Mona Lisa Eclipsing

SIX

I RESTED, NOT for the brief fifteen or twenty minutes that I had expected, but for several long hours during which time I slept deeply. When I awoke, I found my hand reaching for something that was not there.

I sat up and thought, Where is my necklace?

A panicked rush out of the bedroom brought me my first glimpse of the main house. It shouted of a degree of wealth that was far beyond anything I’d ever seen before. Roberto’s home was styled like a grand palazzo, with marble floors, fluted columns, massive windows, and ceilings that were impressively high—classical elegance blended with modern sophistication. The dress Maria had provided me, that had felt too formal and overdressed before, now seemed perfectly fitting in the graceful splendor of the residence. I ventured down the wide staircase feeling a bit like Alice dropped down the rabbit hole.

Heartbeats sounded toward the back of the house. I was about to head over there when Maria came through a door bearing a tray. On it was a plate of some sliced exotic fruit and a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed, if the juicy pulp was anything to go by.

“Miss Lisa, you up. Good, I tell Senor Carderas. Come.” Leading me to another room, she set the tray down on a small table overlooking the gardens outside, and gestured for me to sit. “This for you. You eat and drink now. You want medicina for head?”

“Medicine? No, thanks. My headache’s gone now.” And not only was my headache gone, but the lump on the side of my head had disappeared. The purple bruises on my arm, openly displayed by the short-sleeve dress, were also yellow now. Five days of healing accomplished in several hours of rest. If Maria thought it odd in any way, she didn’t comment on it.

I was savoring the last bite of the delicious fruit when Roberto appeared. I hadn’t thought much of his clothing before, only that he favored white and cream-colored clothes that set off his dark skin tone rather nicely, but on closer inspection I saw that it was very much in keeping with his home, a casual lord-of-the-manor style of dress.

“You look much better,” Roberto said, sitting down beside me and taking my hand so that a sharp frisson of awareness flared up between us again with the contact.

“I feel much better. This is the most delicious fruit I’ve ever tasted. What is it?” I gestured to my plate where only the thick outer green peel and black discarded seeds of the fruit remained. I had spooned out and eaten every single bite of the inner, custardlike white flesh.

“Cherimoya,” Roberto answered, looking divinely handsome sitting there. “Mark Twain once declared it the most delicious fruit known to man.”

“I would have to agree. Do they have this in the United States?”

“Why?” asked Roberto.

“Because it would be criminal if I never tasted this again.”

“Stay here with me and you can have all the cherimoya you can eat.”

Our conversation had been the easy kind that casual acquaintances had with one another. His last comment, though, had been uttered with what sounded very much like sincerity. As if he had truly meant it.

Stay here with me . . .

I did what any woman who wasn’t sure if the man she was speaking to was joking or not would do. I laughed and withdrew my hand from his light grasp. “Wow, if you’re an example of that famous Latin charm, no wonder it’s, well . . . famous.”

He held my gaze. “Will you consider it?”

“What?” I needed him to say it, in case I was mistaken.

“Staying here with me.”

I blew out a breath. “You’re kidding.”

“I do not kid,” Roberto said with grave sincerity. “I ask that you think about it.”

The idea that he was serious—that he meant it—was overwhelming. “Why? You hardly know me. I hardly know you.”

“I know that you are like me, and that I have been alone all my life until now, as have you. I know that our chemistry is alike, a small miracle to me.” He grazed his thumb lightly over the back of my hand, sparking that strange surge of energy between us again. “It does not sound as if you have much to return to: no job, no family, no close lovers or friends. You have been alone all your life, like me, and I have never felt anything like this before with another woman. It would be criminal, as you say, not to taste this, explore it . . . savor it.”

Oh my. For someone who had never been attracted to a woman before, he was very, very good—smooth and suave and tantalizingly seductive.

My hand crept up automatically in a nervous gesture to touch the necklace I had always worn. “My necklace,” I said, reminded of its loss. “What happened to my necklace? I know I was wearing it when I fell. I always wear it.”

“Do you?” he asked curiously.

“Yes, it was the only thing I had when they found me abandoned as an infant on the doorsteps of an orphanage.”

“So you have had it ever since you were a child?”

“Yes, it’s the only thing I have from my mother. Please tell me you have it.”

He nodded, and I felt a surge of relief well up within me. “Oh, thank God. I would have been devastated if I had lost it.”

“It looked valuable, so I put it in my safe for safekeeping and forgot about it until you reminded me. I shall go get it. No, stay here. Allow me to bring it to you.”

