Drowning in Fire

EIGHT

Hiking on three hours’ sleep. What rest Keko didn’t get was counterbalanced by the constant reminder that Griffin Aames was on her tail.

Griffin. Who had come to the Big Island to stop her.

Another shudder passed through her body, and it was like food or water, giving her energy. Nothing like a good, angry chase to push her onward.

Nothing like the knowledge that the Queen’s prayer was so close.

Her pace was slower than it had been yesterday, but it was still a good one. She was still moving. When she’d left him, Griffin had been absolutely wiped. Even in the darkness, even though he was trying his best to hide it, she’d seen the steep slant of his shoulders, and heard the wheeze and fatigue in his voice. He’d probably passed out on that ridge last night. But as soon as he woke up, he’d cross the ravine and hunt her all over again. She would be stupid to discount someone of his determination and focus.

She had to keep moving.

She ate the last of her granola bars as she trudged on. She was desperate for water, but she didn’t want to backtrack to the stream she’d crossed a few hours ago. Although backtracking could possibly throw Griffin off, her time and resources were running out. She would press on. She was fire, after all, and fire didn’t need water.

She hadn’t been fooled by anything Griffin said to her—did he really think she believed he was here for any reason other than the Senatus? For anyone but himself?

He, however, had been fooled by the chief.

It made sense Chief would send Griffin after her. If Keko did find the Source and survive, if she brought back the cure, she would be venerated above the Big Island ali’i and all the other island chiefs. She’d be above the Queen. Of course Chief wanted Keko stopped before that could happen. He had other Chimerans covering his weakened ass, after all, and could still live as he had been.

Griffin could go on thinking she was doing this solely for the glory. That was fine by her. He already thought her hotheaded and stubborn and brash. As long as he never knew the real reason. As long as he never found out about the wasting disease. The head Ofarian could never discover a weak link in the Chimeran race.

Bane, though . . . Bane’s motives puzzled her. Messed with her mind. Made her heart feel oddly tight.

There was no room in Chimeran society for familial ties once a person began challenging others to establish their place in the ranks. Bane and Keko had long since ceased being brother and sister, even before she’d ever beaten him for the title of general. So what the hell was he doing? Why would he ask Griffin to find her and bring her home safe? Unless Griffin had misread him.

Unless Griffin was lying. Again.

Both were possible. Neither changed her mind.

The ground was soft from rainfall this close to Hilo. It was pointless to try to keep dry. The damp just kept coming. She was starting to miss the scent of the air within the valley, the smoke and smell of the erupting Kilauea volcano that occasionally drifted to them.

Thick clouds pushed quickly inland, a line of clarity drawn just off the coast where it was tauntingly sunny and dry. She changed her route, finally angling toward the water. There, a little farther northwest on the Hamakua Coast, she would start to look for the geographical markers the Queen’s lover had described. She tried not to worry that the landscape had changed too much.

Movement behind her. A shuffle of leaves, a crack of branches. Small but noticeable, odd and out of place. She whirled.

A flash of dark in the distance. A man sliding behind a tree. Griffin.

She ran.

Didn’t matter how tired she was. Didn’t matter her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. She ran, sprinting through the underbrush and around the hills. She ran, away from the man who would stop her from doing the one good thing in her life she was meant to do. She could hear him pursuing fast. He called her name more than once, and then all she heard was the pound of her bare feet on the uneven earth and the slap of her pack against her back.

She zigzagged, trying to throw him off. The curves around the hills were wide and she followed them left and right instead of taking a straight line that would show Griffin her path. It seemed to be working, because the sound of his pursuit died off. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs. If she was tired, then she must have seriously worn down the Ofarian.

A few more sprinted steps to prove she’d lost him, and then she finally slowed down. Finally let herself jog. A dormant volcano rose straight ahead, its cone shape now covered in green. She’d head that way and not stop running until night. It was in the opposite direction from where she needed to be, but tomorrow she’d veer back to the water and get her bearings. Tomorrow she’d—

A hard, giant something slammed into her from the right side.

