Mona Lisa Darkening

CHAPTER FOUR

Halcyon materialized in the business district of New Orleans. It was quiet here, just past the midnight hour, the stroke of time that split night from day. All slept or partied elsewhere. He walked out of the alleyway, and moved with inhuman speed closer to where people gathered. As he neared the French Quarter, he slowed and became visible once more. His mental compulsion more than his lifted hand made a passing cab screech to a halt.

The hour it took to drive to Belle Vista stretched hideously long. Only now, as he journeyed by means other than his own power, did Halcyon open up his senses and cast them wide, searching for that pull of like to like, that distinct and thrilling recognition of blood. His blood. Always before, he had sensed it, sensed her — Mona Lisa. Only now there was no answering echo in return. Only emptiness. A chilling void.

Not here answered back the silence.

He searched farther, trembling as he stretched his senses to their limits. Nothing there. Nothing that he could detect anywhere in this realm.

He arrived into chaos at Belle Vista. He sensed it, heard it in the quickened heartbeats stirring within, and quickly sent the cab driver on his way.

"Halcyon." Amber strode down the front steps, a giant of a man. Their love for the same woman bound them in harmony now, in this time of crisis. Naked on Amber's normally impassive face was worry. Panic, even.

"What happened, Amber?" Technically it was "Warrior Lord Amber," as denoted by the gleaming medallion necklace he wore, identical to the one around Gryphon's neck. Gryphon and Amber, one dark and beautiful like a fallen angel, the other a massive brute of a warrior, rugged of face, powerful of body. They had been Mona Lisa's first two lovers, and were wildly distrustful of him with the natural fear of the living for the dead. All that fell away now as the big warrior rushed down to him.

"She's gone," Amber said.

Even though Halcyon knew that — knew it in his bones, in the unanswered echo of his blood — still the words chilled him.

"Is she down in Hell? Is that what you've come to tell us?" Then more ominously, as the thought occurred to Amber, "Or was that black light your doing?"

"Black light?" Chilling coldness swept through Halcyon's being, must have been reflected in his face, because Amber's angry aggression collapsed. "What is it? You know what's happened to her."

He had an inkling, a dreadful one. "Tell me what occurred tonight," Halcyon commanded as Amber urged him inside where they were quickly joined by the others. Her family. Mona Lisa had called them, though only one was related to her by blood. The rest were bound to her by ties of the heart — a family in which she'd generously included Halcyon.

"Never mind," Dontaine muttered into the phone, catching sight of him. "Halcyon's here." He hung up and turned to face them, a man tall, handsomely bright. As fair as Gryphon was dark. And as equally jealous and distrustful of Halcyon as Gryphon had been — until their last encounter. Only Dontaine, among Mona Lisas people, knew of the demon essence that had been slowly darkening her. In the order of love — of lovers — he was Mona Lisa's fourth, after Halcyon.

"My lord," Dontaine greeted now. Polite, respectful, tensely expectant.

They all looked to him, the people who loved her: her brother, Thaddeus; the other two Mixed Bloods, Jamie and his sister, Tersa; Rosemary, their mother; and the other warriors sworn to her. Aquila, Tomas, and Chami. They all looked to him for answers. But he needed some himself first.

"Tell me what happened," Halcyon said in quiet command.

"We were Basking," said Chami. He was boyishly lean, deceptively young in appearance. With violet eyes and curly brown hair, he looked more like a graduate student than the accomplished killer he was. "Light filled her, renewed us — all normal. Then this veil of darkness swept across the moon, covering it. Black light pulsed down, traveling through the rays of moonlight, and struck Mona Lisa. It was like this giant hand of darkness closed around her and swallowed her up. She was gone, just like that."

"We searched," said Aquila, continuing the tale. A former rogue bandit, he was a bird of prey, an eagle in his other form. "I searched with all the others who could take to the sky on wings. Dontaine and Amber searched the grounds with the other guards, shifted into their animal forms. There was no scent. No trace of her. No trail to follow."

"I called High Court and was on the phone with Lord Thorane," said Dontaine, "trying to see if there was any way of contacting you, when you showed up. How did you know to come?"

"She is my mate," Halcyon said. "We are bound together now." In more ways than many of them knew. "I came because I no longer sense her."

"Could my sister be down in Hell?" Thaddeus said, asking the question innocently without truly understanding what he asked.

"No," Halcyon said, shaking his head. "I would have sensed her if she were in my realm. She is not there, just as she is not here in this realm."

"What if she's transitioning?" asked Dontaine, and he, unlike Thaddeus, was fully aware of what he asked. "Could you have missed her while traveling through the portal?"

"If she was in Hell now, I would feel her, but I do not. If she was making the transition, it would have occurred by now."

Thaddeus's young face paled as he finally realized what they were discussing: whether Mona Lisa had died and become demon dead. "Maybe your bond, your sensing of her, changed if she… if she died. Maybe she's down in your realm and you just don't know it."

"I wish, I truly wish that were the case," Halcyon said gently to Thaddeus, a boy who looked years younger than his age of seventeen. He had the same dark exotic eyes as his sister. "If she were a demon now, my awareness of her would be even stronger. I'm sorry, Thaddeus."

"So you think she is just no more?" Tersa asked. A quiet girl in her early twenties, she had a birdlike delicacy to her, and was normally shy and withdrawn. That she had spoken up showed her deep concern. What she asked put into words what others there feared, what he feared.

When the Monère died, those who where strong enough became demon dead and existed in Hell for as long as their psychic power sustained them. Those unable to make the transition simply faded away into the darkness. Before, Mona Lisa had more than enough mental strength to make the jump. But that was before she had become demon living. Halcyon's greatest fear coming here had been that — that she had died and was no more. Now, hearing their tale, he found himself filled with an even more horrible consideration, a possibility that hadn't even occurred to him before.

"You know something," Aquila said.

Damn his sharp eagle eyes. Halcyon could have lied — considered it for one moment — but he chose not to. "I fear something even worse than that has happened."

"What could be worse than dying and being no more?" Thaddeus asked.

"Do you know the significance of this particular day, other than it being a full moon?" Halcyon asked.

"It's the spring equinox."

Halcyon nodded. "My people call it Aequus Nox, equal night. When day and night are of equal length. In Hell, it is the time when the wall between the realms thins, when inhabitants of one realm can sometimes cross over into another."

"But you said she's not in Hell," Tersa said quietly.

Halcyon swung his gaze to the girl whose dark eyes were more knowing of pain than they should have been at so young an age. "There is another realm besides Hell," he said, "though not many know of it."

"What other realm?" asked Amber, his voice wary, remembering the expression that had crossed Halcyon's face outside.

"A place called NetherHell."

"Is it like Hell?" asked Thaddeus.

"No." Halcyon's heart howled inside, crying for his mate. "It is a place far worse, far more dangerous than Hell. We call it the Cursed Realm. The realm of the damned."