Mona Lisa Blossoming

Chapter Nineteen

They say that time heals, but that's a lie. All it does is allow you to hurt. And I was so tired of hurting. The sun was shining brightly when I pulled up in front of Belle Vista. I shut the engine and sat there looking at it. The people I loved were all in there, sleeping. Except one of them was missing and would never come back. I wanted to return to the sanctuary of my chamber, but to reach it I'd have to pass Gryphon's room. Empty now, forever. I couldn't face it. Not yet. So I just sat there until Amber came out the front entrance, and flowed down the steps.

Concern flared in his eyes when he saw me—concern that I was alone in a strange car. "Mona Lisa, where's Gryphon?"

"He's dead," I said numbly. "Mona Louisa killed him, and I killed her. She sacrificed her men. They're all gone."

He opened the door, spoke gently. "Come inside." But I refused to get out. I felt so brittle. I was okay just sitting here, but if I had to go inside, pass Gryphon's empty room and smell his scent, it would break me. I didn't know how to tell Amber this, other than to say, "I can't."

Amber knelt, took my limp hands, engulfed them protectively in the largeness of his own.

"It hurts, Amber. It hurts so much. I don't want it to hurt anymore. I don't want to think or feel anymore. Come running with me."

In the knowledge of his eyes, I saw that he knew what I desired. "Wait for me. Let me tell one of the others."

I sat there in the car, unmoving, until he returned.

Amber led me to the edge of the woods. There he stopped and undressed, neatly folding his clothes, then removed mine. I stood passively and let him, concentrating fiercely on the birdsong, on the feel of the sun on my skin, on anything other than my feelings, my thoughts, my memories.

"Mona Lisa, when you are ready," Amber said quietly, bringing my attention back, and I realized that I was completely nude and unembarrassed. What did it matter now?

I dropped that shielding, that control, those mental chains that had bound my beast for so long that it felt a natural part of me. Nothing happened, and for one moment I felt despair. Was I too consumed? Was I too spent? And then I felt my beast roaring out of me, exploding from me, and caught its thoughts for one fleeting second… Unleashed. Finally unleashed… Before it took me over completely and I ceased to be. In my receding consciousness, I heard only the panting of my tiger. Felt it leap with its great paws touching the ground ever so lightly, racing toward the heart of the deep forest.

When I came back to awareness, it was dawn or dusk, I could not tell. I did not know how much time had elapsed, remembered nothing. I was in a bed of leaves in the shelter of a shallow cave, in Amber's arms, my head pillowed on his chest. I was covered in an acrid scent I did not recognize and the tang of old blood was a coppery taste in my mouth. My stomach churned and I scrambled on all four out of the cave. Only a few feet from the entrance, I could hold it back no longer, and heaved and wretched up bloody chunks of raw meat. And then heaved even more when I saw what was spewing out from me. Amber held back my hair, supporting me, crooning in wordless comfort.

In the days to come, we nestled in the forest. Amber roamed free as a cougar, and I as a Bengal tiger. My beast became my escape, my salvation now. And it reveled in its newfound freedom, unchained, unbound.

Every day I awoke to other unfamiliar scents on me, and the tang of old blood in my mouth became a familiar aftertaste. But I always woke with Amber's arms, large and secure around me, with his heart beating slow and strong beneath me. I no longer vomited, and there were memories now. Flashes of running through the forest, my head low to the ground, stretching out. Bits and pieces of the hunt. Different ones, so many different ones. The rush of bringing prey down, that final soaring spring, the tearing of flesh, that sweet hot spray of blood filling my mouth.

And then one day, I didn't just remember. I was aware. I saw my paws stretched out before me, felt the bare impact as I touched lightly upon the ground, and I came to a sudden stop, letting the deer I was chasing dart away, its bobbing white tail a teasing allure that I resisted though my beast still wanted it. I felt my beast's silent half-hearted snarl at me for stopping. But it was well-fed. The deer had simply come along while it had been resting and it had given chase because that was what it did. I turned, and through my tiger eyes saw the tawny mountain cat that had been my constant companion, saw it watching me with intelligent amber eyes.

Are you in there? he asked.

Yes.

I changed and it was an easy, natural thing to do, to resume my human form, to stand and watch as the cougar shimmered, as fur became skin, and Amber once more stood before me. "Welcome back."

"How long was I gone?" It felt odd to talk.

"Almost a fortnight." Several weeks.

"What day is it?" I asked.

"The second day of the new year."

I'd missed Christmas then.

Thoughts of the holiday made me think of the others and I found myself missing them, my family. "Let's go back home."

Amber smiled and extended his hand. I took it.

"Home," he said. "That sounds nice."