Mona Lisa Blossoming m-2 Read online

  The taste, the feel, the flooding of me with his essence brought me to my own release, an almost gentle wave of pulsing, quiet convulsing. And while my body still quivered, I found myself hauled up his, his heart thudding against mine. I wrapped my arms around him, held him tight as the last of the light was absorbed back into us and we were two separate beings once more, two separate skins. "Mine," I whispered fiercely against his neck. "You are mine."

  "Yes, I am yours. Body, heart, and soul," he breathed, a soughing surrender, holding me tightly to him, soft bemused wonderment in his voice. "And you are mine."

  Chapter Seven

  The knocking on the door was loud and intrusive. The sun was still up, high in the sky, shining fiercely. I felt as if I'd barely closed my eyes. Gryphon stirred beside me. Knocking was way better than just barging in, but still… this had better be good.

  "They're gone, milady. Tersa and the boy." It was Rosemary. She spoke urgently but quietly through the door. No need to shout, I heard her clearly.

  I found my clothes scattered on the floor. Gryphon was dressed before I was. He opened the door as I secured the daggers around my waist, and Rosemary slipped in.

  "I'm sorry, milord, milady. But I've searched the entire house. They're not here. And your brother, Thaddeus, is also not in his room."

  My brother still often rose in the afternoon while the others slept, not quite adjusted yet to our reverse schedule. I could almost see what had happened: Tersa discovering Wild Boy gone back to his home—the forest, Thaddeus the only one up and about; both of them going out to search for him. Tersa and Thaddeus out there alone! Aw, fuck.

  I threw open the door to find Amber in the hallway, fully dressed, his hair tousled from slumber but his eyes alert. Maybe throwing on clothes was like going to the bathroom for men; they just did it quicker than women. He'd obviously heard Rosemary.

  "The others?" I asked Amber.

  "Sleeping. It would be hard to rouse them."

  "Wake up Chami," I instructed Rosemary. "Tell him what's happened. Have him guard the others here." It was the best I could think of for now.

  I ran down the stairs, Amber and Gryphon behind me. "How did they leave the house?" I asked.

  "A window was open in the dining room," Rosemary answered, coming down the stairs with a surprisingly light tread for her girth and stature. You'd expect someone with that heavy build to thump. "I closed it."

  "Lock up behind us." I went out the front door.

  The burning sun was directly overhead, causing both Amber and I to squint. Sunlight didn't fry us, but our eyes were sensitive to the bright light. I had a pair of sunglasses somewhere up in my room. God knows where they were hiding. No time to waste scrounging around for them. A pity. Already my eyes were starting to water.

  I scanned completely around me but found nothing in the near vicinity. Nothing human, that is. Plenty of wildlife out there. I turned to find Amber scenting the air, his nostrils wide and flaring, eyes bright amber yellow.

  Gryphon had undressed completely, his clothes neatly folded on the ground. Gee, maybe it wasn't a girl-guy thing. Maybe they just had more practice than I did. A shimmer of energy, sparkles of light, and Gryphon was soaring in the air, wings spread over ten feet long, a giant, graceful snow-white gyrfalcon. A few beats of his gray-tipped wings and he was high in the sky, circling above us.

  "They went north," Amber said, sprinting across the lawn, darting into the woods. I followed behind him, jumping over rocks and fallen tree trunks, ducking branches, brushing past bushes. I moved with natural grace and speed, but nothing like Amber. He flowed like water flowed in a river, naturally, skimming through the brush without disturbing a single leaf. He moved as if he knew where every rock, every tree, every branch was. He moved with a fluidity and swiftness that came from tapping into his beast, from utilizing his cat senses. And watching him, following him, slower, less sure, I wished that I could do as he did.

  I caught brief glimpses through the trees of Gryphon winging overhead in a silent, graceful, effortless glide. And though my senses were less keen than Amber's or Gryphon's in their animal form, I could smell the brackish smell of still water, of decaying leaves. The ground beneath us grew wetter and softer. They'd gone into the marsh land, the bayou. There were nasty things that lived out there. Things that could eat you. What the fuck were they thinking?

  I heard them now in the far distance.

  "Wild Boy," Tersa called.

  Then my brother's young tenor. "Wiley, buddy, where are you?"

