Mona Lisa Awakening m-1 Page 5

  The falcon gave a piercing shriek of rage as he slashed some of the rope with his beak. He might have broken free had he used his talons, but he could not employ them without dropping me. And he did not release me. Inevitably, the net tangled with his wings and we dropped back to the ground. Another surge and Gryphon was back in his normal form, a sprawl of arms and legs, naked, panting with exertion, weakened by the poison, a drop of blood glistening on his pale skin as the net was lifted off us. My knives were snatched away and powerful hands that I was quickly coming to recognize gripped my arms once again, bringing them together behind me, manacling them both with huge iron fists that allowed me no room to maneuver.

  "Quick learner. Too bad," I muttered, and arched back my head in a sudden move, landing a solid blow to the giant's nose. Good thing I was tall for a woman. He bellowed with pain but still held me secure. He drew me back firmly against his massive chest and tilted his head out of my reach. That awareness, that sharp attraction of like to like, of Queen to male that had been present all along, burst into full awareness and I felt something rise behind me from down below to prod at me. Could have been the sword, but I doubted it.

  I struggled fiercely, energized by something that tasted like fear. My feet slammed into the giant's shins. He grunted but didn't move; his pain tolerance was impressive but not to my advantage. Only when I lashed back and up, trying to kick between his legs did he lift me easily and take me down to the ground, sweeping my legs out from under me quickly and efficiently, with no wasted effort or emotion. He followed me down, his great weight trapping me and immobilizing my legs, damn near squashing me. Good thing I didn't need to breathe as much as a normal human or I would have suffocated.

  The other men, including the white-haired man I had cut earlier, gazed down at us from a distance, making no move to come closer, which I didn't mind in the least. Nor had they made a move to help at any time. Of course, it looked as if the giant hadn't needed their help, the big brute.

  They had shackled Gryphon not with iron but with silver manacles, hands and feet, and left him on the ground. He struggled, straining against the shackles until his wrists and ankles were raw and abraded. I felt a shimmer of energy from him but he couldn't transform. We lay several yards from each other, helpless.

  "She gave you a bit a trouble for such a small thing, Amber," hissed a sibilant voice to my right. I craned my head and saw her. Yup, Mona Sera, the snake bitch. And it was Amber, of the raping Sonia fame, on top of me.

  Mona Sera came closer and I felt her definitive presence like an irritating buzzing against my senses that annoyed the heck out of me, and I wondered if this was what silver felt like against the skin of a Monère. If so, I could understand their aversion to the metal.

  I felt the cold touch of manacles clamp around my wrists and wondered if it was silver also. It didn't bother me, nor would it be able to hold me, though they evidently thought that it would for some reason. Interesting. I looked at Gryphon. I'd thought his inability to break free was due to his weakened condition, but perhaps touching silver weakened Monère in some way. Perhaps it weakened me the same way. Mentally I shrugged. We'd see soon enough. But now was not the time to test the restraints, with us surrounded, outnumbered, and outstrengthed, and with Gryphon trussed up and laid out beside me like a plucked turkey. I'd wait for a better time and opportunity, like when the sun was hot and high in the sky. While they slept, maybe.

  I was flipped onto my back and saw for the first time the face of my opponent, Amber, close-up. He was beautiful in a brutish manner, the way a towering oak tree was, built for power and endurance, his face roughly hewn, with big features—a prominent forehead and brow, a bold nose, a jutting jaw that fit the massive body, and straight nut-brown hair. His dark blue eyes were large and deep-set. There was an odd emptiness of emotion in their depths. Not anger or irritation or lust, just a cool control that had not changed in any way while we had fought. Not one single emotion but for that brief glimmer of surprise when I had thrown him.

  "Amber, rape her," Mona Sera commanded.

  Perhaps waiting for the right time was not an option after all. Both Amber and I tensed but Amber made no other move, just stayed straddled over my thighs. I had wondered why they hadn't chained my legs, and now I knew. It was so he could rape me. I'd just as soon have not known, actually.

  We stared at each other, both of us still, the tension stretching taut between us. Neither one of us made the first move to break it. Something flickered in those turquoise depths. His pupils constricted, his heartrate went up, and his nostrils flared as his breathing quickened. I braced myself for his attack but all he did was turn his head to Mona Sera.

