Sunny - Mona Lisa Eclipsing

“Neat trick,” I observed. “Wish I could do that. It would have been much easier to fish the bullet out of you that way.”

“You probably will be able to in time.” With neat, efficient strokes he sliced off the skin and tail, filleting the white flesh into one-inch strips. “Here, try a piece.”

“No, thanks.”

“Think of it as sushi,” he said, eyes crinkling, “which it essentially is.”

“I never ate sushi.”

“Your first time then.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

The smile disappeared. “You need to eat and replenish your energy. Just a small piece,” he urged.

He refused to eat until after I had done so—the only thing that made me swallow a slice of the slippery, raw fish. “It doesn’t taste that bad,” I said with surprise. A belated thought popped into my mind. “What about worms or parasites?”

“It didn’t have any,” he assured me. “Even if it did, your body would easily rid itself of them.”

“How do you know? I’m part human, remember?”

“Have you ever been sick?”

I squinted in thought. “No, never. No colds or ear infections as a child. I’ve never been sick or ill before at all, come to think of it.” Pushing up my left sleeve, I glanced at the clear skin of my arm. The yellow bruising had disappeared. “This is the worst I’ve ever been injured. I can’t believe it’s healed so quickly, even though it took longer than my head.”

“Our body heals our worst injuries first.”

“Is that why your legs are still busted up?”

Dante nodded. “Yes. Back, ribs, and head first—the cheekbone was a simple, clean break and easy to fix. Legs next—a lot of bones were shattered. At least I can wriggle my toes now.”

He made me eat one more slice, and then he finished off the rest of the fish himself. He tossed the skin and bones into the river, and I splashed some water over the side to clean away the blood-tinged residue.

“How did you make the fish jump up like that?” I asked.

“I lured it close with my finger and then compelled it to jump out of the water. A trick I learned over the years.”

“Hmm. Never thought to apply that trick to a fish before.”

We had another aquatic meal for lunch, and a third one for supper. By that time, I was thoroughly sick of raw fish. “I think I’ve had enough sushi to last me a lifetime,” I said. “Berries tomorrow.”

“We’ll see,” he murmured, drowsing under the shaded canopy of the woven branches. It seemed adequate cover for him. I was glad when the sun finally set and the cooler darkness of night set in.

His legs, by that time, had healed enough for him to stand up and stretch.

“The wounds on your back”—from his knife and my fingers—“still haven’t healed.”

“They’ll go last—the least serious. Still finishing up the legs,” he said, glancing down the river. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

I did. After a moment’s concentration, I heard what he had: the sound of water was louder ahead of us. It grew louder still as we journeyed forward, until, finally, we saw with our eyes what we had first heard with our ears. Ahead of us, the river abruptly ended, plummeting down into a waterfall. From the sound of it, it was a long drop.

“I guess we go to shore,” Dante said, gazing out over the distance. I felt him cast his senses outward, and in response, loosened my own senses as well.

“No sign of our pursuers,” I murmured. “I think they stopped following us a long time ago.” If they had even bothered to.

Dante didn’t say anything as I slipped into the water and guided the raft with strong kicks toward shore.

“Just let me do it,” I said in protest when he eased himself into the water. “You’re still healing up.”

He ignored me. “Don’t pull the raft ashore. Let it float down and go over the drop. We’ll follow along the bank.”

“I don’t think it’ll survive intact. It sounds like a pretty big drop, and I spent a lot of time and effort making this raft,” I said, frowning. “Maybe I can carry it down.”

“No, I’d rather you had your hands free. I’ll help you gather up the logs again if they separate.”

It turned out he didn’t need to. The moment we were onshore, a net came flying over us. Silver, I realized, at Dante’s sharp hiss of pain, but it had no effect on me—no pain, no lessening of strength. I tore it apart easily and flung it off us.

Familiar undulating war cries shrilled the air, two close by that we somehow hadn’t sensed. The eerie chant was taken up more distantly by the rest of our pursuers.

Before we could spring away, another silvery net came down over us, entangling our limbs. I started to rip that away also and felt a stinging prick on my arm.

I yanked a dart out. Silver. But with something else as well. Drugged or poisoned, I had a moment to realize as my limbs grew unbearably heavy. Then darkness muffled me and swept me under.

WHEN I CAME to, it was not with a simple and easy drift-to-wake consciousness. No, it was much cruder than that. Pain first, a rough shaking of shoulder, then even rougher slaps across my face. Two voices yelling, angry. One of them was familiar—someone I knew, if only I could wake up. Then a cold, wet splash of water—a bowlful dumped across my face, I saw as I blinked the heavy lids of my eyes open. A dark, frightening face, painted black and brown, with a red eye drawn crudely on the forehead, looked down on me.

Ah, yes. It was all coming back to me: silver nets, a drugging dart, capture by these heathenish Monère. My impression of the race so far wasn’t that great. First a drug lord. Then what I had thought were bandits. Now this half-naked primitive bunch.

I turned my head and saw a familiar face belonging to the familiar voice. Dante. My poor comrade-in-arms. Me, I just hit my head and spilled out some memories, and, oh yeah, turned into a vulture. He was, however, by far getting the worst of things. Atop of his old injuries, now his right eye was swollen shut, with new bruises adorning his chest and arms in garish disarray. Couldn’t tell if his poor legs had been rebroken or not because he was lashed to a pole, arms and legs tied. His single unswollen eye glittered like a hard, pale diamond.

For all that he was bound, he looked more scary than scared.

At a woman’s command, I was pulled to my feet and secured to a similar pole, my wrists bound together with silver ties similar to the material used in the nets that had captured us. My arms were lifted up, tied, and my legs bound in likewise manner below. I was helpless to stop them—my limbs felt leaden and my wits just as heavy and slow. What the hell had they drugged me with?

A woman sauntered into view. The woman who had given the command, no doubt. She had black lustrous hair. True black, not the shade mine had been before, a brown so dark that some had mistakenly called it black before a talented stylist had skillfully lightened the color.

She had threads of gray streaking through the black strands—odd to see against an unlined face. Without those betraying gray hairs marking her age, she could otherwise have passed for thirty. How old was she now, midforties maybe?

She was lighter skinned than her men. Would have been the fairest one here but for myself. Even with my newly acquired tan, my skin was almost white compared to the brown pigment clearly marking her Latino ancestry. There was a curved roundness to the pretty features of her face and a softness to her small and shapely build, all but the eyes. Her eyes, the color of dark soot, fringed with long, fanning lashes, were hard and frightening, with not a smudge of softness in them.