Mona Lisa Eclipsing m-5 Read online

  I sensed a familiar presence coming quickly around the distant corner. “Easy,” I said to Jarvis, when his head jerked up, “it’s just Amber. He’s with us.”

  Amber came into sight and Jarvis’s eyes widened in astonishment. I wasn’t sure if it was from Amber’s huge size or the gold medallion chain he wore.

  Jarvis turned dazed-looking eyes to me. “And the other three males I sense nearby?”

  “Are the local territory Queen’s men, I believe. I’d advise you to avoid them until we can make your changed status more clear.”

  Jarvis nodded.

  “Okay, everyone’s here. Let’s go do this.”

  We walked around to the front of the hospital, toward the thick throng of reporters. Several of them glanced our way. A few eyes zeroed in on Jarvis, then dismissed him as they took in his obviously uninjured appearance. But one attractive blonde reporter continued to gaze sharply at Jarvis and Kelly, especially Kelly. Her school photo had been running on the news.

  “That’s them! Come on, Jack,” she cried, grabbing the arm of her cameraman. The other reporters turned back to stare at us then rushed toward us in a mad scramble.

  The blonde reporter reached us first. “Are you Jarvis Condorizi and Kelly Rawlings?” she asked, sticking her mike in front of Jarvis.

  He flinched back a little and looked at me. I nodded.

  “Yes,” Jarvis answered.

  Questions came pelting at him fast and furiously. Jarvis glanced desperately at me, clearly overwhelmed. I motioned for him to wait. Stepping around the excited reporters that thronged around him and Kelly, I made my way with the others to the standing mike set up near the taped-off area for the reporters. Gently tapping the microphone, I happily noted that it was turned on just as Stanton, his three agents, and the two policemen burst out the front door with guns in hand. Catching sight of us, the nearby reporters, and running cameras, they halted abruptly. Before they could decide what to do next, either point their weapons at us or drop them less conspicuously down by their side, I spoke into the microphone.

  “As he just confirmed, that is Jarvis Condorizi and Kelly Rawlings.” My voice echoed nice and loudly out from the set of speakers, capturing everyone’s attention. “FBI agent in charge Richard Stanton and his men, standing right over there—” I waved my hand at them, and several cameras zoomed in on them. “—wanted to take us into custody. We politely declined and made our departure out one of the side exits.”

  Half the reporters dashed back over to us. “Who are you?” the blonde female reporter who had first spotted us asked, first one there, once again.

  “My name is Lisa Hamilton. I’m a Monère Queen serving as ambassador for the Monère people residing here in America. The Monère, as I explained and demonstrated to the doctors and nurses upstairs in the burn unit, and the FBI agents here, are descended from a race of people who once lived on the moon over four million years ago, before our home planet became uninhabitable. We were here long before Christopher Columbus ever sailed the ocean blue, and have lived in secret among you, until now. Our people have many gifts; one of them is shape-shifting. Jarvis, for example, is a bird-shifter. Jarvis, are you well enough to show them your wings?”

  “Yes, milady.” He made his way over to me. No one spoke as Jarvis took off his top.

  With a simple pulse of power, he lifted his arms and shifted them into beautiful, magnificent wings. Where his hands used to be were long gray-and-black-striped feathers; the color transitioned into startling, pure white along the top. The ease with which he performed the partial shift was quite impressive.

  “What is your name?” I asked the quick-footed female reporter. She was not only pretty but young, only in her late twenties, and obviously highly intelligent, debunking the stereotype of all blondes being bimbos.

  “I’m Meredith Tanner with Fox News.”

  “Jarvis, would you mind if Meredith touched your wings?”

  “No, milady.”

  With mike in hand, Ms. Tanner stepped forward and touched a wing with her fingers. “Oh my God,” she breathed into her mike. “They’re real feathers.”

  “Ms. Tanner, if you don’t mind stepping back please. Thank you, Jarvis, you can shift back now, if you wish.”

