Sunny - Mona Lisa Blossoming

We were in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

"Halcyon." I shook him a little.

Halcyon roused, opened his eyes finally. Blinked them, looked around.

"See any friends or anyone likely to give us a hand instead of take it?" I asked.

Halcyon didn't bother answering me. The answer was obvious. Anyone wanting to help us would have stepped forward by now. Instead they were creeping forward slowly, sniffing as if scenting the delicious aroma of fresh blood, their saliva dripping, circling around us like jackals, gathering for the kill.

The High Prince of Hell threw back his head and released a blood-curdling howl that lifted to the nightfall sky, outward and beyond. A calling, a beckoning that was answered by a fierce, joyous baying in the distance that rose on the hot wind like an utterly anomalous sound, inhuman. Howls that crawled over my skin and creeped out my flesh. That made me want to run far, far away.

I wasn't the only one. The faces surrounding us turned as one toward the eerily triumph cries, then slipped away, disappearing like dark sand shadows, leaving us alone to face what was coming.

"Uh, Halcyon, do you think calling the Hell hounds is a good idea?"

"They are one of the few things the demon dead fear."

"For good reason, no doubt. I don't know if facing them is any better than what just left us."

"It cannot be any worse."

My skin rippled in an involuntary shiver as the first big shadow appeared. "I happen to disagree. Uh, can you control them?"

"We shall see." His answer was far from comforting. "When I call them, it is usually to feed."

"It would have been nice if you hadn't told me that." My arm around Halcyon's waist became more clutching than supportive as more and more shadowy forms appeared. They had the eyes of night creatures, reflective, glowing. Cold eyes gleaming with frightening intelligence.

They came forward and my first clear vision of them almost made my knees buckle. I firmed my wobbly joints urgently, desperately not wanting to be down on the ground when they reached us. Down on the ground would make us appear less master and more food in their eyes.

Hounds was the wrong word for them. Hounds made you think of dogs. And let me tell you… these things were not dogs. They were giant beasts on four legs, their heads as tall as we were standing. The sheer size of them made the sword I held feel like a flimsy toy. They were death come calling, with a tail. But the tail was wagging back and forth, as big as a sturdy branch whoosing through the air. But it was wagging. The biggest creature, pure black like the complete absence of light, came forward and nudged Halcyon's outstretched hand.

"Shadow," Halcyon murmured, petting that massive head. The great jaw yawned open in a happy grin, showing razor-sharp teeth and a long pink tongue. A pulse of power and Shadow was shrinking, growing smaller. Although smaller was a relative word: In this case meaning shoulder-high instead of head-high. He became an animal form more like the canine species he was named for. Black, sleek, still powerful. Still more than capable of ripping your throat out and swallowing you down in a few big gulps. Still frightening. But less… monstrous.

More pulses of power like batteries discharging around us. Other transformations. There were over thirty of them, of all different colors and fur patterns. A solid gray Hell hound came forward, nudged Halcyon's other hand, snuffling me curiously.

"This is Smoke, Shadow's mate."

Halcyon deliberately lifted his arm around me and gazed into the eyes of the great Hell hounds before him. "This is Mona Lisa." He laid his golden hand against my pale face in a gentle claiming. "My mate."

Their intelligent eyes studied me as if they understood what Halcyon had said. I let them sniff me, take in my scent, even when they snuffled my crotch. I'd washed but some scents you couldn't wash completely away. Their mouths opened up in gleeful doggy grins. I tensed, but they didn't take a chomp out of me. Shadow's long pink tongue swiped over the back of my hand—my right one holding the sword—and it felt like the roughest grade of sandpaper rubbing over me. I gave a startled yip, and his uncannily intelligent yellow eyes laughed up at me.

"Shadow, stop playing with her," Halcyon scolded him affectionately, "and take me to my father's house."

Father's house turned out to be quite a trek away. I walked. Halcyon rode… hunched over on Shadow's back, with his hands buried in the thick pelt of the hound's powerful neck. The midnight black beast was gentle, careful in his stride, as if he knew how weak his master was and how injured. But even so, pain carved deep grooves in Halcyon's face with each soft jostle.

I seemed to have found a second wind. Maybe from almost being eaten twice, first by demon dead, then by the demon dead's version of a dog. My sheathed sword and combat knife jostled against my side as we passed thatch-roofed huts built of wood, and ramshackle abodes constructed from rough-hewn stone. Hidden demon eyes peered out at us through the windows, but none ventured outside as the Hell hounds swelled the fairway, sweeping me along in their midst. The shelters disappeared and we traveled alone on an empty path for a stretch of time.

Then the fairway widened and rose, leading to a rise upon which loomed a dark tower built of smoothly chiseled black rock, with twin spirals reaching mournfully for the twilight sky. Grand it might be, but it seemed empty, full of gloom, as if no life stirred within its stony interior. Like a giant, elaborate mausoleum or an avoided monument.

And yet, life, it seemed, did reside here. The metal doors, black like the color of demon chains, creaked open to frame a demon dead male of imposing height though lean of build who wore a neat white shirt, waistcoat, and—can you believe this? — a duck-tailed jacket. All spruced up with nowhere to go. The odd thought that the attire had to be tailor-made flitted through my mind before the man strode down like a lurching tree, fearlessly wading into the pack of Hell hounds toward Halcyon. The action jerked me out of my reverie. I didn't know who he was, only that he wasn't Halcyon's father. I sprung in front of Halcyon and drew my sword.

"Don't come any closer," I said, baring my teeth in warning.

" 'S okay. Winston. Dad's butler," Halcyon slurred.

"A butler named Winston. Down in Hell?"

The big man eyed me imperturbably. "No odder than a Monère Queen down in Hell named…"

"Mona Lisa," Halcyon supplied.

The thin, severe mouth didn't even twitch, but some spark of humor leaped into Winston's mirror-dark eyes. "Mona Lisa," he repeated blandly. "Like the painting."

I bristled. He was the first one to reference it… a demon dead butler, at that. "What of it?" I challenged.

His eyes laughed at me, quite a feat to accomplish without moving a muscle in his stiff face. He simply brushed by me, ignoring my sword, giving me his damn back—hmmph! — as if I were no threat to him. But his long arms were gentle as he picked up Halcyon, cradling him against his lean chest.

I turned to the watching Hell hounds. Shadow's and Smoke's intelligent feral eyes swung from their master to me. I swallowed under their intense yellow gaze.

"Thank you for your help," I told them, feeling foolish talking to them. But Halcyon had spoken to them as if they'd understood, and oddly, they seemed to know what I wished to convey.

Their jaws opened in wolfish grins. Lifting their muzzles to the sky, they howled, a chilling, primal sound meant to stir man's deepest fears. The rest of the pack joined in the baying, a lonely but joyous sound. With startling bounds, they loped off into the woods, fleet-footed shadows of death, to hunt other prey.