Sunny - Mona Lisa Blossoming

Her eyes spewing with molten wrath, Mona Louisa sprang to the couch where Gryphon lay bound. Her men acted as a living barricade of flesh between her and the Demon Lord so that I couldn't see Blaec, only the flash, flash, flash of bursting lights. Could only hear sounds and screams. Could only see swords and daggers rising and falling in a cacophony of vicious sound and stabbing motion.

With her left hand, Mona Louisa yanked Gryphon to his feet, hissing her blood-stained fangs— fangs ! — at me. "I told you once before, mongrel bitch. If I cannot have him, then neither shall you."

I scrambled to my feet, but it felt as if I were wading through thickened air. I stumbled, and watched helplessly as Mona Louisa pulled back her hand as if pulling a tautened bow. Then with terrible finality, she unleashed her hand and plunged it straight into Gryphon's chest, tearing through flesh and bone as if she were ripping through paper. With a vicious grabbing twist, she yanked his heart out, so that it was a bulging, quivering organ gripped tight in her first. She threw it into the air.

"No!" My horrified scream echoed loudly in my ears as I leaped up to catch it. Slowly, so slowly, I watched that precious tumbling heart fall into my hands. Felt the warm wetness of fresh blood, the squish of firm and tender tissue. Felt one weak beat throb against my palms. Felt myself shudder with the reality of it, and then time resumed its inevitable fast march forward. I landed at Gryphon's side; he had fallen to the ground. With sobbing haste, I rolled him onto his back and aimed the throbbing heart at the gaping hole in his chest. Carefully, I reinserted that still beating organ back into his broken chest cavity and held it in place with a trembling hand. I ripped the offending gag from Gryphon's mouth and screamed, "Blaec! Blaec!"

There was an almost endless ripple of exploding lights and then the High Lord was at my side, his face drawn and sallow with the effort of his kills.

"Heal him, High Lord! Please!" I cried. "I'll do anything, give you anything, if you'll heal Gryphon."

"I'm sorry, child." Blaec's words tolled with bitter finality. "No one can heal such a wound."

"No! There has to be some way of helping him," I sobbed. Frantically I covered Gryphon's torn chest with both of my hands. Desperately I called up that power deep within me as I looked down at him. "Don't leave me," I whispered.

My palms throbbed, ached with burning heat, and I poured that hot rushing energy into Gryphon. His eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, stirred, fluttered open as if he were awakening from a sweet dream. Our eyes met.

"Gryphon… please don't leave me."

"My love." It was the barest of sound on a last sighing breath, with a gentle smile on Gryphon's beloved face. Beneath my hands, his heart lay coldly still, no longer beating. Then Gryphon shone one last time, a glittering eruption of light released, no longer held. Before my eyes, his flesh shimmered, dried up, and started to crumble, collapsing into a cascade of powdery residue. He gave off one final flash of his essential light. And then he was free. And was no more.

Ashes scattered to the ground, dusting over my knees, coating my bloodstained hands. His clothes lay on the floor like an empty shroud. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes .

Silence filled the room like a tomb, broken only by my shuddering breath. Carnage had swept the room with a clean, ruthless hand, piles of ashes all that remained of so many. I was surrounded by death and felt as if I had died also. Wished that I had, since living hurt so much.

Then the sweet, clean burn of rage filled my empty shell, giving me a driving purpose to focus upon. So that I thought of only one thing.

"Mona Louisa is mine," I rasped harshly, jerkily, looking up at the High Lord.

He crouched down beside me so that his dark compassionate eyes were level with mine. "She is much stronger than you now," he said gently.

"Mine," I reiterated with a flat, trembling voice.

"She will kill you," Blaec said simply.

My eyes held his gaze fiercely so that there would be no misunderstanding. "After I die, she's all yours. But she is mine until I depart this earth." I stretched out my shaking hands, coated with the dark redness of Gryphon's blood, and the words came to me from somewhere deep inside, some place old, long before my birth, a hazy past filled with the most base primal instincts: desire to own, to possess, to conquer. The words came tolling out of me. "I claim Mona Louisa's life as my blood right."

The words echoed, trembled in the air. Blood right . A claim that seemed to hold meaning for the High Lord. Bowing his head, Blaec nodded.

We left that house of death and stepped into the dark whispering night, tracking our prey where she had fled into the woods. I smiled with cold satisfaction. The stab wound in Mona Louisa's back had prevented her from flying away, from taking her vulture form. She was grounded until the torn tissue knitted together.

Deep in the woods, ahead of us, Mona Louisa's slow heartbeat sounded in the distance and the scent of her blood drifted to me like tracking beacons. We headed north after that heartbeat, after that obscene sound of life that still was and should not be. So many dead because of her. It was only just that she join them.

I threw myself into mindless pursuit, trusting to instinct, to primal senses to find my way, leaping over trees and bushes, springing blindly after her, after that beckoning heartbeat, landing wherever I landed, on fallen logs, on the moist rich ground, in clawing brushes, soaring over rocks and boulders, only to spring up again, throwing myself blindly forward, ever onward at full speed, letting that unthinking, natural part of myself that was more animal than human guide me onto paths unknown.

The High Lord was a silent shadow beside me, pure movement, no sound. No betraying breath or pumping of blood to mark his presence.

We were gaining on her. She'd been spoiled by the ease of taking wing and soaring high in the sky. On the ground, Mona Louisa moved more cautiously. She made her way carefully in the thick woods, less experienced in the forest than above it. She moved not with the dangerous speed I forced upon myself, the blind leaps of faith I took. And why should she? She wanted to live. I did not care if I did or not. All that filled me was that single driving purpose, that pervading anger.

Cold rage. I'd never understood the term before. Never thought that rage could be anything but hot. But rage can be cold. Like flames that burned so hotly they edged from orange to cool blue, from rash heat into cold fire. It was thinking rage. Anger, pain, sorrow did not fill you, overwhelm you. You were dispassionate, detached from your emotion, as if you were already dead. My heart was. When she had ripped Gryphon's heart out of his chest, it felt as if mine had died as well.

Almost there. I closed in on that slow, slow heartbeat, my only goal to make that beating stop. I drew my sword, called the dagger from its sheath. "Face me, bitch," I whispered and knew that she heard me.

With one last bounding spring, I fell down upon Mona Louisa, her blond hair glowing bright under moonshine, waving in the darkness like a beacon of light. She turned her face up to me, and I fell upon her with a soundless cry, aiming my sword at her neck, my dagger driving for her heart.

At the last possible moment she turned fully and, with blinding quickness, heaved a melon-sized boulder at me that she had hidden in her arms. Going downward, I was unable to avoid it. Like a cannoned missile, it struck my drawn sword aside, knocking it from my hand. The heavy rock smashed into my chest with crushing force. The pain was blinding, breath-stealing. Hot, searing agony ripped through my torso from the blow, and then once again as I hit the ground with jarring force. Before I could catch my breath, I felt her hands on me, gripping my hair, grabbing the back of my pants, lifting me up and heaving me into the air. I crashed against the huge trunk of a giant cypress tree, the rough bark shredding my cheek, my arm, my entire left side.