She had no time to react. Just barely enough seconds to whip her head around to make out Griffin’s snarl so close to her face. Then his arms and legs clamped around her, snatching her feet from the ground and tossing her up and over his body. Together they sailed through the damp air.

She hit the dirt and bounced, rolling a little uphill, hitting a massive root, then tumbling back down. The momentum let her find her feet again, and she whirled to see Griffin also recovering from the impact, transforming his fall into a shoulder roll, and then popping into a crouch.

Keko dug deep, drew a Chimeran breath, and spit fire into her hand. Let it burn and crackle and glow with its own life. As he eyed her weapon, she scanned the desolate, windy surroundings, searching for other Secondaries—his backup. No one visible, but she could make out his path, tracing how he’d managed to cut her off. She’d zigged and zagged too much and he’d merely taken the shortest distance between points A and B. A dumb mistake.

Returning her focus to the Ofarian, she noticed with satisfaction the heaving of his chest. He wore no shirt, just a lightweight vest with pockets and zippers.

At his side, one of his hands flexed and curled. Like he was getting ready to arm himself with his own magic.

“I’m ready,” she said, finding a firm stance, giving the fire a good burst of flame. “Not like Makaha. And I won’t miss.”

He didn’t flinch at mention of the man he’d maimed. “I’m not here to fight you.”

She nudged her chin in the direction from which he’d attacked her. “Where are the rest of them? Are they on their way, now that you’ve found me?”

He started to raise his hands, but she snapped out a sword of flame in warning and he lowered them.

“I told you,” he said. “There are no others.”

“I can think and run at the same time, and I came to the conclusion that you’re lying. The only reason you’d be here is for the Senatus.”

“Or you.” His response came so quickly.

“Or the Senatus,” she repeated.

He shook his head at the ground, his hands resting on his hips. His body was the complete opposite of hers: loose and unafraid. Unaffected. She refused to be taken in by that. He wasn’t going to get her to lower her guard.

“Three years,” he said to the dirt. His dark hair was shiny with sweat and rain.

Then those brown eyes flipped up to hers under the canopy of his furrowed brow. That look—the way he looked—made her suck in a breath. Made her fire actually falter on her fingers.

“Three years you had my phone number and you never called. I thought you hated me, and when I first saw you in that garage in Colorado I thought I’d been right. And then there was something else. I saw the truth deep in your eyes. I saw in your eyes what I heard in your voice when you finally did call me days ago. That, Keko, that is why I’m here.”

For a split second she was tempted to let the fire go. Instead she touched her palms together as if in Primary prayer, spreading the flame between her hands.

Griffin watched her, but not in fear. Respect maybe, but not fear. She didn’t know which she wanted more.

He said, “You think all you’re worth is what you can prove to others. I came after you to tell you that I think you’re worth much more.”

“This is all I have left.”

“Bullshit.” Griffin lifted his arms, let them slap to his sides. “Do I look like I came from the Senatus? Wouldn’t I have an army behind me?”

She peered over his shoulder again. Still no movement among the trees. No shapes of soldiers.

“If they wanted you,” he said, “they’d come for you. Make no mistake about that. They wouldn’t send just me. Think about it.”

She did, and then she lowered one arm, letting the flame on it die a green death.

“I’m thirsty,” he added with more than a little exasperation. “Can I have a drink?”

Her throat tightened in a similar want. She licked her lips.

“I’ll need magic,” he said, then waited for her to give a shallow nod of permission.

The Ofarian language was still as gorgeous as she remembered, all flowing words that ended too soon. She cringed, hating this reaction. Despising even more how she watched with wonder him using his magic.

The air around his head started to dim and shimmer and coalesce. He was taking moisture from it. Whipping it together to form droplets, churning it into a little spout high above the ground and aiming it toward his mouth. Dropping back his head and opening his mouth, the floating funnel of glistening water poured itself inside. It trickled out of the seam of his lips and trailed down his chin. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “I’m already tired of this chase. I’m tired of being scared for you.”

