Sunny - Mona Lisa Blossoming

I am serving you.

Gryphon was keeping to the promise to which I had made him swear when I was afraid of losing him after I had only just found him. A promise I had selfishly wrenched from him because I did not want to be alone again. I'd made him promise to fight to live. He was fulfilling that promise. Only… oh, baby, serve me another way. Not like this. Not like this.

When I was clean, when the tears finally stopped and my breathing finally evened, I turned off the water and toweled off. Big fluffy towels to go with the big fluffy room. I was alone and thankful for it.

I'd been alone ail my life. Physically, the last three years. Emotionally, almost all my life. Ever since Helen, the human mother who had adopted me and loved me as her own, died when I was six and I entered my first foster home. In the long years that followed, I'd grown used to that solitude. The last couple of weeks, I'd gone from just taking care of myself, to taking care of nine others. And now finding I had to expand that to over four hundred more. God! The pressure, the responsibility, was almost smothering. Deliberately, I slowed my breathing. Wouldn't do to hyperventilate.

I felt dawn like a gentle promise, advancing slowly, inexorably. Pressing against the horizon, creeping ever closer. Someone had unpacked everything and put all my stuff away. I fumbled through the drawers until I found the big T-shirt I slept in. Old, worn, comfortable, and familiar. I had a sudden sharp need for things comfortable and familiar. With the soft cotton pressed against my skin like a faithful friend, I crawled between the sheets, tired and heartsore, and welcomed the unthinking bliss of sleep.

A wolf howled at the crack of dawn. Not a rooster. A rooster would have been preferred. Nasty though it would have been, a cock-a-doodle-do wouldn't have shot me out of bed with the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

It came again, a long, jarring mournful howl.

Shit!

I threw open a couple of drawers—couldn't remember where everything was. I finally found a pair of jeans, slid into them, and into my shoes in almost one continuous motion, and ran out the door. Other doors opened. I met Gryphon and Amber, still dressed, at the end of the corridor. I caught a glimpse of Chami, Tomas, and Thaddeus, who looked as if they had thrown on clothes as quickly as I had.

Down the corridor, Tersa poked her tousled head out. "What is that?"

"Good question," I said, looking at Gryphon. "Is that Dontaine?"

"No." There was an odd look on Gryphon's face, almost as if he knew what it was but didn't wish to tell me.

Another eerie howl floated up the stairs. I ran after it, chasing it like an ethereal specter down the spiraling steps, the others behind me.

"Wait," Amber called out behind me. "Let us go first."

I ignored him, bypassing the last twenty steps by leaping over the carved wooden balustrade and landing lightly on my feet. I dashed down the hallway, opening my senses. There. I passed through the kitchen, the laundry room, and came to a closed door. A sniffling sound came from behind it, and a heartbeat. Not a slow, slow one like Amber's or Gryphon's, whose hearts beat no more than thirty times a minute. A moderately slow one like mine, like Thaddeus's. Fifty beats per minute. And it wasn't fur I smelled. Not an animal. A human.

The door was locked.

"Open the door," I said softly to whoever was behind it.

The sniffling stopped, but the door remained locked. The rest of the gang came pounding up behind me.

"No, do not open it, Mona Lisa," Gryphon said.

For some reason, I did not want to listen to Gryphon tonight. In fact, I felt a strong urge to kick open the damn door just because he'd told me not to. And looking at me, I think Gryphon somehow knew what I was feeling. He held up a ring of keys.

"Open it," I said flatly and stepped aside. See, reasonable. It wasn't smart to ruin one's own property if you didn't need to.

Gryphon inserted a key. He knew exactly which one, I noted. He opened the door and I stepped inside. I didn't need lights to see in the dark. We were creatures of the night. Darkness was our home. I saw as clearly as if sunlight had flooded the room.

A boy was locked up, shackled in silver manacles against the wall. I could tell it was a boy because he was shirtless. Ail he wore was a pair of ragged pants that made Dontaine's ruined pair look pristine. Dirt, mud, stains, and bruises covered him. His hair was long and matted, hanging about his face in dreadlocks. Not a fashion statement but the real thing caused from dirt and tangled, unwashed hair. The boy's eyes gleamed like shiny wild things from behind his straggles of hair. Yellow teeth were bared and a growl rumbled from his throat.

He was Thaddeus's height but so different from my brother. Thaddeus had the thinness, the lankiness of a young boy about to sprout. This poor creature's thinness was the thinness of hunger, of starvation. His rib bones pushed out, while the skin covering them seemed to be trying to suck them back in, dipping so painfully inward into a belly that wasn't just flat and hollow, it was concave. But he was strong. Every bit of flesh he had was lean, developed muscle. The wiry strength of his body, even more than his clothing, his hair, bespoke his wild state. He looked to be even younger than Thaddeus. Fourteen, maybe. And he'd been crying, alone in the dark.

"He's a Mixed Breed," I said. My senses told me that. And not just half. More. Possibly three-quarters of his blood was Monère. Like me. Like Thaddeus.

Someone flipped the switch and fluorescent light lit the room.

A sharp gasp. Then Tersa whispered, "Oh, dear Goddess."

I kept my attention fixed on the boy. "Can you understand me?" I asked softly.

No reply. Just that warning rumble.

"It's okay. We're not going to hurt you," I soothed.

When I turned to Gryphon, my voice wasn't as gentle. "What the fuck is this?"

Gryphon had on his impassive face, the one that told you nothing. "A present Mona Louisa left behind."

"How long has he been here, locked up like this?"

"Horace did not say," Gryphon said quietly.

"Two days." It was Dontaine's raspy voice. He'd pushed through or maybe everyone had just stepped back and let him through. He'd healed enough to close his windpipe but not cover it. The little bones and cartilage of his trachea were clearly visible, moving as he talked. He didn't drip blood, but it glistened there. Wet meat. "He existed in the bayou. She had him captured two days ago. Left him for you."

No need to ask why. The message was clear. This is what Mixed Bloods are to us .

"Was he causing trouble?" I asked.

Dontaine shook his head slightly, making the loose flesh move around his trachea. It was even worse than watching him talk.

"He is a wild thing," Dontaine said.

"I kinda got that when he howled," I said.

"Grew up in the swamps. But no, he was not killing cattle or raiding human livestock."

"Would they have killed him if he was?" I asked.

"Yes."

I didn't want to ask, to know, if they had killed others like this boy. Nothing here to take my rage out on if they had. Mona Louisa was gone. Although maybe the boy's mother was still here.

"One of the women here had him." I said it as a fact, not a question.

"Sweet Mother, is that what you do with Mixed Breed children here? Leave them in the swamps?" It was Rosemary who voiced that angry question. Rosemary, a Monère woman who had loved and raised her Mixed Blood children, keeping them with her instead of abandoning them to the humans. Or abandoning them in the swamp. Jesus.

"Some women. Not all," Dontaine replied. "Mona Louisa did not care what they did with them."

"God," I whispered. I turned to Gryphon. "You knew he was here. And you left him here. Like this."