Sunny - Mona Lisa Blossoming

Halcyon gave out a sharp cry, jerking my attention to him. Dontaine hadn't managed to free him yet. The Demon Prince's back was arched, his neck tautly stretched. A look of horror masked his face and I felt a reflection of it grip my own. Mona Louisa was behind Halcyon, twined about him like a lover, embracing him, pressed tight against his back, her lips two crimson slashes pressed against the curve of his neck. Blood so darkly red that it was maroon trickled down Halcyon's golden throat as Mona Louisa's slender, strong neck worked obscenely. And I realized she wasn't kissing him, she was drinking his blood!

I gathered myself and leaped, soaring through the air to land beside them. They were too closely entwined to risk using blades so I dropped them. One of my hands twisted roughly in Mona Louisa's shiny bright hair. With my other hand gripping her neck, I ripped her from him, and flung her away. Only one bite mark on his neck. Almost innocuous looking. But Halcyon looked as stunned, as dazed, as frightened as if she had ripped his throat out. He collapsed forward weakly, held upright only by his shackles.

I couldn't break the damn chains. "Dontaine!"

With a heaving snarl, the leopard went sailing across the room to hit the far wall with a cry, and Dontaine was beside me. He snapped Halcyon's chains with four sharp pulls, freeing his arms then his legs.

"Get us out of here," I gasped, lifting Halcyon into my arms.

Dontaine did so with the simple expediency of turning and crashing through the very same wall where the chains where embedded. Stone burst outward, and I stepped through the jagged hole my wolfman had made with his body. I felt Chami, a shimmering presence behind us as we fled into the night. There were sounds of pursuit, startled cries, gasping gurgles, snarling animal growls as Chami danced with his invisible cutting blades and Dontaine ripped and slashed with his long deadly claws, both men guarding my rear.

My right arm burned like a howling banshee and I felt blood flowing down my forearm. My partly healed wound had broken open. But my arm was holding Halcyon's dead weight. I didn't drop him, and that was all I asked of my injured arm for now. I ran, breath coming hard from pain and exertion, and then cursed and stumbled to a halt as I felt the presence of others before me, blocking my path.

"Mona Lisa." It was Gryphon.

Amber, Tomas, and Miguel, Mona Carlisse's man, emerged from the darkness like pale shadows, flowing around Gryphon, passing us, rushing into the fray behind me. I almost dropped Halcyon from sheer relief. Gryphon carefully took the Demon Prince from me. A car screeched to a stop and Aquila leaned over and threw the passenger door open from inside. "Hurry!"

We tumbled into the car and the white Suburban pulled away, bumping roughly over the grassy lawn. It was terrain like this where four-wheel drives showed their superiority. The SUV navigated the grassy ground with the heft of a tank and an angry rumble, its tires throwing up clumps of grass behind it.

"What about the others?" I gasped.

"Gerald has them," Aquila said.

I looked back, turning in the front seat, and saw the green Suburban pulling away with the others inside. Amber was crouched outside, up on the roof, like a giant gargoyle of death, his great sword slashing away, cutting hands and limbs, discouraging pursuit, keeping them off the fleeing car. Other guards spilled outside, running to the front of the house.

We lurched onto smooth road and Aquila floored it.

"They're heading for their own cars," I gasped.

"Don't worry." Aquila smiled like the bandit he once was. "They can't come after us. Not with flat tires."

I felt like kissing him, then leaned over and did so, smacking him on the cheek. "You're brilliant."

Aquila's teeth flashed in a pleased grin, lifting his neat mustache. "I know."

"Thaddeus?" I asked.

"Safe back home with the others. He told us what happened. Dontaine led us here."

I watched with fear squeezing my heart as Amber swung himself feet-first through an open window into the SUV. They hit the smooth pavement of the road and sped after us.

We'd lost all our pursuers. But relief was short-lived, triumph fleeting. Turning in my seat, I looked down at Halcyon. He had fallen into a shocklike stupor, lying limply on the second row where Gryphon had laid him out, his chest looking like raw meat slashed open, the flesh parted, not healing. His skin at both ankles and wrists had also split open when he had struggled against the manacles. A final insult, Mona Louisa's bite mark lay like a hideous kiss upon his neck.

"What did they do to him?" Gryphon asked.

"They put him in the sun," I answered. "He was weak but not like this, not until Mona Louisa bit him."

"I did not know that the sun weakens the Demon Prince as it does us," Gryphon murmured. "He needs blood."

I caught Gryphon's gaze. Held it with demand. "I know that now, but not before. Why did you not tell me?"

A glimmer of guilt, of remorse passed through Gryphon's eyes. "Who would you have had me ask to donate blood?"

It reminded me of when he had asked me which woman he should have asked to care for an injured, dangerous Dontaine.

"You would have chosen yourself again," Gryphon said, answering his own question, "and I could not bear the thought of him touching you."

Inwardly I sighed. I was merely mad when I should have been furious. This was even worse than Gryphon putting my hand on another man's groin, on keeping Wiley's chained captivity from me. This time we had nearly died. But it was hard to work my emotions up to furious when I understood Gryphon. He had been consistent in this all along, his fear and want of distance between Halcyon and me. Guilt and remorse shone in Gryphon's eyes as he gazed down at the insensate Demon Prince.

"Forgive me," Gryphon said softly.

"It's hard to keep forgiving you, yet again."

Gryphon bowed his head, frozen in that odd stillness that he was capable of achieving, as if he were inanimate, not breathing. As if his heart did not beat, so how could it break? Then he broke the stillness. A quick movement and he slashed his wrist with a blade, blood welling to the surface as I gasped with surprise. He pressed his opened wrist to Halcyon's mouth, his face once more serene, unreadable, blank.

At the touch of blood, the Demon Prince stirred. His mouth parted and his lips sealed around Gryphon's wrist, creating suction. Both of Halcyon's hands came up blindly to grasp Gryphon's arm and to hold it secure though his eyes remained closed. Like a baby, Halcyon sucked and nursed, greedily milking the cut flesh with firm lips for more of its red nectar.

Apparently it was not enough.

Halcyon's fangs lengthened and grew, a simple morphing that didn't even use a shimmer of power. It just occurred naturally, like breathing, lips drawing back. One sharp sinking bite and Halcyon pierced even deeper into Gryphon's flesh, drank down even richer blood, his larynx bobbing up and down as if it were a lever that could pump the blood faster into his mouth.

I wondered how much blood Halcyon was drinking down. How much blood could Gryphon continue to give? Gryphon looked pale, but I couldn't go by that: Pale was his baseline. But I could hear Gryphon's heart. It had kicked up its rhythm, a sign of his heart having to pump faster to meet its needs with a lesser volume of blood.

"Halcyon." I reached over the seat and touched the Demon Prince's hands. His skin was less sallow than before, not quite as sickly ashen beneath the tan. Those hands were wrapped tightly around Gryphon's wrist, holding him a willing prisoner.

"Halcyon, wake up."

Halcyon's eyes remained closed. He did not stop in his single-minded gulping of blood.

I slid over my seat into the middle row, crouching down in the floorboard space, a little alarmed at the strength I sensed in those golden hands. They were clamped down like cold steel. I couldn't pry them off Gryphon. Couldn't move a single finger, not even his pinky. When I tried, those slim, elegant hands only tightened even more, clearly unwilling to give up his food source.