Mona Lisa Eclipsing

FOURTEEN

I WOKE UP to the smell of something burning. For a moment I thought I was back home, and something was burning on the stove. But my home didn’t have a concrete floor. And that didn’t smell like food cooking. This odor was noxious and distinctive and somehow familiar . . .

I cracked open a heavy eyelid and took note of several things. One, I wasn’t home. I was outside, with the hot sun straight overhead, filtering through a silver netting placed there, I remembered, by Mona Sierra’s primitive thugs. I was also sore and achy and had my hands tied behind my back. Then I forgot all about myself as I caught sight of the source of that noxious burning smell.

“Dante,” I croaked, my lips cracked and dry. The inside of my mouth was gummy, and my skin was pink and flushed. But that was nothing compared to Dante’s condition, I saw as he looked up. His face, his chest, were unburned where he had curled. The rest of him, however, was a red, oozing, blistering wreck. His back, arms, even the soles of his feet, were an angry, swollen mess of weeping boils and melting ooze. His flesh was burned, all but where the silver rope bound his wrists just below the bracelet bands he still wore. There the skin was a weeping, crusty black beneath the painful silver binding.

“Oh my God . . . Dante!”

“How are you feeling?” His voice was unbelievably calm and evenly metered.

“How am I feeling?” Horror choked my voice and hysteria hovered nearby, but I battled it down.

“Your respirations slowed. Thought you were going to stop breathing.” Only then did any emotion leak into his face—the sick worry he had felt for me.

“How long was I out?”

“Six hours, at a rough guess.”

Six hours while he had literally broiled.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wake up sooner.” I tried to roll over onto my knees, but my body didn’t seem to want to cooperate. It was as if an anchor was weighing down each of my limbs. The two darts were still stuck in my thigh, their feathered tails sticking up like tiny flags. “I’m awake, but my body still seems to be asleep. I think there’s a paralytic component to the venom.”

I was awake but useless to him. Fucking great. Wetting my cracked lips, I looked around. With the sun cast high overhead, the only sliver of shade was against the far wall. “Can you reach the shaded area?”

“Already tried. They tethered us out in the center. My rope doesn’t reach far enough.”

I tested my fingers and toes and found I was able to curl and wriggle them, move my arms and legs a feeble bit. “How much longer can you hold up?”

“Not much longer.” His voice held none of the enormous pain he must have been in, but there were still signs of it—I could hear his distressingly fast heartbeat, his almost panting breaths. “I passed the critical point already. It’ll go quickly downhill from here.”

“How fast?” I asked, licking my dry lips.

“Maybe another half an hour.”

“After so many doses, I’m getting to be a bit of an expert on this venom. I might be able to stand in half an hour”—if I was very, very lucky and determined—“but I’m not going to have my full strength back by then.”

Our eyes met, held across the short distance separating us.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s already too late for me. As least I know you’ll survive.”

“No, it’s not too late,” I said, rejecting his words as my mind revved back into gear. I couldn’t reach the darts, with my hands tied behind my back, but I could jiggle them loose by awkwardly rubbing my thighs together. Ouch! Not the most pain-free method but . . . yes! There they went, nicely dislodged, falling to the ground. I twisted myself around, fumbled them blindly into my hands, somehow managing not to stab myself, then inchwormed myself sideways toward Dante.

“What are you doing?” he asked, panting.

“I’m crawling over to you. Meet me halfway.”

He had to walk on his knees—he couldn’t stand, his feet were too blistered—and he was very weak. He moved laboriously slow, like an arthritic old man as I crawled like a slug toward him across the hard and hot concrete. My muscles were quivering by the time I reached the end of my rope to where he was waiting for me at the end of his own tether line. If our hands had been bound in front of us, I could have reached him, but with our hands tied behind our backs . . .

There was just enough length for my forehead to brush up and rest against his kneecap. One foot more on both our ends and I could have used the sharp ends of the darts to slice away at Dante’s bindings . . .

“Fucking bitch,” I snarled in anguish. “God, she’s sadistic, leaving our ropes just long enough to touch, but not enough to be of any real help. I can’t even provide you with any shade.”

Dante made a vague sound. We just stayed like that for a while, touching. “You feel so cool,” he murmured, closing his eyes. He, on the other hand, felt alarmingly hot.

A minute passed, another precious minute of my weak body resting while my thoughts flew at a hundred miles an hour, thinking, considering options, ideas.

“Probably would have taken too long to free my arms anyway,” Dante murmured.

As an alternative, I could use the darts to saw away at my own wrist ties, but for what purpose? I still wouldn’t be able to reach him. Not in time.

