The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

  If there were ever a time for divine intervention, this was it. I didn’t get it, of course. But I got the next best thing.

  I saw Edwards narrow his eyes in concentration and Mona Lisa’s elaborate dress returned, as did his fancy costume. Gabriel now held a rapier again instead of the knife. The tapestries on the walls were back, and the plastic cups were goblets once more. Then Edwards smiled at me. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long, but it wouldn’t take long for his angels to kill me. He gestured with one hand and Mona Lisa looked outside as the fires out there flared back up again and the mummy climbed in through the window.

  The mummy.

  It must have found a way to escape Morgana and her court. Beloved, beautiful Morgana . . .

  I shook my head to try to clear my mind. Maybe putting on Morgana’s ring hadn’t been the best course of action.

  The mummy glanced around the room and then saw me. It lumbered forward just as Gabriel drew his arm back for another shot at me with the rapier. The angels holding me spoke for the first time.

  “Beware,” Grumpy said. Or was that Dopey?

  “A corruption,” the other one said.

  “More like a deus ex machina,” I said.

  The mummy caught Gabriel’s arm just as he started to thrust. He turned, surprised, and it threw him across the room, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack the stone there. Unless that was just another effect added by Edwards.

  “You boys are in trouble now,” I told the other angels. “Even I can’t stop him.”

  One of the nice things about angels—and there aren’t many nice things—is that they’re reliable. They like to fight. The angels holding me let go and threw themselves at the mummy even as Gabriel climbed back to his feet. The mummy grabbed them by their throats and smashed them together, and feathers flew. But they kicked and punched him even as he tried to choke the life out of them—which doesn’t work with the seraphim or any of their close relations—so all he could do was glare at me with those empty eye sockets while they kept him busy.

  I held back for a moment, slumped against the wall and feigning a slow death from the knife wound. Not hard, considering how much it hurt. Gabriel bought it and only glanced at me for a second before leaping across the room and ramming the rapier through the mummy’s head. Which had exactly no effect.

  I used the angels’ distraction to run past them and throw myself over the table even as Edwards turned the food back into a banquet fit for something other than zombies. I tackled him and took him to the floor, and we rolled around there for a bit, giving me time to work a bit of magic of my own.

  When he finally threw me off—nearly out the window and into the burning landscape outside, in fact—and we stood up, I’d cast my own sleight. Now I looked like Judas too.

  And if you think I hated becoming Judas to try to survive this situation, well, you’ve underestimated my feelings a thousandfold.

  But I’ve done worse.

  No, no I haven’t. But I probably will in the future.

  I didn’t waste any grace on the wound in my stomach. That would have used up most of my reserves, and the sleight covered it anyway. Besides, I had a feeling there were more wounds on the way. I wasn’t going to get out of this one alive. But maybe I could still find a way to free Mona Lisa, and Cassiel would owe me one. Finding out where Judas was after I resurrected was almost as good as finding out where he was now. As long as I didn’t die in his form . . .

  Mona Lisa looked back and forth between the two of us and sipped her wine. “An enchantment,” she said. “How delightful.”

  I sighed. Or maybe I could just beat Judas’s location out of Edwards.

  I risked a glance over at the other fight. Grumpy and Dopey had managed to pin the mummy against the wall like they’d held me, and now Gabriel was stabbing him repeatedly with the rapier. Good luck with that.

  Edwards opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t give him the time for more threats or boasts or invitations to dinner or whatever it was he wanted. I leapt across the distance between us and grabbed on to him, then shut him up with a head butt to the nose. That always shuts people up. It had the added effect of breaking his concentration, and the sleight masking the room faded again. Stone walls, check. Mouldy food, check. Naked angels, check. Edwards as his true self . . . nope. I was going to have to do more than that.

  “Judas!” I heard Mona Lisa cry as we struggled. “Judas!” And the sound sent a shudder through me, because a gorgon’s cry is like nothing you have ever heard—or want to hear. Especially when it’s calling the name of Judas.

  “He’s an imposter, my love!” Edwards yelled. “Help me kill him!”

  “No, he’s the imposter,” I shouted. Okay, it wasn’t the most imaginative thing to say, but do you think you would have come up with anything better in the same situation?

  Edwards wrapped his hands around my throat to try to stop me from saying anything else. I tried to pull them off, but he was stronger than me at the moment. This wasn’t going well at all. I needed another plan. Hell, I needed a plan. But I didn’t think I was going to have the time to come up with one.

  So I threw some of my remaining grace into my right hand and punched him in the face as hard as I could.

  The blow would have taken off a normal man’s head. It would have broken through a brick wall. It would have fractured the ground like an earthquake. You get the idea. Edwards took a couple of steps backward, and his eyes glazed over a little, and that was about it. But that was enough.

  I felt the air start to heat up around me. And I couldn’t help but notice the walls begin to smoulder around the same time my feet began to burn.

  “My love—don’t!” Edwards managed to gasp as he collected himself again. Then he kneed me in the balls—my Achilles’ heel, so to speak—and I was left hanging on to him more than holding him. But it was too late. I’d broken his concentration with my blow, and thus broken his hold over Mona Lisa.

