Mona Lisa Eclipsing (34 page)

Read Mona Lisa Eclipsing Online

Authors: Sunny

Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Supernatural, #Shapeshifting, #Erotica, #Fiction

“It would be safest for you that way, but we’re about to go public. If you would rather not be a part of that, we can part ways here and now. Or you can join us, be part of our group.”
“Join you, milady?” he said, looking confused. “I’m a rogue.”
“So were Hannah and Nolan, and their two sons, Quentin and Dante,” I said, gesturing to the Morells. “I don’t have a problem with former rogues.”
“Former? I don’t understand, milady. Are you asking me to serve as . . . as one of your men?”
“Yes, Jarvis. I’m offering to be your Queen.”
Stunned disbelief ran across his face. He began to drop to his knees, still holding Kelly.
“Please don’t kneel again,” I said, stopping him with a quick hand under the arm. “A simple yes or no will do.”
“And Kelly?” he asked hoarsely.
“She’s welcome to join us also.”
He set her on her feet, asking her silently what her decision was.
“I’m staying with you,” Kelly said, “wherever you decide.”
Jarvis swallowed and said, “Then, yes, milady. Please . . . I would like to serve you, if you will have me.”
I smiled. “Then consider yourself sworn into my service. Welcome to the family.”
I sensed a familiar presence coming quickly around the distant corner. “Easy,” I said to Jarvis, when his head jerked up, “it’s just Amber. He’s with us.”
Amber came into sight and Jarvis’s eyes widened in astonishment. I wasn’t sure if it was from Amber’s huge size or the gold medallion chain he wore.
Jarvis turned dazed-looking eyes to me. “And the other three males I sense nearby?”
“Are the local territory Queen’s men, I believe. I’d advise you to avoid them until we can make your changed status more clear.”
Jarvis nodded.
“Okay, everyone’s here. Let’s go do this.”
We walked around to the front of the hospital, toward the thick throng of reporters. Several of them glanced our way. A few eyes zeroed in on Jarvis, then dismissed him as they took in his obviously uninjured appearance. But one attractive blonde reporter continued to gaze sharply at Jarvis and Kelly, especially Kelly. Her school photo had been running on the news.
“That’s them! Come on, Jack,” she cried, grabbing the arm of her cameraman. The other reporters turned back to stare at us then rushed toward us in a mad scramble.
The blonde reporter reached us first. “Are you Jarvis Condorizi and Kelly Rawlings?” she asked, sticking her mike in front of Jarvis.
He flinched back a little and looked at me. I nodded.
“Yes,” Jarvis answered.
Questions came pelting at him fast and furiously. Jarvis glanced desperately at me, clearly overwhelmed. I motioned for him to wait. Stepping around the excited reporters that thronged around him and Kelly, I made my way with the others to the standing mike set up near the taped-off area for the reporters. Gently tapping the microphone, I happily noted that it was turned on just as Stanton, his three agents, and the two policemen burst out the front door with guns in hand. Catching sight of us, the nearby reporters, and running cameras, they halted abruptly. Before they could decide what to do next, either point their weapons at us or drop them less conspicuously down by their side, I spoke into the microphone.
“As he just confirmed, that is Jarvis Condorizi and Kelly Rawlings.” My voice echoed nice and loudly out from the set of speakers, capturing everyone’s attention. “FBI agent in charge Richard Stanton and his men, standing right over there—” I waved my hand at them, and several cameras zoomed in on them. “—wanted to take us into custody. We politely declined and made our departure out one of the side exits.”
Half the reporters dashed back over to us. “Who are you?” the blonde female reporter who had first spotted us asked, first one there, once again.
“My name is Lisa Hamilton. I’m a Monère Queen serving as ambassador for the Monère people residing here in America. The Monère, as I explained and demonstrated to the doctors and nurses upstairs in the burn unit, and the FBI agents here, are descended from a race of people who once lived on the moon over four million years ago, before our home planet became uninhabitable. We were here long before Christopher Columbus ever sailed the ocean blue, and have lived in secret among you, until now. Our people have many gifts; one of them is shape-shifting. Jarvis, for example, is a bird-shifter. Jarvis, are you well enough to show them your wings?”
“Yes, milady.” He made his way over to me. No one spoke as Jarvis took off his top.
With a simple pulse of power, he lifted his arms and shifted them into beautiful, magnificent wings. Where his hands used to be were long gray-and-black-striped feathers; the color transitioned into startling, pure white along the top. The ease with which he performed the partial shift was quite impressive.
“What is your name?” I asked the quick-footed female reporter. She was not only pretty but young, only in her late twenties, and obviously highly intelligent, debunking the stereotype of all blondes being bimbos.
“I’m Meredith Tanner with Fox News.”
“Jarvis, would you mind if Meredith touched your wings?”
“No, milady.”
With mike in hand, Ms. Tanner stepped forward and touched a wing with her fingers. “Oh my God,” she breathed into her mike. “They’re real feathers.”
“Ms. Tanner, if you don’t mind stepping back please. Thank you, Jarvis, you can shift back now, if you wish.”
Another pulse of power, and the feathers melted away, replaced by fingers, hands, and skin once more. A moment of stunned silence, and then a tall, athletic-looking male reporter near the front thrust his mike at me. “What other gifts do the Monère people have?” he asked.
I loved these reporters—not one single mocking glance or scoff of disbelief.
“We are faster and stronger, and our senses much keener. What is your name?” I asked.
“Charles Kramer with NBC News.”
“Charles, to help me demonstrate, would you mind racing me?”
