Mona Lisa Darkening

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

we had dinner at a charming restaurant off Bourbon Street. I didn't ask if it was mine. The fact that we didn't need to pay told me that it likely was. On the drive home, we held hands and spoke little. I drowsed, waking as we pulled in front of Belle Vista. A relaxed lethargy seemed to hold me in its grip. Inside the house, I smiled and nodded as the others complimented me on my new glamorous look. As soon as we politely could, Dontaine and I retired upstairs.

He stopped in front of my room. "You seem tired. Should I leave you alone to rest?"

"Oh, no, you don't." I opened my door and pulled him inside. "You're responsible for putting all this stuff on my face. It's up to you now to get it all off." I yawned and plopped into the chair in front of the dressing table as he brought all the things up into my room. "Do you remember what to use for what?"

Thankfully he did. My face seemed oddly naked and bare after it was cleaned. Maybe because of my hair.

Hopefully, once I washed away the salon-perfect style, it would look more like the simple me I was used to seeing in the mirror.

The bed beckoned to me and I crawled onto it.

"Do you want to go to sleep?" Dontaine asked, stretching out beside me.

"It's too early, hours yet before the sun rises." I snuggled against him on top of the bedspread. "I just want to rest here for a little bit, like this, with you holding me."

My last thought was how surprisingly comfortable it was in his arms.

I woke up beneath the sheets, naked, my head resting on top of Dontaine's chest. He was wide awake, a warm smile on his lips, a tender light in those green eyes.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Six."

"I only slept one hour? It feels longer."

"It is much longer. It's six the next morning."

My eyes popped wide in disbelief. "I slept for over twenty-four hours again?" And yet I still felt so tired.

"You needed it."

"Oh no," I groaned. "I missed dinner! Rosemary's going to kill me."

"You wake up in bed with me and your first thought is of Rosemary's wrath?" He rolled, bracing his lithe, muscular body over me, his weight balanced on his hands, feet between mine.

"I must not be doing things right," he murmured and lowered his body down to brush the lightest kiss above and below — his lips soft and tender over mine, the hard silky rub of him lower down between my legs. It pulled a hungry sound from my throat, and my lips and legs opened wider in invitation.

"Much better," he murmured, rolling away to open the bedside drawer. Grabbing a condom, he ripped it open, slid it on, then slid back on top of me. "Rosemary saved us some dinner, and she's not mad."

"Good;" Lifting my head, I nipped those luscious lips hovering so close to mine. "What did you want my first thought to be?"

"Of me." His eyes heated to deep green as he lowered his mouth and kissed me thoroughly, tongue pressing in slowly, delicately. "Of this." His body followed, his full weight sinking me down into the mattress, his arousal seeking its own wet kiss down below. "Of what we are together." The hot slide of his erection in — deep, deeper, deepest. My soft moan, his deep groan.

My lips sealed around his tongue and sucked deep. Down below, inside, I clenched tight with hidden muscles around his throbbing hardness filling me so sweetly, so fully. Felt him flex inside me at the twin embrace in sweet reward.

We moved in languorous rhythm, building the heat slowly. His shimmer of light started as a gentle glow, building with each unhurried stroke, each lazy kiss, some deep, some delicate. Savoring me with contentment in his eyes and happiness. Gone was that yearning intensity, that unfulfilled need. Whatever he had searched for, he had found. Never had things been so easy, so right with us.

His light brightened above me, around me, deep inside me. I felt my body try again to match his light. Sharp rending pain from the torn part of me pulled a soft cry from me.

"Did I hurt you?" His hands cupped my neck, his thumb brushing the side of my face. The pain stopped as soon as my body stopped trying to glow — to express the pleasure he was giving me.

"No, you didn't hurt me."

It was true, he hadn't hurt me, and it came suddenly to me what was so different, what was missing between us — that electric buzzing sensation I had always felt from him whenever we touched. It was missing, gone.

"Dontaine, I don't feel you," I said in surprised realization.

He mistook my meaning and resumed the deep strokes he had stopped in his concern. Green eyes shimmered above me with sparks of energy, energy that I didn't feel from him, only the stroking, the deep push and pull of him rocking above me, inside me. He quickened the tempo, almost brilliant now with light. His hand slid down my chest, brushed over my nipple. He touched me perfectly, expertly. His hips began to plunge in and out of me with rapid weight and speed, thrusting me down into the bed, dipping the mattress with each stroke. I felt him there, only there, at those two crucial points — my beaded nipples that brushed his chest with each stroke, and my tight quivering sheath. And could only lie and take what he gave me, my limbs suffused with an odd languor as my body began to buzz with sensation, not the electrifying spark that usually flared when he touched me, but the simple buildup of heated passion, of cresting pleasure. Cresting then exploding like a bomb inside me, gripping me, arching me back in hard convulsions that spasmed my entire body.

He thrust through my clenching contractions, once, twice, a third time, then with a tight ecstatic grimace, his mouth opening in a silent cry, he gave himself up to release, his hard body shaking, shuddering above mine. His heavy weight came down to blanket me, his arms wrapped around me, holding me in close embrace. I felt his heart beating strong and fast against mine, faster than my own, which was unusual. My base heart rate, already slow by human standards, was usually double his.

