Mona Lisa Eclipsing

by Sunny

  It all sounded true, reasonable, consistent with everything he’d told me. I would have been satisfied if two of our attackers didn’t match the description my landlord had given me of my four “friends” who had helped me move out of my Manhattan apartment.

  Had they—bizarre thought here—had they been trying to rescue me? If so, that would imply that they thought Roberto was the bad guy. It would also imply that I was a captive, which I wasn’t. Was I?

  “We’ll drop you off at the house first,” Roberto said, interrupting my train of thought.

  “No, the police will need my statement. I was a witness. For that matter, why didn’t we wait for the police? Aren’t we supposed to stay at the scene of a crime?”

  “Normally we would, but it was too dangerous to remain there. The men who escaped might have returned.”

  Roberto and his two bodyguards had tipped the car back onto all four wheels, roughly stowed their captive in the trunk, and taken off like a bat out of hell. Roberto could have straightened the car himself, single-handedly, but he’d asked his bodyguards’ help, likely in case anyone in one of the homes along the street were watching. As if a giant eagle turning into a naked man, and people moving at faster than human speed, able to leap an entire block in a single bound, were not strange enough.

  “I will take you to the house first. No need for you to be involved,” Roberto said in a soothing tone. “If the Federales wish to take your statement, they can come to the house to do so.” He dropped me off, leaving the taller bodyguard with me, following me inside like a looming shadow as Maria opened the door.

  I escaped upstairs to my room, very aware of the guard’s presence outside my door as I wrestled with my sudden, odd suspicions. Roberto had been nothing but kind to me so far, more so than he needed to be. And they had attacked us, not the other way around. But still, so many things didn’t add up, and my questions would not be answered unless I asked them.

  I made my decision and opened the door. “Excuse me,” I said to the guard standing outside my room. “Do you speak English?”

  “Sí. A little.”

  “Good.” I looked up into his eyes and captured his will. Mesmerism, compulsion—whatever name you wanted to call it. I considered this my most dangerous power; as a nurse, I’d only used it to help people, to provide a momentary balm to soothe sick and injured patients.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Carlos Hernandez.”

  “Come inside, Carlos.”

  He entered and I shut the door behind him. He waited for my next command, his face slack, eyes fixed on mine.

  “What type of businessman is your boss, Roberto Carderas?”

  “A ruthless one,” Carlos said, answering the question, but not in the way I had hoped.

  I rephrased it. “What type of business is Roberto in?”

  “He is a drug lord.”

  My sluggish heart started to pound. “What type of drugs?”

  “Crystal meth, cocaine.”

  Okay, definitely the illegal stuff. Even though I didn’t feel the strain yet, I knew I couldn’t keep up the compulsion for much longer and asked the next question quickly. “How did I come to be here in Roberto Carderas’s house?”

  “He shot you with a tranquilizer dart and brought you here.”

  My hand flew to where that red spot on my back had been, an injury caused not by a needle but a dart!

  “When he shot me with the dart, was I alone?”

  “Sí.”

  “So the men we just fought, I do not know them?”

  “The big man and the invisible one tried to help you, but Senor Carderas put a knife to your throat. Threatened to kill you if they did not leave.”

  “They are my friends!” It was a stunning, devastating realization. “The man they captured . . . I have to rescue him! They’re bringing him to the police.”

  “Senor Carderas did not take him to the Federales. He is taking him somewhere to be questioned.”

  “And after he questions him?” I asked.

  “He will kill him.”

  EIGHT

  I WAS OPERATING blindly in so many ways, I should have been terrified. And if not terrified, then exhausted and drained, as I usually felt after expending so much energy to compel another’s will. But I was none of those things. I was flying on fear and adrenaline instead of crashed out on the floor in a weak and helpless puddle, not at all tired, even though I’d held the compulsion for more than five minutes—by far the longest I’d ever done so. A lot of things, it seemed, had changed in those six months of lost memory.

  I changed back into my own clothes, which Maria had neatly mended and washed. Grabbing my passport and money, I left with Carlos before the additional guards Roberto had called in to protect the house arrived. Moments later, I was in the car, being driven by Carlos to wherever Roberto had taken the prisoner—a friend whose name I didn’t even know yet—to be questioned. Or, in franker terms, to be tortured and then killed.

  I looked nervously over at the swarthy bodyguard behind the wheel.

  With a final flexing of will, I had implanted in Carlos the false impression that we were fleeing an attack on the house. Things seemed to be going well so far—no suspicious glances at me yet. I didn’t know how long the compulsion would last. In the hospital in New York, I’d used my ability only in short spurts, to provide quick comfort. Not for anything as elaborate as what I was doing now.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  “Just ahead.” He seemed to mean it literally as he turned into a driveway and pulled in front of an old house that would have looked quite ordinary were it not for the two men posted outside armed with small machine pistols. A rapid flurry of Spanish was exchanged between Carlos and one of the guards, the other bodyguard who had been in the shoot-out, and I wondered for the umpteenth time if what I planned to do wasn’t just crazy but maybe sheer suicide. Then I was inside, with Roberto walking toward me, frowning fiercely. Two other armed men, new guys, followed behind him wielding more of those nasty-looking weapons.

