Mona Lisa Awakening m-1 Page 4

  "So what happened to these blessed Queens?"

  "Great gifts beget great peril. They were both blessed and cursed by their gifts."

  "Sounds like a mixed review to me."

  My stomach suddenly growled and I jumped. Gryphon gave that rusty laugh again and I rewarded him with a grin. "I'm starving. Do you eat? Or do you need to drink blood?"

  His brows rose. "And would you offer me your lovely neck if I did?"

  "Sure, if you needed it."

  "Ah." He sighed, his eyes growing soft. "You are like a fresh breath of wind. No, we do not drink blood. We partake of food as humans do. Did you think me vampyre?"

  "Yes," I blushed. "I craved your crimson blood the first time I saw it. I was overwhelmed with a desire to taste it. And when I did, my heart melted. It was the first time I'd ever felt such an urge."

  "That is because it was the first time you have been with one of your kind. The urge to taste each other only arises between Monère lovers, never with humans. The resulting bite mark is the highest form of honor, evidence of the deepest of passion.."

  "You didn't taste my blood." I touched the unbroken skin of my neck where he had pressed his teeth.

  His blue eyes sparkled with simmering heat. "I restrained myself because of those who hunt me. It would be my honor and even greater pleasure to taste you and leave my mark upon you when the time is right."

  I blushed. "So we're not vampires by nature. Are there such things as vampires, then?"

  A bare hesitation, then, "No, there is no such creature. The vampire stories originated from those of us who can take on the form of a rat or a bat."

  "How about werewolves? Are they real?"

  "Again, that lore is based on those of us who can shift into wolf form. But as with the vampyre, there is a little truth and much misinformation that humans have concocted."

  "Like holy objects causing you to burst into flames. What about wooden stakes through the heart and garlic cloves?"

  "Myth only. Stakes through the heart… that would not kill us. Our healing body would eventually spit the wood out."

  "So, what are our fata! vulnerabilities?"

  "The usual ways. Cutting our hearts out. Severing our heads off. But the most painful and lingering deaths are through silver or sun poisoning."

  My eyes grew round at the gruesome methods he ticked off. "The sun can kill you?"

  "Most definitely. Its hot rays burn us even at its weakest hours. Does it not burn you?"

  "No, I have no such problems."

  "Ah," he said, pleased, as if I had confirmed something he had already suspected. "The ability to withstand the sun is not unusual for Mixed Bloods."

  I swallowed. "Do you have to sleep in a coffin or in the ground?"

  He kissed me, a light peck of affection. "No, a soft bed will do very well. We are nocturnal. We sleep during the daytime hours. Humans are made for the heat of the sun. We are cold-blooded creatures. The night," he glanced longingly out the window, "is our domain. The darkness, the soothing air, when the world is shrouded in serenity, and our bodies, enlightened, are infused with energy from the moon. Don't you feel that, too, when night falls and your soul awakens to the calling from above?"

  "Yes, I have felt that way since my childhood, only I didn't know then what it was, what made me so different from other children."

  "That must have been hard for you, not knowing what made the days dreary, the sun glaring, and your body leaden with fatigue." He stroked my hair. "Tell me more about your childhood."

  "I will, later. Your well-being is what concerns my heart now. We must act to find the cure soon to stop this poisoning. Thirty days is not a long time."

  He smiled and whispered in a most gentle tone, "I care not that I live another moment. I care only that I am in your arms. I feel like a camel reaching an oasis after a long trek in the dry desert. I feel as if I have lived my life, that I could close my eyes and fall asleep and rest in your presence forever."

  "Don't close your eyes now." I pressed a kiss to his brow. "You are too young to die."

  He looked at me quietly for a moment. "I could just stay here and use the rest of my days, however short they may be, to pass you knowledge, teach you of our kind, acquaint you with people and names that may prove useful to you as a Queen," he said gently.