  Another pulse of power, and the feathers melted away, replaced by fingers, hands, and skin once more. A moment of stunned silence, and then a tall, athletic-looking male reporter near the front thrust his mike at me. “What other gifts do the Monère people have?” he asked.

  I loved these reporters—not one single mocking glance or scoff of disbelief.

  “We are faster and stronger, and our senses much keener. What is your name?” I asked.

  “Charles Kramer with NBC News.”

  “Charles, to help me demonstrate, would you mind racing me?”

  The reporter blinked then smiled eagerly. “Sure. Where to?”

  “How about if I race you to the curb and back, here to my left? That way you won’t need to shift the cameras around. I’d recommend you keep your shots angled out wide instead of zooming, so you don’t miss anything.”

  Charles nodded and said into his microphone, “Okay, I’m ready when you are,” and handed his mike to the reporter next to him.

  “On the count of three,” I said. “One, two, three . . . Go!”

  Charles sprinted forward. Before he had taken two steps, I was waiting for him by the curb, fifty feet away. To everyone watching, all they would have seen was a blurred streak of movement.

  I heard gasps and comments like “Did you see that?” and “Holy shit,” which the home stations would hopefully bleep out. The expression on Charles’s face as he ran up to where I waited for him was one of awe and amazement, mixed with excitement.

  “Do you have a watch or handkerchief or something to give me as proof that I was actually here at the curb, here with you, and not just a fancy hologram? I’ll return it to you, of course.”

  He removed his watch and passed it to me. “My God, are you really that fast?”

  “Yup. See you back where we started.” I streaked back to my original spot in front of the cameras to a lot of startled gasps and white faces. No one fainted, luckily. Holding up Charles’s watch, I said, “Here you go, folks. Proof that I was actually there at the curb and that it wasn’t some cleverly manufactured illusion. You’ll also be able to see that it’s real when you play the footage back in slow motion.”

  Charles returned, puffing hard.

  “Thanks for the watch, Charles.”

  A reporter near the back yelled out the next question. “Are the others with you also Monère?”

  Gotta love these guys, they recovered quick; not even a second of silence had passed.

  “Yes,” I answered, “let me introduce them to you. From my left here is Nolan Morell, his wife Hannah, and their sons, Quentin and Dante. Behind me is Dontaine. The big guy over here is Lord Amber. And you all already know Jarvis and Kelly.”

  “Is Kelly a Monère also?” asked another reporter.

  I hesitated. “Do you want to answer that question, Kelly?”

  “No, you can tell them,” Kelly said, her face carefully set without any readable expression.

  “Kelly is what we call a Mixed Blood, half human and half Monère. Something I believe she was not aware of herself until today.”

  More questions were thrown at me. The crowd outside the hospital had gotten much larger now, I noticed, including more policemen. A lot of people from the burn unit had also come outside.

  I held up my hand and the shouting subsided. “I and my friends are here as representatives for the Monère people residing in the United States. We would like to live openly among you in peaceful harmony, and that is the reason why we have come forward. Unfortunately, people like FBI Special Agent Richard Stanton over there”—I waved to him again—“feel that since we are not fully human, that we don’t have any rights, and he wishes to take us into custody even though we have not harmed anyone or broke
n any laws.” My pleasant smile disappeared. “Let me make this very clear. This is a one-shot deal. We are here now, ready and willing to talk about a peaceful and legal coexistence between our people—that is my greatest wish. However, if you persist in your efforts of trying to grab us and hold us against our will, brandishing your guns, and threatening us with violence, I can promise you this: we will simply disappear and go back to living secretly among you, something we have been doing for millions of years.”

  I let that sink in for a second before continuing. “Let me introduce you to George McManus, our attorney from the law firm of Adams, McManus, and Kent—and also Dr. Hubert, who is Jarvis’s and Kelly’s physician, and some others from the burn unit. They can tell you more about what they saw and heard upstairs.” I waved them to come over. Stepping back away from the microphone, I said softly, “Jarvis, if you can grab Kelly and follow us, we’ll leave now. Our van is parked several blocks away.”

