Mona Lisa Awakening

Chapter Ten

"You have to eat something, milady," Amber said with pugnacious persistency.

I looked past him. Through him. I'd told him already that I wasn't hungry enough times during the past ten minutes.

"Jamie's mom made this spaghetti especially for you," he coaxed.

I had only two words for him. "Go. Away."

"Not until you eat something," Amber snapped. His tone softened. "Three mouthfuls and I'll leave you alone," he wheedled.

I opened my mouth, chewed and swallowed the allotted times. He left and I sank back within.

Another day. Moke murmurs that I tuned out. A loud knock I ignored. Persistent rapping that wouldn't stop. "What?"

"Prince Halcyon has come to see you," Amber said through the door.

"No."

"She doesn't wish to see you," I heard him say.

Silence. Then the door swung open and Halcyon walked in with Amber shadowing him.

Halcyon came to the bed and sat down beside me. He turned on the lamp and I blinked, dazzled by the sudden light.

"How Victorian," Halcyon said with a flash of pearly teeth. They were startling white against his golden visage. "Your lover leaves and you fall into a sad decline."

I stared beyond him. Didn't blink when those long nails passed in front of my eyes. Didn't flinch when they brushed against my skin as he pushed a lock of hair back from my face.

Amber growled.

"Down, boy," Halcyon said, amusement in his words. "I will not hurt her. "

His amusement fled when I turned my face deliberately into those lethal nails. His hand was suddenly gone.

"Go away," I said. No heat. No emotion.

Halcyon's eyes softened. "It is hard, yes. But you will get over it. You are young and beautiful. You will have many more lovers."

"No," I said with certainty.

"Yes," he returned just as surely. "And I will be the first in line."

With effort I stirred myself. "No."

"Are you afraid of me?"

I shook my head.

"Then why not?" he asked.

I looked at him with my hollow eyes and let him see down into me, into my bleeding gaping soul. "Because I could care for you. And I do not wish to. It hurts too much. "

He bowed his head. "Ah, my fascinating Queen. You stir feelings inside me that I had long thought dead." He let out a deep breath and stood. "I will give you time," he said, and I did not know to whom he made that promise. To me, or to himself.

My lethargy was shattered the next sunset by a woman's piercing screams. I sat up, looked out the window, and watched with disbelief as a man threw up a young woman's skirts, ripped off Her panties, and being raping her in plain sight. People were staring but no one made any attempt to stop the brutal violence or rush to her aid.

"Stop!" I opened the window, jumped to the ground twenty feet below, and rolled to my feet. A wave of dizziness hit me as I stood up, weak and light-headed from my days of bed rest. Impatiently, determinedly, I shook it off and raced toward them. "Stop it, you bastard!"

The man's pale buttocks worked obscenely over the woman, pumping up and down like an enraged piston. He did nothing to prevent her screaming. In fact he seemed to encourage it. Only when she tried to rake his face with her nails did he swat her. The woman's face snapped to the side with almost neck-cracking force, stunned from the almost gentle blow. My God, I realized. She was a Mixed Blood.

I ripped him off of her and he landed on the ground twenty feet away, his engorged penis stained red with her blood. He stood up with a smile, casually pulling up his pants. "Not a bad pot of cream for a Mixed Blood."

The woman moaned and fumbled with her skirt, trying to cover herself and I saw her face clearly for the first time. Her hair was a darker shade of red, but the freckles and pert nose were just like her brother's. She was Tersa, Jamie's older sister. And she had been a virgin.

With a roar I leaped for the man and found myself jerked up short.

"Let me go," I snarled at Amber. My four other guards were behind him, and like all the others watching, doing nothing to help. Useless creatures.

"He did nothing wrong, milady."

I stared at Amber with amazement. "He just raped her!"

"She is a Mixed Blood. There is no law against it."

Rage swallowed me up so terribly that I trembled with it. "You're saying he won't be punished."

"No, milady."

"Then I'll see to it."

Amber's hands kept me chained. "Think. They did this to draw you out." He shook me slightly. "Raping is nothing. There is no law against killing a Mixed Blood. And you are a Mixed Blood. You are not protected even though you are a Queen. Until they amend our laws, you are vulnerable. Do you understand?"

"Does the little Queen wish to come and play with Samson?" the rapist taunted. He grabbed his dick and pumped it lewdly. "There is enough of him to please two Mixed Blood whores."

"Release me," I said coldly.

"Milady…"

"Release me."

Amber did so reluctantly. "It is against our law for a Mixed Blood to kill one of the Monère."

"Your laws suck."

"That is a splendid idea," the man said, strolling toward me. "Maybe I'll have you suck Samson."

I smiled at the walking piece of carrion before me. "Oh, yes. I want to play with Samson. Come to Delilah," I crooned.

Amber shifted behind me. "Milady…"

"Don't worry. I understand. If he starts to hurt me, you can jump in and defend your Queen. Your law allows that, right?" I walked forward to meet the bastard and he was too stupid to be scared. "What Queen do you serve?" I demanded.

"Mona Teresa."

The Fire Queen. That fact somehow didn't surprised me.

A large, dark-haired woman wearing an apron burst from the main house and rushed over to Tersa, sobbing. I closed it off and focused on the leering man before me. Insolently, her reached out his right hand and ran his fingertips over my nipple.

I leaned forward, gently pressing his hand to my breast, my fingers over his, and bared my teeth at him. "You know your problem? You're used to raping women who don't fight back." With a casual twisting upward jerk I broke his fingertips. The sound of bones snapping was the sweetest of melodies.

He screamed with great pain and even greater surprise.

I tsked in sympathy. "Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it."

He swung at me with his good hand. I ducked and, sweeping his foot out from under him, rode him down to the ground, knife in hand. His head hit the ground with a loud crack and he lay beneath me, stupefied and stupid. I sliced open his pants and bared his organ, still semihard.

"Now what exactly happened to Samson?" I mused. "Oh yeah, Delilah cut his locks off." I grabbed his offending organ. My knife flew and blood spurt over me. His scream was horrendous.

I stood up, stepped aside, and watched him with a cruel smile as he rolled on the ground, clutching his bloody dickless groin. The missing piece drooped flaccidly in my hand.

"If something offends me, I break it, cut it off, or destroy it." Calmly, I dropped his severed prick—it hit the ground with a wet plop—and methodically mashed his manhood to a pulp beneath my heel. All the watching men winced and many hands flew protectively up to cover their own groins.

"Will it grow back?" I asked.

"Yes," Amber said. He stood by my side and stared dispassionately down at the screaming, writhing, bleeding man.

"A pity. I may have to cut it off again."

Someone whistled in admiration. I turned and stared into Prince Halcyon's golden visage.

"How terribly brutal," he declared. "I'm in love."

The neutered man was screaming, one long breath after another, his eyes filled with horror as he gazed at his mashed pride and joy. His broken fingers were cradled against his chest, oddly bent and swollen quite nicely by now.

I leaned down and buried my blade in the dirt, millimeters away from his face. "Shut up!" I roared.

The screams ceased abruptly. He whimpered as I whipped the blade out of the ground and wiped it on his white shirt.

"Now return to your Queen and tell her what I said."

He crawled away from me, stark terror in his eyes, and it pleased some dark part of me to see it there.

Then the smell of blood and raw meat hit me suddenly, along with the knowledge of what I had done. My stomach revolted violently. I bent over, gagging, and heard my heartbeat slow down. I barely had time to remember the medical term for the reflex—valsalva maneuver—stimulating the vagus nerve by gagging or holding your breath, causing the heart rate to decrease—before the world spun and darkness overtook me.