  "Milady… she is a Queen, I can sense it," Amber said.

  "Yes, then you are not so dumb after all. Obey my order. Rape her!" Mona Sera's voice cracked like a whip and Amber flinched. His hands lifted, reached for me, then dropped helplessly. He looked at me and I realized what I was seeing. Fear. Not lust. Fear. It writhed like a trapped animal in his eyes.

  "Please, milady…" Amber beseeched his Queen.

  "So shy?" Mona Sera purred. "You were most eager with the others. Indeed, there seems to be no problem with the amber stone." Her gaze dropped down to his bulging erection. "Why so hesitant?"

  "Milady, it is forbidden to rape Queens," Amber said desperately, sweat wetting his brow.

  "And yet so many of you men have done so throughout our history," Mona Sera said, her voice as cold as ice as she delivered the death blow. "Like your father. Did he not rape, then kill, his Queen, breaking the ultimate law?"

  I looked at Mona Sera then, really looked at her, and with that new sharpened vision, I sensed it, her secret, her fear. A little kernel within her that had blossomed and grown. And I realized this wasn't about me at all. This was to test and punish Amber, whose father had committed the ultimate taboo, not only raping but killing a Queen. Large, strong, massive Amber, whom Mona Sera secretly feared and hated in the way only a woman, weaker and smaller, could fear a man, even a Queen. Perhaps especially a Queen.

  "Does not the desire run in your blood?" Mona Sera asked, her voice dripping with sweetness. "Come, come. We can all see that you want to take the little Queen. You cannot fool us."

  He quivered, a mass of great strength and masculine control reduced to no better than that of a helpless trapped animal. Poor brute.

  Satisfaction glinted hard like a diamond in Mona Sera's eyes. With my deeper insight into people, I could almost read her thoughts. If he raped me, a Queen, it would confirm all that Mona Sera had secretly feared all along, and it would be his own death sentence. If he didn't, he was refusing his Queen's direct orders. Amber was screwed either way and the realization of it was evident in the sea-blue turmoil of his eyes.

  I wondered how many years Mona Sera had made Amber pay and pay for the sins of his father. How many times she had ordered him to rape someone before her and watch her worst fear reenacted over and over again, prodding at it like one would a sore tooth. How sick and twisted Mona Sera must be to test both of them so.

  Gryphon had said that those here had nowhere else to go. Perhaps if Amber had been less tall, less strong—just less. But with his massive strength and height, no Queen would ever feel completely safe around him with the insanity of his father's history, and it was insane to kill off your life source, condemning not just you but all others to a shorter life.

  "Amber, I ordered you to rape her. Didn't you hear me?" Mona Sera voice grew shriller, louder.

  Amber slid off me. Crawling on his hands and knees, he prostrated himself before Mona Sera. "Please, my Queen. I beg of you… I do not wish to."

  "You lie," she said, her voice pure melodic poison. "One clearly sees that you do wish to."

  He shook his head, his face in the dirt.

  "You dare disobey me?" Her voice was a deadly hiss of warning.

  His hands stretched beseechingly up to her, then dropped, not daring to touch her.

  "Well
I, for one, would be most happy to carry out my Queen's command," said the man I had cut, youthful despite the whiteness of his hair, his cheerful voice breaking the spell and drawing all attention back to me as I was inching my way closer to Gryphon. Great. Just frigging great.

  I started to struggle to my feet and the white-haired warrior did that fast-action leap-and-bound thing, his body on me in an instant, pinning me down before I even had a chance to rise. With a calculated deliberation, he tore open the front of my shirt, revealing my cross and laying bare more cleavage than I was comfortable with flashing.

  Yup, no more waiting. I flexed, broke the short silver chain easily, slammed a manacle-clad wrist into the handsome, winsome face above me—rapists came in all kinds, I guess—and watched with satisfaction as he flew off me.

  I tsked-tsked. "No one teaches you boys manners anymore."

  Gasps of surprise flew around me. I ignored them and scrambled to Gryphon, ripping off his manacles quickly and easily, and pulling him to his feet as men ran toward us.

