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.

Prison garb? I heard that other me wonder. She hadn't recognized the attire.

So he's human, flashed her thought within me, and the momentary alarm that had flared up over that rough and menacing face subsided beneath her smug superiority. Humans were inferior in strength and speed, she thought.

It was that familiar sneer in her voice that rang a bell in me. That made me think: Mona Louisa?

Of course. Who else did you think it was? came the contemptuous answer. Sounding exactly like that blond bitch of a Monère Queen whose essence and light I had sucked down into me.

But you're dead, I thought. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed her after I had done my unsuccessful best.

And now so are you. Her answer, and the rich, malicious satisfaction she oozed in imparting that news, froze me for a second. It had been my first thought, that I was dead, but still I had hoped for another answer. Hearing the words, feeling her absolute belief, totally flipped me out. I panicked completely. Started thrashing and trying to claw my way out of the thick void that surrounded me. My goal was up, toward the shimmering surface so seemingly far above, glimmering with faint, sparkling light. If I could just reach that surface, I knew that I would somehow be back in control.

Don't count on it, mongrel bitch, thought Mona Louisa smugly. You're weaker than I am now.

Which totally exasperated me. That's what got you killed before — underestimating people. Pay attention to what's happening around you! I told her.

Her attention snapped back on the strange human man as he crouched over her, his shaggy hair greasy and unkempt. "Now aren't you a purty thing," he purred. "I ain't had me a real woman for years, penned up the way I was like an animal. Another man just ain't the same thing as a woman, you know." His eyes, sweeping over me… her… us… glittered hard with lust.