“You’re not scared.”

She stared hungrily at the empty space in the air where the water had been.

“I’m not?” His thick eyebrows lifted. “I left my people for the first time ever and crossed an ocean to talk you down from the ledge, knowing I’m the only one who could do it. There’s a tad bit of fear there, yeah.”

That didn’t affect her. Nope. Not at all. “You can’t stop me. You’ll try, but it won’t work.”

He threw a pointed glance at her hand. The one she thought still owned fire. The one that no longer did.

Her lips parted, ready to take in another Chimeran breath.

Griffin came closer, his shoes silent on the ground, his presence consuming. “Are you thirsty?”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, forgetting to rekindle the fire at the mention of a drink.

“It’s a simple question, Keko. No underlying objective.”

So why was he staring at her mouth?

“There’s a stream—” she began, but Ofarian words overlapped hers. That beautiful water language drowning her out. Pulling her under.

Griffin’s image went blurry as the air in front of her swirled, then shifted to a sheet of undulating water hovering at eye level. It rolled into itself, forming a long, liquid thread that danced and glistened before her. The sight of it made her stomach tighten and her throat clench in need.

“Open wide,” he murmured.

Standing at least six feet away, after a long chase across brutally uneven Hawaiian land, and he still had the energy to tilt the magic water toward her. Still had the ability to do things to her with his voice. It was just water, but it was also so much more. There was so much in his offer. So much in her acceptance.

She wanted to fight her thirst—told herself to fight it. The next stream was somewhere around here, and this was the windward side of the Big Island where rain was aplenty, but in the end her body’s need won out. The weakness she’d been ignoring all morning craved attention. Maybe fire didn’t need water, but Keko’s body did.

Keeping watchful eyes on Griffin, she parted her lips. Tilted back her head. When the first cool drops hit her tongue, her eyelids started to flutter and she had to force them open. She gulped down the water, lifting her hands below her chin to cup and drink even more.

The way Griffin watched her reminded her of their very first meeting that day in the airport parking garage. Outward watchfulness, a carefully constructed shell that hid a machine of assessment and calculation and . . . desire.

She quickly severed that line of thought, snapping her jaw shut against the water. It splashed on her chin and chest and she stepped away, almost tripping on a root in her rush.

“Better?”

It had been years since she’d heard that tone in his voice. That ravaged, hoarse quality he’d used when he told her he’d never stop wanting her.

She shook her head, rattling out her anger and wits from deep inside, pushing them to the forefront. She would not be swayed by whatever it was Griffin Aames was trying to use on her. Her purpose was far, far more important than sex. Greater than any lovers’ past.

“Yeah.” She would not say thank you. “This was not a victory.”

He let out a half laugh and shoved a hand into his short hair. Whenever he’d met with the Senatus during that week they’d spent together, he’d arrived around the bonfire carefully groomed. Even when he’d come to “rescue” her in Colorado, wearing full-on soldier gear and a scowl, he’d looked like a million dollars. Now, with that vest pulled over his bare chest, sweat and rain and streaks of dirt making lines across his olive skin, his hair poking up at overlapping angles . . . he looked like a billion.

“Never claimed any victory,” he said. “You just looked thirsty.”

She glanced in the direction of where she believed the Queen’s prayer to be hidden. “I’m going now.”

Lips pursed, hands coming to those slim hips, he nodded. “And I’m following.”

She released a growl of frustration to the billowing sky.

“You know I will, Keko.”

Yes, she did know. Her panic was a living thing now, swimming throughout her body, slashing at her gut, pulling out her worry. Griffin couldn’t follow her. She couldn’t risk him ever finding out about the Chimeran disease, not when he was shadowboxing, looking for the perfect way into the Senatus. Not when it put her people at a serious disadvantage against his.

She couldn’t risk being this close to him again, not when her heart and soul were so raw, when she was at her lowest point.

But . . . this was her land. Maybe if she let him get a little closer—if she let him think she’d given in, that she was softening to him, willing to be swayed—he’d get sloppy. Then she’d lose him so fast he’d never be able to track her.