“There is one thing you can try,” Dante said after a moment.

I turned to look up at him.

“Your Goddess’s Tears—”

“My what?”

“The moles in your hands. I’ve seen you do things with them—”

“Take away pain?”

“No, I’ve seen you . . . project energy, use it like a shield, deflecting daggers and swords.”

That sounded astonishing. Even niftier than being able to fly metal objects into my hands. Also completely unhelpful to our present condition.

“I’ve also seen you use it to burn through a man’s chest, take out his heart in a powerful blast of energy.”

I felt the blood drain away from my face. “Oh, was that why you pulled away when my mole started to heat up?” I asked faintly.

“Yeah, knowing you can do something like that, you can see why I preferred you use a knife instead to dig out the bullets.”

Definitely safer in comparison.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Thought maybe you can try to use them to burn through your ropes.”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “I’ll give it a try.”

I couldn’t grasp the binding around my wrists, which was just as well for this experiment. Didn’t want to accidentally blast off—or through—my opposite wrist. Wriggling back a few inches provided enough slack to grab hold of the long rope with both palms. A moment to calm and center myself. To dive deep into myself and open that door to where that power dwelt within me like a sleeping beast. To try and call it forth, and when that didn’t work, to try and pull and yank it out.

Not even a flicker of heat or power.

“Too weak,” I said after several fruitless attempts. Was I too drained or simply too drugged? The thought triggered another idea. With more effort than was pretty, I struggled to my knees, putting me face-to-face with Dante. His face was lobster red, but there was no perspiration. His skin was alarmingly dry and as hot as a furnace, giving off palpable heat even from a distance of several inches away.

“Dante, you said I saved you before. How did that work?”

“We had sex. You shared your light with me. But that was different. My body—my mind—craved moonlight after being deprived of it for so many years.”

I remembered the vision of the moon’s energizing rays pouring into me. Remembered again how my own skin had glowed with Roberto. “It’s not just light, is it? We share energy, don’t we?”

“It’s a lovely thought, a wonderful one,” Dante said as he realized where I was heading, “but I don’t think sex would be possible. I doubt I could even get my pants off, and even then I don’t know if we have enough slack to connect that way—”

“Kiss me,” I said, interrupting his flow of words.

“What?”

“We glow with pleasure. We don’t have to have sex to share light; all you have to do is kiss me. I could share energy with you that way, maybe enough to help you recover a little, at least give us some more time.” My excitement suddenly faltered. “Or maybe I’d just drain energy from you—”

He kissed me.

I pulled back. “Wait, maybe this will hurt you more than help.”

“Then I shall die happy.” He brushed his lips over mine, sweet, simple, soft, the brush of hot, dry lips over my own chapped lips. And then a wet stroke of tongue, smoothing the way to a more slippery friction, and with it a sudden explosion of sensation, more than I had expected from such a dire, battered condition of its participants. It was like a detonation of feeling, a bombardment of things that were the opposite of pain—pleasure, yes, but even more than that. A seeking of life, a last quietly desperate sip of bliss, of enjoyment. A precious, unexpected treasure stolen out of the misery of the moment.

He kissed me with wave upon wave of feeling. All that he had withheld before now came flooding out. A raw surge of seeking, melding, joining with me.

Incomprehensible murmurs came from Dante’s throat, from mine. A few husked words . . . Mona Lisa . . . my lady . . . love you . . . yes . . .

If we had kissed before, I did not remember it. And it was so much more than the surge of pleasure I’d gotten from kissing Roberto. Like digging into ground looking for a trickle of water and finding a gushing well instead. Dante kissed me as if he would pour his soul into me and pass it into my keeping—a plentitude of giving, not a taking. A benediction of words and sweet sentiment and hotly sprinkled passion over my mouth, my chin, down my neck, touching off zinging sensations, an abundance of it, wherever those firm and tender lips roamed, pulling forth my own gasps and whispers of his name, spurring him more heatedly on.

A seeking nuzzle of those hot lips over the swell of my breast, against my skin. A light, potent brush over my nipple that felt like an unexpected jolt of lightning within me. A sensation so intense it almost frightened me.

“Dante!” I opened my eyes to see my skin and his aglow in luminescent light.

“Sweet, so sweet,” Dante murmured as he tugged my open neckline down with his chin so that it exposed one nipple, pert and erect. “Beautiful . . . lovely.”

I watched his mouth envelope the hard tip, felt the heat and moisture of his mouth, felt the stroke of his raspy tongue, felt the bolts of amazing sensation that pulled cries from my mouth and more light from my skin until I was glowing like a small nova, overshadowing his own light, as he licked and teased and suckled and pulled at the reddened peak, enjoying himself with utter carnality.

