The carnivorous ways of the Aswang leave little room for love - much less a forbidden one between a queen and human girl. Little did Aswang Queen Catarina know, soon, her life would be changed by a plucky American biologist. A blue eyed, blonde adventurer, Rose Smith from California, who would make Catarina question all she knew, and want to make a human Her Aswang Woman King. ___ Catarina Rosales Marquez, 26, is the Aswang Queen of the Domminga Mountains, but she abhors eating humans. She has genetically engineered the fruits of her goddess Ikapati to produce human proteins in order to bring peace to Mindanao - but the Aswang do not trust this revolutionary, peaceful Queen - and are wary of the American biologist she has taken under her wing. Rose Smith is a German-American biologist doing her dissertation on the elusive, endangered Phillippines Eagle. Having studied the Tarsier in her undergraduate semester abroad in Manila, she fell in love with chicken adobo, pandesal - and Filipina women. Eager to be the first American biologist to do a longitudinal study of the Phillipines Eagle, she sets out into the Domminga Mountains on a bus with a one-way ticket - not afraid of the local's warnings of the rabid Iktapati Aswang Clan that eats humans, and roving bands of Tikbalang werehorses that stampede trespassers to death. When Catarina and Rose collide, it is oil and flame. Catarina, expected to marry a King, finds herself questioning the very cosmos of relationships - can she take a Queen, and a feisty American grad student at that? And can Rose come to terms with the elusive, seductive courts of the Vampiric Aswang? When the Iktapati clan rebels, the Tikbalang war, and the wind spirits coquette, Rose and Catarina must team up to save the humans of Mindanao - and the Phillipines eagle!
View MoreShe's got moonglow tits that bob in night waters, perfect round globes like curled-up white rabbits with black peaks of areola and gray nipples because she's all poison and ebony eyes and milky skin. She's curled up in my closet in a nest fit for the Zu bird and sweet seraph curses and she crows and speaks the language of birds that are girls, or girls that are monsters, with scaled legs and owl wings from ancient Sumerian carvings, but she's not perched on two lions, her thin wan legs are jumping on your bed and you're throwing pillows at each other and painting her lips and talons with a pop of cherry poison. It's all fun and games until arsenic kisses and slashed throats of words fly, it's all spin the bottle with succubi until neon lights at your favorite strip mall get busted to splinters by her rage. She's wailing, she's railing, and it's so fun to terrorize the neighborhood with your monster girl. She smells like mothball and tastes like whiskey but it's all swell, all is
"Rose, close your eyes, and imagine your heart's desire," Catarina whispered in a voice like rustling palm leaves on a jewel-swept wind. Catarina cupped her hands in the pool at the heart of the Ikapati Peace Gardens, where fruits and forages of such grand beauty played host to monkey, tapir, and tarsier alike.Rose closed her eyes, smiling with her pink lips. Catarina wondered how they tasted.Catarina plucked a white sampaguita flower and placed it in Rose's hands, with a drop of her blood from her incisor fang at her thumb."Open."Rose's blue eyes widened at the sight of the red blood upon the sampaguita. "Arabian jasmine. Or, in the Philipines, sampaguita. It smells so sweet… why your blood?""My blood has healing properties. All royalty that are imbued with the spirit of Anagoly – her living incarnation on Earth – can reverse the effects of age or wear and tear on telomeres with our blood. Do not be shy – by mixing it
After a feast of lechon, Rose had warmed up to Catarina's icy exterior. Finishing off the last of the Napa valley wine, all they did was flirt as Ambrosio served them roast pig and sigsig, grilled pineapple and papaya skewers."So, Rose, you have the Second Sight? Are you a Babaylan shaman?" Catarina asked, her plum lipstick and pert pink cheeks like a golden China doll. Catarina's amaranth eyes sparkled secretively.Rose blushed, then finished desert – strawberry a la mode Ambrosio had specially prepared. He cleaned their places with precision. "I'm a water witch. And my Second Sight says there is a curse on Aswang Mountain."Catarina flinched, a tear in her bright purple eye. Rose reached over to squeeze her hand. "Fuck, I'm pathetic. I'm failing as a Queen if I can't at least present a façade of control. What do you make of this curse, dear Rose?"Rose interlaced her fingers with Catarina's. Catarina traced her
