Mona Lisa Eclipsing

TWENTY

AMBER LEFT THE next day, returning to his territory; Halcyon departed the day after to his realm, both leaving with the promise to return soon. Things settled once more into routine, with a few changes. Dante and Quentin joined my daily fencing lessons with Edmond, under Nolan’s tutelage. Needless to say, the Morell twins were in the advanced class; Edmond and I were, if not quite novices, then more along the lines of being orange belts to their black belt status. Most of the time, we worked in our evenly matched original pairings, but occasionally Nolan had us change partners, allowing Edmond and me to test ourselves against more superior opponents.

When the hour of sword practice was complete, Edmond left, and I continued on for yet another hour to work on new, additional skills—practicing the weird stuff, as I dubbed it. The extra hour had been suggested by Dante and agreed upon by Nolan. The first part was using the Goddess’s Tear in my left hand to generate a blocking shield of energy. When we first tried this, of course, no one stood in front of me or my power-generating mole. Good thing, too. I knocked over a few trees and blasted the heck out of some bushes before I finally got the knack for calling up energy in a more controlled and modest quantity—a light tugging, not a ferocious pull. And not tossing out the energy but continuing to hold it steady a few inches away from my palm in a light, invisible thrum shaped into a small oval shield the size of my hand.

The last part of the session, I worked on what was the far easier stuff for me, pure blasting power.

When I let loose and just threw out power, I was able to send a spreading wave of energy that stretched to a twenty-foot radius that could travel a distance of fifty-two feet, measured by the violent rattling of trees and bushes.

Close-up work with projectile energy was even more notable. The first time I tried it, I blasted a head-sized hole through a heavy tree trunk, which was both frightening and impressive, since that hadn’t been my intent.

“Remind me never to piss you off,” Quentin said, whistling as the exploded wood chips dropped in pieces to the ground.

It had to have brought back dark memories for Dante, but he only asked, “Did you mean to do that?”

I shook my head. “No, I thought it would just knock over the tree.”

“We’ll have to work on control,” was Dante’s judicious comment.

Nolan nodded solemn agreement. “Yes. We want to make sure you’re doing that on purpose and not by accident.”

“Definitely,” I said faintly, blanching at the idea of taking a life by clumsy accident rather than by sure intent.

By the time Halcyon returned on the fourth day, rested and regenerated from his stay in Hell, I had enough control to maintain a left-handed shield widened out to the size of a basketball. It was no doubt an odd sight to see me blocking Dante’s wooden sword with no visible barrier other than my upheld hand.

“Very nice trick,” Halcyon observed, watching from the side.

“Oh yeah?” I said, quite pleased. “See that pine tree over by the left edge of the lawn, about forty paces away? Keep an eye on the lowest branch.” Aiming my right hand, I emitted a stream of energy I had managed to narrow down to a plate-sized diameter. The energy beam hit its target, sending four pinecones flying from the lowest branch.

“Not bad range and control for—how many days of practice?” Halcyon asked.

“Four.”

“Hmm,” he mused, glancing at the pine tree. “It’s been a while since I practiced . . . but you see that single pinecone above the cluster you just hit?”

“Uh huh.”

He sent out a flick of mental energy and dropped the single cone—without even swaying the branch.

“Oooooh.” I grinned with delight at the competitive challenge. “Neat trick, yourself.”

Pitting myself against Halcyon over the following weeks, I honed my skills to an even finer degree, narrowing my beam down to a two-inch diameter, pushing myself until I was able to almost, but not quite, match Halcyon’s pinpoint accuracy. Control was the issue with me—not power but rather harnessing that power, learning the breadth and range of it. And, as was often the case when pitting yourself against someone better, I improved, developing a finer degree of control—certainly more than I would have had I been practicing alone. Even Amber joined in the fun on the days he came to visit, alternately cheering for me, other times for Halcyon, the big twerp, which I would punish him for later in a sweaty, wrestling romp in bed, tickling him without mercy.

In defensive maneuvers, I was eventually able to stretch the size of my shield out to a radius large enough to cover my entire body, good at deflecting swords and daggers and even bullets, sort of. The first time we tried it, the bullet punched right through my shield. It took six more tries before I finally found the right level of energy to produce. Even then, Nolan always aimed to the side, never directly at me, no matter how I urged him to do otherwise, assuring him I had it now. He chose prudence, and I couldn’t really blame him. It would be bad form to shoot your Queen, even if it was her own idiotic fault.

On his fourth visit, when Halcyon left, I went with him back to his realm.

Hell was different, viewed with its powerful ruler strolling by your side. Needless to say, you didn’t feel as threatened, even when your heart was the only living thing beating down there, calling out like a dinner bell to all occupants.

It took only one of Halcyon’s powerful mental flicks, sending a wolf—Hell’s nasty version of one, at least—tumbling away from us, to warn off other carnivores . . . and down here everything was a carnivore. Even their bunny rabbits had fangs sharp enough to bite your fingers off with.

“I wonder if I can do that now,” I said.

Halcyon lifted a brow. “By all means. The next one is yours.”