He pulled his mouth free with a tight, pulling sensation that arrowed straight to my womb. “Lie down,” he said roughly.

“What?” I was half-blind, dazed from the bombardment of strange and new sensation.

“Lie down on your side. Scoot your legs toward me . . . yes, like that.”

That gave us a little more reach, a little more overlap. His mouth, those soft-hard lips, peppered kisses over my quivering abdomen. “Lift your hips a bit. Perfect.” He nuzzled the shirt up above my stomach, exposing my triangular thatch of hair to his gaze. “So beautiful,” he murmured.

I watched with both curling dread and anticipation as he lowered his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on my inner thigh. “Open your legs for me.” His breath wafted over my thatch of curls—a curiously exquisite sensation.

“What are you doing?” I gasped, shocked and appalled as he nuzzled his way between my legs. The sound turned into a moan as he did something even more shocking with his tongue.

“I’m kissing . . .” The pause was punctuated with like action. “. . . licking . . . tasting you. Open your legs wider . . . yes.”

He lapped and laved and pleasured me until I was half-crazed and wholly blinded, overwhelmed with searing sensation, beyond thought, beyond embarrassment. And still there was more.

Searching deep in my wet folds, he licked and sucked over an area that arched my back and spasmed my legs, building a tense, spiraling, frightening pleasure that suddenly crested and ruptured, free of skin, body, and fleshly containment. Light blazed forth in a rapture of incandescent brilliance as I cried out and seized in ecstasy.

A blissful moment where time seemed to suspend for an indefinite moment as I felt his tongue thrust deep inside me, as I felt him pull my light into him, illuminating his own skin more brightly. A moment of connection, of shattering, of giving and receiving. Of being flung up in pieces toward heaven and then falling back down reassembled.

He pressed a gentle kiss to my hip. “My lady,” he breathed, resting his forehead there.

I opened my eyes and blinked.

Same place but different reality.

Dante’s blistered back, buttocks, and weeping arms were healed. No redness. Even the black charring burns over his wrists were gone, leaving healthy, healed flesh in its place. My own scrapes and bruises had vanished as well, and the leaden, drugged weariness was gone. I felt refreshed, at full and normal strength.

A twist—an easy, simple pull and twist—and my arms were free. “What happened?” I asked.

Dante’s glittery silver-blue eyes opened. “You can also heal with sex.”

I could heal? That was my most heartfelt desire, an instinctual yearning I had felt my entire life—the ability to heal. The manner of doing so, however, was . . . well, let’s just say—unexpected.

“That technically wasn’t sex, was it?” I said doubtfully. I rose to my feet and rubbed my sore arms to get some painful circulation going.

“Part of my body was in yours,” he answered.

Yes, I recalled that quite vividly: his tongue buried in my spasming depths.

I felt my neck and face flush as I freed Dante’s wrists.

“How do you feel?” I asked, helping him stand.

His hand lifted, not to rub his sore arms, but to lightly touch my face. “Well and renewed by your light and healing grace. We can correct that technical point later, if you like, when we have more time.”

Imp.

I smiled as a new and deeper intimacy stretched between us. “I would like that,” I said, nodding, then smiled. “So that’s what all the fuss about sex is about. I never knew.”

“Next time,” he promised, “will be even better.” He brushed an all too fleeting kiss against my lips. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

It was about thirty feet up to the netted ceiling covering the pit, a bit more distance than what I could jump straight up. I solved that problem by springing off the side of the wall, launching myself farther upward. Grabbing hold of the center of the silver net, I tore it open down the middle. Using the natural swing as it gave, I went backward, then propelled myself forward, flipping myself up and out to land on the edge of the pit. An alarm suddenly screeched, ruining our quiet getaway. A motion detector—a surprisingly sophisticated bit of gadgetry in these primitive backwoods.

Dante sprang up and out in a straight jump through the torn silver netting to land lightly on his feet beside me. Six guards came bursting through the trees, hands reaching for venom-tipped throwing darts sheathed in straps slung across their chest. More voices raised in the distance, slower in coming, as if they were being roused from slumber. When they came, however, they would arrive in overwhelming numbers.

“Shift your form and fly away! I’ll hold them off,” Dante yelled as he leaped toward the six men. At the highest point of his jump, he transformed himself with a palpable wave of energy and the loud sound of ripping clothes. Bits of cloth sprayed the air in all directions as a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man transformed suddenly into a five-hundred-pound-plus saber-toothed tiger. He was huge. Massive. Even taller than the men.

