Mona Lisa Awakening m-1

by Sunny

  The two looked at their money, then looked at each other and smiled. They walked away, not even bothering to say good-bye, busy counting their money—three thousand dollars exact.

  "Aquila, how good are you at the wheel?" I asked.

  "I believe I drove one of these things when I was eighteen. That was about a hundred years ago."

  "Good enough for me. Take this." I handed him another stack of Benjamin Franklins and whispered the name and address of a hotel in his ear.

  "Got it," Aquila said.

  Tomas herded Jamie, Tersa, and Rosemary into the limousine and off they went, jerkily, joining the traffic stream.

  I got behind the other wheel, and headed toward the Midtown Tunnel, the skylights of Manhattan looming before me.

  The East Village was quiet and the orphanage was even smaller and older than I remembered it to be. It was a simple red-brick, three-storied affair with drab, weary windows. A few sad shrubs huddled around the cracked stone steps as if they had passively absorbed the emotions of the many little lives that had lived in the orphanage. It was a time of true quiet, those few hours before dawn when all slept, even the criminal elements.

  It was a simple matter to blend in the shadows and wait quietly as Chami pulled out a small case of tools and fiddled with the back entry lock for a few short moments.

  Chami twisted the knob and like magic, the door silently swung open. We slipped inside and I led the way to the lower office. It was locked as well, and just as easily breached by Chami. I made my way to the cabinet files.

  "What are we looking for?" Gryphon asked quietly.

  "A boy with the first name of Thaddeus who would have first come here on January 5, 1989, or close to around that time."

  Amber and Gryphon began helping me search the countless old folders. Chami, to my surprise—for I hadn't imagined such familiarity with such modern human technology—booted up the computer. The screen illuminated the room with an eerie blue glow.

  It was a frustrating, unproductive task. All the files in my cabinet were of children in current residence. I moved to the next cabinet—there were five in all—but it only dated as far back as children who had resided here ten years ago. Amber finished the three rows of his cabinet file and moved on to the next one.

  It was Chami who finally found it. "Milady," he called softy, and indicated the computer screen. I took the seat he vacated and read the information eagerly.

  A boy named Thaddeus, with black hair and dark brown eyes, had been taken into the orphanage sixteen years ago, wearing a silver cross with his name engraved on the back of it. My heart pounded and a sudden surge of moisture blurred my vision. I swiped my eyes with my sleeve and read on. He had been adopted three weeks later. I committed the name, address, and telephone number of the adopting couple, Henry and Pauline Schiffer, to memory.

  "Good job, Chami. Thank you."

  "It is my pleasure to serve you, milady."

  "Are other Monère computer-savvy like you?"

  "Not many, no," Chami confessed. "But I found it necessary and useful in my line of work."

  They'd aimed Chami at human targets as well, I realized. The Queens had used Chami in his own lethal way, much as Mona Sera had used Gryphon and Sonia's sexual services in her business dealings, eliminating any obstacles that could not be lured with money or seduced with a cold finality.

  When we left the orphanage, night was fading and faint light pressed against the thinning darkness. We came out of the building one by one, silent dark shadows. As soon as I hit the street, rounding the block where our limousine was parked, I was jerked into an alley with bruising force.

  I'd had no warning because there'd been no heartbeat to warn me of any intruders in the radius around me. The hand that grabbed me was golden-skinned, with sharp, familiar nails. But the bestial face I looked up into was not Halcyon's.

  One bronze arm wrapped around my waist, lifting me off my feet, pressing me against my captor with a terrible ease, trapping my arms at my side in an unbreakable grip. The demon was impossibly strong and huge, at least seven feet tall. He'd been expecting us.

  Amber and Gryphon came around the corner in a blurred rush. I felt the demon move sharply. One quick downward slash of his hand and Amber's chest was ripped diagonally open, ribs breaking, flesh peeling down all the way so that I saw with vivid horror, his slow, pulsing heart. Warm blood splashed across my face as Amber was flung away. He hit the ground some distance away in a crumpled heap. I opened my mouth to scream but all the breath had been squeezed out of my body by that imprisoning grip. Another swipe and Gryphon was sent flying, demon nails ripping deep furrows in Gryphon's stomach.

