Drowning in Fire

TEN

Keko turned away from Griffin’s dirt-streaked body and that patch of bloody skin between his ear and eye that would always remind her of what he’d just done for her. Very deliberately she walked toward the stone prayer. As she picked her way up and across the broken and upended slabs of lava rock, Griffin’s voice struck her back.

“You’re not still going on with this, are you?”

“What’s it look like?”

He made an exasperated sound. “Like idiocy.”

The prayer was so close.

“You need to rethink things.” He was coming after her again, not running but with quick, purposeful footsteps.

“I came all this way. I’m not turning back now. Please don’t try to stop me.”

“Jesus, Keko.” He caught up to her, grabbed her arm and spun her around. He’d put his vest back on but hadn’t zipped it. She wriggled free from his grasp.

“Can’t you see now why I came to Hawaii? I’m not going to leave you alone because that”—he jabbed a finger at the tree—“can’t happen again. And since this attack took both of us by serious surprise, you should be prepared that it might.”

She drew back, insulted. “You think I can’t take care of myself?”

He lifted his palms to her. “I know you can. I know that. Just”—one of those hands shoved into his hair and gave it a good tug—“you don’t really want to throw your existence away to something like that, do you? Life can be so much more than what you’ve made it out to be. So much more than what your culture has allowed you to have.”

If only he knew exactly what she was doing for her culture, he might understand. And for the first time, she actually had the urge to tell him so. Because this argument of his—this belief in her hubris and selfishness—was starting to do far more evil than good.

“I just want you alive, Keko.”

She turned away, because she was starting to believe him.

A few steps more, and at last she gazed down at the carving made by the Queen’s own hand over a thousand years ago. The slab of lava rock tilted sharply to the left now, the treeman’s uprooting creating a pile of disturbed ground right next to it, but the image of the carved person was still clear. A figure made of simple, clean lines, arms bent at the elbow in supplication. Tiny brown leaves and golden seeds and little piles of dirt clung to the shallow grooves. Keko gently blew them away.

“What does it mean?” Griffin’s voice was soft, inquisitive.

Keko frowned at it. “She is asking the Source to reunite her with her element. Her final wish.”

He moved closer to her side. “You said this thing told her where it was located. Can you read it? Do you know where the Source is?”

When she glanced up at him he wasn’t looking at the petroglyph, but scanning the canyon in a measured soldier’s way, wariness painted across his face.

“No. I can’t.” A feeling of unease and hopelessness skated down her spine. “It doesn’t say anything about where the Source is.” She dropped to her knees and frantically scraped away all the vines and dead brush and leaves from the waves of lava rock immediately surrounding the prayer. “There’s nothing more. Nothing more here.”

Griffin waved his hand, gesturing her to come to him. “Then I think you should get up and we should get out of here. We don’t know if that thing will come back. Or if he’ll bring friends.”

“No.” She reached out and placed a hand over the figure’s body, and suddenly realized what she must do. “I have to carve my own prayer.”

“What?”

“The Source answered the Queen’s final prayer in her hour of desperation, when she wanted it the most. I have to do the same, and there is no time more desperate than now. This was her prayer. I have to carve my own.”

“We should really get out of here.”

“We?” She met his eyes. “I’m not asking you to stay, but I’m not leaving either.”

Keko searched around and found two rocks, one that had been broken into a point that she aimed against a new lava slab. She used the wide edge of the other rock to make the first chip. It fell away and she breathed with satisfaction and growing excitement.

She carved for a long time, echoing what the Queen had drawn and whispering prayers and pleas to both the Queen and the Source. Griffin paced at her back but did not otherwise try to dissuade her.

As the day’s light began to leave the canyon and her work was thrown into shadow, Griffin’s silent worry had reached fever pitch. She didn’t allow herself to feel the same, because if the treeman had wanted to come back and attack, he would have done it by now.

“It’s dark,” Griffin said, as if she couldn’t read the sky. “We’re stuck here until morning. I don’t trust even you to negotiate that ledge at night.”

Keko unfolded her legs and gave her back a good stretch, the tightness in her wound making her feel alive, not halfway dead as before. The two rocks she’d used to carve her prayer were well worn down, as was she, but the prayer was complete.