  He lay there in my arms and my vision was suddenly keener. more perceptive, allowing me to glimpse deep into his weary, battered, undernourished soul and see with sharp clarity what he had chosen—death. He wanted to rest, to die here in the comfort in my presence instead of fight to live. And I saw clearly that neither soft kindness nor sweet pleading would sway him from his chosen path. He needed something harsh, something stinging to wake him up; I knew this, somehow, deep in my heart. A core of hidden knowledge within me seemed to have awakened with his entry into my life.

  "You call me your Queen," I said, my voice cracking like a whip, "but in your heart you do not truly mean it."

  "No—" He jerked back at my sudden attack and sat up.

  I ruthlessly cut off his cry of bewildered protest and continued scornfully. "You have resigned yourself to death, even welcome that final rest, for you are tired of the pain and suffering of living. You lie when you call me your Queen, for you serve no one but yourself in giving in so easily to the death waiting to claim you."

  Gryphon tensed wildly beneath the lash of my words, but he was unable to deny the sting of their truth.

  "You appease yourself by offering to pass me a pittance of knowledge before you die in return for the comfort and ease I give you." I smiled contemptuously. "You treat me no better than a whore if you believe I am willing and desperate enough to settle for so little in return."

  "No," he choked in agonized denial, shaking his head furiously. "No, my Queen."

  "I will not settle for thirty days of your half-hearted service and then allow you to leave me alone and unprotected while you go to your rest," I said harshly. "If I am truly your Queen, then I require and demand from you all that is due me from a male in my service."

  I glided to him and he watched me as if mesmerized, with something new in his eyes—a touch of fear and caution.

  "You are mine. Every part of you belongs to me," I said, caressing his chest just above that slow, steady beating, feeling him tremble and smiling because of it. "Your brave warrior heart, your poisoned body, your weary soul." I breathed the words against his lips as I buried my hand in his hair and gripped his scalp hard. "Your brilliant mind," I whispered and brought my lips against his in a chaste kiss. "By my right, I claim every part of you in my service, and demand and require that you desire to live with your entire breath and being, with your very heart and soul. I hold you to your duty to seek a cure for yourself and to not abandon me. You owe me two hundred and twenty-five more years of servitude and I will not be cheated with a paltry thirty days, do you understand?"

  Gryphon sank to his knees before me, silent tears of shame coursing down his cheeks. "Yes, my Queen," he said, yielding all because I demanded it.

  "Your oath on it."

  "I swear it," he said harshly.

  "Swear it by that which you hold most dear."

  He lifted his eyes to me. "I swear it on milady's heart," he said, bowing his head.

  I tenderly stroked Gryphon's hair, a bittersweet smile twisting my lips. I had won. For now, I had won. I had seen what weapon to use and had used it ruthlessly to achieve my own end because I did not want to be alone, because I had only just begun to truly live and did not want to see that life die in its mere infancy. I smiled bitter-sweetly because I did not know that I was any better than that other terrible Queen, Mona Sera, in her calculated cruelty and, even more frightening, I did not care.

  "I will not make it so easy for you to leave me." It was a soft promise, a gentle threat.

  Gryphon drew in a deep gulping breath. "No, my Queen," he whispered.

  Chapter Four

  I had set my heart in pursuit of the antidote,
wherever it might take me. I felt a keener sense of myself, like a fresh young blossom of spring sensing the world for the first time, my tattered old self diminishing with every new breath I took in.

  The idea of searching out the other Queen Mona Genesa, was soon abandoned. Gryphon had only a poor idea of where she was and an even poorer expectation of how he would be received, being the runaway slave of another Queen, the most despised of his kind. Had we been able to find her, she would likely turn us away like hunted dogs, chasing us far from her. Helping unwanted fugitives was an unspoken taboo among the Queens.

  So, what to do then? There was only one choice, I told Gryphon. Face his enemy, and I would help him conquer the unconquerable. Reluctantly, Gryphon agreed.

  Where did a Monère Queen live? In Queens, of course. Oh, the ego Mona Sera had. Thus we found ourselves the following night, shortly before midnight, outside a desolate warehouse in Flushing, the most easterly outpost of Queens, near an old railway depot. Rusty tracks lay abandoned and unused under the gleaming moon. Surrounding us on both sides were empty railway box carts, the kind once used for shipping before highways and trucks made them obsolete. They were stacked one atop another in a colorful array of dulled orange and grey, to tower over the undistinguished warehouse.