  We spun around as he struggled to break free of me, and I caught a glimpse of Mona Lisa in her full glory. I knew from legends gorgons all had their own powers: Medusa had her whole stone gaze thing, for instance. Victory never would tell me what her power was—she acted as if I’d asked her age when I questioned her about it. And I’d had no idea what Mona Lisa’s power was because I’d never known she was a gorgon.

  But now I was about to find out.

  Her clothes were gone, burned up in the flames that covered her body. But she wasn’t burning up—the fire flowed out of her. She wore it like a gown. The snakes of her hair were made of more flames, and they spat fire at Edwards and me. Smoke poured out of her eyes and mouth. The wire in her lips glowed white hot.

  “What have you done to us?” she screamed, and the words were blue flames. Everyone paused to look at her. Even the mummy. I wondered how my dear, sweet Morgana had ever managed to imprison such a creature.

  Edwards found the strength to throw me away from him. “My love, the imposter has imprisoned you,” he shouted at her. “He has masqueraded as me to keep you hidden away from your sisters and your true cause.”

  Okay, that was well played.

  Mona Lisa looked at me. What can I say about that look? I burst into flames. Or rather, my clothes did. She set my clothes on fire with that glare, and it was all I could do to not drop to the ground and roll about in an effort to extinguish the flames. Because that would have been pointless, as the wooden floor was burning now.

  Oh Morgana, I was never going to see you again now.

  Shut up, Cross, I told myself with a mental slap.

  The obvious response to Edwards would have been something like: “No, he’s the imposter who imprisoned you!” But I could see that particular approach wasn’t working. So I said to hell with it and went for the kamikaze option.

  “We’re both imposters,” I screamed, although it was more of a shriek thanks to the
flames and burning skin and unbearable longing and all. “You’ve been stolen away from the real Judas. He doesn’t even know where you are.” I could have added he didn’t care, but I didn’t think that would go over so well with her.

  The flames subsided a little as Mona Lisa looked back and forth between us. I tried to bat them out with my hands, but my hands were on fire now, so you can imagine how well that worked.

  I’d only been burned to death twice before, once at the stake in England and once in a car accident on a deserted road in a German forest. This time was shaping up to be the worst of the bunch.

  “I have rescued you,” Edwards said. “I have broken the spell. Finish him so we can leave this place.”

  In case you haven’t figured out his plan yet, I think it was meant to go something like this: He convinces Mona Lisa to finish barbecuing me, and then he helps his henchmen dispose of the mummy. Which would probably mean dumping him in the Hadleigh Castle painting or some place like that, because I was beginning to think the mummy was unkillable. And then he’d have all the time in the world to work some fresh magic on Mona Lisa and cloud her mind again.

  But I wasn’t going to let him do that. I was going to free Mona Lisa if it meant killing us all—including me. And that’s exactly what it meant.

  “The real Judas would know where you kissed for the first time,” I said. OK, it was more like I spat out the words. This was killing me. Figuratively and literally.

  Mona Lisa stared at me. And then she smiled, which looked kind of like adding a line of gasoline to a fire.

  “Tell us the truth and live,” she cried. “Tell us a lie and we will burn you from history itself.”

  At this point in my life, the latter didn’t seem like such a bad option.

  “On a bridge over the River Seine,” I said.

  If I was going to go out here, I may as well go out a romantic.

  “Pray to your gods,” Mona Lisa said to me.

  “You really don’t know me,” I said, but she was already turning to Edwards.

  “Tell us the truth,” she said.

  Edwards looked at her for a moment. The other angels continued to struggle with the mummy. The mummy was burning now too, and Gabriel’s wings had caught fire, although he didn’t seem to notice.

  Then Edwards turned to me and slowly clapped his hands together again.

  “Well played,” he said. “Very well played.” And then he dropped the sleight and he was just Edwards again. There was no sign of Judas at all.

  Well, fair’s fair. I wasted no time dropping my own Judas masquerade. And then there were none.

  Mona Lisa howled when she saw our true natures, and the snakes threw themselves at us, uncoiling and lashing out across the distance to score our faces with their burning fangs. The very air itself began to burn in places, scorching my lungs until I couldn’t breathe, and the flames from the floor leapt up all around me. The walls began to melt. The Da Vinci painting we were in was turning into a Dali painting.

  The other angels finally let go of the mummy and took flight, screaming. But it was no good. Their wings were melting and there was nowhere for them to go.

  Edwards seemed more philosophical about the whole thing. He shook his head at me. “You can stop me, but you can’t stop the Risen,” he said. “We are legion.”

  Then the snakes wrapped themselves around him like a hundred fiery constrictors and I couldn’t see him at all anymore. When the snakes snapped back to Mona Lisa’s head, there simply wasn’t anything left of him anymore, not even ash.

  I’ll give him credit—he didn’t scream.

  Mona Lisa turned to me then and I held my arms open to welcome my fate. I was getting tired of this century anyway. But before she could do to me what she’d done to Edwards, another angel came hurtling through the window, from outside. Cassiel. He was naked like the others, and his wings were smoking but they weren’t burning yet.