My joy, when he returned, turned to puzzlement. The item he laid carefully down on the table was a necklace all right, but one I had never seen before. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Your necklace. The one that you were wearing when you fell and hit your head.”

“But the necklace I’ve always worn is just a simple cross. This . . . I don’t recognize it.” I looked down at an exquisite cameo, the likeness of a man carved upon its ivory surface with scroll-like writing framing the rim. The bottom was engraved with the fierce image of a stylized dragon. As I ran my finger over the engraving, the present world hazed over and the man whose likeness was carved onto the cameo was looking at me. His eyes were a deep, rich chocolate brown.

“The dragon denotes my lineage and is the crest of our family line. Will you wear this?” he asked.

With an abrupt wrench, I returned back to present reality.

“What’s the matter?” Roberto asked, grasping both my hands.

I was shaking, trembling.

“I don’t know. I think . . . I remembered something—someone. The man who gave me this necklace. He said the dragon denoted his lineage, his family line.”

“Who was he?” Roberto demanded.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Roberto stared at the cameo image as if by sheer will he could make it impart its secrets to him.

Picking up the bright silver chain, I examined the scrolled writing more closely to see if it might jar loose some more memory.

“That does not hurt you?” Roberto asked, sounding odd.

“What?”

“The silver chain you are holding.”

“No? Why should it?” I asked.

He gazed at my fingers holding the delicate chain. When I continued to simply hold it with no sign of discomfort, he pushed his chair back and stood. “How interesting,” he murmured. “Do you remember anything else?”

“No. Nothing else,” I said, disappointed and highly perturbed. Who was that strange man with the dark chocolate eyes? And why was I wearing the necklace he had given me instead of the silver cross that meant so much to me? Could he have been the fourth man my landlord had mentioned? The one he described as average looking?

“Lisa,” Roberto said, drawing my attention back to him, “we have mentioned that we are alike, you and I, but have tiptoed around the matter. I think it time to lay our cards on the table. I shall go first. I heal unusually fast like you do,” he said, gesturing to the fading bruises on my arm. “I am also faster and stronger than anyone else I know. I can hear things other people cannot hear, and see things from a great distance away that other people cannot see.”

I felt as if my heart stilled for a moment as he said aloud the secrets I had kept from others all my life.

“What about you?” he asked softly.

As my heart regained its rhythm and thumped loudly in the silence, I realized something else I had not noticed till now. Roberto’s heartbeat was beating as slow as mine, at around fifty beats per minute. Most heartbeats ranged from sixty to a hundred beats per minute. Another shared oddity between us.

“Me, too,” I whispered, intimidated even now by speaking of these things aloud. “Ever since puberty I’ve been faster and stronger than other people, my senses—hearing, seeing, smell—all sharper, more acute.”

“But this.” He gestured to the silver chain I still held in my hand. “This does not hurt you or weaken you in any way?”

“No. Why should it?”

He searched my eyes as if he would glimpse all their secrets. “No reason,” he said, sitting back down.

I blew out a breath, feeling a curious relief from unburdening myself. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. You’re just like me.” Hesitantly, shyly, I laid my left hand over his chest to feel his unusually slower heartbeat. “Your heart even beats slower, like mine.”

He held himself very still beneath my touch.

“What?” I asked. “Why are you grinning and looking at me like that?”

“Because it is the first time you have voluntarily touched me.”

I drew back my hand, flustered. “I’m sorry, I—”

“No, do not apologize. I like it very much when you touch me. Why are you staring at me like that?”

The words left my mouth before I had a chance to think. “Because when you smile you go from being remarkably handsome to almost irresistible.” I felt my cheeks grow warm. “Did I just say that out loud?”

Roberto laughed, and the sound of his laughter was as compelling and tantalizing as the rest of him. “Yes, to my great enjoyment. I shall endeavor to smile more for you, my sweet Lisa,” he said, reaching for my hand.

I drew back, my gaze dropping to the necklace that lay between us. “No . . . I’m sorry. You make flirting so easy, so fun, and I admit to a powerfully strong attraction to you . . . but I don’t remember the last few months of my life. I don’t know if there might be someone else I’m committed to, unlikely though that may be.”

“You do not wear a wedding or engagement ring,” Roberto observed carefully.

“No.” I looked down at my bare fingers. “I don’t.”

Gently he lifted my chin until our eyes met again. “Then count me in the running.”

“Of what?”

“A suitor, like this other man you remember may be.”

“More likely he was just a new friend I had made, or perhaps a neighbor or a coworker.”

“There you go again, denigrating yourself.”

