. “We’ll have to talk more about all those things you said, and fill in all those gaps in my memory, but going by my actions, I don’t think they’ll be insurmountable. In the end, I came after you, didn’t I?”
“How much memory did you lose?”
The question, and voice, drew my attention back to Halcyon. “A pretty large gap. The last thing I remember is working as a nurse in Manhattan. Nothing after that. Not even moving out of the city.”
“How do you feel?” Halcyon asked with calm, focused intensity.
“Fine—no injuries. Everything’s healed.” I was more aware of him now. Aware of a faint sensing of his presence, and an odd lack of sound and movement that I suddenly accounted for with a rapid skittering of pulse. He wasn’t breathing. Nor were there any heartbeats, none that my sensitive ears could discern. I sat there listening for a long time in vain. I was incredibly tired but on edge, finding, despite my lethargy, that I was simply unable to fall asleep next to someone who didn’t have a heartbeat.
We landed at the heliport in Cancun International Airport and found Chami awaiting us there.
“Milady, forgive me. I know you don’t remember us but . . .” The slender, curly-haired fellow who had displayed the alarming knack of turning invisible swept me up in an unexpected hug. “It’s good to have you back,” he said, releasing me. The man was much stronger than he appeared.
It was an odd thing being embraced so warmly by someone who was essentially a stranger to me. A stranger I had inadvertently caused harm to. “I’m sorry about before,” I said awkwardly. “About getting you injured.”
“No matter,” Chami said, brushing it easily aside. “You are here now. Safe.”
“Any sign of Roberto?” I asked. “The drug lord who took me?”
“Nope. More’s the pity,” Chami said, his eyes flashing with heat. “Would have liked to have gone a second round with that bastard.”
We made our way to the terminal for private jets and boarded a comfortable jet without difficulty. Without passports or any form of identification, in fact. Trusting in the men’s ingenuity and talent, I left all the details of finessing and compelling to them, too tired to do anything other.
With effort, once aboard the plane, I pushed back the drowsiness that clung to me like a sticky web. At Nolan’s simple question of “What happened?” I filled everyone in on what had happened up to our escape from Roberto. Dante took up the rest of the tale after that, while I lounged back in my seat and listened with half-closed eyes.