Mona Lisa Blossoming

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 realize 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.

"I had a charmed childhood." As far as injuries went. The rest of it, not so charmed.

Gryphon eased me forward to gaze at my back. He ran a finger lightly over where his sharp talons had punctured my skin. "I regret that I had to hurt you," he said with quiet sorrow, his rich blue eyes clouded over with remorse.

I laid a hand over his. "Hey, much better than being alligator meat."

"If you're not sure how quickly you heal, you should go the ER, have them stitch this up," Thaddeus said persistently.

"How bad is 'this? " I asked, swallowing. "Do you think it's healed any?"

"I can't tell," my ever-truthful brother replied. "Too much blood."

Okay. Don't look, don't look. Or I'd be doing another swan dive.

"No hospital," I insisted stubbornly. Thaddeus looked like he was going to usurp my decision and the others frankly looked inclined to support his little revolt. I zeroed in on my likeliest ally. "Rosemary, take me up to my room, please. Help me get cleaned up."

"Well, that certainly cannot hurt your wound," she muttered sarcastically. Okay… maybe she was inclined to support the revolt as well.

Thankfully I felt her big arms wrap around me and carefully lift me up. It felt a little weird being carried up a winding staircase by a woman. Crap, how many stairs could a house, mansion, whatever, have?

Rosemary, bless her stout heart, brought me straight into the shower. It was more than big enough to hold two people, and for once I was thankful for all that luxurious space. We left my muddy clothes on the shower floor, dripping dark brown rivulets toward the drain. I felt like a baby as she toweled me dry and slipped the comfortable T-shirt that I slept in over my head, but I didn't complain, only sighed in relief as she laid me on the bed and propped a folded fluffy towel under my leg.

"How does it look?" I asked her.

"Like something big took a bite out of you."

"Not helpful," I muttered. No help for it. Bracing myself, I cautiously looked down at my leg. I wasn't entirely sure—my first look had been in a fainting swoon, after all—but I think it was a little better. Or maybe that was just because it had been cleaned up. It wasn't bleeding much, just oozing sullenly, and throbbing like an abscessed tooth ready to spew out its rotten pus and decay.

I swallowed, took a shallow breath, and looked away. Rosemary pressed a clean washcloth to my leg. The poor towels. Between Dontaine and I, we would have a bunch of them to replace.

The thump thump thump of whirling blades grew loud and deafening in my sensitive ears before I mentally turned the volume down. "What's happening?" I asked Rosemary. She'd gone to the window, peering out.

"It's a helicopter."

I know that, I wanted to say, but kept my sarcasm tightly clamped and unspoken. It wouldn't help, and she'd been only kind and helpful to me.

The wind from the whirring blades through the open window blew back Rosemary's hair, and the curtains fluttered as the helicopter landed.

"What's a helicopter doing here?" I asked.

Before she had time to answer, the noisy aircraft had lifted from the ground and flew away, and the answer to my question hurried up the stairs and walked into my room.

"Halcyon?" I said, gawking at the golden-skinned man who had just entered. He was a slim man of average height and average build. An elegant man with expensive and exquisite taste. He wore his usual ivory silk shirt—he had a closetful of them. I know, I saw them. But instead of the diamond cufflinks, black onyx rimmed with gold peeked in tasteful display from his cuffs today. Narrow tailored black pants and dashing knee-high black kid boots completed the outfit. With his somber expression and aloof air of reserve, he looked like a nobleman from an era a couple of centuries gone by. It was what I'd first noticed about him when we had met—that reserve, that apartness from others, that… loneliness.

No one would guess at first glance that he was the High Prince of Hell. That he was the demon dead, something that even the Monère feared. The demon dead were what the Monère became when they died, those with strong enough psychic power to make the transition to Hell and sustain a physical presence there. There was nothing unusual about Halcyon that one could sense but for his golden skin and those long nails that graced his fingertips, sharp as knives.