“With good reason. I know I’m not beautiful. I’m just a very plain-looking woman.”

“You do not know what I see. But, gracias Dios, I know that you feel what I feel.” That ever-present heat flared up between us like an invisible muscle flexing, testing. “You are special to me, as I know I am to you.”

Roberto started his campaign that very night.

The coastal city of Cancun, I found, had a high-gloss charm. Sprawled like a languid queen amidst the natural splendid beauty of white-sand beaches and indigo sea, it abounded with four-star hotels, glittery nightclubs, and international tourists roaming the night looking for fun.

“It’s just dinner,” he said when I protested the expensive-looking restaurant his driver pulled up in front of. “You are doing me a favor by keeping me company while I eat, truly.”

We dined in discreet luxury, ushered immediately to a corner table, bypassing the line, the maitre d’ and waiter treating us like royalty.

“They seem to know you,” I said, grateful for the lace shawl that hid the yellow bruises on my arms.

“I dine here often,” Roberto said.

Digging immediately into the food, I found myself unexpectedly ravenous. “Everyone’s looking at us,” I whispered.

“That’s because they are all wondering who my lovely companion is.”

It proved to be an accurate surmise. Not that I was lovely, but that people here were curious as to who I was. Other diners, acquaintances that Roberto knew, stopped by our table—a dapper gentleman who proved to be the mayor of the city, a local real estate mogul, even the owner of the hotel we were dining in. It appeared the crème de la crème of society was here, all peering at me with avid interest in their eyes.

Roberto introduced me simply by my name. The proprietary hand he laid casually around my shoulder, however, defined our relationship more clearly than any words he could have uttered.

“What are you doing?” I asked in a low voice.

“I am staking my claim to everyone.” With a smile, he laid a gallant kiss on the back of my hand, sending a chorus of whispered speculation buzzing anew throughout the dining room.

“I told you before,” Roberto murmured, stroking my hand, sending tingling warmth coursing through me, “other women have never interested me the way you do.”

“So I’m the first woman you’ve dined with in public?” I said skeptically.

“No, I have had other dining companions. But you are the only one I have ever touched or kissed like this.”

Roberto, when he turned on the charm, was mesmerizing, and despite myself, I found myself relaxing beneath his warm, intoxicating attention. Two glasses of fine wine also no doubt helped.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked as our waiter discreetly cleared the plates from our table. Not only had I eaten a main entrée and dessert, but I had guzzled down soup and salad and an appetizer as well—much more than I usually ate.

“The food was divine, the company wonderful, and the setting exquisite,” I said, sitting back happily replete.

“I am only wonderful, while the food was divine and setting exquisite?” he said sadly. The twinkle in his eyes told me he was teasing.

“You’re good,” I drawled back, “but not as good as the food. Especially the dessert.”

“Oh, you wound me.” Mockingly he clasped his chest.

When I giggled, he smiled happily. “You know, I have never had a more wonderful time. Dance with me.”

“Where?” Live music was playing, but there was no space to dance.

“Outside on the patio.” He drew me to my feet and pulled me out the terrace doors.

“It feels unreal,” I said as he enfolded me into his arms outside. “You feel unreal.”

“I’m very much real,” Roberto murmured as he brought me close against the hardness of his body. We swayed in time to the music as a cool sea breeze blew across our skin.

“Kiss me,” I said, lifting up my face, feeling more relaxed than I’d ever felt in my entire life. Feeling almost beautiful.

“I’ve been wanting to all night.” His head dipped down and claimed my lips, and with sweet magic that ever-present chemistry flared up between us.

His kiss, his touch, sent pleasure thrumming through me. With a small sound, I parted my lips, inviting his tongue in to tangle with mine. I ran a hand through the thick silk of his hair, touched the close-shaven side of his face, and felt desire—wonderful, miraculous desire—course through me like a shaft of brilliant sunlight, as if the sun was shining brightly beyond my closed eyelids.

Roberto’s abrupt withdrawal opened my eyes, and I found that the light I had thought I’d imagined was real. Only it wasn’t sunlight, it was our skin: my skin blazing brightly with white luminescence, Roberto’s skin a dimmer glow.

I gasped. “My God. We’re glowing! What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Roberto said, as startled as I. “I thought you might know what this was.”

To our vast relief, the glowing of our skin dimmed and disappeared after we broke apart.

“No one saw us,” Roberto said. “What just happened?”

“We lit up like two freaking lightbulbs. That’s what happened!”

“Yes.” He gave a brief, shaky laugh. “But what caused it?”

Reality shifted suddenly again.