  I called my silver dagger to my hand, the one I had taken from Mona Louisa, and with a twist of my wrist, drove it into the demon's belly. He hissed with pain and his arm squeezed me so tightly mat I was in true danger of being pinched in half. With an animal snarl, he ripped out the little offending dagger. Invisible bands wrapped my hands to my sides, and stilled my kicking legs. I couldn't move or break free of the invisible mental force he had wrapped around me.

  The demon's mouth twisted in a vicious snarl, his eyes becoming fiery red like a wash of angry blood as another knife plunged into his chest from out of nowhere. The demon's hand swept out and grabbed something. Charm came into sudden view, with the demon's claw wrapped tightly about his neck, his arms banded to his side as if invisible forces restrained him, too.

  With a savage drooling snarl, the demon sank sharp teeth into Chami's throat. Deep red blood trickled slowly down Chami's white fragile neck as the demon's throat worked strongly. Dear Goddess, I realized with sickening horror, he was drinking Chami's blood, draining him, and growing stronger with the intake. Chami's eyes glazed over and his body fell slack. No! With every ounce of force and will within me, I struggled to break free. My hand moved slightly.

  With a snarl of rage, the demon discarded Charm, throwing him away like a toy he no longer desired. The invisible vise holding me secure snapped tight once more. With a simple move, the dagger was pluck out from the demon's chest and tossed aside. Blood oozed sullenly from the demon's two wounds.

  Gryphon had picked himself back up and thrown himself forward. The demon stopped Gryphon's rush by simply digging the sharp points of his nails into my throat.

  "What do you want?" Gryphon demanded harshly.

  "Tell Halcyon that Kadeen has his precious Mixed Blood Queen," the demon growled in a guttural voice, the smell of fresh blood heavy on his breath. "Have him come meet my challenge. Or she dies."

  The demon carried me deeper into the alley, into a wall of mist, stepping into a terrible buzzing force of energy that I'd never experienced before or ever hoped to experience again. Hot, searing pain lanced me like a thousand vicious stabbing knives and darkness took me.

  Chapter Twenty One

  I awoke in twilight darkness, terribly weak, chained naked to the ground, my clothes in sliced tatters around me. The air was like the arid heat of the desert. We were outside, in a courtyard of some sort, a ring of faces in various colors shading from light brown to deep bronze watching me with hostile curiosity a short distance away. It took a moment before I realized what it was about the place that bothered me, besides the demon dead, that is. There were no bright colors. No living green grass, no blue sky, no yellow or red leaves. Everything was muted, dampened, darkened, until there was almost no color at all. The only thing that stood out down here was my very white, living flesh and enhoused within it, my very red, flowing blood.

  Kadeen paced beside me, a dark creature of menace with red-stained fangs and bloodied nails. He was different from the other demon dead who rather looked like a tanned version of myself. Kadeen bulged with unnaturally strong muscles, more animal than man. His face was oddly distorted, as if a beast was bursting out from within, his forehead large and bulging, his brow jutting. And those red eyes that glowed with an unnatural luster. He was demon unmasked.

  "I was supposed to kill yo
u," Kadeen said, his voice grating like rusty iron, as if it was hard for him to speak in that form. "But I decided to use you instead to lure Halcyon, my enemy, out from his lair. I have been challenging him for the last one hundred years ever since he killed my father in challenge, but he never bothered to accept it, considering me far beneath his notice. But now Halcyon will meet me. You are what he fancies. You are my bait to draw him out to this battle for supremacy."

  Kadeen stilled. "He comes." He bent down to me. Bloody teeth gleamed and he snapped his fangs viciously at me. I jumped, unable to help myself, and screamed. The chains held me and I could not break free though I pulled and strained until my wrists and ankles were raw and bleeding.

  "Scream again," Kadeen commanded and roughly squeezed my breast with bruising force. His sharp nails pierced through my skin like knives.

  I screamed with helpless hatred and rage. Then screamed with horror as Kadeen's teeth ripped my throat. The pain was excruciating. He fed voraciously, drinking my blood. There was a curious buzzing in my head and everything seemed to swirl.