“I’m staying here tonight.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I hope glory is worth it.”

She tilted her head to one side, and then the other, stretching her neck. “You keep assuming I’m doing this for me.”

His pacing stopped. “You’re not?”

She met his shocked stare with her even one. “No.”

She could sense his question before he asked it.

“What are you talking about?” When she didn’t answer, he dropped his voice. “What the hell do you mean?”

But Keko just shook her head and looked to the indigo sky. “And now we wait.”

The answer had come to her as she’d chipped rock into rock. The legend said that the Queen had carved her prayer in daylight and the location of the Source had been revealed under the moon. Keko would sit here and watch the rock until the same happened to her. And she had every bit of faith that it would.

“Keko—”

“I didn’t ask you to stay, Griffin.”

He regarded her for a long time before lowering himself to the lava rock on the opposite side of the prayer, making himself comfortable by sitting on a balled up T-shirt he pulled from his pack.

They sat in silence, until the moon came out and the prayer came alive.

At first she thought it a trick of her eye—an aftereffect of the wound and the pain, coming on the heels of days of being chased. Fatigue, hunger, desperation, all pounding into her brain.

But no. The air above the prayer—her prayer, not the Queen’s—sparkled. Tiny winks of blue light hovered in space a couple of feet above the rock, growing in number and density with every passing second. Keko scrambled to her feet, heart hammering.

The chest of the basic figure she’d carved glowed blue-white. The figure was her, Keko, bearing the Queen’s treasure. Crowning her effigy, twinkling in stasis above the rock, were hundreds of little lights, like stationary fireflies.

The answer—the location—was in there. Somewhere.

The euphoria of the magic, of the Source actually acknowledging her and answering her prayer, died. Keko began to panic and scratch at her arms.

“But . . . what does it mean? How am I supposed to figure this out?”

Griffin’s knitted brow smoothed and he slowly rose to standing. “I think I know.”

She grabbed his arm above the elbow. “You do? Tell me.”

He tore his gaze away from the lights and looked at her with frightening calm.

“It’s a star map,” he said.

Her grip on him fell away and she whirled back to the prayer, trying to see what he did. “A star map? How do you know?”

He just looked at her. And looked. “Because I know the stars. Every single one of them.”

Their conversation from last night came roaring back.

“It seems to me,” he said, coming to her side, his hand waving just above the floating pinpricks of light, “that if the Chimerans came from the stars, too, in a way, that the stars would be the ones to guide you in the end. Maybe they have something to offer your people as well, not just the Ofarians.”

His words were drifting around in her head, bouncing off her desperation and adding to her confusion. “But what am I looking at?”

He pointed to the glowing blue-white spot on the figure’s chest. “That’s the Source. Positioned under certain stars, at certain angles right now. It would have been a different configuration for the Queen, all those years ago. Maybe back then, since she used the stars to guide her people across the ocean, she knew how to read them.”

“I . . .” It was too conceptual for her, too outside of any way of thinking she’d ever been exposed to, and it wasn’t clicking in her head. She turned her face to the sky and all she saw was a maze of light. She was so close. So close. And now this?

She looked back at Griffin, whose expression was watchful and utterly frustrating.

“Can you read it?” she asked.

He nodded.

Excitement spiked in her heart and made her fire flare in anticipation. “Well? And?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “How about a trade? I decipher the star map and you tell me why you are really doing this.”

She went cold. “What?”

He nodded to the place where she’d sat to do her carving. “What you said earlier, about how this whole thing wasn’t really about you. I can help you, but I need to know what I’m contributing to. You can understand that, can’t you?”

With a snarl of aggravation she swiveled away to stare into the darkest point of the canyon. The star map glowed at her back, sending diffused blue-white light into the reaches.

Of course she understood what he was asking. She’d want the same thing. You never got something for nothing. Only she didn’t think she could give him what he was asking.

“The star map is fading,” Griffin said behind her. Not taunting, not demanding. “If you want to go it alone, you could memorize as much detail as possible now, and then probably plug the points into a computer program to find the general location.”

At that she turned back around, pushing aside all her insecurities, all her self-doubt. She couldn’t afford to let him see that. “I don’t know how to use a computer.”