  “Thank God!” I cried, throwing myself into Roberto’s very surprised arms. “The big bandit attacked the house and may have followed us here.”

  At Roberto’s sharp command, the two guards rushed outside.

  “This is not acceptable,” I said, words that at my implanted suggestion caused Carlos to slump to the ground sound asleep. In a flash of speed and strength, I slammed the silver bullet I was holding into Roberto’s back, embedding it deep in his flesh, somewhere he would have a hard time reaching.

  The silver rendered Roberto weak and slow, just as it had done to his captive. I stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth and secured it with Roberto’s own silk tie, all done in the blink of an eye. In the next ticking second, both of his arms were cuffed behind his back, the handcuffs borrowed from the sleeping Carlos.

  “That should do it for you,” I said, satisfied. Not bothering to secure him further, I pulled Roberto’s gun from its holster and dashed outside. It was almost unfair how easy it was to knock out the two guards with careful, restrained blows to the backs of their heads. A quick hunt for the other two men, who were checking the perimeter, and it was over by the time Roberto stumbled outside, enraged sounds coming from his gagged mouth. I threw the automatic pistols, one after the other, into the surrounding forest.

  “Join me,” I said, pulling Roberto back inside. He struggled but in his weakened state was no match against greater strength. I followed the smell of blood and the sound of a slow heartbeat, even slower than mine, to the basement.

  I ended up carrying Roberto down the stairs with me—easier to do that than get him to voluntarily walk down them—and set him back on his feet at the bottom of the steps. Tugging him behind me, I threw open the door to the room where that single slow heartbeat thudded.

  NINE

  THE PHYSICAL PAIN was agony, the silver bullets burning like fiery brands lodged within Dante’s flesh. But the mental agony w
as greater. She had betrayed him. In what explicit words, Dante could not say or express coherently in his current haze of rage and pain, only that she had betrayed him and caused injury to all but his father.

  It had been many lifetimes since Dante had been a captive, bound, gagged, and helpless. Yet in this current cycle of life, this was his second time in such a state, in as many months. The first time, Mona Lisa had saved him. Now she was the reason he had been captured, his body writhing in silver-ridden pain . . . because she cared more for a handsome stranger than she did him or her own people.

  Dante’s thoughts and emotions were in chaotic turmoil. He loved her, hated her, wanted her like no other . . . and despised her with almost blinding, seething fury for kindling that want, that helpless need within him.

  As if Dante’s very thoughts had procured her, he heard her voice above. Heard the treacherous news fall from her own lips that she had yet again fled a rescue attempt by his father. The Warrior Queen had indeed served vengeance upon him cruelly well.

  You made me love you! Made me think you might love me, too.

  Betrayed, betrayed . . .

  It seeped within him and rose like a poisonous well until livid fury drowned all thoughts in a deafening roar for blood and vengeance. The sight of her, as she came through the door, was like a blow bludgeoning his chest. Love and hate, yearning and betrayal, mixed together in tumultuous disorder.

  He twisted against his silver bonds, shouted muffled words of wrath. Then fell silent as she pulled Roberto in behind her, bound and gagged, with his arms handcuffed behind his back.

  Mona Lisa hesitated at the sight of the wild captive chained to the wall. She had thought him frightening before in his eerie fighting calm. Now the calmness was gone and something akin to madness gleamed in his pale silver-blue eyes. The sight, the shock of it, jarred loose another broken memory.

  The same young man in a near-naked savage state straining against silver chains, padded oddly with fleece, his hair unkempt and wild, eyeing her like a famished beast.

  It overlay the current reality like a ghostly afterimage for a heartbeat, and then disappeared. The momentary shift in reality unsettled and confused her enough to make her ignore the dangerously enraged state of the bandit.

  She ripped off his gag, asked him desperately, “I . . . I know you, don’t I?”

  Her question punched through Dante’s rage and shocked him still. “Mona Lisa. What game are you playing at?”

  “Do I know you?” she persisted.

  “Hell, yes, you know me!”

  His shout galvanized her into action. “Where are the damn keys?” she asked. Turning to Roberto, she searched his pockets.

  “You don’t need keys,” Dante snarled. “You’re strong enough to break the chains yourself.”

  “I can?” She seemed surprised.

  “Yes, silver doesn’t weaken you.”

  “No, you’re right. Silver doesn’t bother me.” Still, she seemed astonished that, with one simple tug, she was able to wrench open the shackles that had contained him.

  The chains fell away with a clank, and he was free, looking wildly dangerous and threatening, those pale blue eyes burning so hot and fierce as he stepped toward her.

  “What’s your name?”

  Her question stopped him cold in his tracks again. “You know my name,” Dante said, jaw clenched.

  “Maybe once but not now. I don’t remember. I hit my head. I don’t remember any of you.”

  He stared at her intently then said, “I’m Dante.” When she showed no reaction to his name, he nodded toward Roberto. “What about him?”

  “He’s the bad guy, right?”

  A cold, deadly smile lit Dante’s face. “Yeah, he’s the bad guy.” He moved toward Roberto, who fell back, mumbling frantically, trying to force words out past his gag.