  Wiley?

  Above us, the falcon gave a piercing shriek.

  "Tersa, Thaddeus!" I shouted, still running, leaping, following Amber almost blindly as he headed toward the voices, feeling a tide of relief welling within me at finding them.

  "Mona Lisa?" Thaddeus called out with surprise.

  Then came a sound that abruptly changed relief into a quick flash of terror—a loud splash. A startled scream.

  "Tersa!" Thaddeus shouted.

  And then a second softer splash, more controlled, from the other end of the bayou, like a large predator entering the water, hunting its prey.

  "Get her out of the water!" I threw myself forward without regard for quiet or stealth or whatever path may or may not be before me. I cleared my own path, leaping over things when I could, crashing through shoulder-high weeds and thicket when it was the shortest route, my heart pounding, drowning out all other sounds until I heard nothing but my panting, my running feet. My fear.

  A scream splintered the air as I broke through to the edge of the bayou, and the sight that filled my eyes stopped my breath, the only reason I knew it was Tersa screaming and not I.

  A dripping Thaddeus stood valiantly in front of a soaked, bedraggled Tersa where he had obviously dragged her a few feet up the bank. But getting out of the water had not guaranteed safety. My brother faced a hungry alligator, intent on its kill. Only it wasn't just an alligator, it was a damn leviathan. The creature's full length was hard to ascertain as its tail was still in the water. But it definitely stretched longer than my brother's five and a half feet. Maybe three times longer, three times heavier.

  Most animals of nature have some redeeming beauty, but not so this creature. It was truly ugly, a bowlegged, stumpy, flat thing with a long powerful body that slither-crawled just above the ground. It's rock-armored hide had lumps and bumps jutting out of its surface like sharp, hideous growths. Like a thing of monstrous evil, a reality much worse than what you dreamed of in your nightmares. Its cold, flat light eyes were the only things that looked alive, although alive was a generous description. Looking into those cold gleaming eyes, you knew they possessed no mercy, no joy, no emotion other than hunger and the need to sate that hunger… cold, cunning, and calculating. Like my mother's eyes.

  Thaddeus's power flickered in the air, appearing and disappearing like an invisible beat in rhythm to Tersa's screams. He wielded his right fiberglass cast like a shield before him. He'd broken his arm in the car crash that had ended his parent's life but had spared his. The cast was no longer pristine white but a muddy gray from his dunk in the bayou's dark chocolate waters.

  Thaddeus leaped back as those yard-long jaws lunged forward incredibly fast, snapping shut bare inches from his ankles. A freaking too-near miss. But instead of retreating, Thaddeus stepped forward, swinging his cast like a club, cracking it against the flat snout and sending the gator's head flinging back. Unfortunately, the blow must have been swung during one of Thaddeus's off-power flickers; the power he packed behind the blow was nothing more than human strength. The low and heavy reptilian body stayed anchored, gripping the land. The head came swinging right back, those deadly jaws yawning open once more and suddenly time seemed to slow down. It was as if the very air had thickened and grown sluggish. I had all the time to see Amber leaping for Thaddeus and Tersa. All the time to see that he wasn't going to make it, not in time. Not before that monstrous jaw closed around my brother's leg. All the time to weep and re
alize that there was nothing I could do.

  I watched with a horror that filled and engulfed me like an overpowering wave as those teeth came closer and closer, and knew what the creature felt: a hunger for meat, a thirst for blood.

  A piercing shriek ripped away the sluggishness, and motion sped back to the normal passage of time. What happened next was so surreally fast, it was hard to follow with mere eyes. A large falcon—Gryphon—dove with incredible speed and force in a breath-taking stoop, like a hundred-pound bullet hurtling down from the sky, unrestrained. The alligator's snakelike eyes rolled upward, sighting the new threat. Those tender eyes snapped shut just barely in time, a fraction of a moment before the swooping predator struck, raking sharp talons over the gator's craggy face, the protective eyelids, but missing the eyes, the only vulnerable spot on its armored surface.