  With cameras still filming us, we ran, blurring out of sight, nothing more than smeared streaks of speed; one moment there, the next moment gone.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS SORT of anticlimactic to pull into the back parking lot of our hotel and exit the van without anyone gaping or pointing at us. For now, our anonymity was still intact, though I didn’t trust it to last for long.

  “Jarvis.”

  He turned to look at me.

  “Dontaine, Amber, Dante, and I will be here,” I said, pointing to our door. “You and Kelly will be staying in the suite next door with the Morell family. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “You both did well. Let’s get some rest while we still can, then we’ll grab something to eat. After that, we’ll get some clothes and supplies for you and Kelly. How does that sound?”

  Jarvis seemed both bemused and discomfited on my seeking his opinion. “Of course, milady.”

  “Don’t forget to put the Do Not Disturb sign on your door,” I told Nolan, and made sure to hang our own sign outside on the door handle.

  “So what do you think?” I said as soon as we were inside. “Do you think it went badly? Did I totally blow it?”

  “I thought it went well,” Dante offered. “You made our purpose and our good intent very clear. The next step is up to them.”

  We talked for another half hour. The general consensus was that we had handled things pretty well—as best as the situation allowed, anyway.

  “You guys must be feeling tired,” I said, noting the time. It was ten thirty in the morning, long past our normal bedtime. “So who gets what room?”

  “Where would you like us to stay?” Dontaine asked, his face carefully bland.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, walking to the bedroom where Dontaine had unpacked all my stuff. “You guys work out the bedding arrangement. One person can stay with me, but no sex, just sleeping.”

  I was already in bed when Amber came into the room with a suitcase.

  “The other side,” Amber said, claiming the side closest to the window.

  I obediently moved over and watched Amber undress. He was a beautiful beast, I thought, watching him strip down and walk into the bathroom with that lack of self-consciousness all Monère males seemed to possess. From the flashes I remembered of my first life, I hadn’t been shy about baring my body either, and yet now I was. How did that work? Was modesty natural or something learned?

  Any further thoughts scattered when Amber returned and slid into bed with me.

  One good thing about this hotel was that they didn’t skimp on the curtains. The ones in our room were heavy and thick, blocking out the morning sunlight almost completely; just a thin sliver of light on either side of the drawn curtains penetrated into the room.

  “Who got the bedroom and who’s taking the pullout sofa?” I asked.

  “Dante is taking first watch. Dontaine is sleeping in the bedroom.”

  I turned on my side, and he pulled me in tight, spooning his big body around me. “They’ll switch in a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll take the third shift,” I offered.

  “That’s mine. You can stand watch after me.”

  “Which probably means there won’t be any watch to take after you,” I grumbled. “I’m not a delicate flower that will wilt at the least little bit of work, you know.”

  “Hush, we know that,” Amber murmured, his voice a pleasant rumble behind me. “Close your eyes.”

  My lids obediently shut. I thought it would take a while to settle down, but I drifted easily into sleep moments later with Amber wrapped snugly around me.

  When I blinked my eyes open, hours later, the slices of light coming into the bedroom were much dimmer, and I was alone. For a big man, Amber could move with surprising stealth. He had left the bed without waking me.

  I got up and used the bathroom. The television was playing when I stepped out into the living room area where not just the people in our suite, but also everyone from next door, were gathered. They had turned on the volume when they heard me get up, so I had already heard part of the news reporting. But seeing it was an entirely different experience.

  Every news channel was playing the announcement I had made in front of the hospital. I’d never been on TV before and had never seen myself this way. It was not the same as looking at your image reflected in a mirror or seeing it captured in a photo. It was more objective. Truly how others perceived you.

  With my hair so fashionably styled, and the clothing and makeup bringing out the exotic lift of my dark eyes, I could honestly say that the woman on TV was attractive. Not gorgeous like the people behind me, but there was a grace and elegance and command that was indeed riveting, especially set against my obvious youth.