  "Enough. I am here." Halcyon's quiet voice pierced the night, jerking the demon from me. Kadeen faced the Demon Prince with fierce hatred and grim satisfaction, my blood dripping from his fangs.

  Halcyon looked the same here in Hell, I noticed with a distant floating detachment. White silk shirt, black coat, elegant trousers. That same calm golden face I'd first seen in the forest amid the sunshine. Halcyon glanced at me once then looked away.

  "I challenge you." Kadeen grunted, seething with eager ferocity, high and powerful on the fresh blood that I had unwilling donated.

  "I accept." With unhurried ease, Halcyon undid his diamond cufflinks, unbuttoned his shirt and stepped gracefully out of his soft, calf-length leather boots.

  "How did you know where to find Mona Lisa," Halcyon asked.

  "Mona Louisa told me she would come to the orphanage. She wanted me to kill the new Queen so she would get her territory back."

  "Mona Louisa again. What a nuisance she is becoming." Halcyon murmured.

  It seemed an impossible match. A slim elegant man facing a towering beast. Then that part of Halcyon fell away even as his silk shirt fell to the ground. I felt a rush of energy and Halcyon grew in size and width, swelling with brutish muscles until he stood monstrously large, even taller than Kadeen. Maybe eight feet. His forehead widened and thickened, a vein bulging prominently down the center. His brow jutted and my comfortable lassitude that I had fallen into ripped away. Halcyon's eyes hazed red and his face twisted in a silent snarl, displaying fangs that were ivory white and impressive as hell. Then the brutish rage smoothed out and his eyes returned to that calm midnight black.

  They lunged at each other, a blur of speed almost too fast to follow, their heavy bodies meeting in the air and rolling to the ground a few yards away, shaking the earth beneath me with the impact of their combined weight. Claws slashed and blood ran. Kadeen howled with rage and threw Halcyon off him. The Demon Prince rolled to his feet with fluid grace, at peculiar odds with his beastly appearance, and sprang and tackled Kadeen in a haze of motion. They roiled on the ground, further away from me, each trying to get atop the other, Kadeen slashing with his claws, snarling and cursing, Halcyon fighting in a cold, freezing silence that was somehow scarier than Kadeen's hot rage.

  "Enough," Halcyon said suddenly, as if he was tired of playing.

  All I caught was a swift sharp movement that abruptly shut Kadeen up mid-snarl. There was a stunned, uncomprehending look on the smaller demon's face for a long, stretched-out moment. Then Kadeen's head fell off and rolled to the ground. Blood, the color of dark burgundy under Hell's twilight sky, seeped out beneath it. I gave a muffled shriek, unable to tear my gaze from that head, from those eyes. Those red, burning eyes that, dear merciful God, still held awareness and watched as Halcyon proceeded to slice off Kadeen's arms and legs with swift, lethal precision. Watched as the severed limbs fell in bloody, chunky pieces to the ground. Watched with fear-wide eyes as Halcyon walked over to him and drove both talons into his skull with one forceful, piercing thrust. Those eyes finally closed as Halcyon cracked open the thick bone of Kadeen's skull several inches to reveal soft, wet brain and oozing cerebral fluid. Just as I was breathing out a sigh of relief, those terrible eyes flashed open once more in awful awareness.

  Halcyon tipped back his head and released a blood-curdling howl. Fierce, joyous baying answered in the distance unearthly cries that made my skin want to detach itself from off my flesh and crawl away just to escape whatever was coming.

  "Feed him to the Hell hounds," Halcyon ordered. His rough, gravelly voice, a hoarse parody of his usual smooth, cultured tone, made me flinch. And that one involuntary ripple of movement from me tore away Halcyon's cool facade and revealed the seething emotions within. Hot, burning rage poured out from Halcyon in roiling waves until the very air quivered. His flaming eyes burned so hotly it seemed as if they would surely sear flesh. The other demons seemed to think so as well. They faded away, all but two males who quickly gathered up all of Kadeen's many parts and hurriedly took them off into the woods, as if they too could not wait to escape their prince's wrath.

  Halcyon walked to me and knelt down, so close and so big that I felt like a small, fragile doll beside him. The chains that I had not been able to free myself from looked ridiculously tiny in his hands. Hands that spanned more than three times the length of mine.