The subtle parting of his lips was the only thing that told of his surprise. He cleared his throat. “So you need me.”

Coming closer to the star map, looking down into the mess of floating lights and the brilliant, tempting X that marked the treasure, she knew she’d never be able to memorize all that detail.

“I want something more,” she said.

“Name it.”

The space between them screamed with tension.

“If I tell you,” she began slowly, “I want your word that you will never repeat a word of it. Not to Gwen, not to your dog, and absolutely never to the Senatus.”

“My god,” he whispered, “what is this about?”

“Your word, Griffin. What I could tell you would never hurt me—I’m far beyond that and I wouldn’t care if it did—but it would destroy others. It would compromise all Chimerans in the eye of the Secondary world. It would create huge rifts among my people and the island clans, and that scares me more than anything.”

As he stared at her she knew immediately that he would never agree to such an oath. All that she’d just said would steer him away from agreeing to her terms. In fact, it had probably churned up even greater determination in him to discover it on his own, without her stipulations. It had always been about the Senatus and the Ofarians to him. It had never been about her or her people. What she’d wanted or believed in had never factored into his role or objectives—

“Done,” he said. “I swear.”

All breath punched out of her lungs. “What?”

“I told you”—he inched closer, making the space between them even more pressurized—“I’m not here for them. I’m here for you.”

How on earth had she pegged him so wrong?

“The stars,” she blurted, because she knew how much they meant to him. As much as her Queen. “Swear on your stars.”

He drew a breath. By the twitch of his hands at his sides, she thought he might touch her, but he didn’t.

“I swear on the light of the stars, the power that brought the Ofarians to Earth and that which I hold dear, that your secret is safe with me, Keko. I will never use it against you or for my own gain. I will never tell another soul.”

Brave Queen . . .

And then he repeated it in Ofarian. She couldn’t understand the words but she knew what he was saying, could almost see the oath that his strange syllables and beautiful phrases wove around them both.

She covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t help it. It was all so overwhelming. So unexpected. Every motivation and emotion she’d assigned to him now felt false.

“Do you believe me now?” he asked quietly, and she knew he wasn’t asking about the oath.

Behind her hands, she nodded. If he were here for the Senatus—at their order or to wedge himself into their ranks by using her—he never would’ve agreed to this. He could be lying, but the stars . . . they were his religion, whether he recognized that or not.

She looked at the star map, whose brilliance had faded somewhat. Soon it would be gone, but Griffin had it all stored away in his head. Exactly what she needed. But could she actually give him what he wanted in exchange? Could she tell this ambitious man about the disease that was weakening her people? Her leader?

“I need time,” she said. “I need to think.”

He reached out to take her hand. Looking down at where her fingers were clasped lightly in his, she added, “I can’t think straight when you touch me.”

He let her go.

• • •

The most startling thing about waking up was not realizing she’d fallen asleep in the first place. Dawn smacked Keko’s eyelids open and she came awake with a gasp. Sitting up, she felt the tug on her shoulder wound and the gouges in her skin from where rocks and branches had bedded down for the night.

Immediately she looked over at her carved prayer, sitting there sort of ugly and harsh next to the time-weathered one made by her Queen. The starlight magic was gone. So was the glow in the figure’s heart. All that was left was the map and knowledge in Griffin’s head.

He appeared before her then, as though she’d called out for him. The faint light coming over the ocean cast his body in silhouette.

“Morning.” His voice sounded like he’d had lava rocks for breakfast. “We need to get going. Light’s coming up.”

He zipped up his vest—over a black T-shirt this time; it must have gotten chilly overnight—threw his pack over his shoulder, and turned his face to the relentless ocean. That’s when she saw the dark smudges underneath his eyes, the drawn line of his mouth, and she knew he hadn’t slept at all. Had probably paced the whole night, scanning for the return of the earth elemental, standing guard.

Keko pushed to her feet and dug into her pack for something to eat but came up empty. A little plastic cup filled with hard pebbles of who-knows-what was shoved into her hand. She looked up at Griffin.

It was different now, in the growing daylight, knowing that they each had something the other wanted. Knowing there were secrets. Knowing they were connected in even more ways.

