Mona Lisa Eclipsing

by Sunny

  “You want me to change?” I glanced down at the jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers that I had on, and didn’t see anything wrong with what I was wearing. No holes or stains or anything; they weren’t even frayed.

  Amber and Dante remained in the living room, their faces carefully blank. I got the feeling, however, they were both secretly amused.

  “When you declare our existence to the world today, you will be representing us all,” Dontaine said, smoothing the wrinkles out of one of the full-length black dresses I had brought—what Monère Queens usually wore. “It would be nice if you were dressed more presentably.”

  “Nuh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “No way am I going to wear a long, black formal gown.”

  I wanted to say, You can’t make me, but better inspiration came to me. “If the other Queens are going to remain in hiding, we don’t want to make it easy for humans to find them, right? So a black gown is definitely out. Plus, wearing all black is pretty severe. I don’t want to go out looking like Morticia or anything.”

  “Morticia?” asked Amber.

  “From The Addams Family. An old TV show,” Dante explained.

  My poor Warrior Lord didn’t look any further enlightened.

  “Hmm, you have a point. Perhaps something more colorful would be better,” Dontaine said, his eye moving to a bright scarlet dress.

  In defense, I grabbed an outfit Dontaine’s friend in New Orleans, a professional dresser, had put together for me—gold slacks paired with a light green oriental shirt, and ivory ballet slippers. It was elegant and sophisticated, and much less gaudy than the scarlet dress he had been considering.

  “No dress or high heels,” I asserted firmly, stepping into the bathroom to change. “I might need to run if we have to make a quick getaway.”

  When I stepped out of the bathroom, I was met with the appreciative stares of three pairs of masculine eyes. The gleam in Dontaine’s eyes was just a touch too satisfied, telling me I’d just been had. I walked over and hit him in the arm.

  “What was that for?” Dontaine asked. Had he been human, he might have said Ow! and rubbed his arm. But tough Monère warriors apparently didn’t do that.

  “You played me,” I accused.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dontaine replied innocently, but a pleased smirk leaked out despite his best efforts to suppress it. Amber and Dante didn’t even try to hide their grins from me.

  Unable to help myself, I smiled. “Okay, Slick. You got me to change into a nice outfit. Let’s go now.”

  “Three more minutes,” Dontaine said, dangling my makeup bag in front of me with a pleading, coaxing look that clearly said, Please, milady, you’re going to be representing us all.

  Giving in, I sat down at the end of the bed. “No more than three minutes,” I grumped, looking at my watch. “I’ll be counting.”

  Using a deft, steady hand and full Monère speed, he had my hair and makeup done with ten seconds to spare: a quick application of smoky eye shadow, contouring blush, and red lipstick; my hair was a simple brush out, a squirt of gel onto his hands, and artful scrunching. Simple things that somehow gave me a salon-styled look.

  A complete transformation, I noted, looking in the mirror. “I don’t know how you do that, Dontaine.”

  “It’s all in the hands,” Dontaine said with a wink, “and a good haircut. Now we are ready to go.”

  And we were, I saw, running my appreciative gaze over the three gorgeous men behind me who had also taken the time to change into neater attire, making them even more mouthwateringly scrumptious.

  I smiled in sudden anticipation. “Watch out, world. Ready or not, here we come.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “THERE’S QUITE A crowd of reporters,” Hannah said worriedly as we came in sight of the hospital. We had parked the van three blocks down and walked the remaining distance, in case we needed to make a quick, anonymous getaway.

  “I’m picking up three Monère guards posted around the hospital,” I said. The local territory Queen’s men.

  “Me, too,” Amber confirmed. His golden eyes scanned the area, lingering with unease on the crowd of reporters and cameramen restlessly gathered thirty feet away from the front entrance in an area that had been sectioned off with yellow tape by the police, who were also quite visibly present. I saw two squad cars, counted three police officers outside, and glimpsed a dark uniform inside the glass entrance doors.

