by Sunny
She slammed my hand down, crashed it through the wood, sprawled me on the floor, and smiled. "Winner takes all." Mona Louisa pinned me down and her small, smooth hands closed about me like shackles. And I was helpless to break free of her iron grip. Jesus Christ, how had she gotten so fucking strong?
"Your promise, Demon Prince," Mona Louisa said to Blaec.
Without demur, Blaec held out his hands and Gilford quickly clamped the demon chains about Blaec's wrists, closing them with a loud and heavy clang.
"Bring the other pair of demon chains here," Mona Louisa ordered and Demetrius jumped to do her bidding.
I gazed despairingly up at Blaec as I lay there pinned to the ground, Demetrius only steps away from binding me, too. Dear God, had I been wrong? Had I gambled and lost everything? Goddess help us.
Like an answer to my prayer, the demon chains binding the High Lord broke with a snap. Blaec tore the manacles from his slender wrists with two easy motions and straightened his cuffs. As the chains dropped to the ground, his glamour fell away. White wings flared once more at Blaec's temples. Gold skin darkened to bronze. There was a moment of frozen silence where everyone stopped and stared, where all eyes were upon him, all breaths held, where time itself was suspended. Where some recognized who they truly faced and others did not. Then all Hell broke loose.
Death came not with blood or violence. But with almost gentle grace. With nothing but a look, just the weight of the High Lord's gaze, Gilford flashed into light, puffed into dust. The next closest warrior standing next to Blaec almost immediately followed, so that they were like twin strobing lights going off next to the elegant bronzed man, illuminating the High Lord of Hell. A flash, flash of brilliant light and they were gone before the brightness had faded.
Mona Louisa screamed with rage, loud enough to deafen the entire room. "Cut him, slash him! Make him bleed! That will weaken him."
Even facing living death could not counter a warrior's strong inborn instinct to defend his Queen. And she sent them all to their sure death without remorse, without thought, with an ice-cold heart. Sacrificing her men to buy time for herself.
Mona Louisa pulled me up to her like a rag doll in her strong grip and buried her teeth, her fangs in my neck. I felt a sharp pain, a tearing bite. She was pressed so closely against me that I felt her slender throat work strongly as she gulped down my blood like a demon dead creature, pulling it from me so fast that I was dizzy.
With the last ebbings of my draining strength, I stretched out my right hand. A silver blade harkened to my call, leaped into my grasp. I buried the shaft deep down to the hilt in her back. Mona Louisa tore her mouth away and screamed in painful outrage. Letting me drop, she clawed the dagger from her back and threw the bloody blade at me, a blinding whirl of silver. I rolled and the knife sank into the floor where I had lain.
Her eyes spewing with molten wrath, Mona Louisa sprang to the couch where Gryphon lay bound. Her men acted as a living barricade of flesh between her and the Demon Lord so that I couldn't see Blaec, only the flash, flash, flash of bursting lights. Could only hear sounds and screams. Could only see swords and daggers rising and falling in a cacophony of vicious sound and stabbing motion.
With her left hand, Mona Louisa yanked Gryphon to his feet, hissing her blood-stained fangs—fangs! — at me. "I told you once before, mongrel bitch. If I cannot have him, then neither shall you."
I scrambled to my feet, but it felt as if I were wading through thickened air. I stumbled, and watched helplessly as Mona Louisa pulled back her hand as if pulling a tautened bow. Then with terrible finality, she unleashed her hand and plunged it straight into Gryphon's chest, tearing through flesh and bone as if she were ripping through paper. With a vicious grabbing twist, she yanked his heart out, so that it was a bulging, quivering organ gripped tight in her first. She threw it into the air.
"No!" My horrified scream echoed loudly in my ears as I leaped up to catch it. Slowly, so slowly, I watched that precious tumbling heart fall into my hands. Felt the warm wetness of fresh blood, the squish of firm and tender tissue. Felt one weak beat throb against my palms. Felt myself shudder with the reality of it, and then time resumed its inevitable fast march forward. I landed at Gryphon's side; he had fallen to the ground. With sobbing haste, I rolled him onto his back and aimed the throbbing heart at the gaping hole in his chest. Carefully, I reinserted that still beating organ back into his broken chest cavity and held it in place with a trembling hand. I ripped the offending gag from Gryphon's mouth and screamed, "Blaec! Blaec!"