  “Wait.” She gripped his forearm. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to kill him.” He had fallen back into that eerie calmness. Said it as if it were a foregone conclusion. As if it was normal practice for him—and her—to kill the bad guy. But whatever Mona Lisa didn’t remember, she couldn’t have changed that much. The thought of killing Roberto made her instinctively recoil.

  “No, leave him! We have to go. There were other guards coming to the house. I took off before they arrived. They may be on their way here.”

  The sound of a car pulling up and people getting out, weapons being readied, filtered down from outside.

  “Too late, they’re here,” Dante said and ran up the stairs as fast as his wounds allowed, cursing the silver still lodged within him limiting him to only human speed.

  He grabbed a knife from a fallen guard and one of those automated pistols—.22 caliber, Dante noted, why the bullets hadn’t blown through him like a more powerful 9 mm weapon would have. Mona Lisa followed behind with Roberto. Stuffing the pistol in his waistband, Dante grabbed Roberto, bringing the naked blade to his throat. “Knife, I think. A more visual threat. You’re going to tell your men to throw down their weapons, understand?”

  Roberto nodded frantically as Dante ripped off the mouth tie, allowing him to spit out the gag.

  Dante glanced around for Mona Lisa, but she was gone. He felt his heart give a frantic thud at the discovery. “My lady doesn’t want you dead,” Dante snarled in fluent Spanish as he jerked Roberto outside, using him as a human shield. “But give me a reason and you will be. Tell them to drop their weapons now!”

  Roberto yelled out the order. There were four men, all armed with automatic pistols. Two of them started to drop their weapons, but the two others farther away still held their guns trained at Dante. In a fast, blurry motion, Mona Lisa came up behind them, knocked the two armed men unconscious, and followed suit with the two surrendering guards.

  “I did what you said!” Roberto babbled in English as his men thudded to the ground.

  “Pity,” Dante said, removing the sharp knife from his neck. He shoved Roberto down onto his knees. “Stay here. You move, you die.” He strode to Mona Lisa, stopping two feet away from her. Any closer and he would be tempted to grab her and shake her. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he gritted out as fear and adrenaline pounded madly through him.

  “Disarming them.” She started gathering up the weapons, handling them with dainty distastefulness.

  “You should have stayed safely inside instead of risking yourself,” he growled.

  “I didn’t want any more bloodshed, yours or theirs,” she replied softly. Only a discerning ear would pick up the faint, trembling edge in her words. She was not as calm as she appeared. That sign of nerves oddly calmed his own fear and rage.

  Dante watched as she went to the car parked farthest out in the driveway. Popping the trunk, she hastily dumped the weapons she had collected in there.

  “You should kill them,” he said with calm practicality.

  “No.” Just one soft word.

  “They’ll follow us.”

  Slowly, carefully, she took the knife from Dante’s hand. “Not if I can help it.” Going to the other cars, she slashed their tires with quick efficiency. “Let’s go,” she said, sliding behind the wheel of the last car, the only functioning vehicle left.

  “What about him?” Dante asked, casting a hard glance back at Roberto.

  “Just leave him, please.”

  She scrambled out of the car in alarm as Dante went back to the other man. “I’m just getting his wallet and leaving him a warning,” he said. Crouching down, Dante whispered low into Roberto’s ear, “Be grateful for your miserable life. Come near her, or any one of us again, and I will kill you slowly and very painfully. Comprende?”

  Roberto nodded frantically.

  Dante returned to the car and they drove off.

  TEN

  GOD, WHAT AM I doing, leaving with someone even more dangerous than Roberto, the asshole drug lord?

  My eyes couldn’t help glancing down at Dante’s hands. At where thos
e long and lethal claws had sprouted out from his fingertips. He’d used them like knives. Fought with them calmly, as if he’d done it many times before. It was hard to tell how old he was under all that hair, beard and mustache covering his face.

  “How old are you?” I finally asked.

  “Twenty.”

  Twenty to my twenty-one. Jesus Christ, I’d thought him ten years older. He was one year younger than I was but only in physical years. His eyes were those of a much older soul. That of a hardened soldier’s.

  I eyed him warily as he slumped back against the seat. “You’re injured,” I said, feeling silly stating the obvious, but in the midst of all the fighting he’d acted with such competence and menacing purpose I had completely forgotten the fact that he had been shot twice.

  “Yeah, the bullets are still in me,” he said, eyes closed. “You have to get them out.”

  “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “No, too long. You’ll have to take them out.”

  “With what? My fingernails? Unfortunately, they don’t grow out long like yours do.”

  He grinned, actually grinned. A slight, brief upward tug at the corners of his mouth. “You can dig them out with the knife.” The knife he had held to Roberto’s neck.

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or consider it a joke. It didn’t sound like the latter despite that brief grin. I drove blindly, wondering if my companion was a madman.

  I made random choices whenever the road forked or intersected, but some deity must have been watching over us because after several minutes of blind driving, we somehow found our way back onto the highway. Ten miles later, smelling the ocean, I exited onto a smaller road, following the briny scent.

  “What are you doing?” Dante asked, opening his eyes.