Mona Lisa Darkening

CHAPTER TWELVE

Maybe it was being dead that made Gryphon feel so suddenly alive. It was certainly that — being demon dead — that twisted his priorities around enough so that he was fighting this prehistoric creature, trying to keep its stomping attention away from his Demon Prince, instead of running to Mona Lisa.

Sweet night, how beautiful she was, even surrounded by those menacing winged creatures who, thank the heavens, did not look as if they meant her harm… whereas this big sucker in front of him clearly did.

Thump! Another near squishing stomp of that big foot. Much too near a miss. Gryphon slashed his sword across that thick hide and leaped away, feeling like a tiny gnat stinging a giant human. Another bellowing scream from the bizarre-looking beast that looked part woolly mammoth and part something else he'd never seen before.

"Move it, Halcyon!" Gryphon yelled, adding further clarification in case his ruler prince didn't get it the first time. "Move your ass out of there!"

"I am hustling as you speak," Halcyon said. "You would do very well to take your own advice." But Gryphon couldn't. And Halcyon wasn't hustling as he said he was. If he was, it was an old man's hustle — a sluggish walk instead of a run. They were probably lucky to have even that. It was as if the Demon Prince suddenly felt every single one of his six hundred plus years down in this cursed stinkhole of a realm. A place that seemed to spawn these great mutant monstrosities that apparently liked to tenderize their meat before they ate it by crushing it first.

Whomp! Another near miss, close enough to keep the nasty behemoth's attention focused on him instead of the exhausted Demon Prince making his not-so-quick escape.

Hurry, Halcyon, he mentally urged. A trumpeting screech, like rusty nails scraping across a chalkboard, set his nerves even further on edge as he dodged the ugly beast and at the same time tried to keep an eye on the winged creatures that surrounded Mona Lisa. He watched some fly toward him and the beast, others wing toward Halcyon. It was too many things to try and keep an eye on. Something big smashed into Gryphon. A sideswipe from a tree trunk of a leg, and he went flying. Right into the arms of something that was too small to belong to that one-ton leg, but plenty big in its own right. Much bigger than him, at least. It caught him neatly like a baseball flying neatly into the pocket of an outfielder's glove. Grinning — an expression that flattened the creature's pug nose even more and revealed sharp teeth — the winged thing said, "We are here to aid you at your lady's request."

Batlike wings flew him safely away from the rampaging beast, as others of his kind engaged the creature. For a second, there was just that beautiful sense of flight. Sweet heaven, how Gryphon missed the falcon part of himself lost with his death, like a piece of his soul ripped away. He craned his neck and saw Halcyon scooped up in another's arm and carried as he was, like a baby. Easier to tolerate when the ruler of Hell was being transported in a similar manner.

Gryphon found himself deposited a safe distance away, with Mona Lisa to the distant left of him, and Halcyon at a third triangular point. In their center was the mammoth beast. Gryphon could appreciate the move — spreading out their risk. But it grated on him to be so close to Mona Lisa and still so far away from her.

"Stay here. We gargoyles are better equipped to handle the obor." With that terse order, his rescuer flew off in a winged rush, flying to where his companions engaged the obor with their dark swords, deadly no doubt to another creature similar in size to them — man-sized or, more accurately, gargoyle-sized — but not to the obor, which towered over the gargoyles, making their swords look like tiny matchsticks.

How in the holy darkness did they expect to handle the obor? Gryphon wondered. Even with a dozen gargoyle warriors harassing the beast, hovering around it like fat-bodied, charcoal-gray moths, they seemed inadequate in number to take down the obor. It was simply too big.

Even more perplexing, the gargoyle who had rescued him didn't draw his sword, though it was there, belted at his side. And he was the one the woolly creature struck at the most with his flying front feet, as if somehow sensing he was the greatest danger. The obor held him at a stalemate, so that no matter which way the gargoyle darted and twisted, it could not get close to the creature. Whatever his gargoyle rescuer had planned to do, it obviously wasn't working.