Mona Lisa opened her mouth to yell at him and found a hissing sound emerging from her beak instead of words. A hissing sound that grew louder and more distressed as the bottom of the rugged gorge loomed alarmingly closer, and still he just fell, making no effort to change, his pale blue eyes glittering, lifted up to her.
She tucked in her long span of wings and dived, but it was too late; there was too much distance between them. He hit the ground feetfirst with bone-crunching impact and slammed into the dirt, landing on his side. Blood sprayed the air with metallic scent.
She hissed and snarled, misjudged the landing distance, and hit the ground harder than she had intended. Dante was still conscious, a broken, bleeding mess. His eyes, only his eyes shifted to her, his head and neck unmoving. Blood, mixed with clear sanguineous fluid, seeped out like in a tiered halo around his head, reddening the ground.
“Take us away,” he croaked in a barely understandable rasp.
She wanted to yell and scream at him, tell him he was too injured to move, but a vulture had no vocal cords, no way of speaking. Only her eyes flashed her ire and sick worry as she hopped agitatedly around him.
He smiled, goddamn him, seeming to understand her distress. “Won’t kill me . . . but they will.” He shifted his eyes to look up. Turning, Mona Lisa saw them in the far distance, scaling their way rapidly down the cliff like giant spiders.
Mentally cursing, she hopped onto his chest, surprised a little at how big she was. Grabbing each arm with a claw, she spread out her long-spanned wings and flapped hard. Taking off with deadweight wasn’t easy. She ended up dragging his body more than ten feet on the ground before she finally gained air. Flying with him was more strenuous than she had expected, and to think that eagle had flipped a car onto its side with four heavy people inside it. What did the guy eat? Wheaties? Well, if he could do that, she could do this, but it sure wasn’t pretty or easy. Her flight had absolutely no grace or finesse. It was jerky and erratic and rough, real rough. And all the while she worried about dropping Dante and seeing him falling . . . falling like before, that endless plummet, the brutal landing, the crack of bones and spray of blood, the pooling of it around his head in a growing splash of red.
She flew for what felt like forever, with the heavy, dragging weight of Dante clutched in her talons, and still she flew on, until her wings ached so badly she was sure they’d crack and fall off—was surprised they hadn’t done so already.
During all this time, he didn’t make a single sound—not one grunt or moan of pain during the jerky flight. Just the harsh noise of his breathing.
Following the sound of water, Mona Lisa eventually came to a river and landed, laying him as gently as she could on the bank, which was not gentle at all; it was as rough and clumsy as her first landing, maybe even worse. It took two tries before her tightly clenched talons—could talons cramp?—finally got the message and released him. A slight lift and hop away from him and she staggered, let herself fall over, wings folded.
Human, she thought, and pictured it in her mind: her normal self.
A faint, weak shimmer of energy, a swirling and morphing of reality, and she found herself gazing at her bare arm, followed it down to see the skin of her chest, stomach, and legs. “I’m naked,” she slurred, pushing up onto her elbow.
“Tore your clothes . . . during transformation,” Dante said with painful effort.
He was conscious.
Oddly, ridiculously shy, she crept over to where he lay. “You okay?” she asked, wishing for longer hair—something, anything to cover herself with.
“Could be better,” he rasped. “You can use my shirt . . . quickly. Don’t have much time.”
“You think they’re following us?”
“Yes . . . hunting me.”
“You?” Carefully she unbuttoned his shirt and eased it down his left arm. “I’m going to have to lift you a little.”
“Do it.”
The entire left side of his face was grotesquely swollen and matted with blood. She couldn’t tell if his temple and the back of his skull were fractured. His cheekbone was definitely broken, as were both his legs, she noted as she slipped the shirt off his other arm. Blood soaked the left collar and almost the entire back, but it was still a relief to slip it on over herself and button it up. She had lost everything, not just her money, credit card, and passport, which had been in her pocket, but her socks and shoes as well. All but the necklace she still wore around her neck. Only that hadn’t slipped or torn off when she had transformed into a bird . . . a vulture, of all things!
“Build a raft,” he told her. “We’ll float down the river.”
TWELVE
“BUILD A RAFT,” I muttered as I pushed over my fifth tree and ripped off the branches. I felt better now with a little rest. Enough to feel resentment building up at the situation—lost in the mountainous wilds of Mexico with a demented pack of native Monère savages still hunting us . . . hunting him.
“Why the hell are you so sure they’re still hunting us?” I asked as I dragged the trunk over to where he lay. I’d never realized how pampered and tender my feet were until now, walking around barefoot in a jungle.
“What he called me. Smãileden.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s me—what I turn into.”
“Which is?”
“A saber-toothed tiger.”
I stopped what I was doing. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
Brushing off my hands, I crouched down beside him. “You know how I said that you should smile more?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I changed my mind. It’s starting to irritate me.”
His smile deepened enough to form crinkle lines around his eyes. “You’re cute when you’re irritated.” During the half hour of his rest and my labor, his voice and breathing had evened out. Broken ribs healed perhaps.
I rolled my eyes. “And you’re obviously feeling a little better—as much as someone with a cracked face and broken legs can feel better. Oh, and I forgot, you’ve been shot twice. In all the new trauma, I almost forgot that minor detail.” I shook my head at him, at the situation. “Really? A saber-toothed tiger?”
“Yes, it’s a rare form, and why you’re in this mess. Some tourists saw me and it was reported in the news. My father said that’s why you came here looking for me.”
“Why was I looking for you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He sounded honestly puzzled.
“I mean, why were we apart? You said we were lovers.”
His gaze fell away. “Things happened. I left.”
I looked thoughtfully down at him. “You said the first time, I shared light with you. Light that you needed. Was it just that once?”
“No, two more times.”
“Were those two other times a therapeutic necessity?”
He shook his head
“Did we break up?”
“Yes.” The affirmation clearly hurt him.
“So why was I looking for you?”
His gaze lifted back up, his odd pale eyes somehow managing to look both tender and tormented. “There are things I have to tell you. But later, not now. They’re hunting us.”
I cast my senses out. “I don’t feel or hear anything.”
“Neither do I, but I know they’re coming.”
“You’ve encountered them before?”
“Yes, a long time ago.” He turned his eyes to the tree trunks I had laid out on the ground. “Gather some vine and use it as rope.”
His sense of urgency communicated itself to me, and I had the trunks crudely rafted and knotted together a few minutes later.