  The full moon hovered above us in perfect round glory. Why while everyone gathered for Basking.

  Gryphon had said to me the previous night, "A sad pity we could not search for the antidote during the full moon tomorrow while everyone is gathered for Basking, but we shall have to stay here and Bask ourselves."

  "Bask?" I had returned. "What's that?"

  He had looked at me, stunned. "Basking is when we stand beneath the full moon and the Queen opens herself and the moon showers down upon us her rays of light, renewing us all."

  And so I came to learn a bit more about the children of the moon. Queens were precious indeed, because only they had the ability to pull down the moon's rays and allow others to Bask in its energy. Without Basking, the Monère aged more quickly, like humans. Queens held the ultimate power: they prolonged life. I, unfortunately, did not know how to Bask. Oh well. But at least we now had the perfect moment for entering the premises with the least chance of detection.

  A cool wind swept the tree branches, causing a flurry of red and gold leaves to dance and flutter to the ground. An owl hooted as we swiftly crossed and blended into the shadows of the building's northern wall. Gryphon entered through a second-story window like a shadowy ghost. A moment later, he opened the front door, letting me in.

  All the lights were off, but darkness was no obstacle to our kind. Our eyes were equipped to see things as if night were day. It was deserted inside. That was no surprise. The surprise was how richly furnished—opulent, really—the interior was, with veined marble flooring, finely woven Persian carpets, and a magnificent crystal chandelier. I followed Gryphon up the grand, winding staircase in silent wonderment and down a hallway that held nothing but a single door at the end.

  My skin prickled as an acute fragrance rushed toward me from that door. A fragrance feminine and jarring, giving me a sense of being in a place where I ought not to be, as if I was impinging upon another's realm. It had to be Mona Sera's chamber.

  Gryphon opened the door and disappeared inside. Taking a deep breath, I followed him and entered into the spacious living quarters of the master bedroom. It was lavishly furnished with plush carpeting and heavy, gilded frames of art. One I recognized as a Renoir, another a Rubens. A huge, draped four-poster bed dominated the room. It was twice the size of a king bed, enshrouded by curtain wisps that framed it in sheer decadent glory.

  Gryphon's touch broke my spell and I blinked at him. He gestured me toward the adjacent dressing area while he went to the bed and began searching it. The dressing area was a room as big as my living room and decorated much, much nicer, with framed prints, carpeting, draperies even, and a comfortable chaise. I opened the closets. Mona Sera's gowns and apparel lined the racks with her shoes in the space below, numbering well into the hundreds. I shook my head in bemusement. What did you know? Mona Sera had a thing for shoes.

  I looked carefully on the shelves and through the custom-fitted drawers, ran my hands down the clothes, peered in the shoes, prodded the little toes within, but found nothing. I even ran my hands along the walls and floor but could sense no hidden seams or compartments. I returned to the boudoir and looked at Gryphon. He gestured to some vials on the mirrored bureau top. I came to his side, lifted the lids, smelled nothing but perfume fragrance, and shook my head. We searched the rest of room, even peering under the mattress of the huge bed but found nothing except a simple vial hidden in a bedside drawer.

  Before I could lift the stopper of the vial, Gryphon was at my side, his hand over mine, shaking his head furiously. Carefully, gingerly, controlling my movements with dreadful care, he put the vial back and pulled me into the bathroom where he had me wash my hands three times before continuing our search. It was fruitless.

  Disappointment weighed heavily in my heart as we slipped back out into the hallway and made our way back down. We had agreed beforehand to search only the Queen's private quarters where the antidote would most likely be hidden. Gryphon waited for me down by the front door, but before I reached him, I stopped and turned. Something drew me, some amorphous thing coming from the east wing. Instead of leaving, I veered right, following the irresistible pull down an empty corridor.

  Gryphon stopped me, a hand gripping me urgently, shaking his head and urging me back toward the entrance. But I shook him off, called onward by something I could not deny, some force that pulled me forward until I stumbled into a grand hall. Only then did I recognize it. The feel of power, old power. It hit me with a spine-tingling rush.

