Sunny - Mona Lisa Awakening

"Like holy objects causing you to burst into flames. What about wooden stakes through the heart and garlic cloves?"

"Myth only. Stakes through the heart… that would not kill us. Our healing body would eventually spit the wood out."

"So, what are our fata! vulnerabilities?"

"The usual ways. Cutting our hearts out. Severing our heads off. But the most painful and lingering deaths are through silver or sun poisoning."

My eyes grew round at the gruesome methods he ticked off. "The sun can kill you?"

"Most definitely. Its hot rays burn us even at its weakest hours. Does it not burn you?"

"No, I have no such problems."

"Ah," he said, pleased, as if I had confirmed something he had already suspected. "The ability to withstand the sun is not unusual for Mixed Bloods."

I swallowed. "Do you have to sleep in a coffin or in the ground?"

He kissed me, a light peck of affection. "No, a soft bed will do very well. We are nocturnal. We sleep during the daytime hours. Humans are made for the heat of the sun. We are cold-blooded creatures. The night," he glanced longingly out the window, "is our domain. The darkness, the soothing air, when the world is shrouded in serenity, and our bodies, enlightened, are infused with energy from the moon. Don't you feel that, too, when night falls and your soul awakens to the calling from above?"

"Yes, I have felt that way since my childhood, only I didn't know then what it was, what made me so different from other children."

"That must have been hard for you, not knowing what made the days dreary, the sun glaring, and your body leaden with fatigue." He stroked my hair. "Tell me more about your childhood."

"I will, later. Your well-being is what concerns my heart now. We must act to find the cure soon to stop this poisoning. Thirty days is not a long time."

He smiled and whispered in a most gentle tone, "I care not that I live another moment. I care only that I am in your arms. I feel like a camel reaching an oasis after a long trek in the dry desert. I feel as if I have lived my life, that I could close my eyes and fall asleep and rest in your presence forever."

"Don't close your eyes now." I pressed a kiss to his brow. "You are too young to die."

He looked at me quietly for a moment. "I could just stay here and use the rest of my days, however short they may be, to pass you knowledge, teach you of our kind, acquaint you with people and names that may prove useful to you as a Queen," he said gently.

He lay there in my arms and my vision was suddenly keener. more perceptive, allowing me to glimpse deep into his weary, battered, undernourished soul and see with sharp clarity what he had chosen—death. He wanted to rest, to die here in the comfort in my presence instead of fight to live. And I saw clearly that neither soft kindness nor sweet pleading would sway him from his chosen path. He needed something harsh, something stinging to wake him up; I knew this, somehow, deep in my heart. A core of hidden knowledge within me seemed to have awakened with his entry into my life.

"You call me your Queen," I said, my voice cracking like a whip, "but in your heart you do not truly mean it."

"No—" He jerked back at my sudden attack and sat up.

I ruthlessly cut off his cry of bewildered protest and continued scornfully. "You have resigned yourself to death, even welcome that final rest, for you are tired of the pain and suffering of living. You lie when you call me your Queen, for you serve no one but yourself in giving in so easily to the death waiting to claim you."

Gryphon tensed wildly beneath the lash of my words, but he was unable to deny the sting of their truth.

"You appease yourself by offering to pass me a pittance of knowledge before you die in return for the comfort and ease I give you." I smiled contemptuously. "You treat me no better than a whore if you believe I am willing and desperate enough to settle for so little in return."

"No," he choked in agonized denial, shaking his head furiously. "No, my Queen."

"I will not settle for thirty days of your half-hearted service and then allow you to leave me alone and unprotected while you go to your rest," I said harshly. "If I am truly your Queen, then I require and demand from you all that is due me from a male in my service."

I glided to him and he watched me as if mesmerized, with something new in his eyes—a touch of fear and caution.

"You are mine. Every part of you belongs to me," I said, caressing his chest just above that slow, steady beating, feeling him tremble and smiling because of it. "Your brave warrior heart, your poisoned body, your weary soul." I breathed the words against his lips as I buried my hand in his hair and gripped his scalp hard. "Your brilliant mind," I whispered and brought my lips against his in a chaste kiss. "By my right , I claim every part of you in my service, and demand and require that you desire to live with your entire breath and being, with your very heart and soul. I hold you to your duty to seek a cure for yourself and to not abandon me. You owe me two hundred and twenty-five more years of servitude and I will not be cheated with a paltry thirty days, do you understand?"

Gryphon sank to his knees before me, silent tears of shame coursing down his cheeks. "Yes, my Queen," he said, yielding all because I demanded it.

"Your oath on it."

"I swear it," he said harshly.

"Swear it by that which you hold most dear."

He lifted his eyes to me. "I swear it on milady's heart," he said, bowing his head.

I tenderly stroked Gryphon's hair, a bittersweet smile twisting my lips. I had won. For now, I had won. I had seen what weapon to use and had used it ruthlessly to achieve my own end because I did not want to be alone, because I had only just begun to truly live and did not want to see that life die in its mere infancy. I smiled bitter-sweetly because I did not know that I was any better than that other terrible Queen, Mona Sera, in her calculated cruelty and, even more frightening, I did not care.

"I will not make it so easy for you to leave me." It was a soft promise, a gentle threat.

Gryphon drew in a deep gulping breath. "No, my Queen," he whispered.

I had set my heart in pursuit of the antidote, wherever it might take me. I felt a keener sense of myself, like a fresh young blossom of spring sensing the world for the first time, my tattered old self diminishing with every new breath I took in.

The idea of searching out the other Queen Mona Genesa, was soon abandoned. Gryphon had only a poor idea of where she was and an even poorer expectation of how he would be received, being the runaway slave of another Queen, the most despised of his kind. Had we been able to find her, she would likely turn us away like hunted dogs, chasing us far from her. Helping unwanted fugitives was an unspoken taboo among the Queens.

So, what to do then? There was only one choice, I told Gryphon. Face his enemy, and I would help him conquer the unconquerable. Reluctantly, Gryphon agreed.

Where did a Monère Queen live? In Queens, of course. Oh, the ego Mona Sera had. Thus we found ourselves the following night, shortly before midnight, outside a desolate warehouse in Flushing, the most easterly outpost of Queens, near an old railway depot. Rusty tracks lay abandoned and unused under the gleaming moon. Surrounding us on both sides were empty railway box carts, the kind once used for shipping before highways and trucks made them obsolete. They were stacked one atop another in a colorful array of dulled orange and grey, to tower over the undistinguished warehouse.

The full moon hovered above us in perfect round glory. Why while everyone gathered for Basking.

Gryphon had said to me the previous night, "A sad pity we could not search for the antidote during the full moon tomorrow while everyone is gathered for Basking, but we shall have to stay here and Bask ourselves."