Halcyon had come up with an even better idea. Don't try to hide it. Simply make them think it had occurred for another reason, hence my official recognition as Halcyon's mate. When I finally manifested my demon traits in front of Monère witnesses (those that tattled, which was bound to occur someday soon), they would think that I was becoming what I was becoming because I'd been contaminated by my demon lover through sex. Sex, after all, was how Monère usually shared and acquired gifts and power. And since such a relationship had never occurred before a demon taking a Monère mate all would blame it on that. And perhaps on the fact that I'd been down to Hell a time or two.
The real cause of this all, though, was the former Queen of this Louisiana territory, Mona Louisa. She'd swallowed down Halcyon's blood, and I in turn had sucked her light and demon-tainted essence into me. That was another secret, what I could do, Mortal Draining. It made me feel guilty that the blame would be placed on the wrong person, on Halcyon instead of me and that former bitch Queen that no longer existed, except sometimes in me. Mona Louisa was dead but not entirely gone. I felt her occasionally in my dreams.
As a vulture in her other form, she'd been able to fly, and sometimes I dreamed of soaring through the sky, of smelling death and rotting, decaying flesh down below, carrion. Even more odd, outside of dreams, in my waking state, in my demon awakening state, my eyes changed from my normal brown to a cool crystal blue Mona Louisa's eyes. A creepy thing, that.
I shrugged away my morbid thoughts and concentrated on the here and now: the full moon riding like a giant beacon of light above us, and my people waiting expectantly for me to draw down its life-extending rays. There was no real science to it. I just opened myself best way to describe it. Every child of the moon felt that distinct pull when the moon came into its full and ripe roundness. It was like an invisible, tugging rope reaching down to try to open up a door inside of you. I simply stopped resisting and let whatever was being pulled inside of me flip open and become just a conduit a conduit of lunar light. It shone down on me now like a spotlight, filled me up, filled me to bursting, then overflowed out from me.
Little butterflies of light flittered down from the heavens, swooped into me and spilled out like a cresting tide, washing over my people, darting into them, bowing their backs, lighting them up like flickering candles set aflame. We shone brilliantly for a long spun-out moment in time until that lunar light was swallowed and absorbed into us. Until we no longer glowed and skin became simply skin once more, not incandescent light, incandescent energy.
The last two times I'd done this, the only two times I'd done this, that was it. Over. Finis. Not so this time. This time was different. This time something hazed my vision. Something hazed the moon, actually, because that was what I was looking at.
Like a veil
being thrown across its bright surface, a shimmering darkness swept across the moon like spilling ink, blocking out the light like an eclipse, only faster, much faster. It occurred in the blink of an eye, so fast that I almost doubted what I was seeing. Would have doubted it had I not felt it as well a weight like a descending hand reaching down to cover me. Not that gentle tugging sensation but something much more heavy and forceful.
My people cried out in alarm and I could do nothing to stop it or respond to them as a black power slammed into me, closed like a gripping hand about me and swallowed me down into a dark and fathomless void.
CHAPTER TWO
The stillness of sound, the absence of it, was more noticeable to me because I was trapped somewhere inside my own body. I saw, I experienced sensations the blistering heat, the gray reddening of predawn light but they came to me filtered, through a thick and muffled layer, as if someone else was using my eyes and in control of my body and I was just along for an unwilling ride.
My taken-over body was lying on the ground. The very hard, very hot scorching ground. Get up! I screamed. But whoever was in charge now ignored me and just reveled for a moment in simply being back. Her thoughts. Her words.
Whoever she was, she was in no hurry to move in case it was all just a dream. I called it more of a nightmare.
She gazed up at the sky, all she allowed me to take inventory of. But it was worthy of note, actually. It was a scarlet, fractured sky, like it had been broken apart and put back together. And the impression wasn't just from the uneven layers of red firmament that transitioned one piece into another abruptly, but the twin suns themselves, shaped like the Chinese yin and yang symbols. As if a giant hand had plucked down a single sun, torn it apart, and cast the broken pieces back into the sky.
The light was abruptly blocked as a man, a mean-looking stranger, stood over us. No one I recognized. I just knew that he wasn't one of my people. The orange prison garb he wore was a really big hint.