As if conscious of my attention on it, my heart slowed even further, grew even weaker. My sight hazed, my consciousness dimmed.

As if from a distance I felt Dontaine pull away from me. I heard his muffled voice spiraling down to me as if through a long corridor. "Mona Lisa, what's wrong?"

All sound faded until all I heard was the hesitant beating of my heart. Ba-boom. . pause… ba-boom. A much longer pause. Then nothing, no more beats. Just echoing, empty silence, the silence of my body. The realization — I'm dying.. I'm dead. And nothing with that thought, no emotion, no fear. Just nothing as death claimed me once more.

I'd always thought of death as an active thing. But it was simply a cessation… a ceasing.

Into this floating mass of nothingness, crackling energy — excruciating pain — struck me like a lightning bolt through the heart. Sound and sight returned, life resumed, messy and chaotic. My eyes shot open as I gasped in a breath, as my heart leaped within my chest and resumed its slow and labored beating… ba-boom… ba-boom. Sound was both loud and muffled — Dontaine's words, fierce and strong, "No! I won't let you go."

His green eyes had changed to silver, I noted distantly. Sparks of light, of energy, so much energy, crackly like tiny lightning bolts in those glittering eyes, lifting his blond hair around his face like an invisible wind. His hands, pressed down over my heart, passed another burst of electrical current through me. It felt like needle-thin knives were stabbing me.

"Ow!" I mumbled. My tongue felt thick and heavy. As were my limbs as I tried to push his hands away. But it was enough to lift Dontaine's hands off my chest. No more jolts of electricity passing like a live current through me. But it still hurt! I looked down and saw that my skin was blistered red and was actually smoking!

The door flew open and people started pouring in — Rosemary, Chami, Aquila. Dontaine pulled the sheet over us a second before my brother, obviously pulled from sleep, rushed into the bedroom.

"What's happening? What's wrong?" Thaddeus demanded, his voice raised up over the others.

"She was dying. Her heart stopped beating," Dontaine said, his eyes still wild and sparkly.

"He jump-started it, I think," I mumbled weakly, my voice slurring. "S' tired."

"I'll get Hannah," Rosemary said, rushing out.

The only one in the room that I sensed was Dontaine, and I likely only felt his energy because he was so close to me and revved up so extraordinarily high. The others… utterly nothing. I wondered if it was the same in return, if they felt nothing from me. No presence.

In an amazingly short amount of time, Hannah was there, pushing her way through to me. I saw her but didn't feel her, and that inability to sense her was like having one of my arms or legs amputated.

"Hannah," I slurred, "am I still here?"

"Yes, child. You're still here." She glanced at the others. "Some privacy, please."

Everyone left the room but Dontaine. "I cannot leave her in case her heart stops again," he said stubbornly.

"Her heart stopped?" Hannah asked.

"It slowed and then it stopped and she wasn't breathing. I sent a surge of energy through her heart, and it started beating again."

Hannah turned back to me, her face, her voice, serene and gentle. "I'm just going to touch you and examine you, milady."

She placed her hands around my head. I felt her then, the dimmest, faintest presence. She ran her hands down my face, my neck and shoulders, inhaled sharply when she lowered the sheet and saw the red burn marks on my chest. She did a complete head-to-toe exam, and for once I wasn't bothered by being naked in front of her. Exhaustion and worry about what she was sensing… or not sensing… fretted me more than my modesty.

She covered me with the sheet again and turned to Dontaine. "Tell me everything that happened."

He did, elaborating in far more explicit detail than I liked.

Hannah turned her gaze back to me. "Yesterday, your body did not emit light during sex."

It wasn't really a question, but I nodded anyway. "Not for lack of pleasure," I said, speaking slowly. I found that if I spoke slowly enough, I didn't slur my words. "Felt my body try, though."

"Try what?" she asked.

"To match his light… but couldn't."

"You were tired afterward?"

"Slept for long time… didn't help… just as tired when woke up."

"And when you made love this morning?"

"Didn't glow."

"Did you feel your body try to match his light again?"

"Yes… but couldn't. What did you find… when you touched me?"

"Your aura, your energy, is dramatically less than it was two days ago when I last examined you," Hannah said. "In the week since you returned to us, you hadn't improved but neither had you worsened much."

"Much?" I whispered.

"Your energy was a tiny bit less each day. I didn't mention it because I was hoping you would stabilize."

Only this morning, I'd had the same thought and had felt sad at the thought that I might be like that for the rest of my life, as weak as a human. Now it seemed like a state of uncommon fitness compared to the condition I'd deteriorated into.

"I made her worse," Dontaine said grimly.

"Having sex… making love… made her worse," Hannah said gently. "It seems to have expended a great deal of her energy each time. She's no longer a closed, regenerating circuit. What energy she loses, she does not seem able to get back."

"Why didn't you tell us this sooner?" Dontaine asked, deeply anguished.

"I didn't know. She's been relatively stable up till now."

"Can you help her?"