  “Amber, can you stay out here and stand guard, in case our arrival spooks Jarvis into flying out another window?” I asked, looking up at our most conspicuous member. “I know the Queen Mother informed the local Queen not to touch Jarvis, but your presence out here might keep her men from overreacting if he tries to bust out unexpectedly.”

  Amber agreed with obvious relief. He glanced up at the hospital, looking puzzled. “That’s odd. I’m not sensing Jarvis at all.”

  “Neither am I,” I said, “but it’s a stone building. If the walls inside the hospital are built with cinder blocks like the hospital I used to work in, it’ll mask most, if not all, of his presence.”

  Mr. McManus was seated in the waiting area and was easy to pick out. He looked exactly like what he was: a high-priced attorney, wearing a three-piece suit and spit-polish black shoes. Beneath the bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen, sharp intelligence gleamed out from a pair of deep-set eyes. Wavy russet hair, sprinkled with distinguished gray, framed a craggy, strong-boned face. An expensive-looking briefcase sat by his feet, and the fingers of his right hand drummed impatiently as he scanned the faces of everyone entering. His gaze touched on us briefly, then moved on.

  His sharp eyes swung back, refocusing on me as I made my way over to him.

  “Mr. McManus, I presume?” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Lisa Hamilton. Thank you for meeting me here.”

  “You’re much younger than I expected,” he said, frowning as he shook my hand.

  “And you sound even better in person than you do over the phone,” I returned. I had been expecting his voice to be less vibrant somehow, but it was even richer and more resonant in person, almost professional quality like what you heard announcing commercials.

  “How old are you?” McManus demanded, his bushy brows scrunching together like caterpillars wriggling toward each other.

  “Twenty-one. Don’t worry, I’m legal.” In that one sense of the word, at least. “Let me introduce my friends to you.”

  Everyone exchanged courteous nods.

  “Here—before I forget,” I said, handing him the thousand-dollar retainer fee. The cash was wrapped in a sheet of hotel stationery with the top letterhead ripped off, leaving just a blank sheet. An envelope would have been nicer, but all of them had been imprinted with the hotel’s name and address.

  McManus counted the money and slipped it inside his suit pocket. He glanced at me, waiting expectantly. When nothing more was forthcoming, he said, “One pointer, Ms. Hamilton. Always ask for a receipt in any cash transactions.”

  A good point, though it made me feel as young as he said I looked. Business transactions were not my forte. “Can I have a receipt?” I asked.

  McManus took out a business card and printed out the amount he had received on the back. Dating and signing it, he handed it to me, completing our transaction.

  I pocketed the business card/receipt. “So are we your clients now?”

  His thick brows twitched. “I thought you were engaging my services to represent Jarvis Condorizi solely.”

  “For the most part. But if I and my friends get into trouble upstairs, I trust you’ll come to our aid as well.”

  “Of course. But that will increase my time, and your expense.”

  “Understood.” We walked to the bank of elevators, bypassing the visitor’s desk.

  “You know where he is?” McManus asked when I pushed the “up” elevator button.

  “The burn center, most likely.” The elevator doors opened, and I entered, holding the door while the rest tro
oped inside.

  “Don’t you need a visitor’s pass?” McManus asked.

  “I thought it would be better just to go straight up. Your presence should be enough to get us in.”

  Clearly, McManus didn’t like this, but he didn’t comment. Scanning the directory posted on the wall, I pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  “Not all of you will be able to see him,” McManus said as the doors closed and we started going up.

  “Most of them will wait outside the burn unit. It’ll just be Hannah and me, and you, of course, going in to see Jarvis.”

  Dontaine, Nolan, and Dante turned to gaze at me. Only Quentin seemed unconcerned.

  “He is a wounded male,” said Dontaine too quietly for McManus to hear.

  “Which is why it would be best if only Hannah and I went in,” I answered. “The presence of other males will only agitate him.”

  “And a Queen’s presence will not?” Dante asked with acerbic bite.

  “Consider me both bait and protection for Hannah,” I murmured. “Don’t worry, Nolan. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt Hannah.”