  I had changed. And it wasn’t just the new highlights in my hair or the better haircut, although that did indeed help. It was my attitude, my confidence—my awareness of who and what I was.

  The ugly duckling had transformed into a graceful swan Queen.

  I had a moment to absorb this altered perception of myself before Quentin said to me, “We’re the biggest story out there. They’ve been playing this all day.”

  He flipped to a channel showing Dr. Hubert in front of the hospital describing what he had seen in the burn unit. Another channel showed Jarvis pulling off his blue top, his bare arms morphing into gloriously feathered wings. Yet another station was playing the blurred streak of me running to the curb at full Monère speed, leaving the tall reporter looking as if he had been caught flat-footed at the starting point. They followed with an immediate replay at slow speed. Watching this, I was struck by a stunning realization. “Oh my God,” I said unsteadily.

  “What is it?” Amber asked in a harsh rumble. All the men tensed and looked alertly around for a threat.

  “We did it!” I laughed. “We really did it!” I felt shocked, amazed, and exhilarated as it sank in. “The whole world knows about us now.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Quentin said in a loud aside to Kelly and Jarvis. “Our Queen’s a little slow when she first wakes up.”

  “And how would you know, little bro?” Dante asked, swatting his brother up the backside of his impudent head.

  “Hey, you’re just older than me by six lousy minutes, and I know by how she just reacted.” Quentin flashed me a grin. “Milady darling, the whole world has known for over eight hours now.”

  “That’s milady darling Queen to you,” Dante growled.

  “Boys, stop teasing,” Hannah chided her sons with offhanded casualness.

  I laughed again. “That’s okay, I deserve it. It’s just that it really didn’t hit me until I saw us on TV. Has it really been eight hours?”

  “It’s just past six in the evening,” Nolan said.

  Jarvis’s stomach growled. His face reddened when everyone glanced at him.

  Another laugh bubbled out from me. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  I ended up sandwiched between Amber and Dontaine in the middle row becau
se my face was too recognizable now. Nolan, Hannah, Jarvis, and Kelly sat in the back row, with Quentin driving and Dante riding shotgun.

  Doing a search on the GPS, Quentin drove us to the closest fast-food restaurant, a McDonald’s. We went through the drive-through and parked a short distance away to eat.

  “The meat’s overcooked,” Dante grumbled, biting into his Big Mac, which he had ordered without cheese.

  “Shut up and eat,” Quentin said cheerfully, biting into his Double Quarter Pounder, minus cheese also. “Not like all of us can march into a steak house and sit down and eat without being recognized.”

  “Maybe we can order takeout at a restaurant next time,” I said. “A steak restaurant, if you want, though I don’t understand the preference you guys have for rare meat. This Filet-O-Fish is delicious.”

  Dontaine shuddered beside me. “Mona Lisa, I love you with all my heart but your taste in food is atrocious.”

  “Fish,” Amber mumbled, his grimace as heartfelt as Dontaine’s shudder.

  “Monère men,” I said, turning to wink at Kelly, who had opted out of the beef everyone else was eating for a chicken sandwich. “Something’s got to be wrong with their taste buds, not ours.”

  Sitting next to her, Jarvis wolfed down his second burger. I had doubled his order of two hamburgers. A good call, it seemed, as I watched him unwrap his third burger.

  “Do you need any more food, Jarvis?” I asked.

  “No, milady,” he said around the big bite he had just taken.

  “You were injured. If you’re still hungry, let me know.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “Were you able to get some sleep?” I asked Kelly.

  “Some—about five hours,” she said, eyeing me warily. “All the men address you as my lady. Am I supposed to do the same?”

  “Not if it makes you uncomfortable. You can call me Lisa or Mona Lisa, if you prefer.”

  “What’s with that?” Kelly asked. “Mona Lisa?”

  “Mona is a title for Monère Queens. Since my name is Lisa, I’m addressed as Mona Lisa. If I had been named Kelly like you, I would be addressed as Mona Kelly.”