  "Wait," came a woman's voice, clear and loud, not Mona Sera's. And for some reason, perhaps from nothing more than mere surprise, everyone halted, including Gryphon.

  "Why do you interfere, Sonia?" Mona Sera snapped. Sonia—Gryphon's half sister.

  "My Queen," Sonia said, her voice ringing with desperate certainty, "she is your daughter."

  Chapter Five

  The pronouncement stopped me short. My mother? I stopped yanking on Gryphon and swung back to stare at Mona Sera. Focusing my vision, I searched her face. Her eyes were cold and her lips were thin, cruel. But those cheekbones, the strong line of her jaw, that black hair…

  Oh my God, there was a resemblance.

  "Do not be ridiculous," Mona Sera said sharply, with what almost sounded like pain.

  "Milady. She wears a silver cross against her skin and it does not weaken her," Sonia said. She was a gentle woman, with kind eyes and light brown hair the color of autumn leaves after they had fallen from the trees. "She is a Mixed Blood."

  "She cannot be a Mixed Blood. She has our strength and speed, and she is a Queen," Mona Sera said. But she narrowed her eyes and looked with that extra sense beyond the five that humans possessed. "How interesting," she murmured. "When were you born?"

  I arched my brow. "The day I was found in the orphanage was October 31, twenty-one years ago."

  "Is that the date?" Mona Sera queried of Sonia. The other woman nodded.

  My eyes narrowed. "You have to ask someone else when your daughter was born?"

  "Why should I remember it?" was her arrogant reply.

  "Bitch," was mine.

  Gryphon squeezed my shoulder in warning as I processed the information that the cross I had cherished and worn against my heart all my life had not be given to me by my mother as I had thought. Mona Sera had not recognized the cross in any way.

  With slow certainty I turned my eyes to the woman who must have given it to me, who must have named me. The woman who had remembered the day and year I had been born. Who had recognized that cross.

  "Her palms," Sonia said quietly. "She should have the marks."

  "Show us your palms, girl," Mona Sera commanded.

  I curled my hands into fists, bristling against the order. Gryphon squeezed my shoulder gently, persuasively. But it was the quiet plea in Sonia's compassionate eyes that I could not resist.

  Goddammit, why couldn't you have been my mother instead? I wailed inside as I uncurled my fists and held out my palms. Everyone gasped again. I was beginning to feel like a circus monkey, performing trick after trick.

  "The Goddess's tears," Mona Sera said, looking at my pearly moles. "I remember thinking it such a waste on a Mixed Blood child."

  I'd always wondered who my mother was. Looking at Mona Sera's proud icy face that reflected not one ounce of maternal warmth, I felt the truth of that old adage—Be careful what you wish for.

  My eyes fell to Amber's quivering prostrate form and things shifted into better perspective.

  Okay, so my mother was a sick, murdering bitch. At least she was sane.

  I found myself locked in the dungeon for the rest of the day. A real honest-to-god dungeon. What else did one expect in the basement of a beautiful manor house masquerading as an ugly warehouse. The stone walls were damp and there was no light, but I didn't need any to see. If this was how she treated a daughter, I wondered how she treated an enemy.

  The door was made out of silver, and no, that didn't stop me. The slow beating heart armed with my own knives behind the door did, however. That, and the fact that Mona Sera was taking and presenting me to the High Queens' Council the very next night. It was what Gryphon and I had wanted, after all.

  I sank down onto the stone floor and felt the sun rise and worried about Gryphon. He had been taken away and I had forborne asking Mona Sera about him, instinctively knowing that any concern evidenced for him on my part would be seen as a weakness to be used and exploited by her. I wasn't a daughter to her. I was just an interesting tool, like a hammer she could swing, a novelty she could present to the court and claim credit for. None of it mattered, as long as she took us there.

  I must have dozed. The sound of a key turning and door opening awakened me. The light from the stairwell fell on my guard's hair, showing its true color, a blond so light in color it appeared white at first glance, but upon closer look revealed that faint touch of yellow. His eyes were a striking green, not that brownish mix of green more commonly seen, but pure emerald green that made one think of the rich verdant jungles of the Amazon. He had the same cheerful smile that he had worn when he was about to rape me.