The next one didn’t come until ten minutes later, a flying serpent that was strangely beautiful, like a large dragonfly, its iridescent red and brown scales gleaming under Hell’s hot midday moon. It zoomed straight for us, hissing, venomous fangs on full display.

I lifted my left hand, shot out a careful pulse of power, and whoops . . . missed!

“Um . . .” Halcyon issued tentatively.

“I got it,” I muttered. Taking quick aim again, I loosed a second pulse from my palm. This one connected with its target just in time, dropping the serpent less than ten feet away from us to writhe in a ropey mass on the ground, lightly stunned, looking more like a regular snake with its delicate wings folded onto its back.

“If I may,” Halcyon said, politely offering his services as the serpent hissed at us and spread its wings.

“By all means,” I replied easily, much more agreeable now after having proved my marksmanship on, if not the first, then at least, the second shot.

With a light mental flick, Halcyon sent the coiled serpent tumbling away from us.

“I should come down here more often to practice on moving targets,” I said.

“Your visits would be more than welcome,” Halcyon said with a smile, “and for more than just target practice.”

“By the way, it was nice of you to shield me in the portal, but not necessary.”

He looked at me quizzically. “I did not shield you.”

“You didn’t? But it didn’t hurt, at all.” Normally, transporting myself through the portal involved severe and biting pain, as if tiny blades were crudely hacking away bits of my flesh. “Why is that? What’s changed?”

Because something in me obviously had.

“If I were to guess, I’d say that your body has altered since reabsorbing Mona Louisa’s essence back into you, incorporating enough demon essence to make traveling the portal painless. And yet, curiously, you have been stable since then, with no other ill effects. Have you had any flaring of demon bloodlust?”

“No, none,” I said, considering what he had said. “So you’re saying the physical nature of my body has changed. Maybe the change occurred when you tore her out of me. Or when I was pulled down to NetherHell.”

“Or when her separated spirit, substantially weakened, reintegrated back with yours,” Halcyon said. Like a bandage slapped on just in the nick of time. Both of us had been trickling out vital energy like invisible blood, everything going out and nothing coming back in. “You said the touch of the gargoyle lord kept Mona Louisa from fading completely away,” Halcyon said thoughtfully.

“A gargoyle,” I said, continuing Halcyon’s line of thought, “who has the ability to turn anything it touches into stone, one of the most solid and stable substances.” And Gordane, the Gargoyle Lord, had been pumping heavy doses of his solidifying power into Mona Louisa there toward the end to keep her from fading completely away. “Do you think that’s why I’ve been free of demon symptoms?” Symptoms that had been growing progressively and distressingly worse until Halcyon had feared having to kill me if I lost control completely and began slaughtering people and drinking their blood. I had come perilously close to that edge before being yanked down to NetherHell, and all that had followed afterward.

“If that is the reason,” Halcyon said, “then NetherHell was a blessing in disguise, and everything, including your fear of me afterward, was well worth it.” That had upset Halcyon in a way I’d never seen before, my rejection of him, my fearful recoiling away from his touch after experiencing that tearing, excruciating pain he had caused ripping Mona Louisa’s dead spirit out of me. And yet, without that necessary action, I would still be trapped down in NetherHell, not only dead, but likely dead and truly gone by now. It was not easy surviving in the harsh realm of the damned dead.

As for why it no longer hurt traveling the portal down to Hell, the realm of the living dead, it could be that there was a part of me that was truly lifeless now—the part of me that was Mona Louisa, fully integrated into me. Or again, it could be the lingering aftermath of Gordane’s gargoyle touch, or from a subtle change after being down in NetherHell.

I didn’t know or really care. I was just grateful.

We reached Halcyon’s home unmolested, though not from lack of trying. I had two more opportunities for target practice, and Halcyon three.

“I would not suggest you come down to visit on your own,” Halcyon said after dispensing with a particularly nasty-looking creature I didn’t even have a name for.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “Not even tempted.” Cool, neat weapon that my mole-emitted beams were proving to be, without Halcyon’s powerful presence by my side, the attacks on us would have been likely triple what they had been, or even more. The most dangerous predators, the demon dead themselves, had not ventured anywhere near us. That, I was sure, wouldn’t have been the case had I been walking alone with my loudly beating heart calling out to all the blood-hungry denizens.

Halcyon’s house was a far more modest abode than his father’s dark, towering fortress, quietly elegant, solid and powerful like the man himself. Tuck and Keven, two elite demon guards patrolling the grounds, met us at the property line. We exchanged greetings and made our way to the house.

The door opened before we could turn the knob, and a querulous voice said sourly, “I’ll get it. Stand back, you lout.’Tis my job, not yours.”

I had to adjust my gaze significantly downward to meet the eyes of the small female demon that stood there: Jory, a dour old demoness who oversaw the smooth running of Halcyon’s household.

“Welcome, my prince, my lady,” she said blandly.

“Thank you, Jory,” I returned, and lifted my gaze to the demon lout she had been scolding.

He stood waiting a few steps away in brimming impatience.

I felt my heart kick hard at the sight of him and his name left my lips in soft utterance. “Gryphon.”