  The force and momentum of the giant falcon's rush, the brush of its wings, flung Thaddeus back into Amber's arms and barreled the nightmarish creature away, tumbling it back into the water.

  just barely in time, the bird pulled up, out of its death-defying dive, coming so close to the ground that dirt spewed into the air from where the talons scraped the bank. But as soon as the falcon pulled away, the alligator returned to its pursuit. It was right back there on the grassy bank as Amber swooped up Tersa with his other arm. For a bulky, hideous thing, it moved incredibly fast. But then, so did I. Only I wasn't on the bank, actually. I was in the water up to my thighs, behind the prehistoric beast, gripping its tail, yanking its swift rush to an abrupt, teeth-jarring stop.

  I felt like I was holding a jagged rock. A rock that moved. A rock that had enormous force. Before I could flip the damn monster away from me, the tension in that long, long tail slackened.

  Uh, oh.

  With a striking blur almost Monère fast, it reversed and lunged for me. Sharp pain tore like hot searing iron through my meaty calf, and the sharp tang of blood rose into the air, dulled by the water, but unmistakable. My blood. Oh, shit was all I had time to think. Then with one easy toss from that strong jaw, I sailed in the air for a long brief moment and hit the water again, only deeper, sinking in the center of the bayou, water past my head. I bobbed back up and gasped for air.

  Like a creature from hell, like a beast from a time long forgotten, the alligator sank into the water until nothing was seen but those cold, calculating eyes, rippling the water behind it in silent eddies with the powerful sway of its heavy tail, moving with a chilling speed in the water—oddly graceful, when it had lumbered so awkwardly on land—coming swiftly at me. For me.

  Oh, God! Oh, God!

  I started to swim, but water was not my natural terrain. None of my foster homes had ever found incentive to fork over money for swimming lessons. The best I could do was a graceless doggy paddle. And with only three legs. My right leg was sort of numb and useless at the moment from where the alligator had bit me. My swimming, if you were kind enough to call it that, just wasn't going to do the job. I heard—felt—the submersed creature gaining behind me and turned to face it. I definitely wasn't going to out-doggy paddle it; may as well meet it.

  Then it sank completely.

  Oh, double fuck!

  A body sprang and sailed in the air like a flying monkey, too small to be Amber, landing in an almost splashless dive, knifing perfectly into the water near where the gator had decided to play peek-a-boo-I'll-bite-you. They broke the water almost immediately, the two of them intertwined, thrashing.

  It was Wild Boy—Wiley—wrapped around the alligator's pale belly with his monkey legs, an arm around the partially opened toothy jaw, the other arm flashing up and down, stabbing a pitifully small-looking knife into the beast's underbelly. They disappeared beneath the water again and I started paddling toward them.

  The alligator was either going to munch on Wiley soon or drown him, damn it!

  "Mona Lisa!"

  I turned my head to where Amber called to me and saw him pointing up in the sky. I felt rather than saw the powerful presence swooping down.

  "No!" I managed to get out before incredibly sharp, painful talons sank into my back, digging deep into my flesh. I was yanked out of the water, lifted into the air, then dropped safely onto the bank. The falcon climbed the sky once more, gaining altitude for another dive. But would it do any good? It was hard to time an airborne strike with two thrashing figures popping in and out of the water at unpredictable intervals.

  "Mona Lisa!" Thaddeus shouted, running toward me from the brush, Tersa beside him.

  "Where's Amber?" I gasped, mostly from the pain. Take your choice now, talon-punctured back or teeth-ripped calf.

  Tersa pointed behind me, at the bayou.

  I whirled around. Amber was swimming rapidly to the center, and he looked like he knew what he was doing. But there was nothing else. Just rippling water. Then the boy-wrapped alligator broke the surface again. One big stroke and Amber was there, one hand wrapping around the tip of that long snout, slamming the jaw shut with almost casual ease, the other holding one of the creature's stumpy front legs. The animal thrashed and twisted, twirling all of them in the water, but not with ease as it had with Wolf Boy Wiley. It moved in the water with great difficulty, as if weighed down by a massive boulder, which I suppose Amber was.

  "Go!" Amber yelled at Wiley, gesturing him away.

  Wide-eyed, without hesitation, the boy did so, swimming for the shore with rapid, graceful strokes. Gee, did everyone know how to swim but me?

  Tersa ran to meet him. "Wiley!"