She saw his conviction, his oath, in his tired, red rimmed eyes, and felt the anguish of an unmade decision wrestle in her gut.

“Freeze-dried soup,” he said. “Not good for much but energy. I’ll add water if you’ll heat it up.” He ripped off the top seal of his own cup, spoke Ofarian to drag water from the air, and poured it into the little containers.

She dipped fingers into the muddy-looking soup and added heat. Steam curled up from the water that plumped the powdered pebbles into things resembling vegetables and meat.

“Careful,” she said, handing him his cup. “It’ll be hot.”

“I like hot,” he said. “Remember?”

Too much. She started off toward the black sand. “I can walk and drink at the same time.” She downed the hot liquid in a few quick gulps.

“You okay today? How’s the shoulder?”

She waved nonchalantly, pulling out a dull twinge of pain. “Fine.”

They made it up and around the ledge, their backs sliding along the uneven bluffs, their feet shuffling precariously over the sea-sprayed rocks. Finally they stepped down into the stream bed that shot back up into the island.

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” Griffin blocked her path upstream. “There’s this thing the Ofarians use in all our businesses, the ones we don’t want Primaries to know about. It’s called waterglass, and we combine a consistent flow of shielding magic with water and run it between two panes of glass in the windows. I want to cast something similar over us, use it to disguise our movements.”

“You’re worried about the earth elemental.”

“Yeah. Neither one of us knows anything about them. Who that one was, how Aya is involved, how he found you . . .”

The mention of Aya made her feel uneasy.

“The way he appeared,” Keko said, “it was like he came from the ground and pushed himself up into the tree. Took it over. And when you stabbed it—”

“He left the tree. Went back into the earth. I noticed that, too.”

“You think he could find us again?”

Griffin nodded, hands on hips. “I can use mist to cloak us as we move up the stream bed, until we climb out of this ravine and get out of the natural areas. The mist will throw him off, if he’s looking or following. I would’ve used it last night except he already knew where we were and it just would’ve drained my energy.”

“So we get out of the stream bed, and then what?” She raised an eyebrow. Before, she’d expected to have a travel course and a plan of action when she left the stone prayer, but now her travel was entirely dependent on the knowledge and route in Griffin’s head. Maybe she could get him to reveal something more. “Which direction?”

His eyes narrowed, fully aware she was trying to needle information from him without actually giving up any of her own.

“Toward civilization. Back into the modern world,” Griffin said.

That made sense. “He can’t get to us in the cities, not without walking in as a human, like Aya did. There’s too much man-made stuff all around. Too much below the surface. That would be my guess.”

Griffin scratched at his face, dark growth shadowing his cheeks and jaw and neck. “Exactly. I’m wondering, though, why he came after you in the canyon. Why not attack when you started out? Why even let you get that far?”

She looked at him quizzically. “How would he have known what I was doing?”

The pause before his reply was long. “I have no idea.” He frowned. “You’ll have to stay fairly close to me when we’re inside the mist. It’s harder to maintain at a distance, less effective.”

Exactly how close? Because being this close to him already was rather unnerving. “But if the earth elemental comes back, wouldn’t you be able to feel him coming?”

“Not until he was practically on top of us. Or below us, as it seems. Now come closer.”

She moved to within six feet and he threw up a veil of nearly invisible mist, wrapping it around them like a blanket. Its surface caught the light at certain angles, making tiny rainbows.

Concentrating, he shook his bent head and waved her in. “I need you closer.”

Three feet.

He visibly relaxed, the strain of the magic lessening and the faint shimmer of mist tightening around them. He lifted his chin, met her eyes. “Perfect. That’s good.”

Try as she might, she couldn’t look away. “He can’t see or hear us?”

“Shouldn’t be able to. I’ve never done this before.”

“A virgin, eh?”

Griffin cleared his throat and swiveled, facing upstream. “Just keep near me.”

Keko wanted to resist the order out of habit and pride, but as he started to negotiate the stony, irregular bank of the stream, she couldn’t help but notice how his ass and legs looked in those shorts, and thought, No problem, sir.

As they walked, she could hear him murmur in his language every now and then, altering the mist, testing it. His voice sounded as tired as the droop of his eyes and the downward slant of his shoulders made him look, but he never said anything about fatigue, never complained.