She tightened the strap of her pack that ran diagonally between her breasts. “I’m not slowing down for you.”

“Don’t expect you to.”

And then he smiled.

• • •

Griffin woke up because of the warmth on his face. When he’d fallen asleep stretched out on the wet grass, legs crossed at the ankles, hands tucked into his armpits, he’d been cold but determined to suck it up. Unwilling to give Keko any sort of ammunition against him.

As his eyes cracked open, he stared into the dancing flames of a small fire built only a few feet away. Its heat coated his pebbled skin and he resisted groaning in relief. On the other side of the fire, just beyond its circle of light, was Keko.

She sat on her heels, her back to him, head bowed toward the hands in her lap. Perfectly still. The fire and her presence confused him.

She easily could have taken off while he slept. She’d been the first to fall into sleep, her body tucked into a nest of tree roots, curled away from his sight. Only when he knew she was out did he let himself rest, knowing he could wake himself up after a few hours. And here she still was.

Silently, he came up to his elbows.

She hadn’t spoken to him all day as she’d set a blistering pace northwest toward the coast. But then, he hadn’t asked anything of her, just stared at her back, trying to figure her out. They’d stopped when the light died.

Now he looked at her back again, only under entirely different circumstances. It was quiet here, calm. Every now and then the fire would flare, sending light to graze her back in a loving stroke. Her white tank top was one of those that looped around her neck, exposing her defined delts and lats. Her long black hair was pulled over one shoulder. She wore jean shorts that made her ass look like a denim-covered heart. The shape of her, motionless for once, was intoxicating.

The way the firelight played across her skin made him think that he could see the magic inside her.

She was whispering something, the hush of it mixing with the breeze. It was another language, spoken so softly, and in a gentle tone that he’d never associated with Kekona Kalani. He longed for Gwen to sit at his side and translate for him. Just as quickly he changed his mind, because this moment of solemnity and peace was so unique and mesmerizing that he wanted to enjoy it for what it was. The puzzle was part of the appeal.

The whispers stopped. Keko’s head lifted slightly, her gaze going into the trees and brush.

“Thank you,” he said.

She didn’t jump, which told him she’d likely already known he was awake. Her hands slid to the ground near her hips and she looked over her shoulder at him, her hair swinging in shadow, nearly touching her waist.

“For the fire,” he clarified.

“You were shivering.” Flat tone, flat eyes.

He wasn’t fooled by her act of generosity. She would still try to lose him. She’d make him think she was acquiescing by having him tag along, maybe even try to seduce him so he’d nearly die from orgasm, go all moony-eyed, and then she’d disappear. He knew those games and wouldn’t fall for them. But he didn’t have Adine’s little toy anymore, and he had to keep her as close as possible for as long as possible. Let her think him dumb and malleable, if in the end it gave him an advantage. If it allowed him to keep a close eye on her.

She slid her legs out from under her body and sat perpendicular to the fire, hands wrapped around her knees. Great stars, her legs were long, that caramel skin such a gorgeous color.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“Praying.”

He didn’t know what surprised him more. The fact she’d answered so quickly, or the nature of her answer itself. “To whom?”

She looked confused. “The Queen. Of course.”

He sat fully up. “The Queen who died when she found the Source. She became a deity after that.”

Her eyes narrowed, her face just above the tips of the flames between them. “Yes.”

“So what do you pray for?”

Keko answered slowly. “What people usually do. What do you pray for, Griffin?”

He sat cross-legged. “I don’t. We don’t. Ofarians give thanks and pay homage to the stars twice a year, but we don’t have a god or goddess that looks out for us. We don’t have religion.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Huh?”

“What you just described. It’s religion. You believe the stars gave you your magic, right?”

He swept a long, arching look across the sky that was slathered with twinkling lights. “Not exactly. Ofarians came from somewhere out there, somewhere else in the universe. Our magic came from our home world, but it’s the stars we can see as we stand here on Earth. So it’s the stars we acknowledge.”