  “It is both of your safety I am concerned about,” Nolan said.

  “Mona Lisa is right,” Hannah said quietly. “This way will be the least threatening to Jarvis, and therefore the safest for us.”

  “Excuse me, did you say something?” McManus asked, glancing at me. He had obviously seen my lips moving.

  “No, just talking to myself,” I answered blithely.

  That didn’t appear to lend him any more confidence in me, but at this point I didn’t care as the lift came to a gentle halt and the doors opened to the fourth floor.

  We left the men waiting unhappily in the sitting area and made our way to the Trauma and Burn Center. Visiting hours were posted on the glass doors, from nine a.m. to nine p.m. It was a few minutes past nine. Perfect timing, though our number of visitors was not as ideal. Most hospitals allowed only two visitors in at a time, not three, and only relatives were permitted into the intensive care units.

  Then we were in the burn unit and the smell of it hit my sensitive nose—burnt flesh beneath the astringent, industrial smell all hospitals had. I caught the feel of Monère presence, but that, too, was faint, much fainter than it should have been, but I would have known, even had I not felt him, where Jarvis was. There were two policemen posted outside the room directly across from the nurses’ station, with a crowd of other bodies inside and outside of the room: nurses in their flowered-top scrubs and young-looking doctors in white coats and dark blue scrubs. Hospital interns and residents, I realized with a start. Must be a teaching hospital. Two FBI types stood outside the room next to two seated police officers. There was almost an equal number of people inside his room gathered around the bed, all of them gloved and gowned, blocking my view of the occupant.

  McManus stopped in front of the nurses’ station, waiting patiently for one of the busy nurses. But what I felt made me too uneasy to wait.

  “I can’t discern his heartbeat,” I said to Hannah. Everything was beating human fast, and that should not be; Jarvis’s heart should have been half the normal rate, but everything I heard was going at least sixty to eighty beats a minute. The only reason for a Monère’s heart to beat that fast was extreme stress or severe injury. And it wasn’t because he had sensed us: none of the heartbeats had sped up. That, coupled with the weak presence I felt emanating from him, had me severely worried.

  “He shouldn’t be this weak,” I said softly to Hannah.

  “No, milady, he shouldn’t,” Hannah agreed.

  “We can’t wait. Follow me.”

  I dashed past the guards, moving at full, blurring Monère speed, and entered the room, dodging around bodies until I saw him. And then I stopped, frozen solid with shock and dismay.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  My words, the feel of my presence, drew Jarvis’s eyes directly to me, past all the people gathered around his bed.

  There was a sudden exclamation as people caught sight of me and Hannah. Hey, who are you? You can’t come in here without a gown! How did you people get inside the room? But I had eyes and ears for only one person—Jarvis.

  Ash-blond hair curled in loose waves around the lower strands singed. He had the face of an angel, an archangel, with strong, noble features and vivid blue eyes. No wonder people were calling him an angel.

  Those blue eyes grew huge and wide, the only part of him that moved. The rest of him was still.

  He lay on his stomach, facing the far end of the room where Hannah and I stood. His face was the only visible part of him that was not burned. A tented-sheet canopy had been erected over him and I caught a glimpse of his neck and upper arms from where I stood: they were completely scorched, ugly charred burns mixed with raw, blistered flesh, everything smeared liberally with a gooey paste.

  An older doctor sitting near the bed turned around to look at me, unblocking some of my view so I could see the unblemished back of Jarvis’s lower thighs and calves emerging from the other end of the tented canopy. As I watched, the IV catheter the doctor had just inserted into the back of Jarvis’s knee was slowly pushed back out, the white anchoring tape no match for the strong rejection of Jarvis’s body to the inserted foreign object.

  The doctor muttered a foul curse and glared at Hannah and me, as if we were to blame for what must have been the one-hundredth failed attempt to put an intravenous line into him.

  “Please,” Jarvis said, looking at me with clear panic in his eyes. He had been so utterly still, not even breathing, so that it was like watching a rock suddenly come alive as he levered himself up off the bed, disrupting the canopy above him.

