The Mona Lisa Sacrifice (27 page)

For a moment, everyone froze, or at least that’s the way I remember it. The angels paused to stare at what I’d done. Edwards stopped his hands in mid-clap. Mona Lisa looked at the faerie as if noticing him for the first time. And the faerie? Well, he kept concentrating on the scene for another few seconds. Then a violet bubble burst from his lips, and a stain spread around the rapier. I pulled it from his chest in a smooth motion—I’d had lots of practice over the years—and the stain spread even more.

“Thank you,” he said to me, and then he fell to the ground, skipping the whole slumping to the knees part and opting instead to melt into the floor, seeping through the cracks in the wooden planks. Then he was gone, like mist in the sun.

Another nice touch. I would have appreciated it more if I didn’t feel so damned miserable. Once I settled things with Judas, I was really going to have to do something about Morgana.

With the faerie dead, the glamour he’d been maintaining started to die as well. The fires outside the window flared once and then fell out of sight. The smell of smoke in the air faded away. The banquet turned to mouldy mounds of food swarming with flies. The angels’ finery drifted apart into spider webs that broke as they moved, leaving them naked. I glanced down at myself and saw I was holding the kitchen knife again, and once more wearing the clothes I’d been killed in. To clarify: the clothes I’d been killed in most recently.

“What’s happening?” Mona Lisa asked, looking around her, at the tapestries fading into the walls, at the goblets turning to plastic cups, at her dress turning into rags, at Judas turning into Edwards.

“You’ve been deceived,” I said, but that’s all I had time for before Grumpy and Dopey spread their wings wide to block her view of me. And then Gabriel leapt over them and descended upon me.

Sure, there were three of them, but I had once been Jesus Christ, their lord and saviour—their
master
.

Yeah, they kicked my ass.

I tried to impale Gabriel with my blade like I’d impaled the faerie—oh,
Morgana
!—but he just held up a hand to catch the blade. By “catch” I mean he let me stab him through the hand. Then he swung his arm back, taking the knife with it, only to punch me in the head with the same hand. He didn’t even bother to pull the knife out.

Everyone had impressive tricks today.

While I was still trying to figure out whether the white lights I saw were imaginary or from the faerie’s fading glamour, Grumpy and Dopey grabbed my arms and slammed me against the wall. I looked past them and Gabriel to see Edwards make a motion with one of his hands, and just like that he was Judas again.

“Look at me,” he told Mona Lisa and she did and paused.

“Judas,” she said. “What is this place?”

I wanted to shout at her that it was her prison, but I was taken aback by her appearance. Her skin was marked with what looked like the scars of branding irons. Her eyes were empty sockets, just black holes in her drawn face. Her smile was the worst of all. Loose pieces of wire hung from her mangled lips, and the holes still gaped in them where she’d been stitched shut.

Then it was all gone again as Edwards replaced the faded glamour with a sleight. It wouldn’t be as good as the glamour, and he wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but it might do the trick long enough to cloud her mind with some other enchantment he had waiting as a backup. Maybe he even had another faerie in reserve in one of the other paintings. I knew I had to do something. But Gabriel complicated my efforts when he pulled the knife from his hand and then stabbed me in the stomach with it. Maybe that was ironic. I’ve never been quite clear on the definition of irony.

It hurt like hell, but it didn’t hurt any worse than my new longing for Morgana. If it were just Gabriel and me, I probably could have dealt with the pain and made a fight of it. But unfortunately it wasn’t just Gabriel and me—it was Gabriel and me and the other two angels and Edwards.

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.