There was an almost endless ripple of exploding lights and then the High Lord was at my side, his face drawn and sallow with the effort of his kills.
"Heal him, High Lord! Please!" I cried. "I'll do anything, give you anything, if you'll heal Gryphon."
"I'm sorry, child." Blaec's words tolled with bitter finality. "No one can heal such a wound."
"No! There has to be some way of helping him," I sobbed. Frantically I covered Gryphon's torn chest with both of my hands. Desperately I called up that power deep within me as I looked down at him. "Don't leave me," I whispered.
My palms throbbed, ached with burning heat, and I poured that hot rushing energy into Gryphon. His eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, stirred, fluttered open as if he were awakening from a sweet dream. Our eyes met.
"Gryphon… please don't leave me."
"My love." It was the barest of sound on a last sighing breath, with a gentle smile on Gryphon's beloved face. Beneath my hands, his heart lay coldly still, no longer beating. Then Gryphon shone one last time, a glittering eruption of light released, no longer held. Before my eyes, his flesh shimmered, dried up, and started to crumble, collapsing into a cascade of powdery residue. He gave off one final flash of his essential light. And then he was free. And was no more.
Chapter Eighteen
Ashes scattered to the ground, dusting over my knees, coating my bloodstained hands. His clothes lay on the floor like an empty shroud. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.
Silence filled the room like a tomb, broken only by my shuddering breath. Carnage had swept the room with a clean, ruthless hand, piles of ashes all that remained of so many. I was surrounded by death and felt as if I had died also. Wished that I had, since living hurt so much.
Then the sweet, clean burn of rage filled my empty shell, giving me a driving purpose to focus upon. So that I thought of only one thing.
"Mona Louisa is mine," I rasped harshly, jerkily, looking up at the High Lord.
He crouched down beside me so that his dark compassionate eyes were level with mine. "She is much stronger than you now," he said gently.
"Mine," I reiterated with a flat, trembling voice.
"She will kill you," Blaec said simply.
My eyes held his gaze fiercely so that there would be no misunderstanding. "After I die, she's all yours. But she is mine until I depart this earth." I stretched out my shaking hands, coated with the dark redness of Gryphon's blood, and the words came to me from somewhere deep inside, some place old, long before my birth, a hazy past filled with the most base primal instincts: desire to own, to possess, to conquer. The words came tolling out of me. "I claim Mona Louisa's life as my blood right."
The words echoed, trembled in the air. Blood right. A claim that seemed to hold meaning for the High Lord. Bowing his head, Blaec nodded.
We left that house of death and stepped into the dark whispering night, tracking our prey where she had fled into the woods. I smiled with cold satisfaction. The stab wound in Mona Louisa's back had prevented her from flying away, from taking her vulture form. She was grounded until the torn tissue knitted together.
Deep in the woods, ahead of us, Mona Louisa's slow heartbeat sounded in the distance and the scent of her blood drifted to me like tracking beacons. We headed north after that heartbeat, after that obscene sound of life that still was and should not be. So many dead because of her. It was only just that she join them.
I threw myself into mindl
ess pursuit, trusting to instinct, to primal senses to find my way, leaping over trees and bushes, springing blindly after her, after that beckoning heartbeat, landing wherever I landed, on fallen logs, on the moist rich ground, in clawing brushes, soaring over rocks and boulders, only to spring up again, throwing myself blindly forward, ever onward at full speed, letting that unthinking, natural part of myself that was more animal than human guide me onto paths unknown.
The High Lord was a silent shadow beside me, pure movement, no sound. No betraying breath or pumping of blood to mark his presence.
We were gaining on her. She'd been spoiled by the ease of taking wing and soaring high in the sky. On the ground, Mona Louisa moved more cautiously. She made her way carefully in the thick woods, less experienced in the forest than above it. She moved not with the dangerous speed I forced upon myself, the blind leaps of faith I took. And why should she? She wanted to live. I did not care if I did or not. All that filled me was that single driving purpose, that pervading anger.