The moon full and round, pregnant with light and energy. Rays, shafts of light, coming down from it. No, that wasn’t quite right— pulled down from it. By me. Hitting me, filling me with buzzing power like a battery getting a sudden blast of charge. Light filling me, pouring out of my skin, setting me aglow . . .

I crashed back to the present. To Roberto’s voice.

“. . . it was almost as if sunlight emanated from us—”

“No,” I whispered hoarsely. “Moonlight . . . moonlight spilling from our skin. What in God’s creation are we?”

Sudden awareness rippled across my skin, that feeling of like to like, as energy brushed faintly across me.

“What’s that?” I asked as my skin prickled. Turning in a circle, I tried to pinpoint where that feeling was coming from.

“What is what?” asked Roberto.

“That. Don’t you feel it? It’s like what I feel with you, only it’s more distant. It’s coming from . . . the sky. There!” I pointed to a bird on the distant horizon and wondered if I was crazy. No airplane, no crazy tourist hang gliding or parasailing. Just the bird—my vision zoomed in. An eagle.

Roberto suddenly urged me inside.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s another like us,” he said, sounding grim.

“Where?”

“Where you pointed.”

“I pointed to a bird.”

“Exactamente.”

“You can’t be serious.” I stopped. Turned to look at him. “You are! You think that eagle is someone like us?” I said with disbelief.

He nodded. “If I can take on the form of an animal, so can someone else.”

My voice squeaked up an octave. “You’re telling me that you can shift into an animal?”

“Into a jaguar. Can you not shift into animal form?”

“Uh . . . no.”

That seemed to surprise him. He shook his head as urgency regained its hold. “Inside the restaurant, quickly.”

“Why? If it’s someone like us, don’t you want to meet him?” I asked, bewildered.

“It’s a male,” Roberto said. Opening the door, he ushered me inside the restaurant. “I have found other males to be quite dangerous.”

“You’ve met others?” Aware of our environment, I lowered my voice. “Like us?”

“Met them and killed them.”

“You killed them?” I said in a shocked whisper, swinging around to face him. We were drawing attention again, but our voices were lowered beyond what normal humans could hear.

“It was kill or be killed,” he said, gripping my shoulders. “Other males come here occasionally to challenge me, to try and take my territory.” Planting a quick kiss on my mouth, he spun me around and led us back to our table. With a gesture from Roberto, our attentive waiter rushed over. A quick spatter of Spanish later, Roberto was leading us out the front door. His two bodyguards, waiting near the entrance, fell into place, one in front of us, one behind.

“I didn’t see you pay,” I continued to whisper, even though there was no longer a need to.

“I had the waiter charge the bill to my account.”

No credit cards, just charging things to your account. It struck me as hilariously funny for some reason. I started laughing as I almost ran to keep up with Roberto’s brisk pace, his hand tightly clasped around mine.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, glancing back.

“You are. This whole situation—bodyguards, just signing instead of paying a bill, running from a bird.” And unsaid, our skin glowing with moonlight, and learning that there were other people like us who Roberto had killed and who had tried to kill him. And discovering that people like us could shift into animal form!

Our car quickly pulled out in front, and we slid inside into the dark, tinted interior. The two guards squeezed in front with the driver, and off we went, blending swiftly into traffic. There were fifteen minutes of alert tension but nothing happened, and I began to think that we had lost whoever, whatever, had been flying toward us. A bird. A freaking bird, I thought with disbelief. Had I not felt that frisson of awareness, I would have wondered whether Roberto was paranoid or deluded.

Shifting into an animal . . . Roberto had claimed he could as well. Never in my wildest dream had I imagined being able to do something like that. But as we pulled off the main highway and threaded our way onto less crowded residential roads, I felt it again, that sharp frisson of awareness.

“He’s here,” I said a second before something big struck the roof. The car jolted with the impact, and taloned claws—alarmingly big, almost the size of a man’s hand—punched through the metal above us with a screeching, tearing sound. Gravity tilted as the car was jerked abruptly onto its side, my scream lost among the blistering sound of metal scraping along asphalt and the loud, explosive din of guns being fired at close range.

The taloned claws disappeared, and the car careened to a stop. We were amazingly uninjured, I saw, as I climbed out of the upended car. I looked wildly around for a large eagle and felt him close by but had only a fraction of a second to glimpse a naked, bleeding man sprawled on the road before my senses were awash with another onslaught. Not just one but many, I had time to think, and then three men were suddenly attacking us.