  With one yank, Halcyon snapped the chains easily and removed the manacles, his big hands accomplishing the task with unexpected gentleness. I was free, but couldn't seem to move. His red eyes, set deep in that beastly face, touched upon my torn and swollen neck, my bruised and bloodied breast, moving slowly down my body, reminding me vividly aware once more of my nakedness.

  I closed my eyes, unable to do anything else. A moment later, I felt silk touch my skin. I opened my eyes to find Halcyon's shirt covering me.

  I sat up and flung myself against Halcyon, hot tears roiling down my face. "I am sick of men stripping away my clothes and chaining me up," I said fiercely, my face buried against the hard ridges of his abdomen.

  Halcyon took a deep breath and shuddered. Energy prickled my skin. As Halcyon changed back, shrinking once more to normal size, I found myself held against his chest, my eyes level with his throat now. I gazed up into black midnight eyes, into Halcyon's dear familiar face. He lifted me into his arms and I was never so aware of man's greater strength.

  He carried me out of the courtyard and I had a brief impression of entering an ancient dark fortress that seemed to reach for the sky. I glimpsed a few startled, tanned faces. His servants, no doubt.

  Wrapping my arms around Halcyon's neck, I pressed into him, needing the contact, the security, unable to stop my body's tremors.

  Ascending a flight of stairs, Halcyon brought me to a rich, comfortable chamber and lay me down on cool linen, disappearing for a moment. When he returned, he wore clean clothing. The blood that had covered him was gone. He held two wet washcloths in his hands. One he gently pressed against the torn flesh on my neck. With the other, he slowly and methodically cleaned my face, wiping off Amber's blood. He carefully washed my raw wrists and ankles, even my breasts, as efficiently as any nurse. When Halcyon was finished, he slid me into a clean silk shirt that smelled faintly of him.

  "Where are we?" I asked.

  "In my private chambers," Halcyon said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "He staked me out in front of your own house." I snorted. "He certainly had balls."

  "No longer," Halcyon said coldly.

  I shivered, remembering the unearthly baying of the Hell hounds.

  "I am sorry you had to see that," Halcyon said quietly.

  "No. I know you had to set an example. To let others see what they risked if they challenged you. And it's not as if I haven't cut parts off of men myself." My smile cracked and disappeared. "Just not quite to your thorough degree."

  "I meant that I was sorry y
ou had to see me in my other form." Halcyon kept his gaze averted. "You fear me now."

  Monsters were we all, I thought, and so terribly fragile.

  "It would be foolish not to fear demons," I replied softly.

  "You did not fear me before."

  "I was foolish. I did not know how incredibly strong and dangerous you were." I remembered Gryphon's trembling fear and anger when I had returned from the forest in Halcyon's company. Gryphon had known.

  Halcyon's face was a carved golden mask, devoid of any living expression.

  "But I trust you still not to harm me." I took Halcyon's unresisting hand, laid it against my face, and drew his long lethal nails gently down my skin.

  Halcyon drew in a convulsive breath. His hand tightened against my face for a brief moment, an involuntary spasm, then relaxed.

  Something changed. The room suddenly shimmered with sensuality. Halcyon's lips softened in a seductive smile, drawing my attention to them like an irresistible siren call. His lips were pure red carnality. His nails slid down the smooth uninjured side of my neck in a sensuous caress that seemed to touch more than just skin, going deeper, much deeper inside to secret places. Unbelievable pleasure slithered down my spine and loosened my knees.

  I shuddered and drew carefully away from his touch. "I don't, however, trust you not to try and seduce me."

  "And well you should not," Halcyon murmured, his voice a deep sensuous velvet that stroked all my senses. He bent over me, lowering those erotic red lips down.

  "No," I said softly. The small hand I put up to his chest was no match against his greater strength, but he stopped.

  "Why not?" he asked just as softly.

  "I've given my heart already."

  "To Gryphon."

  "And Amber," I said in a low voice.

  Halcyon's lips twisted. "Then why not me too?"

  "I… just can't. I'd feel as if I were betraying them."

  Halcyon lowered those tempting lips closer and whispered against my mouth, "I could make you not care."