“You have rituals? Things you do and words you say that you believe make you stronger?”

“Yes.”

Her hands left her knees and slapped lightly back down. “It’s religion. Yours is less tangible, but no less a faith.”

Now this was getting interesting. “Less tangible?”

“Well, yeah. You worship something that doesn’t actually give you power, but a substitute.”

“We don’t ‘worship’ the stars.”

She acted like she hadn’t heard him. “But we worship the woman who gathered all the Chimerans together from all across Polynesia and New Zealand and Southeast Asia. She dreamed of the ‘land of raging fire’ and took us across the sea to find the wellspring of our power. Here. We owe her everything. She was real.” Another light slap to her knees. “Tangible.”

“Huh. I’m not sure I follow you.”

She flicked her eyes skyward. “We came from up there, too, you know.”

Griffin couldn’t hide his surprise. “No. I didn’t know.” Still such little knowledge about the other elemental Secondaries. Did it frustrate the other races as much as it frustrated him?

Pulling all her hair into one hand, she started to braid it. “In a meteor shower, the story goes. There was something in what came through the atmosphere, something that affected portions of the population in the South Pacific. Something that mixed with the fire magic that was already present in the Source, and it changed some of the people.”

Absolutely fascinating, but Griffin couldn’t find his tongue to tell her so.

Now Keko swung her legs around, too, sitting tall on her hips, her white tank top nearly glowing in the night. “That’s what the Queen did. She found all of us, scattered over hundreds of places and islands, and brought us together. Taught us how to use our magic. She only wanted what’s best for her kind. It’s why she searched for the Source in the first place, to make us all stronger.” Keko licked her lips. “It’s why I’ve asked her to bless my purpose now.”

“And that purpose is . . . ?”

She almost answered. Almost. Keko opened her mouth, took a short breath, then changed her mind, lips pressing shut.

“You want to be a goddess,” Griffin said.

Keko’s eyes glittered like black diamonds. “No.”

“But you want to lead.”

“You know I do.”

With a hard pang he realized this was the easiest they’d spoken in three years, since the final time they’d been alone in that hotel room. Easiest, but also the hardest, because so much of what he’d told her was lies.

Every time she brought up the Senatus and he had to deny its involvement, he felt an invisible knife gouge into his heart. And every time he had to pluck that knife out and ignore the doubt and pain welling in its place, because Keko’s life and safety—and the protection of the Source—was worth more than the truth at this point. He would deal with the truth later. When she could listen and actually hear it.

Picking up a stick, he poked at the fire. It flared more than his poking warranted, and when he glanced up he saw the flames reflected in her penetrating eyes.

“So your Queen brought all the Chimerans to these islands. Did they make the great migration with the Primaries, when the other cultures settled here?”

Another burst from the fire, this time without him touching it at all. “Someone read the tourist brochure.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is that how it happened? Did you cross the ocean with them?”

Again she lifted her eyes to the stars, as though consulting the objects he still wouldn’t name as deity, no matter what she said.

“Is it some sort of secret?” he pressed.

She lowered her chin. Met his eyes. And it took all his strength not to react to the intensity of her direct look, not to let her see the shiver that shook his spine.

“No. I guess not,” she said. “No orders or kapu or anything like that.”

“So . . .”

She fidgeted with something on the ground, shot a blank look into the shadows, looked anywhere but at him. “So, yes. We came over with the Primaries.”

Holy shit. He couldn’t hide his excitement. “You were at one time integrated with them. Lived together.”

“That’s what the tales say, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? When we came here, so close to the Source, our magic increased. The Queen became more powerful. We scared them and separated ourselves.”

It was a different time then, he told himself.

“They made up stories about us. How we lived in volcanoes and made them spew ash and fire. How we demanded sacrifices. How we held power over the common people.”

“Sounds a lot like some of the Hawaiian folktales.” Yeah, he’d read the tourist brochures, and anything else on old Hawaii he could get his hands on, once he learned where Keko lived.