Our two bodyguards had crawled out of the car and were shooting in a wild burst of fire but seemed unable to hit any of our attackers. Roberto came closer to hitting his target with the gun he had pulled out and was firing. Close but no cigar. His bullets struck and deflected off the thick, metal bracelets his attacker wore on his forearms, using them like an ancient warrior of old to block the shots—a wild-looking man with long, dark hair and a thick, unruly beard. It was a scary and impressive skill he had. Even more impressive were the three-inch-long claws curving out of his fingertips!

I blinked my eyes to make sure what I was seeing was real. Holy crap, it was.

He was a seasoned fighter, much better than Roberto, it became quickly obvious as the two neared each other. Blood scented the air, pungent and coppery thick, as he sliced across Roberto’s chest and, spinning nimbly, cut deep bleeding furrows down his back. Before I had time to think, I was in motion, as with cold, eerie calmness he executed another neat rotation, raising his right hand—his right claw—for a beheading stroke.

“No!” I threw myself in front of Roberto, coming face-to-face with eyes so pale a blue that they looked like ice. I saw my death in those eyes and had no time to brace myself for the oncoming blow that would end my life.

Emotion flashed in those arctic eyes, something like confusion, maybe even surprise, as he twisted himself violently away. I felt his claws whistle pass my neck, felt the brush of passing wind whip across my skin, and braced for pain, but none came. No blood, no wet splatter. He’d missed . . . he’d deliberately missed.

“Mona Lisa,” he rasped hoarsely, words that jolted me. As I stared into those odd, pale eyes, his body jerked as a gun fired behind him, blasting my eardrums with the close shock of the loud noise. My eyes dropped down to those deadly claws, so long and lethal and inhuman, and watched with awful fascination as they shrank down in a fluid wave of transformation to become normal nails on normal hands.

“Silver bullets,” the pale-eyed attacker said, looking down at his unblemished chest. No exit wound. The bullet was still inside him, buried in his flesh.

As he dropped to his knees, Roberto came into view, his dark eyes shining with satisfaction as he shot the man a second time. The bandit jerked again and collapsed on the ground.

One moment I was alone with the fallen attacker, shielded behind Roberto and the two bodyguards; the next instant a hand grabbed me out of nowhere, an invisible hand I could not see, matched by an invisible voice that said, “Let’s go, milady, quickly.”

“No!” Frightened and bewildered, I instinctively resisted the invisible hand gripping me. “Let me go!”

Roberto aimed to my left and fired. More bullets whined.

I heard, even felt, some of them passing by. Heard two of them hit their invisible target as I twisted and fought against my unseen captor. My wrist was abruptly released, and I sensed whoever had been holding me move away. He made it only a few yards away before the first drops of red blood spilled out at stomach height, as if from the very air itself. Then abruptly, as if a veil had been yanked away, a man suddenly appeared, tall, wiry thin, with short, curly brown hair. He looked like a young graduate student instead of a road bandit; certainly not someone capable of playing the invisible man and inspiring the choking amount of terror he had in me.

All guns trained at him and fired. If I had wondered before if we were capable of moving faster than a speeding bullet, the answer is yes, sort of.

Roberto and I were the only ones who saw the other attacker move, the biggest one, tall and strongly muscled, with a beard like the other man but shorter and more neatly clipped—the only one left uninjured among our group of attackers. He moved as I moved when I ran free, out of sight of prying eyes: inhumanly fast. He snatched up Mr. Invisible (who had now turned visible) and darted out of the way of fire before the bullets reached where the other man had been standing.

Roberto was the only one fast enough to fire a second round. The big guy deflected two of the bullets with metal wrist guards similar to what the arctic-eyed bandit wore. Even as he ran, fast, so fast that it was nothing but a blurring streak to human eyes, I saw him turn back and look at us . . . no, not us. At the other man who had fought like him and been shot down, fallen near me, blocked from rescue behind Roberto and the bodyguards.

“Go! Leave me,” I heard the injured man say as he tried to crawl away from us, making pitiful progress. The words should have been lost beneath the gunfire but I heard him and so did the big man.

The large bandit raced to the naked eagle guy and swung him over his shoulder. Unhindered by their weight . . . indeed, acting as if they weighed nothing more than a feather each, he sprang into the air, one impressive bounding leap that took him to the end of the block where he veered around the corner, disappearing from sight.

I was still reeling from what I had seen, not the world-record-breaking leap—that I could do myself, though maybe not with two other men hanging over my shoulders—but rather from what I had glimpsed when he had swung the naked man onto his shoulder: the neat Vandyke beard and mustache adorning the bird-man’s face.

Looking just like a character out of England’s Victorian age.