"The energy she pulled from me last week — and it was quite a lot — didn't even make a dent then, and she was in far better condition than she is now. I, alone, cannot do much. We must take her to High Court, see if the other healers there can help her. Perhaps with several of us working on her, she might be able to regain some of her strength."

"Regain. Not heal her?" Dontaine asked.

"I do not know if that would be possible, but perhaps the other healers there have more knowledge than I."

"When do we leave?"

"Right away," Hannah said, rising. "I'll phone them, let them know we're coming."

There was a heavy, painful silence after she left.

" 'S okay… didn't know," I said, my words slurring as I rushed to reassure him.

"It's not okay!"

"If not you… then Amber."

"But it was me. Oh, Goddess. It was me!"

I reached for his hand clumsily. Felt a faint dim spark when I touched him. "You made me… feel beautiful."

Tears rolled down. "I'm sorry. So sorry."

"Me, too," I rasped as strength left me. as my heart slowed and stuttered. "That I wasted… so much time."

My vision faded.

Sound stretched out. receded from me as I was pulled back down into a tunnel of silence, into that void of nothingness.

Then sharp pain flashed through my chest, a lightning bolt of sizzling agony. Blurred images of Dontaine's face… silver eyes… other faces gathered around. Raised voices as I flowed in and out of consciousness. Words floating to me… She's dying… The plane… Too late… Hannah touching me, collapsing to the floor. My body straining for each breath, each laboring heartbeat.

My brother's voice, "Let me help. I have some healing ability." Rousing panic as I fought to speak, to mutter, "No!" Relief as I saw Chami hold him back — Thaddeus's protector, someone to look after him when I was gone.

But who will look after Dontaine? I wondered. Absolve him of a guilt that should not be his to bear? That I regretted the most.

I was dying, I realized vaguely, and found the process immensely painful. Not the physical aspects, though that was no picnic. More the mental anguish it caused the others, and how my death would hurt them, all of them — Amber, Gryphon, Halcyon. Dante — Nolan's son.

"Hannah?" I managed to whisper. A weak sound, one I barely heard myself.

"She's okay," Rosemary reassured me. "Just fainted."

The crowd around me shifted, parted, and I saw a face… two faces in the doorway that made me seriously wonder if I hadn't died already, passed into death without being aware of it. Either that or I was hallucinating. I blinked and saw them still — a gray gargoyle and a ghost I never expected to see again: Gordane carrying Mona Louisa in his arms, saying, "Let me through," and, "Do not touch me. Not unless you wish to be turned to stone."

Mona Louisa looked as bad as I felt — weak, faint, dying.

"You real?" I asked.

"Yes, we're real," Gordane said. He knelt next to me, Mona Louisa cradled in his arms.

"How… cross gate?"

"I brought her another way when she collapsed and continued to fade in substance, even with my continued touch. I knew that only you could help her."

Even in my confusion and disbelief, I saw how carefully Gordane held her, with a tenderness that was surprising. And how trustingly she lay in his massive arms, her fingers, so slim and fragile in comparison, delicately holding his thick wrist. Her eyes looked at me through half-closed lids.

"You're both dying," Gordane rumbled.

I wanted to argue that Mona Louisa was already technically dead, but didn't bother wasting my energy or breath.

"You must combine together again," Gordane said urgently.

"How?" I whispered. I felt a tug of awareness, a pull toward her, but didn't know if I could do that, merge us back into one. I looked at her, wan, waning, just like me. "You agree… to this?"

Her ice blue eyes glinted at me. She may have been fading in body, in strength, but her personality was yet strong. "Yes," she whispered.

The last time I did this, I had sucked her essence into me through my mouth. I tried to do that now. But I had lost my ability to do otherworldly things. All I drew in now was breath.

"Can't," I gasped. "Not… working."

"Shift her over. Give me some room," Gordane said to someone over my head.

Dontaine slid his arms beneath me, moving me to the center of the bed, and Gordane laid Mona Louisa gently on the bed beside me. As soon as he lifted his hands away from her, she started fading, losing substance right before our eyes.

"Touch her!" Gordane barked. "Touch each other."

We were already instinctively reaching for each other. The moment our hands touched, something clicked wide in me and in her. Some force reached out and pulled her to me like a magnet. Not physically — she didn't move. But parts of her began to disappear: her hair, the side of her body that was farthest away from me. Not fading away but rather being absorbed into me. Flowing her into me through our connecting hands.

"Never thought I'd be so glad to see you again," Mona Louisa whispered with a mocking smile, her usual cynical self. But the look in her eyes when she turned to look at Gordane was new, different — softness and yearning… filled with regret. "Farewell," she whispered. Then the rest of her flowed into me like a fine mist, like a wonderful healing balm slathered on my invisible wound, and that deep inner ache disappeared.

I was healed. I was well. I could feel everyone's presence. And I was so incredibly tired, as if my body had just run a marathon, and maybe it had, the equivalent of one, at least, in its efforts to hold me to life. Now that my body didn't have to fight so hard anymore for each breath, each heartbeat, all my strained and fatigued muscles suddenly relaxed.

"She's okay, Gordane," I said, my voice no longer weak. "We're okay… just really, really tired. Sleep now," I muttered. And did just that.