  The great chamber was exposed to the full moon through an open skylight. A score of men and a handful of women faced away from me, their faces lifted to the streaming rays bathing them in pale light. On the center platform, a woman lifted her arms in joyous welcome to the round, luminous planet that had once been their home, her hair streaming down her back, hair so black that it shone blue in the silvery light. She was naked, unrestricted by clothing, her flesh pure and unblemished, her breasts jutting out full and proud. From the waist down, her body was a serpentine flow of smooth, rippling muscles covered by glistening scales. She had no legs, just the body of a snake. I looked at her with wonder and thought lamia, what the ancient Greeks had called the snakelike creature they had believed to be vampire, a creature of legend and lore that I would have claimed only a moment before did not exist.

  A moonbeam fell on the snakewoman and the power that filled the room grew. With a burst of brightness, little butterflies of light showered down from the heavens, darting into her and entering into all the men and women around her, making them gasp, bowing their backs as the light streamed into them until they glowed with blinding brilliance.

  And still the power did not abate but continued to grow, tightening more and more within me until I felt as if I would surely-burst. And then it seemed as if I did. With another flash of light, moonlight darted to the back of the hall, to me, finding me and touching me with cold light, showering me with flittering energy and sharing that invigorating power with Gryphon, making us gasp and glow with radiance. Only then did the power fade with one last loving caress, leaving us behind in the quiet afterglow with all eyes turned upon us and the cold discovery that several men had moved behind us and now held us captive.

  Basking, as far as I was concerned, hadn't been worth it.

  "Well, well, well. What have we here?" Mona Sera purred. A forked tongue flitted out in the air, tasting us. I felt a surge of energy. Before my eyes, the lamia's vertically slitted pupils rounded out and her scales melted away into legs that flowed with sinuous grace toward us.

  A woman brought a robe to Mona Sera and she slipped her arms into the garment and belted it, to my immense relief. The fact that a naked woman coming at me was scarier than the warrio
r behind me, holding me captive in an iron grip, said a lot about my priorities. Homophobic, me? Nah. I just felt more comfortable fighting. Street fighting and a hodgepodge of other disciplines thrown in.

  With a twist I broke free, my arm slipping out at my opponent's weakest point where his thumb and fingers met. I grabbed my captor's arm. Another twist, a grunt from me as I bent and lifted, and the man went sailing over my head to land with a nice thud on the ground, surprise darkening his eyes.

  Geez, he was a massive brute, at least six-four and close to three hundred pounds I'd bet, with a barrel-like chest and arms and thighs as wide as my head. I was surprised I'd been able to throw him, and surprised even more at what he wore at his waist—a genuine sword sheathed in its very own scabbard, like what they used back during the Crusades.

  One of the two men holding Gryphon lunged at me and I ducked back. Let's see, two opponents in front, twenty behind me. Forward, definitely forward, was the way to go. Knives suddenly in hand, I leaped and slashed a white-haired warrior in my way, slicing his chest and drawing blood, then darted past him as Gryphon plunged an elbow into his opponent and dropped him with a kick. The stench of Gryphon's blood filled the air. Damn, his belly wound had broken open again.

  We dashed down the corridor, out the front entrance and came to an abrupt halt. Ten men formed a half circle in front of us outside; they must have come through the skylight. I wondered briefly if they could fly, and that made me think of something.

  "Gryphon, fly," I said. "Fly away from here, now. Do it."

  His eyes burning, he obeyed me. His clothes ripped away and he transformed with a brief surge of power, his face changing, his mouth lengthening into a sharp beak, snowy white feathers flowing on his arms, all over, as he became a huge bird of prey. But his eyes, his beautiful intelligent eyes were still the same, fixed on me as he spread his wings in flight. Fixed on me as he swung his powerful feet to grip me, his razor-sharp talons carefully wrapping around and not into my waist. We were three feet into the air when the realization that he was trying to fly us born out hit me, the same time a heavy rope net was thrown over us.