Cold rage. I'd never understood the term before. Never thought that rage could be anything but hot. But rage can be cold. Like flames that burned so hotly they edged from orange to cool blue, from rash heat into cold fire. It was thinking rage. Anger, pain, sorrow did not fill you, overwhelm you. You were dispassionate, detached from your emotion, as if you were already dead. My heart was. When she had ripped Gryphon's heart out of his chest, it felt as if mine had died as well.
Almost there. I closed in on that slow, slow heartbeat, my only goal to make that beating stop. I drew my sword, called the dagger from its sheath. "Face me, bitch," I whispered and knew that she heard me.
With one last bounding spring, I fell down upon Mona Louisa, her blond hair glowing bright under moonshine, waving in the darkness like a beacon of light. She turned her face up to me, and I fell upon her with a soundless cry, aiming my sword at her neck, my dagger driving for her heart.
At the last possible moment she turned fully and, with blinding quickness, heaved a melon-sized boulder at me that she had hidden in her arms. Going downward, I was unable to avoid it. Like a cannoned missile, it struck my drawn sword aside, knocking it from my hand. The heavy rock smashed into my chest with crushing force. The pain was blinding, breath-stealing. Hot, searing agony ripped through my torso from the blow, and then once again as I hit the ground with jarring force. Before I could catch my breath, I felt her hands on me, gripping my hair, grabbing the back of my pants, lifting me up and heaving me into the air. I crashed against the huge trunk of a giant cypress tree, the rough bark shredding my cheek, my arm, my entire left side.
I hit the ground, half of me numb. I'd lost my dagger and wondered for a moment if I'd stabbed myself. My chest felt as if it were on fire, as if purgatory had decided not to wait until I died and was roasting me now. I glanced down to make sure. Nope, no dagger sticking out of my chest. Just felt that way. Broken ribs tended to do that. They hurt like the dickens.
Mona Louisa's battle shriek tore through the quiet of the night as she rushed me with blinding quickness. She may have been strong, beyond Monère strong, but she'd obviously not had much fighting experience. Experienced fighters didn't scream and warn you that they were coming.
I lay there waiting for her to come to me and she did. She threw herself at me, reaching for me with clawed fingers. I took a trick out of her own book and waited until she'd almost reached me. When it was too late for her to check her rush, I brought both legs up and donkey-kicked her in the stomach and chest. The jarring impact of stopping dead all that weight and momentum ripped another fiery pain through my chest, but the satisfaction of hearing that whoosh of breath and glimpsing the surprise in Mona Louisa's face was worth it. Seeing her go flying back and smash up against a palmetto tree, hearing the groaning wood crack and tilt as she hit it, was even better.
The stunned look that swept across her face and the twisting rage that flushed into an ugly red mask made me think that it was the first time she'd ever been hit in her life. Made me want to hit her more.
Pushing back against the tree that had broken my fall, I climbed back onto my feet, hunching over a little. "Did that hurt, bitch? Why don't you come back for more?" I taunted, mainly because I couldn't rush her. Heck, I doubted I could even take one step toward her.
With a screeching cry, she flew at me again. I got in one good swing that snapped her head back nicely before she grabbed me and tossed me up so I soared twenty feet in the air again. I was getting used to the feeling of flying. Landing, though, was a real bitch. Sure enough, a tree trunk tried to break me in half again. Holy sweet mother of God… I almost passed out from the pain.
I saw Blaec, or I thought I did, in my wavering vision. A hazy bronze shape peeping out from beneath the shadow of a tree, a question on his face.
"No." I shook my head stubbornly to clear my vision, to shake off the pain. "She's mine!"
And then she was on me, her breath in my face heavy with the smell of my own blood, imprisoning my arms, crushing them to my sides as she lifted me up with almost effortless ease and slammed me back against the heavy, solid tree trunk with pounding force, her teeth drawn back in a furious snarl. "You are nothing!" she screamed. Thunk! Thunk! Beating me like a board she was trying to break. "Nothing!" Rough bark tore into my back, snagged my hair. Blood trickled down, soaking into my pants.