  He landed between Mona Lisa and me, facing her, and kept his wings up out of the flames.

  “The river Styx,” he told her. “The river Styx is where we kissed for the first time.”

  She stared at him for a moment, and then his wings crumbled into dust and blew away. His skin melted, turning white and then ashen, like a corpse’s. And his body took on a gaunt, not-quite-human shape that was all too familiar. . . .

  Oh, for Christ’s sake.

  Mona Lisa’s snakes reached out to caress his face. He didn’t flinch away from them, just held out his hands to her. The flames faded from her skin—but not the rest of the room—and she stepped into his embrace.

  “A boat of bones,” he whispered. “The songs of the dead. The end of time.”

  “Judas,” I swore. There is no other way of describing how I said his name.

  He turned to face me. It was him all right. I’d been played like I’d never been played before. I was too disgusted with myself to even attack him right away. And too near death. I could barely stand.

  “I told you I would deliver you Judas,” he said. “And I have kept my end of the bargain. Just as you have kept yours.”

  I thought about maybe picking up one of the fallen weapons and killing him with it. But instead I just rested my burned hands on my scorched legs for a moment. I took note of the black spots marring my vision, but I wasn’t sure if they were ash or just my eyesight starting to fade.

  “As you might expect, I have a few questions,” I said through gritted teeth and charred lips. “Like why the hell you dragged me into this. Why didn’t you just rescue her yourself if you knew where she was?”

  Judas smiled as Mona Lisa embraced him. Her snakes caressed his face like Penelope had stroked my hair when we lay together. “How could I have succeeded where even you have failed?” he said.

  Fair enough.

  “I’m going to die here,” I said. “But I’ll die trying to take you with me.”

  And the snakes hissed at me as Mona Lisa straightened and pushed Judas behind her.

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” I said and grabbed a knife off the burning table. The blade and handle were both white hot from the fire, but whatever.

  “Wait,” Judas said and pulled Mona Lisa back before she could annihilate me. Damn him. “I have met the terms of our bargain, but I feel perhaps that is not enough.”

  “Perhaps not,” I agreed, continuing on. I threw a jab at his face, but it was just a feint to cover the knife thrust to his stomach. I sank the blade in deep, to the hilt. And then it kept going. My hand erupted out the other side of him, and ash poured out. Mona Lisa screamed, but Judas waved her off.

  “You have earned that, or I have deserved it,” he said. When he spoke, cobwebs spilled out of his mouth and drifted through the air around us. Other than that, he showed no signs of being affected by the wound. “And now I will give you what you deserve. The answers you have so long sought. The secrets of your existence.”

  I paused in pulling the knife back out of him for another shot. It was the only thing that would make me stop.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  He chuckled. “I thought you might be.” He leaned close, so that when he spoke the cobwebs floated out onto my face when he whispered the words I had waited so long to hear.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said. “And I don’t know why you came to be. I don’t even know how.”

  I swore a handful of forgotten curses at him. “This is not the time for your tricks,” I said and ripped the knife free. More ash filled the air. I rammed the knife deep into him again, through his heart, through him, before Mona Lisa could kill me.

  He cried out in pain but didn’t try to stop me. He just stood there and shook his head. “You can’t kill me any more than I can kill you,” he said. “That’s because you don’t know me any more than I know you.”

  And now Mona Lisa shoved him aside and cast her fiery gaze upon me. The air was a howling f
irestorm, but it wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t hear his words.

  “I am not the one to blame for your existence,” he said. “I am not the one who put you in that body. I suspect the body made you all on its own. A programming error perhaps. Maybe it sought to heal itself when Christ’s soul departed for the happy never after, and it created a new soul to fill the void. You.”

  And then he grew wings again, this time made of smoke and bone, and he caught Mona Lisa in his arms and leapt out the window before she could destroy me. All I could do was scream my rage at them as they disappeared into the burning sky outside.

  And then there was more screaming behind me and I turned to see the other angels completely aflame now. Gabriel threw himself out the window after Judas and Mona Lisa, to who knows where, but the others just battered themselves against the ceiling like moths.

  And there was still the mummy. He stumbled across the room toward me, burning like a torch as he came. I had to give him credit for persistence.

  And I decided then that I was going to make one good thing come out of this unholy mess. Everyone else had been making sacrifices. Morgana, when she had freed me, although she had taken much in return. Aigra, who had given everything to me. Hell, Judas had even sacrificed Remiel to me, if you wanted to look at things charitably. And maybe he had told me the truth about myself, as unpleasant as it was to hear. Now it was my turn. I wasn’t going to use the last of my grace to try to find some way to escape. I was going to use it to free the mummy from its curse. I was going to let him die a man. I was going to use the life my body had given me to give him life. It wouldn’t be much of a life, considering the circumstances, but what life is?

  So I resurrected him.

  It took the very last of my grace, and I dropped into the flames in exhaustion after I did it. I had nothing left. But the mummy stopped coming at me and then gasped for breath. Then he started tearing off his burning bandages. I saw the fresh skin underneath, saw his young face with glistening new skin when he ripped the fiery strips from his head.