The reporter blinked then smiled eagerly. “Sure. Where to?”
“How about if I race you to the curb and back, here to my left? That way you won’t need to shift the cameras around. I’d recommend you keep your shots angled out wide instead of zooming, so you don’t miss anything.”
Charles nodded and said into his microphone, “Okay, I’m ready when you are,” and handed his mike to the reporter next to him.
“On the count of three,” I said. “One, two, three . . . Go!”
Charles sprinted forward. Before he had taken two steps, I was waiting for him by the curb, fifty feet away. To everyone watching, all they would have seen was a blurred streak of movement.
I heard gasps and comments like “Did you see that?” and “Holy shit,” which the home stations would hopefully bleep out. The expression on Charles’s face as he ran up to where I waited for him was one of awe and amazement, mixed with excitement.
“Do you have a watch or handkerchief or something to give me as proof that I was actually here at the curb, here with you, and not just a fancy hologram? I’ll return it to you, of course.”
He removed his watch and passed it to me. “My God, are you really that fast?”
“Yup. See you back where we started.” I streaked back to my original spot in front of the cameras to a lot of startled gasps and white faces. No one fainted, luckily. Holding up Charles’s watch, I said, “Here you go, folks. Proof that I was actually there at the curb and that it wasn’t some cleverly manufactured illusion. You’ll also be able to see that it’s real when you play the footage back in slow motion.”
Charles returned, puffing hard.
“Thanks for the watch, Charles.”
A reporter near the back yelled out the next question. “Are the others with you also Monère?”
Gotta love these guys, they recovered quick; not even a second of silence had passed.
“Yes,” I answered, “let me introduce them to you. From my left here is Nolan Morell, his wife Hannah, and their sons, Quentin and Dante. Behind me is Dontaine. The big guy over here is Lord Amber. And you all already know Jarvis and Kelly.”
“Is Kelly a Monère also?” asked another reporter.
I hesitated. “Do you want to answer that question, Kelly?”
“No, you can tell them,” Kelly said, her face carefully set without any readable expression.
“Kelly is what we call a Mixed Blood, half human and half Monère. Something I believe she was not aware of herself until today.”
More questions were thrown at me. The crowd outside the hospital had gotten much larger now, I noticed, including more policemen. A lot of people from the burn unit had also come outside.
I held up my hand and the shouting subsided. “I and my friends are here as representatives for the Monère people residing in the United States. We would like to live openly among you in peaceful harmony, and that is the reason why we have come forward. Unfortunately, people like FBI Special Agent Richard Stanton over there”—I waved to him again—“feel that since we are not fully human, that we don’t have any rights, and he wishes to take us into custody even though we have not harmed anyone or broken any laws.” My pleasant smile disappeared. “Let me make this very clear. This is a one-shot deal. We are here now, ready and willing to talk about a peaceful and legal coexistence between our people—that is my greatest wish. However, if you persist in your efforts of trying to grab us and hold us against our will, brandishing your guns, and threatening us with violence, I can promise you this: we will simply disappear and go back to living secretly among you, something we have been doing for millions of years.”
I let that sink in for a second before continuing. “Let me introduce you to George McManus, our attorney from the law firm of Adams, McManus, and Kent—and also Dr. Hubert, who is Jarvis’s and Kelly’s physician, and some others from the burn unit. They can tell you more about what they saw and heard upstairs.” I waved them to come over. Stepping back away from the microphone, I said softly, “Jarvis, if you can grab Kelly and follow us, we’ll leave now. Our van is parked several blocks away.”
With cameras still filming us, we ran, blurring out of sight, nothing more than smeared streaks of speed; one moment there, the next moment gone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I
T WAS SORT of anticlimactic to pull into the back parking lot of our hotel and exit the van without anyone gaping or pointing at us. For now, our anonymity was still intact, though I didn’t trust it to last for long.
“Jarvis.”
He turned to look at me.
“Dontaine, Amber, Dante, and I will be here,” I said, pointing to our door. “You and Kelly will be staying in the suite next door with the Morell family. Is that all right?”
“Yes, milady.”
“You both did well. Let’s get some rest while we still can, then we’ll grab something to eat. After that, we’ll get some clothes and supplies for you and Kelly. How does that sound?”
Jarvis seemed both bemused and discomfited on my seeking his opinion. “Of course, milady.”
“Don’t forget to put the
Do Not Disturb
sign on your door,” I told Nolan, and made sure to hang our own sign outside on the door handle.
“So what do you think?” I said as soon as we were inside. “Do you think it went badly? Did I totally blow it?”
“I thought it went well,” Dante offered. “You made our purpose and our good intent very clear. The next step is up to them.”
We talked for another half hour. The general consensus was that we had handled things pretty well—as best as the situation allowed, anyway.
“You guys must be feeling tired,” I said, noting the time. It was ten thirty in the morning, long past our normal bedtime. “So who gets what room?”
“Where would you like us to stay?” Dontaine asked, his face carefully bland.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, walking to the bedroom where Dontaine had unpacked all my stuff. “You guys work out the bedding arrangement. One person can stay with me, but no sex, just sleeping.”

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