"You are as weak as your lover!" she hissed. "Killing him was so easy."
The blackness that had been edging my vision cleared at her words, and I began to struggle in silent, fierce earnestness, twisting in her grasp.
Mona Louisa laughed and slammed me upright, back against the tree, pinning my wrists low with her shackling hands, restraining my legs with the press of her lower body against me. "Killing you will be even easier," she crooned, her breath warm against me. "And much sweeter."
Her teeth lengthened. Rearing back, she struck hard, her fangs sinking deep into the left side of my neck, the clean, unbroken side. I screamed as she drank me down. Tried… tried so hard with everything that I was to break free. But I could not. She was too strong. All I could do was twist my hands, wet from Gryphon's blood. They slid barely, just barely in her cinching grasp so that my palms turned outward, facing toward her.
Her loud swallowing sounds echoed in my ears as I reached out with that other part of me, with a willing, Come to me. My palms throbbed, but either the distance was too great or I was too weak. The lost silver dagger, the dropped sword did not fly to my hands. They remained empty, impotent. My vision was hazing, sounds growing distant as more of me flowed into her. All I could see above me now was the moon, three-quarters full, a neutral presence in the sky, a silent witness. Help me, Goddess. Hear your daughter's plea.
I forced my last conscious will into my hands, into those mounds of pearls embedded deep in my palms. The Goddess's Tears. I angled them up to the dark, velvety sky and begged: Give me strength. Renew me.
I didn't just open myself to the moon, welcome it, and let it flow down. I pulled it down, called it to me, demanded it. Give me justice! But it wasn't the moon's rays I pulled forth.
The Goddess's Tears trembled, gave one giant throb. Then another. They began to glow, twin pearls of light breaking the darkness of the night. Heat filled me. Power swept into me like a gentle spilling light. Mona Louisa's head suddenly jerked up, her eyes panicked and wide. "What is that? What are you doing?"
A light radiance sparked deep within her, like a candle lit by a match, the wick catching aflame. My hands pulsed, my entire body throbbed with the power, with the calling. And I drew more light from her. Pulled it into me.
She released me as if touching me suddenly burned her. She tried to draw away, step back. But I held her now. Energy rushed through me, her radiance spilled into me, filling me, renewing me, siphoning her power, making it mine. My palms pressed against her arms, imprisoning her, holding her to me gently like a sweet lover as I drained her of her power, of her beauty, of her youth and vitality. As I drained
her of life itself. And the power that rushed into me and flooded me, stretched me with seductive heat was better than Basking. Better than sex.
Her essence rilled me, poured into me, kept coming in a steady streaming, a steady draining. My skin felt as if it had become porous. Her energy, her aura, her force flowed over my skin like thick honey and then seeped into every open pore. Was sucked in. And I watched her ebb, fade away. I watched myself grow stronger, brighter.
Power streamed into me until I felt as if I were a paper lantern. As if I had swallowed down the moon and it glowed within me, spilling from me with such blinding luminescence that the forest was ablaze with wild, glorious splendor, lighting up the night.
I watched Mona Louisa shrivel before me, her skin becoming tight, thicker, leathery, all moisture wrung from her. Her flesh melted, was sucked away until she was nothing but thin wrinkly skin draped over dried bones. Youth and beauty vanished. She became an old crone who had lived too long and yet still clung to life, her bulging eyes white and terrified. All that remained of her old self was her bright yellow hair, still shiny and silky and long, like a wig worn by a mannequin. Even her screams had dried up, as if all moisture in her vocal chords had vaporized and all she was capable of emitting now was a high keening sound. A wailing that did not stop.
I extracted the very last drop of her light into me like a final drop of sticky molasses. And yet she still was… screaming, keening, crying, always crying. "Why won't you die, bitch?"
She lay there on the ground where she had fallen, too weak to move, a drained bundle of sticks, an undying corpse.
"She has become more than Monère now." The High Lord's quiet voice came from a careful distance away. His eyes were neutral once more, his face inscrutable.