He was the most terrifying creature I’d ever laid eyes on. The sheer size of him, not to mention those wickedly long saber teeth, complete with a spine-chilling roar, stunned the attackers. If I was standing in their shoes, I would have shit myself.

Two hunters managed to hurl their darts and roll out of the way. The rest froze in that critical moment as they saw death racing toward them in prehistoric form. The beast swiped with his enormous paws, claws fully extended, several inches long, sailing past two attackers and grabbing up another in his jaws. The two long ivory sabers sank through the hunter’s chest like the weapons they were named after. A savage chomp with the powerful jaw, and most of the hunter’s chest, including the heart, was bitten off as easily as taking a bite out of a hamburger. Before the body, what remained of it, hit the ground, there was a bright flash of light.

The body poofed into ashy dust, empty clothes and weapons falling to the ground.

I thought for a moment the tiger had missed the other two hunters because they stood frozen there like statues. Then in slow, ponderous motion, as they started toppling over, a thin line of blood appeared across their necks like red paint seeping out. As their heads slowly separated from their necks, a bright light leaked from their open bodies. With an immolating poof, two more piles of ashes dusted the ground.

With an easy pounce, the creature swatted the three other men into the air like a big cat playing with amusing mice. He broke the spine of one, by the sound of it, partially eviscerated the other, and tore through the ribs of the last, sending them thudding to the ground, an incapacitated bloody mess.

The prehistoric tiger glanced back at me.

I stood there with my mouth opened, stunned by the carnage and odd light-and-poofing-dust display—was that how Monères died?

The two darts protruding from the tiger’s chest didn’t seem to bother him; too big, perhaps, to be knocked unconscious by them. He chuffed at me, a loud coughing sound, and tossed his head in a gesturing motion, like he was trying to tell me something. Oh yeah, to run away. Or more like, fly away.

I tried. I brought the image of a vulture to mind and tried to picture myself becoming that image, but nothing happened. I didn’t know why—perhaps it was the shock of seeing Dante becoming that tawny, striped, enormous beast. Or maybe sensing more than fifty hunters running toward us wasn’t enough peril yet to force the change. Maybe I had to be hurtling down a gorge, in eminent danger of going splat, before I could shift.

“I can’t change,” I said to the huge creature, not sure if Dante even understood me. “I tried but I can’t shift, and I know you want to be heroic and hold them off while I escape, but hello, here. I need some help. For one thing, if you didn’t notice, I have no shoes, and my feet don’t have the inch-thick calluses these guys seem to have. Are my words even reaching you? How about this? Here, kitty, kitty,” I coaxed.

The big, magnificent cat eyed me balefully.

My heart lifted into my throat as I felt—and saw—the first wave of reinforcements crest the small ridge above us. “We have to hotfoot it out of here, Dante, and I can’t do it without you. Please, Dante. I need you.”

With a hissing snarl, the saber-toothed tiger delicately snatched up with his teeth the dark, reddish bracelets from the ground where they’d fallen in his transformation. Then he was in front of me, crouching down on his belly.

“What do you want me to do? Climb aboard?”

Dante chuffed and nodded his head, so much bigger than my own. Jesus, was he big! Big, but not invulnerable. Especially against fifty of those heathenish hunters who were streaming down the hill in a dark, brown-skinned wave, holding spears, swords, daggers, and those nasty venom-tipped darts, which reminded me . . .

I dashed in front of Dante to pull the two darts out of his chest and throw the nasty things away, then leaped onto his broad back. “Go,” I cried, clutching a thick ruff of fur. Powerful muscles bunched and rippled beneath me, and he leaped away. Too late, I saw, looking back—my fault. Dozens of launched darts were coming at us like a dark and feathered malevolent cloud. Dante and I were about to look like a porcupine. Forget about knocking me out—that many venomous darts would be lethal! Me, definitely. Maybe even to him.

With a quick, desperate pull of power from my innermost core, I threw out my left hand and let energy spill out from my mole, familiar yet different. Broadening the focus, I spread it wide with a grunt of effort. Instead of acting like a shield, which was what I was aiming for, it did even better. When the oncoming darts collided with my streaming energy, it not only repelled them but also launched them back at the hunters, some of whom had shifted into their animal forms—leopards and hyenas—all of them notably smaller than Dante’s prehistoric tiger form. Then my pulse of power hit the wave of attackers themselves like a soundless sonic blast, and sent them flying backward.

I glanced down at my hand, staring at my innocent-looking mole from which that surprising blast of power had come, then hastily gripped fur with both hands to secure myself as Dante stretched out in a loping run.