  When the boy was close enough to the embankment, Amber turned, and with a massive heave, sent the alligator sailing in the air, over the shoulder-high grass, soaring an impressive thirty feet at least before it slammed into a giant cypress tree with a resounding thunk. It sank down like a cut anchor, disappearing from sight but not sound. Unfortunately, from the breaking twigs and rustling leaves, the damn thing was still alive. But it was heading away from us, ceding the battle. Smart thing.

  Wiley was out of the water, grinning at Tersa, practically wagging his tail, happy and pleased with her lavish attention. But as soon as Amber came out of the water, the boy loped off into the woods.

  "No, Wiley. Come back!" Tersa called after him.

  "Let him go back to his home in the forest," I told her kindly. "His heart belongs in the wilderness. He'll come to us when he's ready. He knows where we are."

  "Dear Lord, Mona Lisa," Thaddeus said, looking down at my leg. From his tone, it didn't sound good.

  Reluctantly, I looked down too. I'd been delaying that joyful chore until now. Okay—torn flesh, dripping blood. No big deal, I told myself as sounds around me muffled and my vision spotted. And I fainted.

  I came back to as we were climbing the steps to Belle Vista. Jeez, naming a house, can you imagine that. Though actually it was Amber climbing. I was being carried like a sack of wet potatoes in his arms.

  Gryphon came rushing down the steps, dressed, I noted. All the others streamed down like graceful waves behind him—Chami, Tomas, Aquila, Rosemary, Jamie. Even Dontaine, who still seemed to be here. Dusk was falling and everyone was awake. Too bad. It would have been much nicer to creep in unnoticed. Other curious faces I did not recognize peeped out from the front door; house staff, I gathered.

  "Dear sweet Mother of Light!" Rosemary exclaimed, catching sight of us. I inwardly winced. A ragged lot we must all look, with me most ragged of them all. "What happened?" she asked.

  "Nothing," I reassured her. "We're all okay." No thanks to me.

  "You are most definitely not okay," said Chami with some heat.

  "It's nothing," I said.

  "I am glad to see that you are awake," Amber rumbled. His deep, unhappy voice reverberated in his chest, passing through to me as he pushed into the house. "The nothing you speak of rendered you unconscious for the better part of an hour."

  "Oh, that," I said, shrinking with embarrassment. "I just fainted when I saw what a mess my leg was."

  "I thought
you were a nurse," Jamie said, as I was laid gently down.

  "Not on the couch!", I screamed as I saw the beautiful, now ruined, antique couch. Of course I was ignored. With a mental shrug, I relaxed my aching body onto the soft cushions, damage already done and all.

  "We have to redecorate any way," said Tersa in a quiet voice.

  "Tersa, did you just make a joke?" I asked.

  "Oh, milady!" She burst into sobs that made me cringe. Give me blood and gore any day. Tears horrified me. I didn't know what to do in the face of them other than say: I give up. You win.

  "It is my fault that you were injured," Tersa cried.

  "It was an alligator that took a chomp out of me, not you," I said, helpless before the teary onslaught.

  "An alligator!" Tomas exclaimed with soft horror.

  "I'm okay."

  "You fainted," accused Aquila. Even good ole laid back Aquila was going to jab at me. I desperately wanted the peace and quiet of my bedroom. Unfortunately I couldn't get up and walk. The numbness had worn out and it was hurting like hell now.

  "I fainted at the sight of all that blood and gore," I said.

  "But you're a nurse!" Jamie protested again.

  "Thank you, I heard you the first time." I shrugged. "It was other people's blood, other people's ripped, torn flesh. Never mine before." Everyone just stared at me. "So sue me."

  My brother, the voice of reason, spoke up calmly. "We need to take you to the hospital."

  "No!" I yelped. "No hospital. I'll have healed too much in the three or four hours they'll make me wait before they see me."

  "So you heal quickly?" Gryphon asked. Like us, was the unspoken question. Like Dontaine. His throat was whole now, the skin perfect and unmarred, like magic.

  "I don't know," I answered truthfully. "I was never injured before."

  "Never?" Gryphon said with amazement.

  "Not to this extent. Just little scrapes and bruises. I'd always been faster and stronger than other humans." I shrugged again and winced, forcefully reminded once again of the fact that it wasn't just my leg that was injured.