  "Allow me to introduce myself. Beldar, at your service." He bowed with a courtly flourish, and held out a package to me, his eyes fixed politely on my face and not on my exposed cleavage, smart man, a cleavage that he himself had exposed, allowing all eyes to see. "My Queen invites you to break fast with her and bids you wear this gown."

  I took the package from him and opened it. It was a long dress. Black silk.

  "Step outside and close the door while I change," I said.

  "You wound me with your mistrust," Beldar replied. "Surely you don't hold our little skirmish against me. I was the one wounded."

  I sniffed and didn't smell blood. "Your wound seems to have closed."

  He flashed me a charming smile, arrogant devil. "We heal fast. Say you forgive me."

  "When you return my knives."

  "Not until we reach the court," returned Beldar regretfully. "By my Queen's command."

  "The door," I said.

  With a sigh, he closed it and I quickly changed. The dress fell about my feet in a full, rich swirl. A near-perfect fit at the waist but a bit loose at the chest, confirming my suspicion that the dress was Mona Sera's. Pity I hadn't inherited her full bosom. Not what I would have chosen to wear, but it was better than going around in a torn shirt with my breasts half hanging out.

  "I'm done," I said, not bothering to speak loudly, knowing he would hear me.

  The door swung open and Beldar's eyes widened in appreciation. He gestured up the stairs and inclined his head. "Ladies first."

  "No, you first. I insist."

  "Don't trust me at your back?"

  "Nope. Not someone who would have raped me with a smile on his face."

  "I would have thanked you afterward," he said winsomely, and I couldn't hold back a small smile. He might have been an opportunistic bastard but there was no denying he was a charming one.

  He grinned back at me. "Very well."

  I followed Beldar up the stairs and he led the way to the dining room. It was furnished with austere simplicity, with elegant black chairs set against neutral walls and natural wood floors. Everyone was already there, seated around a long formal table set with fine china, polished silverware, crystal candelabras, and gleaming candlelight. Mona Sera sat at the head of the table. Only the men were present. No other women. Nor were Gryphon or Amber present, I noted unhappily
.

  Beldar seated me at the foot of the table, a position of honor, perhaps, or maybe because it was the farthest seat away from Mona Sera. Far enough so that the irritating abrasive presence of another Queen was hardly felt. The presence of over twenty men in close proximity, on the other hand, was like a fresh punch to my senses. I didn't fight the awareness, just let it flow over me, grateful to be sitting down. The trick, I learned, was to absorb it, then tune it down like unwanted noise. The men closest to me held themselves stiffly and looked at me warily, and I wondered sardonically if it was because they were afraid of jumping me or afraid that I might jump them.

  Mona Sera inclined her head, the gracious host. "I am so pleased you could join us, Mona Lisa." She'd had to ask my name last night. Nope, my cross had definitely not come from her.

  "My pleasure," I said dryly, knowing she would have ensured I joined them whether I had desired it or not.

  The food was brought out and I found out where the women were—serving us, silly me. From the corner of my eye, I watched Sonia serve Queen Mona Sera first. A quiet, subdued woman—all the women seemed quiet and subdued, for that matter—lay a plate before me. I glanced down. The steak was bloodier than I was used to but I forced myself to eat a few bites. A girl had to keep up her strength, especially in this crowd.

  "We have a surprise treat for dessert," Mona Sera said, evil satisfaction lacing her voice. It had been surprisingly quiet and civilized up until then. I'd known it couldn't last.

  The door opened and the smell hit me first: heated raw flesh. Gryphon stumbled in, supporting a barely conscious man. Both wore only pants, their tops naked. Gryphon's chest and face were reddened as if he'd gotten a light sunburn, but the other taller, bigger man was a mass of fiery, lobster-red flesh covered by not just blisters, but boils—huge half-dollar size boils that had broken open and oozed a pink-tinged exudate. His eyes were so swollen and puffed with fluid that he couldn't open his eyelids, and his lips were thickened and covered with open sores. His face was distorted beyond the point of recognition. Only the man's size and chestnut hair let me know that it was Amber I was seeing.