Midday they came to a small waterfall, tucked into where the land shot upward and sloped far back, stretching all the way to the majesty of Mauna Kea. Here they’d have to climb out of the ravine in order to hike to the road and thumb a lift into the nearest town, but just the thought of scaling the rocks at that moment pulled on her shoulder wound like a hundred-pound weight. This weakness was abhorrent, but she knew she had to listen to it or else risk more serious injury.

Griffin was also peering up at the climb, his thumbs hooked through loops on his vest. They lowered their heads at the same moment, catching and snagging each other’s gazes. Now would have been the perfect time to lose him. He wavered on his feet. Caught himself. If she pushed herself up those rocks right now, even in his weary state he would follow. He would follow until his legs snapped off.

“A short rest?” she said, shouldering off her pack.

He regarded her, then stretched out a hand to create a narrow divide in the sheltering mist, parting it like it was made of silk. He touched the element like a lover.

That was the way it was with him. Griffin, the unmovable Ofarian leader with the iron gate pulled down over his life, who’d been frenzied and borderline harsh when they’d fucked in exactly the way she’d demanded, was the very same Griffin who could smooth his hands down her skin in the way he touched the mist right now.

For a brief moment in time, she had been his element.

No matter how strongly she told herself to look away from him, she couldn’t. That lack of control took large bites out of her concentration.

“All right,” he said, pulling back his hand and letting the mist close. He removed his pack and vest and carefully set them at his feet, but did not sit. “I can use the waterfall to power some of the magic while we take a break. Won’t drain as much energy from me.”

With a simple Ofarian word, the mist veil arched up to merge with the waterfall. It domed outward to encase the tumbling water and the wet rock ledge on which they stood.

Keko stared at him and his beautiful magic like an idiot. A weird, unwelcome emotion bubbled up from inside her, and it had nothing to do with fire.

She couldn’t believe that the two of them were standing alone together near a hidden Hawaiian waterfall. She couldn’t believe that Griffin Aames had come here specifically to keep her from doing what she most wanted to do, but then had sworn on his beloved stars to give her information to help her move forward. He was far too beautiful and far too frustrating for her own good. And even though she desperately wanted to, she still shouldn’t trust him.

Mighty Queen, this was all so fucking confusing. But nothing more so than the fact that she still wanted him.

She remembered the day he’d stalked into the garage in Colorado, how suddenly and powerfully he had made her feel again after three years apart. How she’d tried so hard to shove her want and need aside, to project an air of steel toughness, and what the aftermath of that rejection had made her do.

This man was like war to her: dangerous and exciting, strong and deadly. He carried emotion on his back like a weapon, hitting her with blow after blow. Sentiment weakened her, weakened all Chimerans. She couldn’t afford that. Not now.

With a nod to the shallow pool frothing at the base of the waterfall, she said, “You mind if I take a quick dip? I think it’ll wake me up.”

Something shifted in his expression, and she recognized it for the desire inside herself that she was really shitty at hiding. She’d never been one for pretending, for covering things up. In the Chimeran valley you said and did what you wanted, and the outcome of those words or actions made you what you were.

But Griffin . . . Griffin threw everything out of whack.

Wanting or needing to fuck was one thing. Carrying around a soul-deep passion, a severe longing, for another person—and not just their body—was so foreign to her. By the look on his face, maybe it was strange to him as well.

He was pretending, too.

She flicked open the snap on her frayed jean shorts. Griffin’s eyes dropped to the motion, his jaw tightening.

“I still can’t be too far away from you to keep up the spell,” he said.

“Then sit right there on the edge of the pool. Turn your back if you want. Or don’t.”

She let her shorts drop. Griffin’s expression turned pained, his eyes squeezing shut as he turned around. “I know what you’re doing.”

“You’re a smart man. I’m sure you do.” She pulled off her bloody and tattered tank top no longer remotely resembling white, then reached over her shoulder to rip off the bandage.

Naked, she stepped down into the pool and sank into it, surrounding herself with his element. Loving the coolness of the water as it lapped against her hot, hot skin.

“I’m in,” she said, lowering herself enough for the water to make a wet line across the tops of her breasts. “You can turn around now.”

He didn’t.