"Mona Lisa." His voice was as cultured, as elegant as the man himself. The worry I saw in his face, however, was foreign. Worry was not something you usually saw in his face. Worry was usually in the other guy's face.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, pulling the bedsheet up high, suddenly, terribly conscious that the last time I'd seen him, he had brought me to a dripping climax from a bite alone, sipping my blood. A small taste of me as I taste you.

I became vividly aware that I wasn't wearing a bra, not that I really needed one, lightly built as I was, but it was a shield of sorts between my nipples and the revealing sheet. Even worse, I was highly conscious of the fact that I wasn't wearing any underwear. Not a state you wanted to be in before a man who didn't even need to touch you to really touch you.

Another person slipped into the room. "Healer Janelle," I said like a numb nut, "what are you doing here?"

She wore her usual maroon gown that denoted her gift and her status. Janelle was the High Council's resident healer back in Minnesota.

I know. What's in Minnesota, right? It's a place with acres and acres of pristine land and untouched forests, right near the border of Canada. Perfect really for Monère headquarters.

Hey, it'd worked so far.

"Gryphon called us and told us that you were injured and that there was no healer available to you here." She came to the bed, tut-tutting as she saw my leg. Turning to the others, she said, "If you will give me a moment alone, please, with my patient."

It took a lot of guts to kick the High Prince of Hell out of a room, and to do so politely. Halcyon nodded and graciously stepped outside, Rosemary behind him. I unclutched my flimsy sheet and relaxed. Janelle, watching me, just quirked her brow.

"It's, uh, nice of Halcyon to escort you here," I said. "To see that you arrived safely."

"It was not my safety that was his primary concern," Janelle replied dryly.

Okay.

"Have you tried to heal yourself?" she asked.

The thought of healing myself had, in fact, occurred to me. I'd actually been expecting Gryphon to walk in instead of Halcyon. But somehow, being all torn up and gory and throbbing with pain that really, really hurt, didn't quite put you in the mood for sex, at least when I was the one hurt. See, real limitations here with my healing gift.

I shook my head.

"Would you like to try?" Janelle asked. "Or would you rather I save the lesson for later and heal you first?"

I looked up and searched her eyes. They were as kind and as clear as always. No hidden innuendo, no sign that she was suggesting we engage in a bout of lesbian sex. Was she?

"I, um, can't seem to heal myself without being intimate with others."

She blinked. "I see. Have you ever tried healing without sex?" She had no problems using the three-lettered s-e-x word, obviously. Though it was odd as hell hearing sex coming out of her serene mouth.

Thoughts of Gryphon guiding my hand down to cover Dontaine's stiff groin flashed through my mind. I pushed it away. "Yes, and I wasn't able to," I replied.

"You were able to take away pain with touch, if I remember correctly."

I nodded.

"Would you like to try at least that?" she asked.

That I had no problem trying, and wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it first. I took a deep breath and laid my hands over my torn up leg; didn't even have to look to do that. I concentrated, went deep within myself, and pulled up… "Nothing," I said frowning. "It's not coming."

"Never mind, child. Forgive an old teacher. It is hard for one to concentrate when one is in such pain." Janelle laid her hands gently upon my leg, barely touching. Just the pleasant sensation of her touch for a moment, then I felt a soft surge of power, a steady humming that at first covered my skin, easing the pain, and then sank down like gentle warmth deeper into the flesh, melting, knitting, making whole. It wasn't a fast process like the explosive healing burst of power that came with my orgasmic release. It was a slow, steady streaming of gentle power. I felt a warmth, a tiny vibration in my flesh as she worked, oh, so patiently, her hands relaxed and still, her face serene and kind as a healer should be. Just being in her presence was an easing balm. Only the faint moisture that dewed her lip and dampened her brow betrayed the effort it cost her.

She removed her hands and my flesh was whole, my skin unmarred. A residual warmth remained for a moment in my healed tissues like a lingering essence of her, then it was gone.

"I wish I could do that," I said with wonder in my voice.

The healer smiled. "I will teach you. Now, where else are you hurt?"