She looked half amused and half annoyed. “Or maybe the folktales sound like Chimeran history. Stories and legends are usually made up to try to explain real things that you don’t understand.”

“True.” He frowned in thought. “So explain the Chimeran name. Isn’t that Greek?”

She shrugged. “We didn’t call ourselves that. The air elementals gave us that name a long, long time ago, and it stuck.”

“Ah.” He poked at the fire some more, glancing up now and then to see her face through the flames. The wood was wet, but that didn’t matter when a Chimeran controlled the blaze. “You’ve been separate from Primaries all this time?”

She bobbed her head from side to side. “Not entirely. Here and there some women have left the valley—if they’re runners or lookouts or something—and came back pregnant. My grandma was one of them. Japanese athlete, she said. She was sent to the Common House for breaking kapu.”

Some blood intermingling in her history and she was still as powerful as the rest of her clan. Interesting.

“The Chimerans seem to have held on to a lot of the old ways,” he noted.

Her brow wrinkled. “We’ve had to, being isolated like we are.”

He considered her. “Do you agree with that?”

Her bottom lip partly disappeared as she chewed it. “Are you trying to politic me? Out here after you chased me down?”

He sighed. “Just trying to learn about you. Just trying to understand.”

“We are who we are, who we’ve always been. And this is how we’ll always be.”

I wasn’t talking about the others, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

“This status code,” he said, “this thing Chimerans have about ranking yourselves through fighting and physical proof, has it always been like that?”

Her back stiffened. “I get what you’re doing.”

“And what is that?”

“Trying to get me to question my own culture. You’re still trying to stop me from going after the Source, only this time with words.”

No point in denying that. He changed tactics. “So the old ways, way back when you lived with the Primaries, were based on this system of learning how to fight, and then climbing the ranks?”

She started to rip out her braid, fingers like claws scraping through the black strands. “No, that was the Queen’s idea. For the Primaries, for the ancient Hawaiians, once you were born into a class you couldn’t ever move out of it. She didn’t like that. When she divided us from the humans, she changed the rules.”

“Which have stayed the same for, what, a thousand years or so?”

She eyed him askance. “Or so.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

She came to her knees in a quick, smooth movement. Her torso loomed above the points of flame, looking like she was growing out of the fire. Maybe she was. “What are you suggesting? That I just leave my people?”

Brilliant, Keko. Bravo. He opened his arms wide. “If the shoe fits. If you’re unhappy, if they’ve shunned you, you have the right to leave. You don’t have to stay there and live with their scorn. You aren’t alone anymore. This isn’t a thousand years ago. Hell, it isn’t even a hundred. You can walk out of that valley and survive in another place.”

Like San Francisco.

That thought made a fist and punched him right in the chest. He tried to ignore it, but the ache, the longing, was too great.

“I can’t do that,” she said, but he saw the conflict marching across her face.

He put every last bit of heartfelt conviction into his voice. “Yes, you can. If you are unhappy, change your life so you can be. If you don’t like the way things are with your culture, leave. By sticking around in that valley and living in that shithole of a Common House because someone told you to, you’re only reinforcing what you hate. You’re giving them power over you, and I can’t believe that you, of all people, would allow that. It’s a different world out there now, Keko.”

Flames flickered in her eyes, but he saw them for what they were: a mask over her sorrow.

“God, you’re so arrogant!” she spit. “You think you have all the answers but you don’t know anything.”

“So tell me!” Now he was on his knees, leaning closer to the heat. “Dying for personal glory is so old-fashioned, so selfish. This isn’t the fucking Middle Ages where you run off to slay the dragon to win the prince. If you think I don’t have the answers, tell me what I need to know so I understand.”

She rocked to her feet and glared down at him. “No.”

“Why not?”

Backing away, out of the firelight, she was almost taken by the darkness before she lowered herself to the ground and stretched out on her side, giving Griffin her back.

He still kneeled there, watching her, until he heard her say, faintly and into the black of night, “Because I don’t trust you.”