  Amidst the sudden uproar of voices, Jarvis slid down to kneel in front of me, his horribly burned arms spread out wide, out to his side. “Please, milady, she’s innocent. She doesn’t know anything.”

  Only then did I realize the protective nature of his gesture.

  The she he referred to was the girl Jarvis had leaped out of bed, stark naked, to shield: the young teenager sitting on the other side of the bed, Kelly Rawlings, the runaway. Both of her hands were swathed in white bandages up to the forearm. Had Jarvis been at full strength, I would not have felt her much weaker presence—a Mixed Blood, as I had suspected. But with his energy signature almost as weak as hers, it was easy to discern.

  Jarvis thought I was here to kill him and the girl.

  “I’m here to help you,” I told him, “not to harm either of you.”

  He stayed kneeling, clearly not trusting my words, begging me with his eyes to spare the girl’s life. For his own life, not one word or plea.

  “Jarvis, what are you doing?” the girl exclaimed. “Get back in bed. You’ll infect your wounds!”

  “Stretch out your senses, Jarvis, and see for yourself that I am like her,” I told him.

  He did and his eyes widened even more in confusion. “But . . . you are a Queen.”

  “And also a Mixed Blood. I give my word, I am here only to help.”

  “What is the meaning of this and who are you two?” demanded one of the suit-wearing men. There were two of them inside the room. Well, actually four of them now; the two others posted outside had come into the room as well.

  “They are Jarvis Condorizi’s friends,” McManus said, pushing his way in past the interns, still tying up his gown. “And I am his attorney. Who are you?”

  “FBI,” the man snapped, flipping out his badge. “Special agent in charge, Richard Stanton. I wasn’t aware he had asked for a lawyer.”

  “His friend here, Lisa Hamilton,” he gestured to me, “obtained my services on his behalf.”

  I waved at Special Agent Stanton.

  Stanton’s brows, less bushier than McManus’s, lowered in glowering disapproval. “And who the hell, Ms. Hamilton, are you?”

  “I am a Monère Queen. A representative for our people.” My cool and calm statement drew a shocked breath from Jarvis.

  “Are you
hurt?” Kelly asked, coming over to Jarvis.

  “No, I’m fine, Kelly.” He kept his arms spread, blocking her attempt to come around in front of him. “Sit down and stay behind me.”

  At his urging, she settled back into her seat, her brown eyes fixed intently on me, her gaze none too friendly.

  “What’s a Monère Queen?” Stanton demanded.

  “Um—perhaps a sheet for his modesty,” I said, waving a hand at Jarvis.

  Kelly pulled a sheet off the bed and draped it over Jarvis’s lap from behind.

  “A Queen is what they call a lady of light,” I explained. “Someone who is able to draw down the rays of the moon and share its energy with her people.”

  “And who the hell are your people?” asked Stanton.

  “My friend, Hannah, here. And people like Jarvis,” I answered. “Kelly, too, if she wishes.”

  Jarvis trembled almost violently at my words. I wasn’t sure if it was dismay from what I was revealing to the humans here or from the agonizing pain from the burns and the position he still maintained, kneeling on the floor.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Stanton growled. “Who are the Monère? I’ve never heard of them.”

  “We are the children of the moon,” I answered. “Its descendents.”

  Jarvis made a horrible, panicked sound deep in his chest. “Please, milady. They may be able to hear you outside. You will bring them all down upon us.”

  “There’s nothing to fear, Jarvis. I’m here at the request and approval of the High Court. I’ve been appointed an ambassador, of sorts, to represent our people. We’re taking advantage of the opportunity you provided to go public.”

  The shock of my declaration, on top of his pain, proved too much for Jarvis. He swayed, looking faint, and I moved quickly, lightly grasping his face to keep him from falling.

  With that contact, the moles in the palms of my hands flared to life and power was pulled from deep within me, drawn by Jarvis’s pain. It flowed out of me and spread into him. Carefully, I stepped back and released him.