Rose followed Ambrosio up a steep mountain pass, past lush crocodiles sunning themselves in a waterfall, and sea cows bathing in the breeze. A variety of deer – Visayan spotted deer, Chevrotain does, and a classic Philippine buck – were feasting at fallen fruit in the pool of the waterfall.The air around Rose misted. It smelled of a vast tree and vegetable terrace, and the air sparkled with mystery.Rose was right: around a bend, vast parts of Aswang Mountain had been carved into terraced paddies. An aquaponics system that harvested mountain rain had been set up to feed the most exotic of fruits – bread fruits and yuzu, durian and tamarind, beetles flying between bees as lush flowers – tropical roses – bloomed forth in a rich homage to Ikapati.Rose held her breath, the sight making her nearly weep. From the shade of the mountain, an elaborate, fantastical palace of jade and amethyst crystal, red adobe, and glass and rose wood jutt
Rose was dropped off. She was lost.Blondes were always lost.But, buoyant, Rose wandered on, whistling a Protestant hymnal.Her father, Bill Smith, a backwoods preacher in the hills of San Jose, had come from Tennessee. He had followed the promise of California gold. He had brought with him mountain charming, snake tongues and hoodoo magick.Rose was a river walker. Rose could charm warts off a priest. Rose could sing to burns and soothe them with her mountain woman magick.And... as for Rose's cooking - why, it could make any woman fall desperately in love!"Domminga Mountains... you're like the Smokies out in Tennessee, dense, thick, juicy. Like the best of mysteries, you won't yield the Philippine eagle to me easily. But that won't stop me from trying, eh, dear Domminga? Aswang or no, I won't fear a haint. Daddy always told me to be brave."Rose fiddled with her GIS tracker. The triangulation system of
Catarina surveyed her villa, a monkey running with a mango across the bamboo fence. She smiled at the monkey's antics. The curious animal was like her - on tenterhooks:Waiting for her story to begin, after two and a half decades. When would Mindanao change? It seemed stuck in cycles. The summer of fruits and feasts.The harvest. The monsoons. Jungle heat, verdigris shade. Motorcycles, pandesal sellers, hawkers of wares and woes. Catarina sipped on coconut juice spiked with human protein. A product of her laboratory.Catarina had dug into the bones of Domminga Mountains to construct her castle of wood, clay, crystals, and stone. Her abode straddled a waterfall, glorious atop a crest in the lush mountain jungle.It was like a great earth giantess consuming the wetness of Idiyanale, the goddess of justice.The Ikapati Aswang used to be just and merciful.That was a long time ago.They were the cruel but kind
Catarina Rosales Marquez surveyed her garden of fruit and vegetables in the windswept hills of Mindanao. The Aswang Queen of Domminga Mountains, Catarina ruled with an iron thumb, her sleek black hair like a whip, replete with eyes of black pearls that shone like a viper's.Catarina had a secret: she abhorred human flesh. Having gone to college for Biology in Manila, Catarina had genetically engineered fruits: mangoes, lanzones, calamansi for teas - everything jade and green under the sun of Bathala that produced the florid juices of the jungle - into sustenance for aswang, with human proteins.But the Aswang of Domminga Mountains were traditional: you were born, you died, and you feasted upon tender suckling babies, like stuck pig that bled providence of ruby hearts, silver alveoli, and tender bones for stews. Catarina had tried without fail to have the Ikapati Tribe, her queenship's name, to adopt her peaceful ways.Ikapati, who she
Catarina Rosales Marquez surveyed her garden of fruit and vegetables in the windswept hills of Mindanao. The Aswang Queen of Domminga Mountains, Catarina ruled with an iron thumb, her sleek black hair like a whip, replete with eyes of black pearls that shone like a viper's.Catarina had a secret: she abhorred human flesh. Having gone to college for Biology in Manila, Catarina had genetically engineered fruits: mangoes, lanzones, calamansi for teas - everything jade and green under the sun of Bathala that produced the florid juices of the jungle - into sustenance for aswang, with human proteins.But the Aswang of Domminga Mountains were traditional: you were born, you died, and you feasted upon tender suckling babies, like stuck pig that bled providence of ruby hearts, silver alveoli, and tender bones for stews. Catarina had tried without fail to have the Ikapati Tribe, her queenship's name, to adopt her peaceful ways.Ikapati, who she...
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